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"It's just that the mule list is a bit of a mystery to us too," Zhin said. "We thought maybe someone was finally looking into it."
"Mule list?"
"Just a shorthand we use," Zhin said. "Solon's departure left behind a real treasure trove of documentation-we've never gotten this complete a picture of human resource processing in the Kurian Zone before. We've had to add and train dozens of people just to sift through it all."
Arnham added: " 'Mule list' is a term we use because all these women appear to carry something the Kurians are interested in. We know it's not blood type or anything obvious, like Down's. About all we know is that only women are tested, and that if they come up positive for it they're immediately packed up and shipped off."
"How do you know it's a positive? List I saw just had an X under 'Result.' "
"Intellectual shorthand," Zhin said. "We just call it a positive. That's the kind of optimists we got here." Zhin and Arnham both chuckled.
"Why the 'she's gone for good' note?"
"I thought he deserved to know." Arnham stared levelly at Zhin. "I don't think that sort of thing should be kept a secret. Like I said, all the security shit is hurting us more-"
"Let's keep this on point, Peter," Zhin said.
Zhin turned in her chair to Valentine. "This Gail, your officer's wife, is most likely dead. Everything we know about the mule list says that they're put on priority trains with extra security and shipped out. Handling is similar to what happens when your Wolves or Bears are captured. We know Hunters are interrogated and killed at a special medical facility; that's been established. Doctors working for the Kurians do a lot of pathology on the bodies."
Valentine had heard rumors along those lines before.
"Have you looked into the family background of your mule list? Do they come from Hunter parents?"
"A few," Arnham said. "Not enough for a real correlation."
"What is the test?"
"Don't know. They take a small amount of blood. Like an iron check when you donate."
Valentine had given enough blood in Southern Command's medical units to know what that meant. A drop or two squeezed from a finger cut. "And then?"
"They drop it in a test tube. We know the negatives stay clear."
"How many show up as positives?"
"Less than one percent," Arnham answered.
"About one out of a hundred and fifty or so, looks like," Zhin said, checking another paper.
Valentine wondered if any of his known unknowns were filled in, or if this just represented a new unknown popping up. "But these women present a danger to the Kurians?"
Arnham's lips tightened. "I didn't say that. I said they were treated that way. Look, we're in the dark about as much as you. We're laying it all out there."
He rooted around in his folios and passed a binder to Valentine. Inside were six tabs. Each had a list from a testing station similar to the one he sent Post.
"Your girl's in the yellow-tabbed one," Arnham said.
Valentine nodded and flipped to the list. The sheets were the same as the others, a bare list of negatives. Female names, no particular ethnic background to them
Valentine's heart thudded before his brain knew why.
Melissa Carlson.
The rest of the room faded away for a second as the name held his attention. Melissa . . . Molly . . . the woman whose family had helped him in his trip across Wisconsin, who he'd gone to the Zoo in Chicago to save when she caught the eye of a sexually avaricious Quisling nomenklatura and murdered him. . . .
"You okay there, Val?" Zhin asked.
No result next to Molly's name. She hadn't been put on a train. Molly's sister Mary was just below her on the list; she'd been tested too, also no X in the result column.
