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blood.
    "I'm
sorry about shoving you away at the library, Emily," he said
softly.
    Her
head came up slowly as she straightened her hair and scrubbed at her
cheeks. The sturdy, unshakable head of the colony's hospital had been
crying.
    "Did
you, Hadrian?" she said. "I didn't notice."
    "You're
lying, but thank you."
    It
had been four months after the founding of the colony when Hadrian
had found Emily ten miles inland, caring for three dying children in
a cave. He had stayed with her until their struggle ended, then dug
the graves before bringing Carthage its first doctor. During the past
year they'd sat up many nights nursing Jonah through his bouts of
illness. She rose now and poured him tea from the pot on the stove.
    "I
just came to beg a little soap and water."
    Emily
lifted an oil lamp toward Hadrian and winced. "A little? Weeks
in jail, hauling old manure?" She jabbed a finger into his
chest, pushing him onto the back veranda, then pointed to a metal
bathtub sitting in a corner. She cut off his protest with an upraised
hand. "You are not going to bury Jonah smelling like a latrine."
    A
quarter hour later Hadrian was luxuriating in hot water from the tank
attached to the stove. A match flared as Emily settled into a rocking
chair ten feet away and lit a small tobacco pipe.
    "He
was murdered, Em," Boone said.
    "I
am the known world's foremost authority on the damage done by hanging
nooses. Asphyxiation by rope was the official cause of death."
    "He
would never commit suicide. Not Jonah. Life was too precious to him.
He had too many unfinished projects."
    "Above
all here in Carthage we know the pathology of the human spirit. I
could give you twenty reasons why he might suddenly give up. His
arthritis was getting worse by the day. Do you have any idea what
constant pain can do to you?"
    "Give
up and also try to burn his life's work?"
    "Half
a dozen reasons."
    "Of
all the scenarios you could postulate, surely murder is at least one
of them."
    The
head of the Carthage hospital was quiet a long time, gazing at the
tobacco smoke that drifted through the moonlight. "Two of his
fingers were broken. There were marks on his upper arm where someone
with a hand like a vise had gripped him."
    Hadrian
lowered his voice. "Does Buchanan know?"
    "He
was there when I cleaned the body. I showed him. He immediately
reminded me that murder was a legal construct, not a medical concept,
then insisted the injuries were made when Jonah dropped to the floor
from the rafter. When I disagreed, he said we had a duty not to panic
the population, that Jonah would want his death to be used for the
betterment of the colony."
    Hadrian
leaned back in his cocoon of warm water and moonlight. Near the
horizon a trail of sparks marked the late return of one of the steam
fishing vessels. Above it the aurora shimmered. Jonah had kept his
astrophysics alive by studying the northern lights and had been
writing a scholarly pamphlet on why their display had increased over
the past generation.
    It
was Emily who broke their silence. "An old man died out here
last week," she said in a melancholy tone. "He had no
family left, made his way as a carpenter, but in his spare time he
tried to start little churches. Baptist first, then Episcopal. The
final attempt was Buddhist. They always failed. He came out here on
his last night. I found him dead at dawn, leaning against a post,
looking upward. In his lap he had left a slip of paper. I thought it
was going to be a prayer or a last bequest. After the earth was in
ashes, it said, I could see the stars more clearly."
    "Jonah
was the best of us, Em," Hadrian said after a long silence. He
wasn't sure she had heard him.
    When
she spoke at last it was in a whisper. "He was always about
getting on with life. The world may have ended for the rest of us,
but he treated it like a bad accident we had to just walk away from."
    "At
first I thought it was because he was callused," Hadrian
replied. "But I quickly learned that wasn't true.