A quiet nod, in the tent's half-light. He looks away from her, towards the doorflap, and continues. "As I said, it's virulent. Any quantity of contaminated tissue or fluid can transfer the virus. It settles in the peripheral nerves, and reproduces in the brain, in the frontal lobe. It's fast, Sayu. Within twenty-four hours of the first symptoms, the whole thing is burned out, erased, rewritten. The patient dies."

He's trying to think of a way to tell her something every baby intuits from their mother's terror. Too many of the ones he's seen don't even cry, right from birth; stress and trauma and adrenaline burnout pouring across the placenta.