She takes in this news calmly enough; she wonders briefly if this could be a menagerie at the End of Time—but while those people are capricious and silly, they are not cruel in this way, and even the most distracted of them would never starve the lost travellers under their care, and would have at least offered some explanation. No, this is something else,.

"Two and a half weeks," she echoes, frowning. Not good. If it goes on for much longer, people will start getting very ill, and longer than that— "That's damned unsporting of our hosts," she says, with that kind of false humour that acknowledges its own inappropriateness. "Who I gather from your earlier comments are not inclined to mix and mingle with the guests."