I got the sense that I should ask no more questions about that, though I desperately wanted to. I thought of what I’d seen in all those towns and wanted to tell him that I felt the same.
“I’ve never seen a canal so clean,” I said instead. “How did you manage it?”
“We have experts.”
“Experts in drawing pollution from the water?”
“Something like that.”
“And if there’s no other water, then why choke it off?” I wondered. “Your farms must be suffering.”
“We don’t have farms, Nina. The land here’s no good for farming. No good for much but coal.”
I looked at him incredulously. “But how are you feeding all these people, if you’ve blocked all method of import?”
“Now, I never said there were no imports, did I?”
Oh, of course, I thought. The tunnels.
He grinned. “Always hungerin’ for all th
