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respond. Reed wouldn’t have said this in front of anyone else. To the rest of the village the priests and their machinery were infallible.
    “And the girl?”
    “Mina? She’s nearby.”
    He led Wilson through the hallway to a door with a small display at the side. “There’s her cardiac rhythm and breathing rate, both at low levels because she’s sleeping.”
    “Have you talked to her?”
    “I haven’t had the chance to ask many questions. She says very little. It could be the medicine I’ve given her, but she’s also been under physical and mental stress. Those tribal animals treated her poorly.”
    “Where’s she from?”
    “I’d say not from any known tribes, but it’s difficult to tell. The few phrases she’s spoken are strangely mixed with English. Her dress is also a pattern I haven’t seen before. The men likely bought her at a slave market and lost their bearings while traveling.”
    “If she was their slave, why the beatings? Why the bruises?”
    Reed smiled. “The innocence of youth––I wish I had it again. Man is born to trouble. Sometimes, that trouble is our fault and sometimes it’s brought by other men.”
    “And the thirty who followed them?”
    “Followed, or simple coincidence?”
    Wilson stared at Reed. “At night, away from known tribes, in strange territory?”
    “Founder’s boots, these are sharp questions,” said the priest. “When she wakes up ask her yourself.”
     
    WILSON’S QUESTIONS WOULD HAVE to wait. Reed dispatched him an hour later to fix a mechanical problem in the Office living quarters. The hot water was coming out cold. A gaggle of old graybeards flocked around Wilson and gleefully argued over the number of decades since the last plumbing fault. It was a rare event and Wilson didn’t need to be reminded of that. He worried less about the problem and more about where he’d have to go to fix it.
    Under a drizzle of rain, Robb walked with him through the village. Both wore sturdy hemp overalls, caps, and leather gloves.
    In the midst of corn fields lay a long concrete rectangle from the old times with cracked walls the same color as the dripping sky. Most of the roof had collapsed or blown away, along with whatever had filled in the windows. Wilson hated the tall, empty holes in the walls, the gaping black mouths that swallowed naughty children. Sometimes he walked alone at night and heard the wind moan across the empty windows like a ghost for her children.
    Wilson lifted a wooden bar across the entrance and pushed on a weather-beaten door. The inside was much the same as outside––bare, cold, and open to the sky. He walked with Robb to the back of the ruin and stopped at a large wooden panel on the floor. When he lifted it grit showered over a rusted hatch in the concrete.
    “This is it.”
    Robb shuffled back. “I don’t want to do it. We can’t go down there!”
    “Listen,” said Wilson. “I got you out of weed chopping. This is only going to take a minute and then you can do whatever you want all day. Think of it––you can play with a stick, or if you’re feeling brave, a rock.”
    “I changed my mind. I want to chop weeds.”
    Wilson leaned the wood panel against a wall. “Okay. I’ll tell all your friends you were scared. Especially that girl–”
    “No! I’ll go with you.”
    Wilson reached down to the hatch and pulled a handle. It didn’t budge. He turned a lever with his thumb, lifted again, and the hatch squealed open.
    Dirt showered into the darkness under the hatch and fizzed somewhere far below. Wilson took a hand sparker and lit the candle in his lantern. He knotted a rope to the lantern’s handle and lowered it down the shaft. The gentle swings of candlelight glowed on the rungs of a metal ladder and the sides of a narrow shaft. The base clinked on a hard surface eight meters below.
    “Here goes nothing,” said Wilson.
    He knelt at the opening and used his foot to touch the top rung of the ladder. His arms and back