3

Back at the village Elizabeth found she had no appetite for more work. She was still waiting for a consignment of proper medical supplies, and a doctor had been promised for more than a month. She had done what she could to see that the villagers were getting a balanced diet—but food supplies were limited—and she had been able to deal with the more obvious ailments such as sores, rashes, and so forth. Last week she had helped deliver a baby for one of the women, and it wasn't until this that she had felt she was doing any good at all.

Now, with the strange encounter by the river still fresh in her mind, she decided to return to headquarters early.

She found Luiz before she left.

"If those men come back," she said, "try to find out what it is they want. I'll be back in the morning. If they come before I arrive, try to keep them here. Find out where they're from."

It was nearly seven miles to the headquarters, and it was evening when she arrived. The place was almost deserted: many of the field operatives stayed out for several nights on end. Tony Chappell was there, though, and he intercepted her as she headed for her room.

"Are you free this evening, Liz? I thought we might—"

"I'm very tired. I thought I'd have an early night."

When she had first arrived, Elizabeth had felt the first stirrings of attraction towards Chappell, and made the mistake of showing them. There were only a few women at the station, and he had responded with great eagerness. Since then he had hardly left her alone, and although she now found him very dull and self-centred she hadn't yet discovered a polite way of cooling his unwelcome ardour.

He tried to persuade her to do whatever it was he wanted, but after a few minutes she managed to escape to her room.

She dumped her bag on the bed, undressed, and took a long shower.

Later, she went to find something to eat and, inevitably, Tony joined her.

During the meal, she remembered she'd been meaning to ask him something.

"Do you know any towns around here, called Earth?"

"Earth? Like the planet?"

"That's what it sounded like. I might have misheard."

"I don't know any. Whereabouts?"

"Somewhere round here. Not far."

He shook his head. "Urf? Or Mirth?" He laughed loudly, and dropped his fork. "Are you sure?"

"No . . . not really. I think I must have got it wrong."

In his own inimitable way, Tony continued to make bad puns until once again she found an excuse to get away.

There was a large map of the region in one of the offices, but she couldn't see anything that might be where Helward said he lived. He had described it as a city lying in the south, but there was no large settlement for nearly sixty miles.

She was genuinely exhausted, and returned to her room.

She undressed, and took the two sketches Helward had given her and taped them to the wall by the bed. The one he had drawn of her was so strange. . . .

She looked at it more closely. The paper it was drawn on was evidently quite old, for its edges were yellowed. Looking at the edges, she realized that the top and bottom were slightly burred where they had been torn, but the line was quite straight.

Experimentally, she ran the tip of her finger along it. The sensation was a quite regular vibration: the paper had been perforated. . . .

Careful not to damage the drawing, she separated the tape from the wall, and took the sketch down.

On the back she discovered that a column of numbers had been printed down one side. One or two of them were asterisked.

Printed in pale blue ink along the side were the words: IBM Multifold ™.

She taped the sketch back on the wall . . . and stared at it uncomprehendingly for a long time.