with her and carried water and soup to all the neighboring houses, rich and poor alike. All were grateful to receive what they brought, and many uttered prayers on their behalf. You would not be so grateful, thought Qing-jao, if you knew that the disease you suffered came from my father's house, by my father's will. But she said nothing.
In all this time, the gods did not demand any purification of her.
At last, she thought. At last I am pleasing them. At last I have done, perfectly, all that righteousness required.
When she came home, she wanted to sleep at once. But the servants who had remained in the house were gathered around the holo in the kitchen, watching news reports. Qing-jao almost never watched the holo news, getting all her information from the computer; but the servants looked so serious, so worried, that she entered the kitchen and stood in their circle around the holovision.
The news was of the plague sweeping the world of Path. Quarantine had been ineffective, or else always came too late. The woman reading the report had already recovered from the disease, and she was telling that the plague had killed almost no one, though it disrupted services for many. The virus had been isolated, but it died too quickly to be studied seriously. "It seems that a bacterium is following the virus, killing it almost as soon as each person recovers from the plague. The gods have truly favored us, to send us the cure along with the plague."
Fools, thought Qing-jao. If the gods wanted you cured, they wouldn't have sent the plague in the first place.
At once she realized that she was the fool. Of course the gods could send both the disease and the cure. If a disease came, and the cure followed, then the gods had sent them. How could she have called such a thing foolish? It was as if she had insulted the gods themselves.
She flinched inwardly, waiting for the onslaught of the gods' rage. She had gone so many hours without purification that she knew it would be a heavy burden when it came. Would she have to trace a whole room again?
But she felt nothing. No desire to trace woodgrain lines. No need to wash.
She looked at her hands. There was dirt on them, and yet she didn't care. She could wash them or not, as she desired.
For a moment she felt immense relief. Could it be that Father and Wangmu and the Jane-thing were right all along? Had a genetic change, caused by this plague, freed her at last from a hideous crime committed by Congress centuries ago?
Almost as if the news reader had heard Qing-jao's thoughts, she began reading a report about a document that was turning up on computers all over the world. The document said that this plague was a gift from the gods, freeing the people of Path from a genetic alteration performed on them by Congress. Until now, genetic enhancements were almost always linked to an OCD-like condition whose victims were commonly referred to as godspoken. But as the plague ran its course, people would find that the genetic enhancements were now spread to all the people of Path, while the godspoken, who had previously borne the most terrible of burdens, had now been released by the gods from the necessity of constant purification.
"This document says that the whole world is now purified. The gods have accepted us." The news reader's voice trembled as she spoke. "It is not known where this document came from. Computer analysis has linked it with no known author's style. The fact that it turned up simultaneously on millions of computers suggests that it came from a source with unspeakable powers." She hesitated, and now her trembling was plainly visible. "If this unworthy reader of news may ask a question, hoping that the wise will hear it and answer her with wisdom, could it not be possible that the gods themselves have sent us this message, so that we will understand their great gift to the people of Path?"
Qing-jao listened for a while longer, as fury grew within her. It was Jane, obviously, who had written and spread this document. How dare she pretend to know what the gods were doing! She had gone too far. This document must be refuted. Jane must stand revealed, and also the whole conspiracy of the people of Lusitania.
The servants were looking at her. She met their gaze, looking for a