“Strange, maybe, but how could it be uninteresting?” she protested. “I want to know everything that happens to you. I hate it that you’re so far away. So tell me. All of it.”

“Well, let’s see. The big excitement last week, of course, was Chay Zanlan’s visit to the city. That had everybody worked up.”

“Yes? And did you see him?”

“Only from the window. We couldn’t tell much, except that he looks really tall. Cerisa actually got to meet him, but of course the rest of us didn’t, and since Cerisa never talks to any of us, I don’t know what she thought of him.”

“And then there was a bombing, I heard,” she said. “That must have been exciting, too.”

“Well, exciting in a sort of terrible way,” Nolan replied. “And it’s created a lot of tension in the city. There’s still an after-dark curfew for gulden men, and they resent it, of course, and don’t think they should be punished for the behavior of a few terrorists. It’s made working conditions at the office a little tense.”

“You work with gulden men?” she said, her eyes wide.

“Sure. I thought you knew that.”

“Well, I knew you said they were there at the lab … I mean, I thought they were janitors or something.”

He was pretty sure he had mentioned Pakt before, maybe even Colt; was it possible he had neglected to specify race and rank? “No, they’re scientists, just like me. Pretty good ones, too.”

“But you’re better,” she said.

He laughed. “I’m not better than Pakt. He’s pretty amazing. He can look over any compilation of data—just the data, not even the experiments set up under the microscope—and show you where you’ve gone wrong. Everybody in the lab respects Pakt.”

“But he’s a guldman?”

“Well, yes.”

She arched her eyebrows but forbore to make any of the comments obviously circling in her brain. This was her idea of broadmindedness. “So what are you working on right now?” she asked. “What project?”

“A sort of generic antibiotic that will destroy any number of bacteria that attack the gulden,” he said calmly, anticipating her reaction. “I haven’t actually tested it in the field, but in the lab it’s one hundred percent effective.”

She was trying hard to keep an encouraging, pleasant expression on her face, but bewilderment and a certain repulsion were trying to work their way through. “An antibiotic that only helps the gulden?” she repeated. “That’s what you’re working on?”

He nodded. “It could have incredible consequences if it really works. There’s a lot of disease, especially in the Lost City—”

“The what?”

“The part of town where the impoverished guldwomen live with their children. Bad health and living conditions there, so there’s a lot of illness.”