I thought about it. I sensed that this murky mystery of poor Lucia tied in on some deep level with what I'd glimpsed of the Crypt-the biological strangeness I'd experienced, but which I'd not been able to express to Peter. If I wanted to unravel all that, I was going to have to deal with Lucia. And besides-I pictured Lucia's face: so pale, such deep shadows around her eyes. She was just a kid, and she really was in deep trouble, I realized, and I felt a sharp instinct to help. Peter's peculiar behavior-the furtiveness he'd shown since he'd arrived here in Rome, the half secrets he'd dropped about dark matter and the rest-was just complicating things. But it didn't change the essentials.

"No. I'm not backing out," I said firmly. "Simple humanity, Peter."

He laughed without humor. "I don't think there's anything simple about this situation." He cast about. "I need to get on the Internet. I'll see if there's a dataport in here, or maybe a phone socket. And I could use a coffee," he called over his shoulder, pulling his laptop out of his bag.

I walked up to Daniel. "You're pacing like an expectant father."

He looked at me sourly. "Bad joke."

"Yes. Sorry. Look, do you have any change? . . ."

Down the hall we found a machine that would dispense Starbucks-sized polystyrene beakers of coffee in return for euro coins and notes. We walked back to Peter, who had tucked himself into a corner seat and was pulling Daniel's hacked medical file off the floppy. He accepted the coffee without looking up, flipped open the little drinking flap in the plastic lid, and took a sip, all without ceasing to work at his keyboard.

"The man's a professional," I said to Daniel.

"Yeah."

We sat down. Daniel was full of nervous energy. He tapped the arm of his chair, and his legs pumped up and down in tiny, violent movements, as if he were ready to flee.

"I guess you haven't had much experience of hospitals," I said.

"No. Have you?"

"Well-"

"You have kids of your own?"

"No, I haven't," I admitted.

He turned away. "Look, it's not the hospital that bothers me. In fact, I enjoy being surrounded by people speaking English, or at least Italian with an American accent."

"The Order? That's what you're scared of?"

"d.a.m.n right."

"They can't harm anybody here." I pointed to a beefy security guard, who stood by the door, hands folded behind his back. "Lucia will be fine. We're in the best place she could be . . ." And so on.

"Yeah." He didn't sound convinced.

A typical adultkid response came to my mind:Yes, everything will be fine, she will be okay, we can all go home. But I thought I should respect him more than that. "I really don't understand what's going on here, Daniel. You know more than I do. And I have no idea if she's going to be okay." I felt a stab of anger. "I don't even know whatokay means, for a fifteen-year-old girl who will have had two kids by some guy whose name she doesn't even know."

"They had no right," he said.

"No. Whoeverthey are."

"I should be at school." He spread his hands. "What am Idoing here?"

"Look-you did the right thing," I said awkwardly. "I've lived a quiet life. What do I know about how to deal with situations like this? You saw a kid in trouble-a human being-and you responded on a human level. Your parents will be proud."

He grimaced. "You don't know my parents. When they find out about this I amtoast ."

A junior doctor approached us. About thirty, she was short, brisk, competent, with severely cut hair. She had a yellow notepad in her hand.

Lucia was fine, the doctor said, in accented English. The girl was in the late stages of pregnancy, and it was possible she would soon go into labor. But the doctor looked a little puzzled as she said this, and I realized that she was keeping stuff back from us. Well, they had had only a few minutes to examine Lucia, and if even a fraction of what Lucia and Daniel had told us was true, they had a right to be baffled.

Peter hit the doctor with questions. "What about her breathing? Her metabolism, pulse rate? . . ." She was startled enough to try to answer him, referring to her pad a couple of times, before her customary doctor's mask of nondisclosure slid back into place. "We'll let you know as soon as there is more news."

And she turned and walked briskly away.

Daniel said, "What use was that? She doesn't know what she's dealing with." He returned to his seat, fuming, pent up.

I murmured to Peter, "Wish I hadn't encouraged him to drink caffeine. What about those questions you were firing at the doctor?"

He looked at me. "When we were helping her to the ambulance-didn't you feel her pulse?Boom . . .

boom . . . boom. Given the state she's in, and given that she'd just thrown up her breakfast, it was b.l.o.o.d.y slow-I estimated less than fifty a minute-slower than a top athlete's resting rate. And she wascold . The quack's first test results confirm it, I think. George, it kind of fits with what you told me of the Crypt. The air down there must be dense, with high humidity, high on carbon dioxide, low on oxygen."

I nodded. "Which is why I felt breathless."

"With low oxygen levels, you get a low metabolic rate, low body temperatures. A slow pulse, cold skin." He rubbed his nose. "I'd like to get a look at any urine tests they do."

"Why?"

"Because in animals, one way of getting rid of excess cee-oh-two is through your p.i.s.s, in the form of flushed-out carbonates and bicarbonates. I wouldn't be surprised if they've come up with some such adaptive mechanism."

"Adaptive.You're saying she's adapted to the Crypt." I thought it over. "Like her pale skin. Her eyes.

Those thick sungla.s.ses."

"It does all fit together, sort of. And there's more. With a low metabolic rate, you'd grow more slowly, mature later. Live longer, too."

"Could that explain the sterility?"

"I don't know. You know, those people must have been down that hole for a very, very long time."

"Peter-what are we dealing with here?"

He glanced at Daniel, and beckoned. We moved a few seats away from the boy.

Peter unfolded his laptop and showed me some images, which I could barely make out for the glare from the big windows. "What do you know about orangutans?"

As far as Peter could tell the file Daniel had given him on Pina was genuine. When Pina went into hospital for her broken leg, the doctors who examined her had been concerned enough by her appearance to insist on giving her more extensive tests.

"George, I think the kid was right. Pina had an imperforate hymen, and quiescent ovaries."

"Quiescent?"

He shrugged. "Not producing eggs. Neverhad produced eggs. There's a brief note here, where one doctor speculates about the mechanism-"

I waved a hand. "I'm not going to understand any of that."

"Anyhow they never did the conclusive tests before she was sprung. I've been onto the search engines and looked wider. The biologists call this 'arrested development.' It can happen for genetic reasons-for instance, a mutation in the receptor for a certain growth factor can cause a form of dwarfism. Or if food is short-say if you're an anorexic-p.u.b.erty can be delayed. It makes a certain evolutionary sense, because if you can't feed yourself it makes no sense to waste calories on bone ma.s.s and fatty tissue for s.e.xual characteristics until your body can be sure it will survive. It's actually quite common among the animals. Sometimes subordinate males don't develop s.e.xual characteristics. Tree shrews. Mandrill monkeys. Elephants."

"And orangutans-"

"Even orangutans, even apes."

"Get back to Pina. You're saying she has this 'arrested development,' too."

"It looks that way. The tests weren't conclusive." He sighed, closed up his laptop, and ma.s.saged the bridge of his nose. "But suppose it's true, George. Suppose that poor kid really has gone through a pregnancy that mushroomed in three months. Suppose there are neuter women down that hole in the ground, a horde of them. Suppose Lucia's other peculiarities-her paleness, her slow metabolism-are adaptations to living underground. And suppose it's true-it seems fantastic, but just suppose-that Lucia had s.e.x with this guy Giulianojust once , but she's going to continue to get pregnant, over and over . . ."

I sat on that plastic-coated seat, in the bright efficiency of the thoroughly modern hospital, gazing through the big windows at the gardens with their cypress trees. "Evolution.They are evolving differently. Is that what you're saying?"

Peter said, "If the story of Regina is true, the Order have cut themselves off, more or less, from the rest of humanity for sixteen centuries. That's, say, sixty, seventy, eighty generations . . . I'm no biologist. I don't know if that's enough time. But it sounds like it to me." He shook his head. "You know, twenty- four hours ago I'd never have believed we'd be having this conversation. But here we are.

". . . I still don't see the big picture, though. Evolutionary changes happen for a reason." Peter leaned close. "You'll have to go back, George. Back into the Crypt. Call your sister again."

"Why?"

"We need more information. We still have more questions than answers, nothing but a lot of guesswork.

If we could get Pina or one of the other neuters into the hands of the doctors-"

"Daniel."

He looked around. "What?"

"Where's Daniel?"While we'd been talking, the boy had disappeared from his seat.

We ran down the corridor, the way he must have gone. We heard the receptionist call us back, a sharper yell from the security guy.

We hadn't gone fifty yards before we met a party coming the other way. Daniel's arms were pinned by his escorts, a burly male nurse on one side, a security guy on the other. The nice young lady doctor was talking to him, steadily, calmly, about how they had been unsure about our credentials, and it was only proper that they should ask the girl herself about her family . . .

When he saw us Daniel struggled harder. "They took her back," he said, despairing. "The Order. They came, andthey took her back !"

Chapter 44.

It was in the year 1778 that Edmund found Minerva, and lost her.

He was twenty-three years old. He had come to Rome as part of his "Grand Tour," in the traditional style, funded by his father's money and his own youth and energy. He stayed in an apartment in the Piazza di Spagna, which had become known as the English Ghetto. The apartment, a decent first floor and two bedchambers on the second, was small but well furnished, and cost no more than a scudo per day.

Edmund fell into the company of one James Macpherson, a forty-year-old Jacobite refugee and hardened rake, who proved a willing guide to the various delights of Rome-as long, of course, as Edmund continued to be a source of cash. Edmund understood this relationship very well, and was careful not to let James take advantage. But Edmund was catholic in his tastes, and soon learned to relish thevitella mongana , which he thought the most delicate veal he had ever tasted, and drank great quant.i.ties of Orvieto, a decent white wine.

Rome proved to be great fun. Night and day the piazzas were crowded with acrobats and astrologers, jugglers and tooth drawers. In the cramped, garlic-stinking alleys where grand mansions loomed over tiny houses, shop signs hung everywhere, of barbers, tailors, surgeons, and tobacconists. But the alleys were always clogged with noise and filth, since the Romans had the rude habit of relieving themselves against any convenient doorway or wall, and left their garbage heaped in every corner, waiting for the irregular call of the waste collectors.

But amid the noise, filth, and debauchery, there were true wonders.

Edmund found Saint Peter's and its piazza quite stunning-he had James bring him back to it day after day, for there always seemed something new to see in it-and he was enchanted by the area around the great cathedral, where elegant domes and cupolas rose from the morning mist. And then there were the older monuments, sticking out of the past. Edmund often had James escort him to the top of the Palatine, where mature cypress trees waved gently among the ruined palaces.

Edmund found the Romans themselves pleasant and civil-as well they might be, he thought, for they were surely the most indolent people in Europe. There was no industry here, no commerce, no manufacturing. The people relied for their income on the steady flow of money from all over Christian Europe, which continued as it had for centuries.

And religion dominated everything about the city. At any one time there were as many pilgrims and other visitors, it was said, as residents. There were threethousand priests and five thousand monks and nuns serving three hundred monasteries and convents and four hundred churches. It was fashionable to dress like a cleric even if you had not taken holy orders. A greater contrast to the dynamic industrial bustle of England could scarcely be imagined; sometimes the cleric-choked city struck Edmund as being in the grip of a great madness.

Edmund was not struck by the women of Rome, whose beauty, he thought, did not match their city's. He remembered a remark of Boswell's that only a few Roman women were pretty, and most of the pretty ones were nuns. But he was not above letting James introduce him to courtesans, of whom he seemed to know a great number. Edmund had not come here for debauchery, but he was no monk, and he had to admit it was a peculiar thrill to indulge his carnal appet.i.tes here in the home of the mother church- where, he learned, some of the prost.i.tutes actually carried licences issued by the pope himself!

But all that changed when he met Minerva.

One night he took in anoperette at the Capranica. It was hard to make out the performance for the drinking and gambling going on in the private box James had hired. James introduced him to the raucous company of the singers and actors, and in the course of a very long evening Edmund was astonished to learn that some of the beautiful "girls" who mingled with the company were in factcastrati . Happily he avoided making a fool of himself.

The next morning, his head more than usually cloudy, Edmund walked alone to the Forum.

He found a fallen column to sit on. The Forum was a meadow littered with ruins. He watched the hay carts lumbering across the open s.p.a.ce, and animals grazing among the lichen-coated ruins. As the rising sun banished the last of the morning mist, despite his mildly aching head, he felt tranquility settle on him. It was a scene of ruin, yes, and there was poignancy in seeing the shabby huts of carpenters erected on the rostrum where once Cicero had stood. But there was great peace here, as if the present had somehow made a settlement with the past.

In one corner of the ancient s.p.a.ce a bank of charcoal stoves had been set up, and he could smell the sour stink of cabbage and tripe. Idly he stood, brushed lichen from his trousers, and wandered that way. There were many places in Rome where you could find food being cooked in the open. Some of these open-air establishments were grand, and Edmund had enjoyed adequate lunches of salad, poached fish, cheese and fruits, rounded off with the ice cream with which the Romans seemed obsessed. But he could see that these cabbage cookers had humbler culinary ambitions than that, and that the wretched folk who cl.u.s.tered around the stoves were the poorest of the poor.

At first he thought the women working at the stoves must be nuns, for they wore simple white robes laced with purple thread. But they wore no wimples or hoods, and he saw that they were all young, all rather similar, almost like sisters-and all pale, as if they wore cosmetics of theatrical thickness.

That was when he saw Minerva.

She was one of the serving women. She had a beauty that made him gasp, as simple as that. Her face, small and lozenge-shaped, was symmetrical, her nose straight and neat, her mouth full and as red as cherries, and her eyes were gray, like windows on a cloudy sky. She was like her companions, but in her the combination of features had worked to stunning effect, like a perfect deal in a card game, he thought.

He felt he could have watched her all day, so enchanted was he by her simple elegance. And when she moved around the stove the sunlight, by chance, lit up her robes from behind, and he caught a glimpse of her figure, which- Somebody was speaking to him. Startled, he came back to himself.

One of the workers was facing him-like the beauteous one, yes, not unattractive, but older, and with a sterner face. But her mouth twitched with humor.

He stammered, in English, "I'm sorry?"

She replied in careful Italian, "I asked you if you are hungry. You are evidently drawn to the scent of tripe."

"I-ah. No. I mean, no thank you. I just-"

"Sir, we have work to do here," she said, reasonably gently. "Important work-vital for those we serve.

I fear you will distract us."

And, he saw,she had indeed noticed him. She responded to his stares with hooded, nervous glances, but looked away.

The older woman said dryly, "Yes, she is beautiful. She can't help it."

"What is her name?"

"Minerva. But she is not on the menu, I'm afraid. Now if you will excuse me-" She turned, with a last, not unkind glance, and went back to her work at the stoves.