But he would not allow the journalists in to interview his workers, saying, “They’re too busy, and if I were you, I would not want to distract them from work that might save my life.” Reporters camped out in front of the lab doors, waiting for workers to come and go, but none of the scientists left the building, a news item in itself, which was duly reported. Not a day went by in the next week in which there was not some broadcast from “the shadowed halls of the city’s Complex, where brave and diligent scientists are hard at work racing to solve the mystery of disease.”

Kit watched them all—the features about the individual scientists at the Biolab, the bulletins about what form the disease might take, the updates of hysteria at the hospitals, the speculations about the whereabouts of Nolan Adelpho, the broadcast debates among city leaders about his ethics and his actions. “Hero or Traitor?” one of these panels was named, but there was very little actual question: hero to have attempted to save the gulden, traitor to have developed the formula that could destroy his own race.

“Unforgivable,” pronounced one of the panelists. “Evil,” said a second one, and two of the others nodded.

“But don’t you think,” said another woman, a small mousy blueskin who looked to be mid-caste and held some hard-won position in one of the governmental offices, “don’t you think he did the only thing possible to dramatize the barbarity of Ariana Bayless’s action? Don’t you think that otherwise we might have been shocked, but in a comfortable sort of way, because we didn’t feel at risk? If you yourself aren’t afraid to open the door and saunter down the street, how can you empathize with someone else who is?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said an older, turquoise-skinned woman—a member of the clergy, Kit thought, if she remembered the identifications correctly. “I don’t have to be on the point of death to comfort my parishioners who are dying.”

“Don’t you?” was the mousy woman’s unconvinced reply. “Don’t you have to experience hunger to worry about whether the poor are fed?”

“I don’t,” one of the other panelists said virtuously.

“And how much have you given to charities in the past two years?” the mid-caste woman asked him.

“Well, I—my own family is my first concern, and I direct my money and my energy to making sure they are not hungry,” he said stiffly.

“Not a penny, then. Is that what you’re saying?”

“How is this relevant?” the moderator broke in impatiently. “We were discussing the unspeakable actions of Nolan Adelpho—”

“He wanted to get your attention,” the woman replied softly. “And he wouldn’t have gotten it otherwise. I think he did the right thing.”

But that opinion was vociferously voted down, and Kit never saw the woman on any other news panels.