Flailing the air, Rocky said, "You're bugging me, man. To hell with you." Then his arms hung limp and his eyes closed.

Cutting Rocky down from the rope, Markel carried him to the camp, where he sat him against a tree, tying his hands behind it. "Go make some coffee. This may take a long time," Markel said.

"What are you going to do?" said the Earth Mother.

"Find a way to kill him, of course."

Rocky came to shortly afterward, glaring angrily at Markel. Markel stood over him. "Rocky, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by just telling me about it, and how you do it."

Rocky spat on the ground. "And after, you'll knock me off again, huh? Listen, I wouldn't tell you the right time, square man."

Markel sighed. "Typical peasant arrogance," he said, shooting Rocky squarely in the forehead.

According to Markel's wrist watch Rocky stayed dead—that is, without pulse or respiration—for seven hours and forty-six minutes. During the first three hours Markel sat incredulously, not believing his eyes, watching the bullet hole in Rocky's head stop bleeding and slowly close, until there was no evidence of a wound. Rocky woke up cursing him.

The next morning, immediately after breakfast, Markel stabbed Rocky through the heart with Rocky's knife. The wound closed in slightly under four hours, after which respiration began again. Rocky remained unconscious for six more hours; he was dead, in all, for nine hours and twelve minutes.

Markel bashed Rocky's head in with a dead branch. In twelve hours and thirty-one minutes Rocky was awake and cursing, his skull completely healed.

Making a noose in the rope, Markel hanged Rocky from a pine tree near the cliff, shoving him from an outcrop to break his neck. His neck broke. Time for recovery: fourteen hours eight minutes. Rocky's neck: completely healed.

"It takes an average of three hours longer for his bones to heal than for his tissues," said Markel as he and the Earth Mother ate breakfast. Rocky had not been fed since the trials had started; Markel was also trying to starve him.

"You talk about him like he was a bug, or something," said the Earth Mother. Her eyes were red and she ate very little. After the first day she had spent most of her time in the 

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