Summary

Chapter 1:

Some time later, Jack, Bess, Aurie, and Jenny are all in a pub when news spreads that ships bringing tea from the Far East (South Asia) are to be quarantined on suspicion of plague, and that homes suspected of carrying plague are to be shut up with their families inside. As panic and rumor spread through the pub, Bess cries out that the authorities are trying to generate a false panic in order to manipulate and steal from the working classes, but no-one pays attention. She also says that Wild controls the “centinels” [sic], the enforcers of order, and that these sorts of situations are designed to cover up some other kind of event, or activity. Aurie wonders what, exactly, is being covered up.

Voth then inserts a several-page footnote describing, in present-tense narration, his encounter with Dean Andrews, a representative...