Island

Mr. Bahu nodded.

"Come in," Will repeated.

Dressed in a blue skirt and a short buttonless jacket that left her midriff bare and only sometimes covered a pair of apple-round breasts, a girl in her late teens walked briskly into the room. On her smooth brown face a smile of friendliest greeting was punctuated at either end by dimples. "I'm Nurse Appu," she began. "Radhu Appu." Then, catching sight of Will's visitors, she broke off. "Oh, excuse me, I didn't know ..."

She made a perfunctory knicks to the Rani.

Mr. Bahu, meanwhile, had courteously risen to his feet. "Nurse Appu," he cried enthusiastically. "My little ministering angel from the Shivapuram hospital. What a delightful surprise!"

For the girl, it was evident to Will, the surprise was far from delightful.

"How do you do, Mr. Bahu," she said without a smile and, quickly turning away, started to busy herself with the straps of the canvas bag she was carrying.

"Your Highness has probably forgotten," said Mr. Bahu; "but I had to have an operation last summer. For hernia," he specified. "Well, this young lady used to come and wash me every morning. Punctually at eight-forty-five. And now, after having vanished for all these months, here she is again!"

"Synchronicity," said the Rani oracularly. "It's all part of the Plan."

"I'm supposed to give Mr. Farnaby an injection," said the little nurse, looking up, still unsmiling, from her professional bag.

"Doctor's orders are doctor's orders," cried the Rani, overacting the role of royal personage deigning to be playfully gracious. "To hear is to obey. But where's my chauffeur?"

"Your chauffeur's here," called a familiar voice.

Beautiful as a vision of Ganymede, Murugan was standing in the doorway. A look of amusement appeared on the little nurse's face.

"Hullo, Murugan-I mean, Your Highness." She bobbed another curtsy, which he was free to take as a mark of respect or of ironic mockery.

"Oh, hullo, Radha," said the boy in a tone that was meant to be distantly casual. He walked past her to where his mother was sitting. "The car," he said, "is at the door. Or rather the so-called car." With a sarcastic laugh, "It's a Baby Austin, 1954 vintage," he explained to Will. "The best that this highly civilized country can provide for its royal family. Rendang gives its ambassador a Bentley," he added bitterly.

"Which will be calling for me at this address in about ten minutes," said Mr. Bahu, looking at his watch. "So may I be permitted to take leave of you here, Your Highness?"

The Rani extended her hand. With all the piety of a good Catholic kissing a cardinal's ring, he bent over it; then, straightening himself up, he turned to Will.

"I'm assuming-perhaps unjustifiably-that Mr. Farnaby can put up with me for a little longer. May I stay?"

Will assured the Ambassador that he would be delighted.

"And I hope," said Mr. Bahu to the little nurse, "that there will be no objections on medical grounds?"

"Not on medical grounds," said the girl in a tone that implied the existence of the most cogent nonmedical objections.

Assisted by Murugan, the Rani hoisted herself out of her chair. uAu revoir, mon cher Farnaby," she said as she gave him her jeweled hand. Her smile was charged with a sweetness that Will found positively menacing.

"Good-bye, ma'am."

She turned, patted the little nurse's cheek, and sailed out of the room. Like a pi

6

"Golly!" the little nurse exploded, when the door was safely closed behind them.

"I entirely agree with you," said Will.

The Voltairean light twinkled for a moment on Mr. Bahu's evangelical face. "Golly," he repeated. "It was what I heard an English schoolboy saying when he first saw the Great Pyramid. The Rani makes the same kind of impression. Monumental. She's what the Germans call eine grosse Seek." The twinkle had faded, the face was unequivocally Savonarola's, the words, it was obvious, were for publication.

The little nurse suddenly started to laugh.

"What's so fu

"I suddenly saw the Great Pyramid all dressed up in white muslin," she gasped. "Dr. Robert calls it the mystic's uniform."

"Witty, very witty!" said Mr. Bahu. "And yet," he added diplomatically, "I don't know why mystics shouldn't wear uniforms, if they feel like it."

The little nurse drew a deep breath, wiped the tears of merriment from her eyes, and began to make her preparations for giving the patient his injection "I know exactly what you're thinking," she said to Will. "You're thinking I'm much too young to do a good job."

"I certainly think you're very young."

"You people go to a university at eighteen and stay there for four years. We start at sixteen and go on with our education till we're twenty-four-half-time study and half-time work. I've been doing biology and at the same time doing this job for two years. So I'm not quite such a fool as I look. Actually I'm a pretty good nurse."

"A statement," said Mr. Bahu, "which I can unequivocally confirm. Miss Radha is not merely a good nurse; she's an absolutely first-rate one."

But what he really meant, Will felt sure as he studied the expression on that face of a much-tempted monk, was that Miss Radha had a first-rate midriff, first-rate navel, and first-rate breasts. But the owner of the navel, midriff and breasts had clearly resented Savonarola's admiration, or at any rate the way it had been expressed. Hopefully, overhopefully, the rebuffed Ambassador was returning the attack.

The spirit lamp was lighted and, while the needle was being boiled, little Nurse Appu took her patient's temperature.

"Ninety-nine point two."

"Does that mean I have to be banished?" Mr. Bahu enquired.

"Not so far as he's concerned," the girl answered.

"So please stay," said Will.

The little nurse gave him his injection of antibiotic, then, from one of the bottles in her bag, stirred a tablespoonful of some greenish liquid into half a glass of water.

"Drink this."

It tasted like one of those herbal concoctions that health-food enthusiasts substitute for tea.

"What is it?" Will asked, and was told that it was an extract from a mountain plant related to valerian.

"It helps people to stop worrying," the little nurse explained, "without making them sleepy. We give it to convalescents. It's useful, too, in mental cases."

"Which am I? Mental or convalescent?"

"Both," she answered without hesitation.

Will laughed aloud. "That's what comes of fishing for compliments."

"I didn't mean to be rude," she assured him. "All I meant was that I've never met anybody from the outside who wasn't a mental case."

"Including the Ambassador?"

She turned the question back upon the questioner. "What do you think?"

Will passed it on to Mr. Bahu. "You're the expert in this field," he said.

"Settle it between yourselves," said the little nurse. "I've got to go and see about my patient's lunch."

Mr. Bahu watched her go; then, raising his left eyebrow, he let fall his monocle and started methodically to polish the lens with his handkerchief. "You're aberrated in one way," he said to Will. "I'm aberrated in another. A schizoid (isn't that what you are?) and, from the other side of the world, a paranoid. Both of us victims of the same twentieth-century plague. Not the Black Death, this time; the Gray Life. Were you ever interested in power?" he asked after a moment of silence.

"Never." Will shook his head emphatically. "One can't have power without committing oneself."

"And for you the horror of being committed outweighs the pleasure of pushing other people around?"

"By a factor of several thousand times."