A grieving Ganymede father, another support-group parent, choosing to evacuate rather than keep searching for his lost son.
Basia Merton — whom Mei calls "KatoaDaddy" — is a Ganymede father and fellow member of the immune-disorder support group where Prax knows him. His young son Katoa, immune-disordered like Mei, went missing in the same wave of disappearances. Thick-necked and peppermint-scented, he lives in a spun-silk-and-bamboo home near water management with his pencil-thin, nervous wife and two remaining children (a near-grown daughter and a younger boy).
Broken by grief, Basia has concluded Katoa is dead — a boy that sick couldn't last days without medicine — and arranged to evacuate to Luna via his cousin's employer, Magellan Biotech. When Prax accuses him of abandoning the children, Basia beats him down in his own home, weeping that "kids die in wars," and only his daughter's intervention stops it. He tells Prax he'd be better off gone.
A big, thick-necked man who always smells of peppermint; wide dark eyes that fill with tears; strong enough to overpower Prax easily.
A fellow bereaved parent whose despair and decision to flee crystallize the moral stakes of Prax's search.