"Gesundheit." Norton giggles as if he thinks he's made a marvellous joke. But then turns more serious. "You should tell people you're from Hong Kong. It's British, so it might make the neighbours a teensy bit less suspicious that you might be a Maoist. You aren't a Maoist, are you?"

Norton was originally from 1954, so although some things about Sweetwater were strange--like whatever was pulling people from across time and sorting them into heterosexual marriage units--but the paranoia about communism seemed entirely reasonable to him.