Haendl nodded. "Right. They're all around us and our lives are beggared because of them. And we don't even know why. We don't have the least idea of what they are. Did you know that one of the sheep was Translated in Wheeling when you left?"
"Translated?"
Tropile listened with his mouth open while Haendl told him about what had happened to Citizen Boyne.
"So he didn't make the Donation after all," Tropile said.
"Might have been better if he had," said Haendl. "Still, it gave you a chance to get away. We had heard—never mind how just yet—that Wheeling'd caught itself a Wolf, so we came looking for you. But you were already gone."
Tropile said, faintly annoyed: "You were damn near too late."
"Oh, no, Tropile," Haendl assured him. "We're never too late. If you don't have enough guts and ingenuity to get away from sheep, you're no wolf—simple as that. But there's this Translation. We know it happens, but we don't even know what it is. All we know, people disappear. There's a new sun in the sky every five years or so. Who makes it? The Pyramids. How? We don't know that. Sometimes something floats around in the air and we call it an Eye. It has something to do with Translation, something to do with the Pyramids. What? We don't know that."
"We don't know much of anything," interrupted Tropile, trying to hurry him along.
"Not about the Pyramids, no." Haendl shook his head. "Hardly anyone has ever seen one, for that matter."