She hurried toward Physical Therapy and, at the passage turn, bumped into a breathless medic rushing out. “Ekel! I was just coming for you. You signaled with a child who fainted? There’s another one in the Secondary play area. This way.”

She followed on his heels, listening to the description. “He’s a seven-anno in Polly Side’s section. Kid can barely stay awake. Eating too much lately and, what with food monitoring, that’s a problem—but he was weighed today and found to be down two kilos from last week.”

She did not have to be told that this was a significant drop for a child of that age.

The boy was lying on a stretch of thick green lawn in the free-play area, a shutter-shielded dome overhead. As she crouched beside him to set up her case, she smelled the fresh-clipped grass and thought how incongruous that was—the enticing green odor and this boy ill.

The pribox readout did not surprise her after Raul Andrit. Fatigue . . . exhaustion . . . signs of aging . . .

“Should we move him?”

That was a new voice. She turned and looked up at a thin-faced man in groundside blue standing beside the medic.

“Oh, this is Sy Murdoch,” the medic said. “He came up to ask some questions of the TaoLini woman. You sent her down to P-T, didn’t you?”

Hali stood up, recalling the grapevine stories about Murdoch: Kelp and clones. Lab One director. One of Lewis’ people.

“Why would you want to move him?” she asked.

“I understand from the medics that Raul Andrit has been taken to sickbay with a similar seizure. It occurred to me that . . .”

“You say Raul Andrit with a certain familiarity,” she said. “You’re wearing groundside. What do you know about . . .”

“Now, see here! I don’t have to answer your . . .”

“You’ll answer me or a medical board. This could be a disease brought up from groundside. What’s your association with Raul Andrit?”

His face went blank, completely unreadable, then: “I know his father.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. I’ve never seen the child before. I just . . . knew he was here, shipside.”

Hali, trained from childhood to be a med-tech, to support life and see that Shipmen survived, knew each bodily muscle, nerve, gland and blood vessel by name and often spoke to them quietly as she worked. Instinctively, she knew that Murdoch was trained otherwise. He repelled her. And he was lying.

“What’s your business with Waela TaoLini?”

“That concerns the Ceepee, not you.”

“Waela TaoLini has been put in my charge by the Natali. That’s Ship’s business. Anything concerning her concerns me.”

“It’s just routine,” Murdoch said.

Every mannerism said it was not just routine, but before she could respond, she saw Waela walk into the play area.

While she was still at some distance, Waela called: “They said somebody here was looking for me. Do you . . .”