Ramsey packed a few things in an expanduffle and the three of them hurried through the doorway and down stairs. The cold dark night awaiting them with a fierce howling wind and the first flurries of snow from the north.
“Where to?” Ramsey hollered above the wind.
“My place,” Margot Dennison told him, and they ran.
Margot Dennison had a large apartment in Irwadi City’s New Quarter. This surprised Ramsey, for not many outworlders lived there. That night, though, he was too tired to think about it. He vaguely remembered a couch for himself, a separate room for the Vegan girl, another for Margot Dennison. He slept like a log without dreaming.
He awoke with anxious hands fluttering at his shoulder. Opening one sleepy eye, he saw the Vegan girl. He saw daylight through a window but said, “Gmph! Middle of the night.”
[p 22]
The Vegan girl said: “She’s gone.”
Ramsey came awake all at once, springing to his feet fully dressed and flinging aside his cloak, which he’d used as a blanket. “Margot!” he called.
“She’s gone,” the Vegan girl repeated. “When I awoke she wasn’t here. The door—”
Ramsey ran to the door. It was a heavy plastic irising door. It was locked and naturally would not respond to the whorl patterns of Ramsey’s thumb.
“So now we’re prisoners,” Ramsey said. “I don’t get it.”