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Orchid,” she added, drawing the name of the hotel from somewhere in her memory. She knew only that it was a very fine place.
    “As it happens, I’m staying at the Royal Orchid, also, miss.” He smiled from ear to ear.
    She hoped they had a room. She had no reservation. Doubtless he didn’t, either.
    A moment later the plane hit the runway, then went jolting along the much-patched tarmac. Despite Miriam’s grim worries, it slowed steadily. Still, she was tense, waiting for the damned thing to get off the runway. For an unspeakably long moment, it hesitated. Were the pilots lost? Had the surface traffic controllers made some stupid mistake?
    She pictured a 747 landing on top of them, its entire flight crew dead asleep. Years ago, two Keepers had been killed in a catastrophic runway accident in the Canary Islands. But the engines revved up again and the plane moved forward. A few twists and turns and it came to a halt. The seat-belt chime rang.
    Immediately, Miriam’s mind focused on her victim. Now she must ignore him a bit, play the coquette, the Occidental woman who was just a little indifferent to the Oriental man.
    As they filed out of the plane, she stayed behind him, evaluating moment by moment every subtle change in his manner. A musty smell flowed from between his legs, a sharper odor of sweat billowed off his skin.
    There was something just a little odd in these odors. He should have smelled far more of sex and less of . . . well, it seemed that he was afraid. Probably, it was because they’d been in proximity too long. You wanted to move quickly when you hunted, not sit cheek-by-jowl with the prey for an hour before proceeding.
    In the airport, they were hit by the wall of filthy air that enclosed and defined life in Bangkok.
    No matter his perversion, here the wanderer could find satisfaction. The Thai had originally been bred by luxury-loving Keepers, and they preserved the remarkable zest for pleasure that had been bred into them. But then, every herd in the world bore the mark of its Keepers. You could see the stark love of order and the obsessiveness of the northern Keepers in the Germanic peoples they had created, and the passion and subtlety of the southern Europeans in the French, the Spanish, and the Italians. She loved the wild mix of the Americas, never knowing exactly what to expect from that mongrel herd.
    As Miriam and her victim moved out into the main hall of the airport, she laid her hand on his shoulder, the second time she had touched him. Each time she did it, she felt more of a sense of possession.
    She felt not the rippling whisper of desire in his muscles, but the tense vibration of fear. This was going to take a great deal of care and attention. This man must be very sensitive indeed to feel as he did now. Perhaps she should turn back.
    He plunged into the chaotic cab rank, a mass of bills in his fist, and they were soon in a taxi.
    She disliked being driven by others in motorized vehicles, and this driver was typical of these wild folk. In addition, he would certainly remember a run with a Thai man and a European woman.
    Her victim sat rigidly, gripping the handhold above his door. When he offered her a cigarette, she did not like what she saw in his eyes. Did not like, did not quite understand. Their instinct was to be drawn to the predator, to be fascinated.
    She let him light her cigarette, inhaled deeply. Cigarettes didn’t matter to Keepers. Their immune systems swept cancer cells away like crumbs.
    An impulse told her to give his cheek a sudden kiss. “Asia,” she whispered, “Asia is such a mystery.”
    “I’m in outsourcing technology. No mystery there.”
    “Your accent isn’t Thai.”
    “My father was a diplomat. I grew up in London and then Burma.”
    She remembered the days of the British in Burma, when they used to grow opium poppies on huge Crown estates. They had looked upon their laborers in much the same way that Keepers looked on humans. You could go out into