“McCord. He was on their side. One of them.” She turned bright eyes on him, the light of revelation now illuminating them. “He was panicking. That’s why. He was a loose cannon. He couldn’t see what they saw—a point in covering it up. I even asked him why they were bothering. He said they were stupid. But they’re not stupid people. They wouldn’t be trying so hard to cover up if they thought there was no point. And if they believe there’s hope, then there must be.”

Li shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

Her mind raced back over McCord’s revelations in the shadow of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. The research team lived on the stuff for a year before we ever went public with it, he had said. And no one died of cholera toxin or mosaic virus. “They’d all been eating the rice,” she said. “Five years ago. And yet only Chao was dying, that we know of.” In all her excitement she was briefly struck by the thought that there was no greater folly than self-delusion. But this was no false hope, she was sure of it. “Maybe,” she said, “not everyone who eats the rice gets the virus. Maybe not everyone who gets the virus dies of it. Maybe, with the huge resources Grogan Industries have at their disposal, they genuinely believe that a cure is possible. Why else would they be playing for time?” She felt like the prisoner in the condemned cell who has just had word of a last-minute reprieve. Death had been postponed, maybe temporarily, maybe till it would have come anyway. But the sentence was no longer inevitable.

“You mean you think we won’t die?”

“Of course we will die! We all die! But maybe, just maybe, we won’t die of RXV.” And with hope came the return of anger. “That’s why the world has got to know about it. We can’t just leave it in the hands of Grogan Industries.” She threw her head back and gasped in exasperation. “And do you know what the real irony is? The profit motive that drove the development of the super-rice in the first place is the same motive that will drive the development of a cure. There is no money to be made from healing obscure or unfashionable illnesses. But imagine what rewards there would be in wiping out a virus that threatens to kill half the world’s population!”

She searched his eyes for some sign that he shared her excitement, her hope. But he seemed a long way away. Finally, he returned from that distant place and met her eye. “They must not be allowed to get away with it,” he said. “Grogan and Pang and the rest.” He saw his uncle impaled on his own sword.

“No, they mustn’t,” Margaret said.