She dashed along the black marble floor toward the double doors, unaware that she was again being followed—not by the gunslinger this time but by a wide-eyed, tousle-haired boy in a cotton shirt and a pair of cotton shorts. Mia crossed the foyer with its red and black marble squares and the statue of smoothly entwined marble and steel. She didn’t stop to curtsy, or even nod her head. That she should be so hungry was bearable. But not her chap. Never her chap.

What halted her (and only for a space of seconds) was her own reflection, milky and irresolute, in the statue’s chrome steel. Above her jeans was a plain white shirt ( You call this kind a tee-shirt,her mind whispered) with some writing on it, and a picture.

The picture appeared to be of a pig.

Never mind what’s on your shirt, woman. The chap’s what matters. You must feed the chap!

She burst into the dining hall and stopped with a gasp of dismay. The room was full of shadows now. A few of the electric torches still glowed, but most had gone out. As she looked, the only one still burning at the far end of the room stuttered, buzzed, and fell dark. The white forspecial plates had been replaced with blue ones decorated with green tendrils of rice. The rice plants formed the Great Letter Zn , which, she knew, meant eternity and now and also come, as in come-commala . But plates didn’t matter. Decorations didn’t matter. What mattered was that the plates and beautiful crystal glassware were empty and dull with dust.

No, not everything was empty; in one goblet she saw a dead black widow spider lying with its many legs curled against the red hourglass on its midsection.

She saw the neck of a wine-bottle poking from a silver pail and her stomach gave an imperative cry. She snatched it up, barely registering the fact that there was no water in the bucket, let alone ice; it was entirely dry. At least the bottle had weight, and enough liquid inside to slosh—

But before Mia could close her lips over the neck of the bottle, the smell of vinegar smote her so strongly that her eyes filled with water.

“Mutha- fuck!” she screamed, and threw the bottle down. “You mutha- fuckah!”

The bottle shattered on the stone floor. Things ran in squeaking surprise beneath the table.

“Yeah, you bettah run!” she screamed. “Get ye gone, whatever y’are! Here’s Mia, daughter of none, and not in a good mood! Yet I will be fed! Yes! Yes I will!”

This was bold talk, but at first she saw nothing on the table that she could eat. There was bread, but the one piece she bothered to pick up had turned to stone. There was what appeared to be the remains of a fish, but it had putrefied and lay in a greenish-white simmer of maggots.