They greeted him politely by name and introduced themselves.
'I am Hannah,' said the woman.
'And I am Gibba,' said the man.
Immediately they began their examination of the patient. At first they ignored his bandaged head and considered instead the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. They palpated his belly and chest. Hannah scratched the skin of his back with the point of a sharp stick to study the nature of the welt it raised.
Only when they had satisfied themselves did they move to his head.
Gibba took it between his bare knees and held it firmly. They peered into Meren's throat, ears and nostrils. Then they unwrapped the bandage with which Taita had covered the eye. Although it was now soiled with dried blood and pus, Hannah remarked with approval on the skill with which it had been applied. She nodded at Taita to express her admiration of his art.
They now concentrated on the empty eye socket, using a pair of silver dilators to hold the eyelids apart. Hannah ran the tip of her finger into
the cavity and palpated it firmly. Meren moaned and tried to roll away his head, but Gibba held it steady between his knees. At last they stood up. Hannah bowed to Taita, her fingertips held together and touching her lips. 'Please excuse us for a short while. We must discuss the patient's condition.'
They went out through the open doorway on to the lawn, where they paced together, immersed in talk. Through the doorway, Taita studied their auras. Gibba's had the shimmering gleam of a sword blade held in the sunlight, and Taita saw that his high intelligence was cold and dispassionate.
When he studied Hannah, he saw at once that she was a Long Liver.
Her accumulated experience was immense, and her skills were legion. He realized that her medical ability probably surpassed his own, yet she lacked compassion. Her aura was sterile and astringent. He saw from it that in her devotion to her calling she was single-minded and would not be constrained by kindness or mercy.
When the pair returned to the sickroom it seemed natural that Hannah should speak for them. 'We must operate at once, before the effects of the sedative dissipate,' she said.
The four muscular attendants returned and squatted over Meren's arms and legs. Hannah laid out a tray of silver surgical instruments.
Gibba swabbed Meren's eye socket and the surrounding skin with an aromatic herbal solution, and then, with two fingers, spread the eyelids wide and placed the silver dilators between them. Hannah chose a scalpel with a narrow, pointed blade and poised it above the pit of the socket.
With the forefinger of her left hand she felt the back as though she was trying to find some precise spot in the inflamed lining, then used it to guide the scalpel to the point she had selected. Carefully she probed the flesh. Blood welled around the metal, and Gibba mopped it away with a swab held in the cleft at the end of an ivory rod. Hannah cut deeper until half of the blade was buried. Suddenly green pus erupted from the wound she had opened. It squirted up in a thin fountain and sprayed against the tiled ceiling of the sickroom. Meren screamed, and his whole body bucked and heaved so that the men who held him needed all their strength to prevent him tearing himself out of their grasp.
Hannah dropped the scalpel on to the tray and clapped a cotton pad over the eye socket. The smell of the pus that dripped from the ceiling was rank and fetid. Meren collapsed under the weight of the men above him. Quickly Hannah removed the pad from his eye and slid the open jaws of a pair of bronze forceps into the incision. Taita heard the points
scrape on something buried in the wound. Hannah closed the jaws until she had a firm grip on it, then drew back gently and firmly. With another gush of watery green pus the foreign object popped out. She held it up with the forceps and examined it closely. 'I do not know what it is, do you?' She looked at Taita, who held out his cupped hand. She dropped the thing into it.
He stood up and crossed the room to examine it by the light from the open doorway. It was heavy for its size, a sliver the size of a pine kernel.
Between his finger and thumb he rubbed away the blood and pus that coated it. 'A splinter of the Red Stones!' he exclaimed.
'You recognize it?' Hannah asked.
'A piece of stone. I cannot understand how I overlooked it. I found all the other fragments.'
'Don't blame yourself, Magus. It was deeply buried. Without the infection to guide us, we might not have found it either.' Hannah and Gibba were cleaning the socket and stuffing wadding into it. Meren had lapsed into unconsciousness. The burly attendants relaxed their hold on him.
'He will rest more easily now,' Hannah said, 'but it will be some days before the wound has drained and we can replace the eye. Until then he must rest quietly.'
Although he had never seen it done, Taita had heard that the surgeons of the Indies could replace a missing eye with an artificial one made of marble or glass, skilfully painted to resemble the original. Although not a perfect substitute, it was less unsightly than a glaring empty socket.
He thanked the surgeons and their assistants as they left. Other attendants cleaned the pus from the ceiling and marble floor, then replaced the soiled bedding. At last another middle-aged woman came to watch over Meren until he recovered consciousness, and Taita left him in her care to escape from the sickroom for a while. He walked across the lawns to the beach and found a stone bench on which to rest.
He felt tired and depressed by the long, difficult journey up the mountain, and the strain of watching the operation. He took the sliver of red stone from the pouch on his belt, and studied it again. It appeared commonplace but he was aware that this was deceptive. The tiny red crystals sparkled and seemed to emit a warm glow that repelled him. He stood up, walked to the water's edge and drew back his arm to toss the fragment into the lake. But before he could do so there was a weighty disturbance in the depths as though a monster lurked there. He jumped back in alarm. At the same moment a cold wind fanned the back of his
neck. He shivered and glanced round, but saw nothing alarming. The gust had passed as swiftly as it had come, and the still air was soft and warm once more.I He looked back at the water as a ring of ripples spread across the surface. Then he remembered the crocodiles they had seen earlier. He looked at the fragment of red stone in his hand. It seemed innocuous, but he had felt the cold wind and he was uneasy. He dropped the stone into his pouch and started back across the lawn.
In the middle he paused again. With all the other distractions, this was the first opportunity he had had to study the front of the sanatorium.
The block that contained Meren's room was at one end of the main complex. He could see five other larger blocks. Each was separated from its neighbours by a terrace over which a pergola supported vines with bunches of grapes. In this crater everything seemed fecund and fruitful.
He felt certain that the buildings contained many extraordinary scientific marvels that had been discovered and developed here over the centuries.
He would take the first opportunity to explore them thoroughly.
Suddenly he was distracted by feminine voices. When he looked back he saw the three dark-skinned girls they had encountered earlier, returning along the beach. They were fully clothed and wore crowns of wild flowers in their hair. They still seemed full of high spirits. He wondered if during their picnic in the forest they had imbibed a little too deeply of the good wine of Jarri. They ignored him and went on down the beach until they were opposite the last block of buildings. Then they turned across the lawns and disappeared inside. Their unrestrained behaviour intrigued him. He wanted to speak to them: they might help him understand what was happening in this strange little world.