Eric arrived early for his first day at the Institute, parking in the asphalt lot. The limo was gone, but a black Mercedes with French license plates had taken up residence. Eric walked all around the hospital, soaking his shoes in the dewy grass, but saw nothing unusual.

The receptionist greeted him with respect and took him to a small, freshly painted room which served as a staff lounge. Medical magazines were spread on a low table, and a coffeemaker and Styrofoam cups stood ready on a narrow counter along the far wall. The room was empty; as soon as the receptionist left him, he immediately went out into the corridor to explore.

The interior of the building consisted of corridors laid out in the general shape of an elongated H, with the main entrance situated in the crossbar. The lounge was set just beyond the junction of the crossbar and the right-hand upright. Talmidge’s office was at the top of the left-hand upright, Rose recalled, so he felt he could explore a little without running into him. He set off down the corridor leading toward the front of the building.

He counted five doors, three on the left and two on the right. Each was numbered. All were closed. At the end was a set of solid-looking double doors, also closed. He retraced his steps, passing the lounge, and came to a small nurses’ station.

“Señor?”

Eric started, banging his hand smartly on the underside of the counter overhang, and swiveled around. A short skinny woman in white glowered at him. “El paso es prohibido,” she said sternly. “Eet ees prohibit.”

He gave her a dazzling smile. “Delighted to meet you, Nurse . . .” - he looked in vain for a nametag on her starched uniform - “uh, nurse,” he finished lamely. He extended his injured hand. “I’m Dr. Rose, Eric Rose. From America. We’ll probably be working together.”

Maybe, her look seemed to say. And maybe not. She ignored his outstretched hand.

“Well, uh, carry on,” he said grandly, flashing her another sparkling smile, and turned back toward the lounge, feeling her eyes on him all the way. As he got to the lounge door, he sneaked a look behind him. She still stood, arms akimbo, watching him distrustfully.

Ah, Eric, you charmer, you.

He crossed to the coffeemaker. Some java, he thought. A magazine. And no moving from this room until they tell you. Got that?

He poured himself a cup of the strong black coffee, looked in vain for milk, and then settled himself in a pale green Naugahyde chair to wait for whatever might happen next.

Ben Talmidge had spent the night in his office, wrestling with unfamiliar emotions. Now he sat hunched over his desk, his chin in his hands, staring inward.

Never, as far back as he could remember, had he questioned his own decisions. He’d known, seemingly from birth, what he wanted and how he was going to get it. His plans had always been quickly made, without undue agonizing. And when they’d gone wrong, which had happened rarely, he’d moved quickly to correct them.

I’m getting old, he thought dispassionately. Though his boyish countenance belied his age, he was nearing sixty.

No family, he thought; not really. No real friends.

It had never mattered before. In fact, he’d consciously rejected such attachments. But the arrival of Eric Rose after such a long period of enforced isolation from his peers had brought to the surface feelings long buried and forgotten.

A professional, Talmidge thought. Someone I can trust; a smart young man who can understand my work. Who can understand me. Or was he seeing Eric through the rosy haze of his own sudden yearnings?

Talmidge rubbed his eyes, then stood up and went to the window. Outside, the air was cool and still. Nothing moved.

“One of our finest,” Harris had said despondently when Talmidge had called to gloat. What I could do with such a trained, talented mind, thought Talmidge. What we could do together. What a legacy I could leave him.

Eric was pouring coffee when Talmidge entered.

“Pour me some, will you?” Talmidge said with a smile. Eric noticed that he hadn’t changed his shirt since their interview the previous night.

He handed Talmidge a steaming cup and watched in wonder as Talmidge gulped down the painfully hot liquid.

“Come with me,” he ordered, so Eric ditched his coffee and followed Talmidge out into the corridor.

Talmidge was crisp, yet affable. “I’ll show you around later,” he said. “Now I want you to scrub in with me. We have a little procedure.”

A test, thought Eric. Good.

The nurse’s face lit up when she saw Talmidge, then darkened again at the sight of Eric. “Prohibido,” she said, and blocked the way, but Talmidge shook his head. “El es un médico,” he explained gently. “A doctor. He will work here with me.”

The woman nodded and let them pass, but she didn’t smile.

“A talented nurse,” Talmidge explained, “but a limited vocabulary.” And he swept past her, Eric following in his wake. They scrubbed together in silence; then Talmidge led him into the OR.

The patient, unidentified, lay on the gurney swathed in drapes.

The scrub nurse might have been the twin of the woman in the corridor: sullen but efficient. The anesthetist, introduced simply as Ricardo, was silent. There was no one else.

“Your patient,” Talmidge told him. Eric looked at him in surprise. “Go on,” said Talmidge testily. “Examine him. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Eric leaned in and began to pull back the drapes. Talmidge touched his arm. “Not the face, Eric. Leave the face. He’s already anesthetized. He can’t talk to you anyway.”

“What are you using?” Eric asked idly, beginning to undrape the body.

“Cyclopropane,” Talmidge said casually.

Instinctively, Eric dropped the drape and stepped back. Nobody used Cyclopropane any longer. Nobody sane.

Talmidge chuckled. “Now, don’t be a baby, Eric,” he said. “Get on with it. We’ll talk about the Cyclopropane later.”

Feeling trapped, Eric stepped in again, his heart jumping. Cyclopropane. Jesus!

Once the man’s body was freed of the drape, the problem became obvious to Eric. He touched the pulsating abdomen gingerly, then turned to Talmidge. “Aneurysm of the aorta,” Eric told him. “We need an ultrasound of the area as quickly as possible.”

Talmidge nodded to the nurse; the ultrasound unit, already set up, was immediately wheeled over. Talmidge had known exactly what he had here, Eric realized. So how could he simply let the guy wait for me? If that thing had ruptured . . .

Using the ultrasound, he quickly located the site of the aneurysm: the spot was greatly engorged and leaking blood. “We need to open him up immediately,” he told Talmidge tensely. He didn’t like the look of the thing at all.

“Be my guest, by all means,” Talmidge told him graciously.

Like a fucking tea party, Eric thought. Tea with the Mad Hatter. Well, if the guy was already out, he was going in - fast. It occurred to him fleetingly that this was a rather unexpected procedure in a hospital of this kind; presumably they cared for the more affluent villagers on an emergency basis.

Talmidge watched carefully as Eric opened neatly and got to work, rapidly dissecting and cross-clipping the leaking aorta. It was a technically difficult piece of surgery, just the sort of thing Eric loved.

“Dacron graft,” said Eric, extending his hand for the piece of plastic which would replace the injured section of aorta. The nurse slapped it into his glove, and he cut rapidly through the aorta, stitching the graft into place. A skillfully performed anastomosis, or junction between the graft and the patient’s own blood vessels, was crucial to the success of the procedure. Talmidge watched intently as Eric removed the clamps.

“Good ‘mose,’” he said. Eric flushed with pleasure and began to close.

When he finally stripped off his bloody scrubs, Eric was surprised to find the operation had taken nearly two hours.

“Well done,” Talmidge told him as they stepped out of the surgical changing room and started down the corridor.

I passed, thought Eric with some relief. I wonder who the patient was.

Suddenly Talmidge stood motionless for a moment, as though debating something deep within himself. Then he turned back to Eric, looking at him searchingly, and put out his hand. Somewhat taken aback, Eric grasped the hand and shook it. To his profound embarrassment, Talmidge did not release it but continued to hold his hand almost tenderly. Then all at once, Talmidge shook off the mood.

“How about that tour?” He spoke almost harshly, as if ashamed of some emotion he had just revealed.

Someday, my boy, all this will be yours, Eric thought unsteadily. “I’d like that,” he answered.

“Still feeling a little shaky about the Cyclopropane?” Talmidge asked solicitously.

“You bet your . . . er, yeah,” Eric told him.

Talmidge smiled. “You’ll get used to it,” he said. Jauntily he started down the corridor. He found he liked having an assistant who not only was an excellent surgeon but also knew enough to be scared of the Institute’s somewhat unusual anesthetic of choice. Then his steps slowed as mentally he pulled himself back. Easy, now, he thought. Don’t get sloppy. You acted on impulse. Now study him. Try him. There are too many secrets here. And decisions can be changed.

The hospital tour was uneventful. Eric was shown the private rooms, comfortable and cheery but not luxurious, the small but well-stocked medical library, the supply room, the X-ray lab. Everything had a clean, well-scrubbed look. But they saw few staff members.

At last they came to the large double doors at the end of the corridor Eric had attempted to explore earlier. Talmidge pushed a small button on the wall, looking up at what Rose suddenly realized was a closed-circuit camera. The lock clicked open, and they entered a dim, cool chamber, its walls lined with what looked like thin metal drawers. A hum of machinery filled the air. At a table in the center sat a squat, ugly little man wearing a lab coat over his jeans. He rose respectfully as Talmidge entered.

“Good morning,” Talmidge said pleasantly. “This is Dr. Rose. He’ll be working with us now. Eric, meet Jorge.”

Despite his Spanish name, the man seemed to understand English because he nodded to Eric and smiled a shy smile.

“Hi,” said Eric. “What happens in here?”

Jorge shrugged apologetically and looked toward Talmidge, who gestured toward the near wall. “Come look at this,” he told Eric.

Together they walked to the cabinets, and Talmidge pulled the handle of one of the wide shallow drawers. Slowly, smoothly, the drawer rolled out, releasing a gust of cold which fogged the air above it. Fifty sealed clear plastic boxes were carefully arranged in the drawer. Each was labeled with a name and a date.

Talmidge picked up one of the boxes and handed it to Eric. Inside he could see two oversize covered slides - at least they looked like slides. In the center of one slide was a thick blob of red. In the center of the other was . . . what? He stared, fascinated.

“This is the original sample,” Talmidge explained, indicating the first of the two slides. “And here” - he pointed now to the second slide - “is the beginning culture. We develop it only to this point, then we chemically suspend its growth and freeze it until we need it.”

He took the box from Eric’s hand and placed it back in the drawer, gently rolling it closed. Eric shivered.

Talmidge noticed the shiver and smiled. “I’ll show you what happens next,” he said and crossed the room to an identical bank of drawers. Eric started to follow.

“Wait!” Talmidge ordered sharply. Then, “Jorge!”

The little man unlocked a desk drawer. From it, he brought out a small metal plate - it looked a bit like a VHS remote control, Eric noticed - and depressing a button, aimed it carefully at a row of drawers. There was a sharp click. Jorge locked the remote control away again, and Talmidge indicated that Eric could now join him at the wall, where he again grasped a drawer handle and pulled.

This time, a four-drawer facade pulled out and hinged down to reveal a cold deep space with a counter-type base inside. On this were mounted two large glass containers, each covered and labeled. Suspended in a clear rose-colored liquid inside the containers were organs: a heart in one, a kidney in the other. Mists of freezing air swirled wraithlike around the containers and up out of the drawer.

“This is what you came for,” Talmidge said dramatically. “The technology I developed and perfected over the years.”

He glanced over at Eric, who was staring down at the organs. His cheeks were pink, and he was frowning with concentration.

“This is very exciting!” Eric chose his words carefully. “I mean, it’s revolutionary, incredible!”

Talmidge allowed himself a superior smile.

“But, well, I don’t understand. How does it get from there” - he indicated the drawers on the opposite wall - “to this?”

Talmidge gave an avuncular chuckle. “Wouldn’t the world like to know?” he said. “But only Jorge and I know the, uh, rather complicated process. And we’re not talking!” He smiled as if at some private joke. “No, we’re not talking!”

He looked sharply at Eric. “Someday,” he said, “if you’re a good boy, maybe I’ll tell you. But it won’t be tomorrow. You’ll have to earn it.”

Or maybe I could buy Jorge a drink sometime, Eric thought. He seems to know English. I could get to know him, make him trust me . . .

Talmidge swung the drawer facade back into place and pushed it closed, locking away the organs and their secrets. Then he strode to the double door,

“Jorge! We’re going now.”

Jorge must have hit a hidden button or switch, for the door lock clicked open.

Eric went toward the door, then stopped at Jorge’s desk. “Thanks, Jorge,” he said. “Nice to meet you. Uh, see you at lunch, maybe?”

Jorge smiled up at him and nodded.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” said Talmidge impatiently, He opened one of the double doors and held it for Eric, who reluctantly passed through into the corridor.

“An interesting case,” Talmidge said as they walked toward his office. “A kind of scientific idiot savant. Explain a procedure to him, and he grasps it instantly. But strangely enough, he can neither read nor write. He can’t calculate the simplest sums. He smiled at you because you spoke to him, but he appears not to experience the most basic human emotions. He’s like . . .” Talmidge searched for a simile. “He’s like a loyal dog.”

“He seems to understand English.”

“Oh, yes, he understands French and German too. Peculiar, isn’t it?”

“You mean because he can’t learn to read or write?”

“No, Eric. Because he’s mute. He was born without vocal cords.” Talmidge smiled pleasantly. “He can understand at least five different languages. But he can’t speak a word.”

Inside the OR, the nurse and the anesthetist had moved the patient onto a gurney, securing him with straps. Now the nurse unlocked a small, unobtrusive door half-hidden by a screen, and they wheeled the gurney through, carefully locking the door behind them.