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me.”
    “I’m sorry. To date I have dealt with human beings driven by base motives. I must remind myself not to judge all you people so cynically.”
    You people, she thought. “What are you?” she asked again.
    “I am an intelligent, sentient being. They call my people the Morn.”
    “And your own name? Or do you still refuse to tell me?”
    “Very well. My name is Jelch.”
    “And where did you come from?” she asked.
    He stared at her, his flat, grey eyes somehow penetrating; she felt, then, as if he were looking deep into her being.
    “You wouldn’t,” he said, “believe me if I told you.”
    “Again, you patronise me, sir.”
    “Sir!” the creature laughed again. “You call me ‘sir.’ You are indeed a singular... human.”
    She had an inkling, then, of the creature’s origins. She had heard stories of wildmen living far from human habitation in Siberia and Tibet... Could this Jelch be one of these?
    The creature winced in pain. Jani said, “I have diamorphine. Painkiller. If you will allow me to...”
    “Your painkillers,” he said, “would have no effect on me. But I thank you for your concern.”
    Jani watched the creature. “Well,” she said at last, “will you tell me where you come from?”
    He took a breath and said, “The less you know, the better. I come from far away, so far away that your mind could not encompass the concept.”
    “So you are not going to tell me?”
    “Correct,” he said. “You are young. Your mind is... unformed. You have assumptions, cultural, racial, that it would be cruel of me to undermine. Perhaps, in time...” – he stared at her – “perhaps then you might be comfortable with the facts.”
    She wondered if these words were the gibberings of a madman, someone driven to the edge of sanity by the ministrations of the Russians.
    The creature – Jelch – stiffened and bent his head as if listening. He said, “People approach.”
    Her heart leapt. “A rescue party?”
    “Or the Russians responsible for this. I cannot tell.”
    She stared through a rent in the chamber and looked down the valley. She made out a single track leading through a distant pass. “I see no one,” she said.
    “They are ten miles distant, at least, and anyway are coming here in an airship.”
    “Ten miles... How can you tell?”
    “I can hear it,” he said.
    She listened, and heard only the soughing of a warm wind through the chamber and the distant sound of birdsong.
    “If they are Russian...” she began, seized by panic.
    “Then hide. They will be merciless with survivors.”
    “Then you, too, must hide.”
    “Or run. I must not be found, by either the Russians or the British. Time is of the essence.”
    “Are you fit enough?”
    He inclined his head. “I am fit enough, and I am touched by your concern.”
    “But where will you go?”
    “Eventually, to Nepal.”
    He coughed, a racking bark that belied his claim of fitness. He placed a hand before his mouth and retched again and again, and, watching him, Jani was reminded of a dog forcing up a bone that had lodged in its throat.
    He wiped his hand on his ragged blue trousers, smearing shiny phlegm and mucus. He rose slowly to his full height and Jani backed away in alarm – for, although she had guessed that he was much taller than her, now he towered over her, over six feet tall and perilously thin, with something in the articulation of his legs that put her in mind, once again, of a dog.
    “Look among the wreckage for food and water,” he said, “and then secrete yourself.”
    “I will do that.” She hesitated, then said, “Tell me, why did the British incarcerate you? Are you... are you our enemy?”
    “I am an enemy of no one,” he said. “I came here in peace, to help you, but unfortunately your people chose to disbelieve my motives.”
    He reached out to her. She thought he was about to take her hand in an oddly formal shake, but as their fingers touched she felt something warm being transferred