Book One: The Thing Was, Chapter 29-Chapter 30 Summary

Mary Hepburn is suffocating herself with a garment bag and hallucinates that she is a tortoise trapped on its back in a sailing ship, kept that way, helpless, as fresh meat. When Mary told students about this common practice among sailors, they were horrified at this treatment of animals. Nature, though, is harsh, and it is no worse than the rodents that wiped out most tortoises by eating their eggs. A similar fate is awaiting humans, whose eggs will be destroyed by a disease that will spread to all human females, except on Galapagos.

Mary nearly dies, even seeing the blue tunnel to the afterlife, but she takes the bag off her head and goes down to the bar. James Wait is feeding the orphan children cocktail snacks from the bar...