“Worthy Adjudicator, I—”

“Shut up,” said Sard. “Just shut up and sit back down.”

Adikor took a deep breath, and held it—just as they’d taught him to those 250-odd months ago when he’d been treated for having punched Ponter. He let the breath out slowly, imagining his fury escaping with it.

“I said sit down!” snapped Sard.

Adikor did so.

“Jasmel Ket!” said the adjudicator, turning her fiery stare now on Ponter’s daughter.

“Yes, Adjudicator?” said Jasmel, her voice quavering.

The adjudicator took a deep breath of her own, composing herself. “Child,” she said, more calmly, “child, I know you lost your mother recently to leukemia. I can only imagine how unfair that must have seemed to you, and little Megameg.” She smiled at Jasmel’s sister, new wrinkles piling atop the old ones on her face. “And now, it seems perhaps your father is dead, too—and, again, not the inevitable death that comes eventually to us all, but unexpectedly, without warning, and at a young age. I can understand why you are so reluctant to give up on him, why you might accept an outrageous explanation …”

“It’s not like that, Adjudicator,” said Jasmel.

“Isn’t it? You’re desperate for something to hold on to, some hope to cling to. Isn’t that so?”

“I—I don’t think so.”

Sard nodded. “It will take time to accept what has happened to your father. I know that.” She looked around the chambers, then finally her gaze landed on Adikor. “All right,” Sard said. She was quiet for a moment, apparently considering. “All right,” she said again. “I’m prepared to rule. I do believe it is just and appropriate to find that a good circumstantial case for the crime of murder has been made, and I therefore order this matter be tried by a trio of adjudicators, assuming anyone still wishes to pursue the issue.” She looked now at Bolbay. “Do you wish to press the charge further, on behalf of your minor ward, Megameg Bek?”

Bolbay nodded. “I do.”

Adikor felt his heart sink.

“Very well,” said Sard. She consulted a datapad. “A full tribunal will be convened in this Council hall five days from now, on 148/119/03. Until such time, you, Scholar Huld, will continue to be under judicial scrutiny. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Adjudicator. But if I could only go down to—”

“No buts,” snapped Sard. “And one more thing, Scholar Huld. I will be leading the tribunal, and I will be briefing the other two adjudicators. I grant there was a certain drama in having Ponter Boddit’s daughter speak for you, but the effect won’t last for a second try. I strongly suggest you find someone more appropriate to speak for you next time.”

By early afternoon, Reuben Montego had good news to report. He’d been talking by phone and e-mail with various experts at LCDC headquarters and the CDC, as well as the hot lab in Winnipeg. “You’ve surely noticed that Ponter doesn’t seem to like grain or dairy products,” said Reuben, sitting now in his living room and drinking the strong-smelling Ethiopian coffee Mary had discovered he liked.

“Yes,” said Mary, feeling much more comfortable after her shower, even if she did have to put on the same clothes she’d worn the day before. “He loves meat and fresh fruit. But he doesn’t seem to have much interest in traditional from-the-ground crops, bread, or milk.”

“Right,” said Reuben. “And the people I’ve been talking to tell me that’s very positive for us.”

“Why?” asked Mary. She couldn’t abide Reuben’s coffee—although they’d asked for some Maxwell House, and, yes, some chocolate milk, to be delivered later that day, along with more clothes. For the moment, she was getting her caffeine from one of his cans of Coke.

“Because,” said Reuben, “it suggests that Ponter doesn’t come from an agricultural society. What I’ve gathered from Hak more or less confirms that. Ponter’s version of Earth seems to have a much lower population than this one. Consequently, they don’t practice farming or animal husbandry, at least not on anything like the scales we’ve been for the last few thousand years.”

“I would have thought that you needed those things to support any sort of civilization, no matter what the population,” said Mary.

Reuben nodded. “I’m looking forward to when Ponter can answer questions about that. Anyway, I’m told that most serious diseases that affect us started in domesticated animals, and then transferred to people. Measles, tuberculosis, and smallpox all came from cattle; the flu came from pigs and ducks; and whooping cough came from pigs and dogs.”

Mary frowned. Out the window, she could see a helicopter flying by; more reporters. “That’s right, now that I think about it.”

“And,” continued Reuben, “plaguelike diseases only evolve in areas of high population density, where there are plenty of potential victims. In areas of low density, such disease germs apparently aren’t evolutionarily viable; they kill their own hosts, then have nowhere else to go.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s right, too,” said Mary.

“It’s probably too simplistic to say that if Ponter doesn’t come from an agricultural society, then he must come from a hunting-and-gathering one,” said Reuben. “But, still, that does seem the best model, at least from our world, of what Hak has tried to describe. Hunter-gatherer societies do have much lower population densities, and also much less disease.”

Mary nodded.

Reuben continued: “I’m told it’s the same principle as with the first European explorers and the Natives here in the Americas. The explorers all came from agricultural, high-density societies, and were lousy with plague germs. The natives were all from low-density societies, with little or no animal husbandry; they didn’t have plague germs of their own, or any of the diseases that transfer from livestock to humans. That’s why the devastation only went one way.”

“I thought syphilis was brought back to the Old World from the New,” said Mary.

“Well, yes, there’s some evidence for that,” said Reuben. “But although syphilis perhaps originated in North America, it wasn’t sexually transmitted here. It was only when it got back to Europe that it took up that opportunistic means of transmission and became a major cause of death. In fact, the endemic, nonvenereal form of syphilis still exists, although now its mostly only found among Bedouin tribes.”

“Really?”

“Yes. So, rather than syphilis being a counterexample of the generally one-way course of epidemic disease, it confirms that the development of epidemics requires social conditions typical of overcrowded civilization.”

Mary digested this for a moment. “So that means you, Louise, and I are probably going to be okay, right?”

“That seems the most probable interpretation: Ponter is suffering from something he got here, but likely has brought nothing over from his side that we have to worry about.”

“But what about him? Is Ponter going to be all right?” Reuben shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve given him enough broad-spectrum antibiotics to kill most known bacterial infections, Gram-negative and Gram-positive. Viral infections don’t respond to antibiotics, though, and there’s no such thing as a broad-spectrum antiviral. Unless we actually get evidence that he’s got a specific viral condition, pumping random antivirals into him will probably do more harm than good.” He sounded as frustrated as Mary felt. “There’s really nothing else for us to do now but wait and see.”

The Exhibitionists swarmed onto the Council-chamber floor, surrounding Adikor Huld and shouting questions at him, like spears being shoved into an ambushed mammoth. “Are you surprised by Adjudicator Sard’s ruling?” asked Lulasm.

“Who are you going to have speak on your behalf in front of the tribunal?” demanded Hawst.