"After all this time and no report, we thought that--"

"I had to take certain medical precautions before I could enter your town."

"I see," she said. "We are so relieved that you made it. I hope that--"

"So do I," he said, seeing for a moment the nine graves he had helped to fill.

Then a door beside her desk opened. An old man dressed in white emerged, saw him, moved toward him.

"Helman," he said, extending his hand. "I'm treating the Dorn girl."

"You'll want this then," said Heidel, and handed him the gleaming sliver.

The doctor was about five and a half feet in height and very pink. What remained of his hair stood out in wisps from his temples. Like all doctors he had known, Heidel noted that his hands and fingernails seemed the cleanest things in the entire room. The right hand, bearing a slim ring with a twisted design, moved now to clutch his biceps, steered him through the door.

"Let's find an office where we can discuss the case," he was saying.

"I'm not a doctor of medicine, you know."

"I did not know. But I guess it doesn't really matter, if you are H."

"I am H. I would not like to have it widely known, of course. I--"

"I understand," said Helman, leading him along a wide corridor. "We will naturally cooperate in the fullest."

He stopped another man in white.

"Run this through the med-bank," he told him, "and send me the results in Room 17.

"In here, please," he said to Heidel. "Have a seat."

They seated themselves beside a large conference table and Heidel hooked an ashtray toward him and withdrew a moldy cigar from his jacket. He stared out the window at the green sky. On a pedestal in tile corner beside it crouched a native deity--exquisitely carved from some yellow-white substance--about eighteen inches in height.

"Your condition fascinates me," said the doctor. "It has been written up so many times that I almost feel I know you personally. A walking antibody, a living pool of remedies--"