"Oh...? I can imagine it. So—Ann—"
"Ann came back to us. It took her a hundred days, she says. She was—is—skin and bone—"
Paul said, "She'll recover, Ed. Only needs rest and food. She wants John and David—naturally. They're her children too, Ed."
Spearman said almost absently, "Are they?"
"What!"
"I don't exactly believe your story, you know.... You must have been—watching—for a long time."
Behind him Paul heard Nisana's miserable whisper: "What is it? What is it?" And Wright's muffled answer: "A sickness."
"There's no truth in that, Ed," Paul said. "Five days ago we still supposed that you and Ann were lost when the lifeboat went down in the channel."
Spearman shrugged. "Yes—I think you've come too soon. You should have worked longer in the dark. We had an epidemic here. Many died. And another trouble—mental—well, you've kept track of that, of course: the way they've fallen away from me, gone back to the forest and the old life, when I could have given them a golden age. A prophet without honor." He coughed and straightened heavy shoulders. "My God, I can't blame the poor fools—now that I know how it was done." His voice did not rise. "Without the conspiracy and interference, I could soon have started them in building a ship that—Never mind that now. I have the designs, of course. That what you came for?"
Mijok broke in, utterly bewildered: "What are you saying?"