Later, inside the Atlas, on the outskirts of Mumbai, she travels a jogging trail wound around the bases of huge, cream-colored towers, forty or fifty stories high. She slips past women in saris, women in jogging suits, men in shorts, everyone motionless. To her right, a wall of green mangroves runs alongside the trail for a half mile, something troubling her as she moves through the frozen joggers, some disquieting wrinkle in the texture of the software: in the people or the trees or the atmosphere. She picks up her pace, uneasy, passing through figures as though through ghosts: with every stride she can feel the fear pervading the Argos, about to lay its hand on the back of her neck.

By the time she climbs out of the Atlas, it’s dark. Little sconces glow at the base of the Library columns and moonlit clouds scud over the barrel vault.

A few documents shuttle to and fro; a few figures hunch over tables. Mrs. Flowers’s little white dog comes trotting to her and sits with its tail swishing back and forth, but Mrs. Flowers is nowhere to be seen.

“Sybil, what time is it?”

Four ten NoLight, Konstance.

She switches off her Vizer and steps off the Perambulator. Father is at Mother’s sewing machine again, glasses low on his nose, working by the light of Mother’s lamp. The hood of his containment suit sits in his lap like the severed head of some enormous insect. She worries that he will chide her for staying up too late again, but he is mumbling to himself, brooding on something, and she realizes that she would like to be chided for staying up too late.

Toilet, teeth, brush your hair. She’s halfway up the ladder to her berth when her heart gives a frightened whump. Mother is not in her bed. Or in Father’s. Or on the commode. Mother is not in Compartment 17 at all.

“Father?”

He flinches. Mother’s blanket is rumpled. Mother always folds her blanket into a perfect rectangle when she gets out of bed.

“Where’s Mother?”

“Hmm? She went to see someone.” The sewing machine clatters back to life, the bobbin spinning, and she waits for it to stop.

“But how did she get out the door?”

Father holds up the edges of curtain to match them, places them under the needle, and the machine resumes drumming.

She repeats her question. Instead of answering he uses Mother’s scissors to trim some thread, then says, “Tell me where you went this time, Zucchini. You must have walked for miles.”

“Did Sybil really let Mother out?”

He rises and walks to her berth.

“Take these.”

His voice is calm but his eyes scatter. In his palm are three of Mother’s SleepDrops.

“Why?”

“They’ll help you rest.”

“Isn’t three a lot?”