“Those poles – what are they?”

“Tree trunks?”

“Way too straight.”

Sorrel suppressed her irritation and went back to her packing.

“Whoa!” Bibi said. “They’re cable-car towers!”

“What?”

“It’s an old cable-car line! Just what we need.”

“What’s a cable car?”

“Machines that took people to high places in the mountains, places too steep for roads. Carriages that ran on, well, cables. Ski resorts used to have them.”

Sorrel wanted to ask what a ski resort was but there was no time for stories. She couldn’t visualize a cable car and didn’t understand her mother’s enthusiasm for a few poles in the ground.

“I didn’t know there was ever a cable car on Bajacu,” Bibi said. “Must have been from the tourism years. But don’t you see, One? This is what we’ve been looking for – it’s like a signposted trail, taking us up the mountain. Look how high it goes. All we have to do is find that water tank.” Bibi shut the PlAK and hugged her daughter. Sorrel did not remind her mother that there was every chance that nothing the PlAK showed them still existed.

At 1300 hours they began to eat everything they couldn’t carry. They pulled the bucket of water into the middle of the living room and wet themselves every half hour. They drank as much water as they could. They ate slowly, sipping at the air between bites, as if that too was food. The heat reached its height and plateaued. They tried not to move.

At 1400 hours, Sorrel logged on to Neurality from Level 4 and looked for Sesame, but her friend was not online. I hope you’re right about the Tribals, Ses, and wrong about the Toplanders. Especially the part about the female slaves. She stared at her own profile picture, now at least two years old. She had the same straight eyebrows as her mother, the same amber eyes, the same slightly triangular ears – elvish ears, her father used to say, tracing them with his finger.

“What are elvish ears?” she’d asked.

“From books I used to love. It’s not important.”

At 1600 hours they showered. They stood back to back and turned the pipes on full, using nearly all the aloe vera soap to scrub their bodies. The water was almost too hot to bear but they stood under the shower anyway and let it run down their limbs. It felt reckless. Decadent.

At 1700 hours they used the electric razor on their own bodies, then on each other for the parts they couldn’t reach easily. Sorrel ran the razor over the slight swell of muscle in her mother’s thighs and was relieved. Muscle meant strength. But it all felt too intimate.

“Should we take this with us?” She asked Bibi, holding out the razor.

“How heavy is it?”

“Not too heavy.”

“Then yes. At least we can do our heads. Best not to stand out too much.”