A door opened a couple of meters away.

“Wala?”

It was Eigen.

I ran to her door and pushed her back inside. Her room was just like the one I had lost. I looked around to see if we were alone. I glanced back into the corridor, found it still empty and white, or still, empty, and white, or still and empty white, then closed the door. Eigen was still dressed in white and her shoes were white, though both toes pointed the same way. I looked to see that there were many white shoes all over the floor, all white, lefts and rights, though she wore only lefts.

“Eigen, are you all right?”

“Look,” she said, pointing down with her two index fingers. “My shoes really do match now.”

I tried to get her to look at my eyes. “Do you know where we are?” I asked her. “Eigen?”

“A hotel? A hospital? Hospitals are often white like this. We’re in a lab somewhere. Are we in a paint factory?”

I sat her on the bed. “Eigen, listen. Given any set A and any set B, x is a member of A if and only if x is a member of B, then …”

“A is equal to B,” she said. “Zermelo-Fraenkel.”

She was still in there.

“Wala?”

“Yes.”

“Where are we?”

“Corsica.”

“Where is Corsica?”

“It’s in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Italy.”

“We’re in Italy?” she asked.

“Technically, France. We’re in John Sill’s compound.”

“John,” she said, her eyes again glazed over.

I grabbed her by her shoulders and shook her, remembering hearing that you’re not supposed to shake babies and wondering if it was also true for mathematicians. I also found myself thinking in ways I had never imagined, wondering, for instance, how an adversarial relationship with Sill might affect my returning to the US and, more importantly, to Trigo. Perhaps bringing Eigen out of her catalepsy was not such a good idea, at least not a timely one. I was concerned about her state, but if there were a change, might we go the way of Agostinho Aguedo, down a chute into the shark pool, so named because it was a pool filled with sharks?

“Wala,” she said, sleepy seeming.

“It’s okay. Just go to sleep, Eigen.” I tipped her over on the bed and she did go right to sleep.

I walked out of her room and stood in the corridor. I had no idea where I was or where I was going or whether it even mattered. I knew only that the vending machine had not been near my quarters, so I walked away from it. I walked and walked, then decided to start trying knobs. If I encountered someone, so what? As it turned out, room after room was unlocked, room after room was ostensibly unoccupied. Twenty or so doors later, I decided that I would simply occupy a random room and did. I trusted that John Sill’s people would find me.