"Oh, it must be," Mal agreed instantly. "There can't just have always been nothing - a City and a Cave and all this technology and nothingness in between. It doesn't make sense."

She should have looked at a map in the Cave. Why hadn't that occurred to her? Probably the fact that libraries weren't really big in Borogravia, where the literacy level was, what, 5%? They weren't big on statistics either. Still, she could read. She could have made use of the resources at her disposal.

Mal quirked her lips in slight amusement. "Well, Re-l, which mysteries do you need to solve?" she asked, humor apparent in her voice. "Are you looking for someone?"

Everyone was looking for someone, eventually, one way or another, but who, that was the telling thing.