“Highly unlikely to be a problem here,” Malani said absently. They were having their afternoon coffee in the ranch house living room, Axel with the GlobalAdvantage Retinal-Scan Livestock Tracking System brochure on his lap, Malani with the laptop computer on hers as she went through the day’s e-mail, deleting one piece of spam after another. “Our cattle are range-fed. How could they get mad cow disease?”

“That was just an example. What about blackleg? What about pinkeye? If we ever had another outbreak of anything like that, God forbid, we’d know for certain exactly which animals had or hadn’t come in contact with the diseased ones. And after the initial cost, it wouldn’t be that much more than the barcoded tags and transponders we put on their ears now.”

“ After the initial cost, yes,” she said dryly, clicking steadily away at the DELETE key. “Have you noticed that that always seems to be the catch?”

“Well, you can’t very well make money if you don’t-”

“Spend money,” she said, reaching for her cup. “Oh, look, here’s an actual message from a live person, someone we know, imagine that! It’s a note from Inge. It’s to all of you.” She scanned it, sipping her coffee. “Oh, my,” she said, looking up. “It looks like they’ve found your Uncle Magnus.”

“They what? ” He got up to come and peer over her shoulder at the message, leaning close and adjusting his glasses to see it better. “Holy moley,” he said quietly. “Well, that would explain why we never heard from him. He never got where he was going. The plane went down.”

“But how would they know it’s his plane?”

“The registration number, I suppose. It’s on the fuselage.”

“Do you think it’s really Magnus? The bones, I mean. It’s kind of gruesome.”