With the clock ticking inexorably toward his death, Webenhaus had worked like a madman, driving himself and everyone around him, digging deeper and deeper into the Matto Grosso. And finally he found it: the copa-iba tree.

His life was almost over, but he had made it worthwhile.

Webenhaus wondered how Stacy would kill him, and the thought of a dying man being murdered made him laugh aloud. For a second the grunts and moans in the next tent stopped. But only for a second. Gott, Webenhaus thought, they've been at it—he stopped to look at his watch—for over an hour already. He laughed again. Stacy hadn't been able to get her off. Poor Helga was still straining for release, and poor Stacy was still determinedly plugging away; both of them trying too hard and working too hard at something that was meant to be pleasurable.

There was a sound from the dark far corner of the tent.

Karl Webenhaus tilted the shade of-the lantern that sat on his worktable so that it dimly lit the place the

sound had come from. There was a small mosquito-netted cot there.

He crossed the room to the cot, parted the netting, and bent over the tiny figure snoring gently inside.

"Ah, Liebchen, Liebchen," he said softly. "What will become of you, eh? But Mama will love you enough for the two of us. And your papa, he just wants to be buried here near these trees he looked for so hard and so long."

Webenhaus hesitated for a moment, then gently kissed the child on the cheek. She stirred slightly and he pulled back. He let the netting fall shut and stood there for a moment, silently watching her. "

He nodded to himself, went back to his worktable, and took up his pen.

"Dear Comrade," he wrote. "It has been many years, but once again I must ask your help. We will not ever meet again, but I must ask you to watch over little Joey. . . ."

Suddenly there was a stirring in the next tent and then the hushed hissing of an argument. Helga was telling Stacy what she thought of his alleged sexual prowess and that he was not even half the man that old, fat broken-down Herr Doktor Webenhaus was. Webenhaus nodded; he had overheard these conversations before, in other places and with other young men.