“You must be Mrs. Decter. And this must be Miss Caitlin.”

“Dr. Kuroda,” her mom said warmly. “Thanks for coming to meet us.”

Caitlin immediately had a sense of the man. She’d known from his Wikipedia entry that he was fifty-four, and she now knew he was tall (the voice came from high up) and probably fat; his breathing had the labored wheeze of a heavy man.

“Not at all, not at all,” he said. “My card.” Caitlin had read about this ritual and hoped her mom had, too: it was rude to take the card with just one hand, and especially so with the hand you used to wipe yourself.

“Um, thank you,” her mother said, sounding perhaps wistful that she didn’t have a business card of her own anymore. Apparently, before Caitlin had been born, she’d liked to introduce herself by saying, “I’m a dismal scientist” — referring to the famous characterization of economics as “the dismal science.”

“Miss Caitlin,” said Kuroda, “a card for you, too.”

Caitlin reached out with both hands. She knew that one side would be printed in Japanese, and that the other side might have English, but—

Masayuki Kuroda, Ph.D.

“Braille!” she exclaimed, delighted.

“I had it specially made for you,” said Kuroda. “But hopefully you won’t need such cards much longer. Shall we go?”

An unconscious yet conscious time of nothingness.

Being aware without being aware of anything.

And yet—

And yet awareness means…

Awareness means thinking.

And thinking implies a…

But no, the thought will not finish; the notion is too complex, too strange.

Still, being aware is … satisfying. Being aware is comfortable.

An endless now, peaceful, calm, unbroken—

Except for those strange flickerings, those lines that briefly connect points…

And, very occasionally, thoughts, notions, perhaps even ideas. But they always slip away. If they could be held on to, if one could be added to another, reinforcing each other, refining each other…

But no. Progress has stalled.

A plateau, awareness existing but not increasing.

A tableau, unchanging except in the tiniest details.

The two-person helicopter flew over the Chinese village at a height of eighty meters. There were corpses right in the middle of the dirt road; in sick irony, birds were pecking at them. But there were also people still alive down there. Dr. Quan Li could see several men — some young, some old — and two middle-aged women looking up, shielding their eyes with their hands, staring at the wonder of the flying machine.

Li and the pilot, another Ministry of Health specialist, both wore orange biohazard suits even though they didn’t intend to land. All they wanted was a survey of the area, to assess how far the disease had spread. An epidemic was bad enough; if it became a pandemic, well — the grim thought came to Li — overpopulation would no longer be one of his country’s many problems.

“It’s a good thing they don’t have cars,” he said over his headset, shouting to be heard above the pounding of the helicopter blades. He looked at the pilot, whose eyes had narrowed in puzzlement. “It’s only spreading among people at walking speed.”

The pilot nodded. “I guess we’ll have to wipe out all the birds in this area. Will you be able to work out a low-enough dose that won’t kill the people?”

Li closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.”

Caitlin was terrified. The cranial surgeon spoke only Japanese, and although there was a lot of chatter in the operating room, she didn’t understand any of it — well, except for “Oops!,” which apparently was the same in both English and Japanese and just made her even more frightened. Plus, she could smell that the surgeon was a smoker — what the hell kind of doctor smokes?

Her mother was watching from an overhead observation gallery. Kuroda was here in the O.R., his wheezy voice slightly muffled, presumably by a facemask.

She’d been given only a local anesthetic; they’d offered a general one, but she’d joked that the sight of blood didn’t bother her. Now, though, she wished she’d let them knock her out. The fingers in latex gloves probing her face were unnerving enough, but the clamp that was holding her left eyelid open was downright freaky. She could feel pressure from it, although, thanks to the anesthetic, it didn’t hurt.

She tried to remain calm. There would be no incision, she knew; under Japanese law, it wasn’t surgery if there wasn’t a cut made, and so this procedure was allowed with only a general waiver having been signed. The surgeon was using tiny instruments to slide the minuscule transceiver behind her eye so it could piggyback on her optic nerve; his movements, she’d been told, were guided by a fiber-optic camera that had also been slid around her eye. The whole process was creepy as hell.

Suddenly, Caitlin heard agitated Japanese from a woman, who to this point had simply said “hai” in response to each of the surgeon’s barked commands. And then Kuroda spoke: “Miss Caitlin, are you all right?”

“I guess.”

“Your pulse is way up.”

Yours would be, too, if people were poking things into your head! she thought.

“I’m okay.”

She could smell that the surgeon was working up a sweat. Caitlin felt the heat from the lights shining on her. It was taking longer than it was supposed to, and she heard the surgeon snap angrily a couple of times at someone.

Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. “What’s happening?”

Kuroda’s voice was soft. “He’s almost done.”

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“No, no. It’s just a tight fit, that’s all, and—”

The surgeon said something.

“And he’s done!” said Kuroda. “The transceiver is in place.”

There was much shuffling around, and she heard the surgeon’s voice moving toward the door.

“Where’s he going?” Caitlin asked, worried.

“Be calm, Miss Caitlin. His job is finished — he’s the eye specialist. Another doctor is going to do the final cleanup.”

“How — how do I look?”

“Honestly? Like you’ve been in a boxing match.”

“Huh?”

“You’ve got quite a black eye.” He gave a wheezy little chuckle. “You’ll see.”

Dr. Quan Li cradled the beige telephone handset against his shoulder and looked idly at the diplomas hanging on his office’s pale green walls: the fellowships, the degrees, the certifications. He’d been on hold now for fifty minutes, but one expected to wait when calling the man who was simultaneously Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China and President of the People’s Republic and General Secretary of the Communist Party and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.

Li’s office, a corner room on the fifth floor of the Ministry of Health building, had windows that looked out over crowded streets. Cars inched along, rickshaws darting between them. Even through the thick glass, the din from outside was irritating.

“I’m here,” said the famous voice at last. Li didn’t have to conjure up a mental image of the man; rather, he just swung his chair to look at the gold-framed portrait hanging next to the one of Mao Zedong: ethnically Zhuang; a long, thoughtful-looking face; dyed jet-black hair belying his seventy years; wire-frame glasses with thick arched eyebrows above.

Li found his voice breaking a bit as he spoke: “Your Excellency, I need to recommend severe and swift action.”

The president had been briefed on the outbreak in Shanxi. “What sort of action?”