They are not at Third Meal, no. Would you like to play a game, Konstance? Do a puzzle? There’s always the Atlas, I know you enjoy going in there.

The digital dog blinks its digital eyes. The digital cloud grinds silently through the digital dusk.

By the time she steps off her Perambulator, the walls of Vault One have dimmed. NoLight coming. She presses her forehead to the wall and shouts, “Hello?”

Louder: “Hello?”

Difficult to hear through walls on the Argos but not impossible: from her berth in Compartment 17 she has heard water trickling through pipes, the occasional argument between Mr. and Mrs. Marri in Compartment 16.

She smacks the walls with the heels of her hands, then picks up the inflatable cot, still wrapped and bound, and throws it. It makes a terrible clamor. Waits. Throws it again. Each heartbeat sends a new stroke of terror through her. Again she sees Father poring over schematics in the Library. Hears what Mrs. Chen said, years ago: This vault has autonomous thermal, mechanical, and filtration processes, independent of the rest of… Father must have been making sure of that. He put her in here on purpose to protect her. But why didn’t he join her? Why not put others inside with her?

Because he was sick. Because they may have been carrying an infectious and lethal disease.

The room darkens to black.

“Sybil, how is my body temperature?”

Ideal.

“Not too hot?”

All signs are excellent.

“Will you open the door now, please?”

The vault will remain sealed, Konstance. This is the safest place for you to be. Best to make a healthy meal. Then you can assemble your cot. Would you like a bit of light?

“Ask my father if he’ll change his mind. I’ll put together the bed, I’ll do whatever you say.” She unstraps the cot, locks the aluminum legs into place, opens the valve. The room is very quiet. Sybil shimmers deep within her folds.

Maybe others are safe in the provision vaults, where the flour and new worksuits and spare parts are kept. Maybe those rooms also have their own thermal systems, their own water filtration. But then why aren’t they in the Library? Maybe they don’t have Perambulators? Maybe they’re asleep? She climbs onto the cot and tears the blanket out of its wrapper and pulls it over her eyes. Counts to thirty.

“Did you ask him yet? Did he change his mind?”

Your father has not changed his mind.

In the hours to come she checks her forehead for a fever twenty times. Is that the oncoming blur of a headache? The lilt of nausea? Temperature good, says Sybil. Respiration and heart rate excellent.

She paces the Library, shouts Jessi Ko’s name down the galleries, plays Swords of Silverman, curls in a ball beneath a table and sobs while the little white dog licks her face. She sees no one.