"You couldn't bear it?" Dr. Mitchells shot him an odd glance.

"I get by with a little help from my friends, doc." Edwin looked down at his splints and bandages. "Guess I'm not going to pass my NASA physical, huh?"

"Don't give up hope, Ed-please!" So far there had been no chance to bring Edwin up to date. The prospect made Rob almost too tense to sit still.

"You're sure now?" Dr. Mitchells demanded once again. "This is important.

It will affect his future treatment, you understand? They didn't administer morphia in the helicopter, nor at the airfield? And you didn't medicate him? No experiments with hashish, no opium cigarettes, no nothing?"

Rob shook his head. Edwin said, "He wouldn't know how to medicate a house plant, doc."

"This is so weird," the doctor muttered. "And I have a quarterly report to write in Qyzylorda. I have no idea why I'm zipping off to Istanbul on a cargo flight with a pair of tourists." He pulled the blanket up to Edwin's chest.

"It's a mystery," Edwin agreed. "Am I done for the moment? Good! I wonder, could you look him over now?"

"There's nothing wrong with me," Rob objected. The old reluctance to be touched possessed him.

"You should see yourself." Edwin met Rob's eye and winked a permission. Rob took a quick glance at himself through Edwin's eyes, and was startled. He had forgotten how many knocks he had taken yesterday. His fair hair and beard were crusted with dark dried blood, and his face was bruised all along one side from falling onto rock. And he was filthy- not as spectacularly grimy as Edwin, but pretty bad.

Grumbling, the doctor swabbed his cuts clean. "You should have a stitch in that eyebrow. Let me give it some xylocaine."

"Don't bother-just sew it." If Rob could short-circuit Edwin's pain response it was no trouble to briefly disconnect his own too.

"It's a macho contest, right? You two are trying to see who's tougher." The doctor rooted in his medical bag, swearing under his breath.

When the doctor was finished with Rob he retreated to the cockpit to swap grievances with the pilot. Rob took a deep breath of nervous anticipation.

"Does it bug you that I'm messing with your head? Anytime you want, I'll quit."

"Don't be ridiculous. To scream like the doc thinks I should would embarrass me. I can tell I'm hurting, but it doesn't bother me at all-like it's happening somewhere far away."

"Are you tired? You want to sleep?"

"Maybe a little later. Right now I want to think and talk. The usual Barbarossa agenda. You got some pretty major bruising there, bud. Is that what's bothering you?"

"Golly, no!" Rob hastily buttoned his flannel shirt back up, cursing the doctor for insisting on listening to his chest. Opening the shirt had revealed that he was black and blue all over.

"Well, what's on your mind?" Edwin's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "This pain thing you're doing on me, you're not actually toting the load or anything?"

"Forget it, it's a snap." Rob unbuckled his seat belt and moved to sit cross-legged on the floor beside the stretcher. "Ed, I have something extremely important to say, okay? And I want to apologize in advance.

Anything I can do to help you with it in future, you got it. That's a promise."

Edwin shook his head. "Come on, Rob. I'm sure this isn't going to be a permanent disability. People break their pelvic bones all the time. It's no big deal."

"No, Ed, that's not it at all. Let me tell this my way." Rob couldn't think where to begin. "The doctor told you about your injuries, right? The leg, the pelvis, the arm, the ribs."

"Funny thing," Edwin said. "I remember everything up to the actual fall.

Just as well, I guess."

"Shall I tell you why that is? Because the worst injury was your head."

"What, this?" Edwin touched the head bandage with his uninjured right hand.

"It's just a scalp wound. The doc said so. Fourteen stitches, though-a personal best for me."

"When I got to you, Ed, it was a dent in your skull. About this big." Rob made a circle with his fingers and thumbs. "And-and squishy. You must have hit a rock."

"Oh, you must be mistaken, Rob," Edwin said with maddening assurance.

"Cranial trauma like that? I would've been herniating, bleeding into the brain with a burst aneurysm or an epidural hematoma. People don't survive injury like that without immediate surgery to relieve the pressure inside the skull. And a brain injury usually entails obvious neurological consequences. I mean, here I am talking quite connectedly to you, sound as a dollar, at least on the cognitive front. Scalp wounds are way messy-that must have confused you."

"I'm not telling this the right way," Rob said, frustrated. "Look. When I nailed Gil I stripped him of everything. The power, and the eternal life too. I had to do it. He was too dangerous to let run around with it."

Edwin blinked up at him. "Did you kill him?"

"Not outright." When he thought back on it Rob was appalled at his own serene cruelty. "I should have. To suddenly be an ordinary average person, after all these centuries-he'll go nuts. It's worse than how he did it to me. At least I had a week or so to gear up to speed. Gil lost it all in one instant."

"And out there in the desert alone-the poor old guy, Rob, he'll freeze! And starve!"

"No he won't. The shepherds will take him in. Ed, don't distract me. I climbed down and found you dying from a massive head injury. I swear it-it's absolutely and objectively true. I had to save your life the only way I could. And I had it on me: the magic sea flower that confers eternal life. So I gave it to you."

Edwin lay and stared consideringly at him for a long moment. When it became obvious he wasn't going to speak Rob said impatiently, "Oh, spit it out, Ed. We've been through so much, you can be up front with me."

"I think," Edwin said gently, "that you've taken some pretty heavy hit points, Rob. Obviously you've defeated Gilgamesh, but it's cost you. It must have been brutal. Look at those bruises. And you haven't come to an accomodation with the tiger side of yourself, am I right? If you had to kill him, it's perfectly normal to suffer emotional stress, and feel a need for a coping mechanism . . . You don't agree with me."

Rob covered his sore face with his hands, partly in frustration but also to hide his unwilling smile. "Be fair, Ed. Have I ever told you anything that wasn't the plain and simple truth? But there's an easy way to prove this one. Back in Kazakhstan Dr. Mitchells said your pelvis was broken. That's why you're strapped to this body board. Let's get him to look at it again."

He got up.

In the cramped airplane cockpit Dr. Mitchells refused point-blank to leave the copilot's chair. "There's no necessity whatever to check the injury.

The less stress we put on the break the better. I never saw a plainer fracture. He'll probably need surgery, and be bedridden for months."

Rob was nettled by his self-satisfied tone. "I don't agree with your diagnosis," he said deliberately.

The doctor glared at him. "And who awarded you an M.D.? You want him to scream, is that it? I tell you, Meg, there are some sick people in the world."

The pilot glanced over her shoulder at Rob. "Oh, be a sport, Bill. Go check him out-maybe there's something really wrong."

"No such luck," the doctor growled, grabbing his medical bag.

Back in the cargo bay Edwin was restless. "Maybe we should wait for an X ray," he said nervously. "Or an MRI. You know, Rob, it's not that I don't trust you. It's just that you see things in a more creative way sometimes."

"Creative," Rob repeated, with a straight face. "Very tactful, pal. I appreciate it."

Ignoring all this, the doctor knelt and threw the blanket back. Underneath, what remained of Edwin's blood-boltered clothing hung in tatters from where the doctor had cut things away. The bulky splints on his right leg immobilized it from hip to ankle. Black padded nylon straps snugly criss-crossed his body from armpits to knees, binding him immoveably to the body board. "This ought to hurt," Mitchells said. "If it doesn't, it's another goddam mystery." He worked his fingers into examination gloves and delicately probed the hipbones.

"You're going to tickle me," Edwin fretted.

Mitchells sat back on his heels for a moment. "That's not right," he muttered. He put a palm on the point of either hip and leaned, rocking the dish of bone with his full weight. "Could it be that. . . Damn it! Wait a minute though. You felt something, didn't you?"

The layer of grime stood out starkly on Edwin's stubbled face as he went suddenly pale. "Not a thing," he said in a stunned tone. "It's just-I'm thinking, that's all."

With brusque angry motions the doctor began unbuckling the nylon straps.