she had just finished in Gao, several hundred miles down
river.

Now she renewed old acquaintances, calling them by name--after checking
her notes. Invariably, their eyes bugged. Their questions came thick,
came fast in the slurring Songhoi and she answered them in detail. They
came quickly under her intellectual domination. Her poise, her obvious
well being, flabbergasted them.

In all, they spent a week in the little river town, but even the first
night Isobel slumped wearily in the most comfortable chair of their
small suite's living room.

She kicked off her shoes, and wiggled weary toes.

"If my mother could see me now," she complained. "After giving her all
to get the apple of her eye through school, her wayward daughter winds
up living with two men in the wilds of deepest Africa." She twisted her
mouth puckishly.

Cliff grunted, poking around in a bag for the bottle of cognac he
couldn't remember where he had packed. "Huh!" he said. "The next time
you write her you might mention the fact that both of them are
continually proposing to you and you brush it all off as a big joke."

"Huh, indeed!" Isobel answered him. "Proposing, or propositioning? If
either of you two Romeos ever rattle the doorknob of my room at night
again, you're apt to get a bullet through it."

Jake winced. "Wasn't me. Look at my gray hair, Isobel. I'm old enough to
be your daddy."

"Sugar daddy, I suppose," she said mockingly.

"Wasn't me either," Cliff said, criss-crossing his heart and pointing
upward.

"Huh!" said Isobel again, but she was really in no mood for their usual
banter. "Listen," she said, "what're we accomplishing with all this
masquerade?"

Cliff had found the French brandy. He poured three stiff ones and handed
drinks to Isobel and Jake.

He knew he wasn't telling her anything, but he said, "We're a king-size
rumor campaign, that's what we are. We're breaking down institutions the
sneaky way." He added reflectively. "A kinder way, though, than some."

"But this ... what did you call it earlier, Jake?... this Cinderella act
I go through perpetually. What good does it do, really? I contact only a
few hundreds of people at most. And there are millions here in Mali
alone."

"There are other teams, too," Jake said mildly. "Several hundreds of us
doing one thing or another."

"A drop in the bucket," Isobel said, her piquant sepian face registering
weariness.

Cliff sipped his brandy, shaking his big head even a