She returned to her reading, so Nolan continued thumbing through his hard copy. Some of the articles merely repeated the city news, of the day, but others reflected a totally different lifestyle than the one he knew. There were listings of athletic and academic accomplishments, in sports and subjects Nolan had never heard of; there were recipes given with ingredients he could not even pronounce. A small box in the corner of the third page noted “Dishonors done,” and gave names and offenses committed by one gulden against another. Nolan read them all, wholly engrossed. Insulted on the street. Word disbelieved. Father mentioned with disrespect. Clan dishonored. A second column across from the offenses listed the status of the event: “settled” or “pending.” Details were not given.

He kept reading, learning how to make a tolerable red fabric dye from the inferior pigments sold in city stores, and then how to grow some exotic flowering plant in the imperfect lowland climate. He was all the way to the last page of the printout before he got to the small news item about another death in the gulden prison. He knew nothing about the gulden jail except that it was twice the size of the indigo one, so he read the brief article from start to finish.

“Huh,” he said, as he came to the end. “That’s strange.”

“I know,” Melina said absently. “Those recipes. Even if you could figure out how to make it, you wouldn’t want to eat it.”

“No,” Nolan said. “There have been a handful of unexplained deaths at the gulden jail. They think maybe there’s a virus or something.”

Now Melina looked up again. “A handful? How many?”

“Well, four for sure and one that might have been a virus or might have been the result of a stab wound. The guy was sick before he got knifed,” Nolan explained.

Melina rolled her eyes. “Well, four people, that’s not an epidemic. I’m sure Cerisa’s watching it, though. Any more people die, she’ll probably send one of us in.”

“You think she knows about it?”

“Cerisa knows everything. She reads the gulden monitors every day. It’s where I picked up the habit.”

“I wonder if—” Nolan began, but he didn’t have a chance to finish the thought. They were hailed by a lovely indigo woman with waist-length black hair and enormous blue eyes. Melina jumped to her feet to give the newcomer a hug and make quick introductions. Nolan smiled politely, but prepared to depart without attempting to make conversation.

“I’ll tell Pakt you’ll be a few minutes late,” he said to Melina. “See you back at the lab.”