Look here, my mother had said, tracing her finger along the image of House of Wisdom on our kitchen wallscreen. She had been speaking normally, but in my memories she whispered as softly as the turn of autumn leaves, This is where Daddy is going to be for a while. He’ll be doing important work.

“Zahra?” Malachi said. “What is it?”

I started moving again, pulling myself hand over hand along the broad corridor, following the signs toward the next interlevel hatch. We had spoken little since leaving the computing core. We could not turn off the radios, lest the hostages make a mistake and reveal their position to us, but neither did we want to provide any information to them, should they be listening. There wasn’t much to say anyway. We needed to get to the bridge on Level 10, and we needed to do it quickly. I felt a weak sort of relief that our plan offered little room for argument.

The corridors of Level 8 were broad and straight. There were no living quarters here, no recreation spaces, no gardens. Beyond those well-spaced doors were research laboratories, each labeled by a small, neat sign.

PLANETARY NAVIGATION. ORBITAL COMPUTATION. MINERAL RESOURCE ASSESSMENT.

As a child I had imagined passing through this corridor a thousand times, when I had wanted to join my father for the adventure of living in space. Later, after he was gone, and my mother as well, I had once again walked this corridor in my mind, planning what I would say to Nadra and Anwar about the father they scarcely remembered and the mother they had only known after she was crushed by grief.

MICROGRAVITY COMBUSTION. CELESTIAL MECHANICS. EXPLORATORY ROBOTICS.

We had no time to spare, but we were right here.

DEEP SPACE ARCHAEOLOGY.

I grabbed a handle on the wall.

We were right here.

“Zahra?” Panya said. “Is something wrong?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Malachi said, reading the sign over my shoulder.

I was losing him. I had known it since we left the computing core. Dag remained as silent and stalwart as ever, and the soft concern in Panya’s voice never wavered, but Malachi’s fear had been sharpening with every level, and with it was an anger I did not recognize. Malachi did not carry rage in his heart like so many in the family. Even when he had been newly arrived at the homestead, his feet blistered and lips cracked from his long, lonely wander through the desert, his spirit dulled by the repeated humiliations inflicted upon him by the Councils citizenship process that promised so much and delivered so little, even then he had been smiling, grateful for a respite, open with his thanks. The smiles, the gratitude, the openness, it was all gone now. House of Wisdom had crushed it out of him.

“This is where the outbreak started,” I said. “Open the door.”

Malachi did not move to obey. “Why? Adam said—”