He did feel better afterwards. They had moved to the bath tent, which was unfurnished except for a large tin bath and a few steam-clouded mirrors. They lingered in the hot water for quite a while, even though a lot of it had spilled over the sides. Ellini was straddling his lap—it was the only way they could both fit into the bath. Steam was rising from the water, curling lovingly around her bare shoulders.

She was in a good mood. He could tell, because her cheeks were full of colour, and her eyes didn't have that vague, unfocussed look which suggested she was re-reading old stories in her head. Just for this moment, she was with him—she was right at the forefront of her eyes, looking out. And he could keep her here if he didn't make any sudden movements, or any allusions to Robin Crake.

He pulled her close and kissed her collarbone, her neck, the underside of her jaw, in a fever of sheer, delirious relief.

"God, I needed that," he said, his voice muffled against her skin. "I'm never going away from you again. Bloody stupid way to carry on, fighting battles and robbing Lieutenant-governors, as if there's anything in the world I care about beside what's in this bath."

Ellini laughed, still breathless and blushing. It was sweet that she still blushed, even though they were hardly new to each other, and she had been saying some quite scandalous things in French a few moments ago.

"You're fond of the bathwater too?" she asked playfully.

"I fucking love the bathwater. I'd love anything that'd had you soaking in it for half an hour."

Ellini opened her mouth—perhaps to say that they hadn't been in the bath for anywhere near half an hour. It probably hadn't even been ten minutes. But this was not particularly what he wanted to hear, so he interrupted her.

"Do you need another maid servant?"

Ellini raised her eyebrows. "Another one? I don't even know what to do with the ones I've got."

"Don't you worry, they know what to do. I've told them not to pay any attention to your orders anyway—in the unlikely event that you ever give them any. They're to feed and clothe you whenever you forget to do it yourself."

"That doesn't take six women."

"You'd be surprised. If you ever looked up from your books, I mean."

This had probably sounded more bitter than he'd meant it to, because Ellini leaned forward and rested her head on his shoulder, suddenly sheepish.

She never argued. What she did do—and it was far worse than screams and recriminations—was step back. She could disappear into that inner world of words and facts at a moment's notice. And, the more she stepped into it, the more he began to dread that she would never come out again.

"Who's this new one, then?" she asked, and Jack felt instantly guilty for expecting her to disappear. He'd been finding more and more of these moments, where she clung onto reality—unsavoury as it was—for his sake.

"She's been begging on the roads outside Lucknow," he said. "Escaped from one of the prison colonies, I think. Anyway, you know how much I appreciate talent, and this girl's got the kind of talent you don't see every day. She's spectacularly paranoid. Suspicious of everyone and everything. She told me right away that Snatcher Harris was stealing from the treasury."

"You knew that anyway."

"Yes, but I knew it because I've been living with his petty theft for years. She knew it just by looking at him! She sees the very worst in people, and you know that's always been a bit of a blind spot with me. I'm hoping that having her around will teach me to be paranoid. The only trouble is, she causes arguments everywhere I try to put her. But I think you might be mild enough to bear her—for a few months, at least."

"What's her name?"

"Violet Pike. Ignore everything she says to you—although I probably don't have to tell you that."

Jack tried to bite down on that last sentence, but it was out of his mouth before he could do anything about it. To his surprise, though, Ellini burst out laughing.

"Poor Jack!" she said, lifting her head from his shoulder to examine his face. "The things you have to put up with!"

"I'm glad it amuses you."

"Only in a horrible, inevitable kind of way," she said. "I am trying, you know. I'm even trying to talk to the girls. But it'll never be good enough—"

"I don't care," said Jack, anxious to avoid one of those conversations where she told him how awful and damaged and hopeless she was. "Keep trying."

"It's just..." She waved a hand vaguely. "Books help me deal with things..."

"By helping you not deal with things."

She glared at him. There was a hint of a smile, but it was mostly glare. "You understand everything, don't you?"

"I've been giving it a lot of thought. Have you ever considered joining the circus?"

"What?"

"You'd be very good," he said solemnly. "You'd be an escape artist, of course. I can see it on the posters: 'The Great Ellini. Watch her pick up a book—or even just think about a book—and instantly disappear! See her flee the country without leaving the room! Marvel as she evades the clutches of her lovers, slipping through their fingers while remaining very firmly in their grasp!' It's an incredible skill. I just wish you knew how to turn it off."

Ellini giggled right the way through this speech. Her stomach muscles contracted, making her fold up against his shoulder until the waves of laughter died down.

"I can just see you in the sparkly costume," he went on.

"Excuse me," said Ellini, with playful haughtiness, "but the sparkly costumes are for the assistants. If I'm the escape artist, I shall expect to wear the top hat and tails."

"All right. You'd look good in either of them."

Ellini didn't reply to this. Perhaps all the laughter had tired her out because she settled her head on his shoulder again. He could feel her goosebumps against his skin, so he fumbled in the water for the silver ewer—another stolen treasure from the Anglican church.

He filled it up and poured hot water down her back in an attempt to chase away the goosebumps. She gave a little moan of pleasure, and instantly—as though the sound had gone straight to his loins without the intervention of his ears—he felt an overpowering surge of lust. He couldn't believe it could be so strong so soon. Clearly, it was going to take him a while to get over those three weeks of separation.

"Tell me about the prison colonies," she said, apparently oblivious of what was happening to him under the water.

Jack tried to focus on the question. "Not nice places, little cricket. I hope you never have to see one."

"What is it that makes them so bad?"

Jack sighed. He had other—less obvious—reasons for wanting to avoid this subject. He had a horrible presentiment that he was going to get dragged into it, no matter how suicidal that turned out to be. Azimullah Khan didn't have the energy for rebellions anymore, but all his quiet, sorrowful abstraction had been brought on by seeing the conditions in the prison colonies. And Jack was uncomfortably aware that the things he would do to impress Azimullah Khan were only slightly less foolish than the things he would do to impress Ellini.

"They were built at the base of the Himalayas," he said, settling back in the bath, and brushing Ellini's wet hair off her neck, "apparently so that the mountains could serve as prison bars on one side. But the rain gets caught up in the peaks and turns the land underneath into a mosquito-infested swamp. Diseases breed in it, and you can't grow anything there. The crops rot as soon as the summer floods come. Mostly, the new-breeds hunt swamp deer, or eat each other. It's not the most nourishing diet, so they're very prone to diseases like malaria, dysentery and cholera."

"Is it true they're planning a revolt?"

"Well, there's not much planning involved, but it's going to happen, yes."

"What are their chances?"

Jack sighed again. "They haven't got any chances. They don't have any weapons, or any tacticians. Most of them are half-starved and dying of cholera. They're angry, but anger's not much good without energy. It's going to be a massacre."

"You could do something with them," she said lightly.

"And why would I do that?"

"Because you want to help them."

Jack was silent for a moment. "Did I say I wanted to help them?"

"I can tell," she said, shrugging.

"Listen, little cricket, our men are mercenaries."

"Azimullah's not a mercenary," she muttered.

"Azimullah can't do it on his own. The others will expect to get paid, and what could the new-breeds possibly give us?"

"If they won, everything."

"They can't win," said Jack, his voice getting shriller by the second. "They'll be fighting the richest, most powerful nation in the world—and don't forget all the other nations who have a problem with them."

"But they don't want to rule the world," said Ellini, as though this was obvious. "They just want an equal share in it."

"No. Joel Parish, the civilized spokesman, just wants an equal share in it. The others are... well, hungry."

"But that's because they're desperate! If they had a decent home, and enough to eat, they wouldn't want to attack anyone."

Jack couldn't help laughing, even though it made her scowl.

"It's like being half-asleep," she went on defiantly.

"What is?"

He realized too late that her eyes had lit up with the kind of worrying enthusiasm they always took on when she was thinking about her books.

"One of my new grimoires talks about a special race of demons," she said. "The LVDs. Last Vestiges of Darkness. They're demons who didn't fall asleep when Eve died the last time—nobody knows why. Maybe they were too far away from her, or maybe they'd renounced her as their queen. Anyway, they're still walking around, in the halfway houses, or other caverns under the earth. But, because Eve is gone, part of their minds is asleep. And it makes them sort of... insane. You know how irrational you get when you're suffering from insomnia? It's like that, only magnified by a thousand. They can't access their higher functions because half of them is still asleep. The good half, I suppose."

"I often feel as though my good half is asleep. Or at least half asleep."

She gave him an affectionate squint. "What does that make you, a quarter good?"

"At best."

"My book says they're frightened of falling asleep," she went on. "You know, entirely asleep. They think it will be like dying. So they do whatever they can to prevent Eve from waking up."

"Why? If Eve wakes up, then they wake up properly, don't they? Going to sleep doesn't enter into it."

"Yes, but once you're fully alive, it's only a matter of time before you die. They want to go on living in their limbo world, being neither asleep nor awake."

Jack hesitated. A nasty thought had just occurred to him. "Could they be the ones who send the assassins? Do they think you're reading so many mystic tomes because you're trying to reawaken Eve?"

"I wouldn't bet against it."

"Um... Are you trying to reawaken Eve?"

"Don't be silly. Nobody knows how to do that."

"That's not what I asked."

She didn't reply, but this didn't strike him as ominous, because it happened so often. She had probably gone back to her perfectly formed world of words.