The moon is low in the sky, the shadows long and deep, as a figure moves across the cobblestones. Her face is hidden, but she moves as the young move, lithe and sure. Her body swings freely beneath the longish skirt, the fringed shawl, as she strides forward. Suddenly she glances sideways and the moonlight catches her face; she has the strong beauty of the mountain people.

What has caught her attention? A small sound; a rabbit? A sparkle of reflected light; the moon on a rock? It is late and she has heard the stories. She quickens her pace.

The rabbit moves forward, but it is not a rabbit.

She picks out the path ahead by feel; her feet know it well . . . now under the overhang of crumbly rock festooned with vegetation. The shadows are darker here, but she is almost home.

The rabbit that is not a rabbit also knows the path by foot, by feel. And her name.

She senses it before she sees it, an outline, black on black in the darkness. Strong arms grasp her, hold her, cover her scream. A sparkle of reflected light: the moon, yes, but on metal, not rock. Cloth at her mouth and nose, and the drug races through her and she falls and a figure bends over her, pulling at her clothes.

And now the knife flashes dimly, redly. In her stupor she moans. She will live, and the legend will grow.

And the rabbit disappears back into the mountains.

* * *

“It happened again last night,” Vincente told Eric as they sat over their café negro outside El Lobo the next day.

“Take the morning off,” Talmidge had suggested, and Eric had done just that.

“Elena it was this time,” Vincente continued conspiratorially. “They talk of werewolves and vampires.” He allowed himself a smug little smile. “They are, I think, very primitive in this village, no?”

Eric wrenched himself away from thoughts of the giant artificial wombs Talmidge called his “ovens,” and tried to concentrate on what the boy was saying.

“Werewolves?”

“It is silly, yes? The woman was not hurt on the neck, like a vampire. She will not start to howl at the full moon. None of the others did.” He spoke scornfully.

“The others?”

“Ten or twelve, I think. Something comes at night sometimes. No one has seen it. It attacks women, only women. It never kills, just . . .”

Eric looked around him. The day was clear and bright, the square was fresh-scrubbed and innocent-looking. Demonic possession. Sure.

He turned back to Vincente. “So who do you think it is?” he asked. “Who’s the town pervert?”

“You mean, what person?”

“It must be someone in the village. Any ideas?”

Vincente looked troubled. “It is no one in the village, of that I am sure,” he said slowly.

“Then who . . . ?”

Vincente sighed. “We are a poor village,” he said. “But without the hospital we would be poorer still. I think it is better for the people to believe in their demons.”

“And you?” Eric asked. “What do you believe?”

Vincente studied his coffee cup. “I have demons of my own,” he said at last.

The sound of an approaching car now echoed across the square, and both men looked up as an old but serviceable taxi with Barcelona plates made its way past the entrance to the square. A blond woman sat in the back seat. Vincente watched as the car disappeared behind the low stone buildings; he followed its unseen progress as it climbed the steep road that led to the hospital.

Abruptly he turned back to the table and drained his cup. Tossing some coins beside the saucer, he stood.

“I leave you now to your work,” he said, indicating Eric’s notebook. “Perhaps this evening we have a copita, yes? And we talk of something else.”

When Vincente was out of sight, Eric opened the book to the notes he had made the previous evening. He’d been determined to keep his journal up to date, but recent events had gotten ahead of him. Last night he’d rectified the situation. There it all was, in black and white. But seeing it written down didn’t make it any more believable.

He wondered how to send a copy of his notes to Harris without Talmidge finding out. Obviously he couldn’t mail them from here. Perhaps a newly released patient would take them to Barcelona for him. No one could doubt that mail took a lot longer to get anywhere from San Lorenzo. Yes, that’s what he’d do.

He ripped some pages from the back of the book and began to write.

Talmidge too was writing, meticulously updating his private records. His head was propped on his hand, his eyes bleary, his face pale. He’d returned from his nocturnal “harvest” and carefully rinsed the blood from his sleeve. So far the villagers were content with supernatural explanations; no need to alarm them with reality.

He’d worked through the night, culturing the new one and checking his stock. And finally, celebrating. Now he was exhausted, but very pleased with himself. The young one, Isabella, was coming along well. Soon he would add her to his revels. And two years from now, the new one. . . .

He picked at some fruit on a tray and drank some coffee. Others might have found his private underground quarters confining, but Talmidge liked the seclusion. The square living-cum-dining room and small but comfortable bedroom were stark yet luxurious, with white stuccoed walls, plush leather furniture, and colorful wall tapestries of local design. Best of all, they were secure. No windows, of course, but so what? Above his steel bunker was his office, with its window looking out to the hills. Sunlight was overrated anyhow.

He grasped the pen again, but the sudden shrill of the intercom phone at his elbow startled him and he dropped it.

“Sorry to bother you, Doctor,” said the voice on the other end. “You’ve got a visitor.”

“I’m not expecting anyone,” he said.

“She said she was just passing by,” Alicia, the day receptionist, told him with more than a hint of sarcasm.

Damn. “Explain to her that I’m quite busy just now. Ask her to make an appointment. Tomorrow, perhaps.”

“Of course,” the voice told him.

Talmidge went back to his papers, but some minutes later the phone shrilled at him again.

“Yes, what is it, Alicia?” he asked testily.

But it was Bascado who answered him. “She won’t take no for an answer,” he said.

She must have kicked up quite a fuss for them to have called Bascado, Talmidge reflected. Bascado was “security” with a capital S; he was also not above a bit of well-paid “wet work.” Few people had actually seen Bascado, but when they did, one look was enough. For Haddad and his ilk, one look was all they got.

“She said to tell you she’s engaged to Charles Spencer-Moore,” Bascado continued. “She seemed to think that would make a difference.”

“It does,” said Talmidge, remembering his phone conversation with Brian Arnold. Damn. Well, at least Eric was out of the building, that was one good thing. He’d give her the sucker tour and get rid of her before Eric came on duty.

“What’s her name again? . . . Vivienne Laker, right. Tell reception to put her in my waiting room,” he told Bascado. “I’ll be right up.”

He cradled the phone, then stretched and yawned and levered himself out of his chair. Carefully he locked the papers away in the safe set into the wall behind the large bold painting, all violent yellow and magenta slashes. Beautiful but unsettling. Just like Anna.

He checked his watch; after eleven, later than he’d thought. He shrugged on his jacket and dialed the code that unlocked the steel panel which served as his front door. Unhurriedly, he began to mount the stairs to his office.

Vivienne stood in the small waiting room trying to psych herself up the way she did before a shoot. The idea of coming here and collecting evidence with which to expose Talmidge’s work had seemed such a good idea back in France. Even on the plane, when she’d started to get scared, she’d hung on to her conviction that nobody connected with Charles could possibly hurt her. They wouldn’t dare. Now she was here, and she wasn’t so sure. She hadn’t pictured the Institute as being quite so isolated, the surrounding countryside quite so grim.

And Talmidge, what would he be like? Could she convince him to show her around? And if not, how far was she prepared go?

Barcelona suddenly felt a long way away.

From somewhere behind the large oak door in front of her came a low rumble and a click; soft footsteps approached.

What can I say that won’t sound stupid? she wondered, then decided that the dumber he thought her, the safer she’d be. That made her feel a little better. And the cheerful, tousled man who opened the door to her made her feel better still.

“Vivienne!” he exclaimed in a genuinely pleased voice. “What a charming surprise!”

He went up to her and grasped her hands in his - strong, capable hands, she noticed - and practically pulled her into his office. He guided her to a seat next to him on the low settee against one wall and studied her brightly.

“So you’re Charles’s fiancée! And you’ve come to see us - how delightful!” Vivienne studied him in return. He wasn’t at all the way she’d imagined him.

Talmidge kept smiling his most reassuring smile, “Sorry you were delayed at the reception desk,” he said, “but it’s most unusual to have outside visitors. The staff simply didn’t know what to do with you.” He laughed lightly.

“Yes, well . . . I was shooting in France - I’m a model, you see - and, well, Barcelona isn’t really that far, and . . .”

“And you thought you’d pop in and have a look at us? Splendid!”

Against her will, Vivienne found herself beginning to relax.

“Charles has been telling me so much about you and what you’re doing,” she said, “that I felt I simply had to see it for myself. I mean, it’s so exciting, being able to . . . uh, do what you’re doing, er, what Charles says you’re doing.”

“So you called Charles and said, ‘You’ll have to do without me for a few more days, darling, I’m off to see your father’s old friend Ben Talmidge, ‘eh?”

“Oh, no,” Vivienne said, “Charles doesn’t know I’m here. He, uh, wouldn’t approve.”

“No? Why ever not?”

“Well, uh . . . he thinks I’m, uh, too excited about it all, too enthusiastic.” Vivienne put as much energy behind her words as she could. “You see, it was all I could talk about, what you’re doing here. I’m just fascinated.”

“Well, I for one am delighted with your enthusiasm, Vivienne. Perhaps Charles has become just a little jaded, yes? Don’t worry, your visit will stay a secret. Unless,” he added, “you’ve told some talkative friend back home?” He looked at her questioningly.

“No, oh, no,” Vivienne said. “I mean, it was just one of those spur-of-the-moment things.”

“So what would you like to see?”

Can it really be this easy? Vivienne wondered. Have I made a mistake about what’s going on?

“Everything,” she said.

“Okay,” Talmidge agreed, noting with satisfaction the sudden confusion this seemed to produce in her.

“You seem surprised,” he said easily. “Did you think we were hiding some deep dark secret here?” He smiled avuncularly. “Let me explain something to you, Vivienne. I consider what I do here to be a service to mankind. I’m proud of it. Now, maybe some people wouldn’t agree. But then, they’re not lucky enough to, uh, participate in our program. No, I find that everyone who’s actually a part of what we do here feels as I do. As you do yourself.”

“Yes, of course. But . . . if there’s nothing to hide, how come we’re not supposed to talk about it?”

“Ah, that’s for the sake of our, uh, clients. You see, we’re still very small. We have a very limited capacity. We can help only a fortunate few. Perhaps someday it will be otherwise. But for now, well, we have to keep it in the family, shall we say?” He sighed theatrically. “Jealousy is a terrible thing.”

“And of course there is the legal aspect,” Vivienne found herself saying. “I suppose the Institute could be shut down if word got out about what you’re doing. I wouldn’t want that to happen, of course,” she added quickly. “I’m involved now too.”

Talmidge patted her hand reassuringly. “Nothing to worry about there,” he told her. “We are fortunate to have as clients several Supreme Court justices, major industrialists from many nations, indeed a number of heads of state.”

A faint flush colored his face. “No law exists which can touch us. How could there be, when no one believes it possible to do what I have done?” The flush deepened and his voice rose. “Even when I told them, all those years ago, they refused to believe.” He stood and began to pace.

“Believe what?”

“The mouse,” said Talmidge angrily, turning to face her. “They wouldn’t believe I cloned a mouse. They accused me of faking the evidence. They asked me to resign. Me!”

“And did you?” Vivienne asked, out of her depth now but hanging on.

“I told them, ‘Yes, I faked the evidence. I admit it! I know you can never forgive me, so I will leave. I am so ashamed!’ And then I took my records, my notes, all the evidence of my discovery, and I came here.”

He turned away from her and went to the window, where he remained, staring out at the hills until, with an effort, he calmed himself.

When he turned to Vivienne, he was all friendliness and charm. “I even took the mouse,” he said with a smile. “Would you like to see it? No? Never mind, a stuffed mouse is not very interesting to a beautiful young woman.”

“Then it’s true . . .”

“Of course it’s true, my dear. But it’s not very dramatic. I suspect it’s not anything like the way you’ve been picturing it.” Again he thought of the phone conversation with Brian. “Many people, when faced with the concept of cloning, think of monsters, zombies, things like that.”

Vivienne felt herself blushing under his stare.

“You too?” he asked kindly. “Don’t feel bad, it’s very common. But you’ll find it’s nothing you need lose sleep over. In fact, you’ll probably be a little disappointed.”

“But they’re alive . . .”

“And so they are. All cells are alive.” Talmidge beamed at her.

“I don’t mean that kind of alive. Dr. Arnold’s papers . . .” She broke off, terrified that she’d gone too far.

But Talmidge’s smile held, though his mind raced. Brian, you fool, he thought, “Dr. Arnold was here in the very early days,” he said after a beat. “You’ll be relieved to learn we’ve changed a lot since then. It’s all much . . . simpler now.”

Can that be true? Vivienne wondered. Can it really all be different?

Sensing her confusion, Talmidge pressed his advantage. “It’s not often I get a chance to show off my work to someone bright enough to understand it,” he said. “Let’s start with the cell-storage facility.”

Vivienne rose and followed him to the door. Talmidge had agreed to show her everything. So why did she feel so manipulated?

An hour later, Vivienne was heading back to San Lorenzo, mulling over what she’d seen: the frozen cells in their steel drawers and the sample organs grown from them, two patients calmly awaiting their operations in spare but clean hospital rooms, the operating theater. “Far more than I’d show anyone else,” Talmidge had assured her. But although he walked her down every corridor and into nearly every room, it had all seemed a little too simple. And very, very different from what she’d read in Arnold’s file.

“I hope you don’t think I’m rushing you,” Talmidge had said as he led her to the front door of the Institute. “But I’m sure you’ll want to be back in Barcelona by evening. Alicia, our receptionist, can drive you into San Lorenzo, and you can get a taxi from there.”

Now, seated beside Alicia in the old green Mercedes, Vivienne decided she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to be in Barcelona that evening. No, she decided, I think I’ll spend the night in San Lorenzo. Barcelona is too civilized. I want to think about it all right here, where it feels like anything could happen.

Alicia let her off in the main square and Vivienne made her way slowly toward the car the receptionist had assured her was the town taxi. Once she was sure Alicia had driven off, Vivienne turned and looked around her. Was there a hotel of some sort? Across the square, a rather good-looking young man was seated at an outside table in front of what looked like a bar. He was sealing an envelope. The remains of breakfast littered the tablecloth. That looks hopeful, she thought.

As she approached, the man looked up; somehow he didn’t seem Spanish. Perhaps he was American or British. Perhaps she could ask him about a hotel.

Pretty girl, Eric thought. Another patient for Talmidge, or was she a visitor? The envelope in his hand reminded him that he needed a mail courier; if she was on her way home, perhaps she’d take the letter for him. He smiled and gestured an invitation for her to join him.

“Hi,” Vivienne said, dropping her suitcase. “Do you speak English?”

“The Brits would deny it,” Eric told her, “but yes, I do. I’m Eric Rose. Uh, won’t you join me?”

“Vivienne Laker, and thanks.” She sat in the chair opposite him and looked around, “Strange town, isn’t it? You get the feeling it hasn’t changed in five hundred years.”

Eric nodded his agreement. “Part of its elusive charm,” he said. “If you’d like some lunch or coffee or something, this is the only game in town.”

“Coffee would be nice,” said Vivienne.

“Allow me,” said Eric, and disappeared into El Lobo. He soon emerged with a heavy white cup of café con leche and several blocks of gray sugar.

“Thanks,” said Vivienne. “What do I owe you?”

“Nothing . . . no, really. But you could do me a favor.”

“Yes?”

Eric toyed with the white envelope addressed to Harris. “Uh, I think I saw you in a taxi heading toward the Institute this morning,” he said. “My favor kind of depends on whether you’re staying there or heading back home.”

“This is a small town.” Vivienne smiled. “Actually, I was just visiting. I’m heading back to Barcelona, probably tomorrow. Which reminds me: is there a decent hotel?”

“This is it.” Eric gestured behind him. “It’s not elegant, but it’s clean. I stay here myself.”

Vivienne looked at him questioningly.

“I work at the Institute,” Eric said. “I’m a doctor. Something wrong?” he nodded as her expression tightened, and her smile died.

“No, of course not. Talmidge is doing wonderful work.”

“Yes, isn’t he?” Eric agreed.

Vivienne sipped her coffee, and Eric toyed with his envelope.

“Uh, who were you visiting?” he asked. Something felt wrong here.

“Dr. Talmidge, actually,” Vivienne told him.

Oops, he thought, dropping the envelope into his lap below the table. “So you’re a friend of Dr. Talmidge?”

Vivienne laughed. “Oh, no!” she said. “I was just having a look at everything. I mean, I want to know where my money’s going! And how did you end up here?”

“Well,” said Eric, “I’d heard about what Dr. Talmidge was doing, and it sounded so exciting, I decided to get involved.”

Vivienne gave him a radiant smile. She’d suddenly realized that if there were any secrets to be learned, Eric Rose was an excellent source. “I hope you won’t think I’m too forward,” she said, “but since I’m staying the night, how about dinner? My treat.”

“Great,” Eric said. “Only be prepared to fight me for the check.” She was awfully pretty. He got to his feet, slipping the letter into his pocket, “And now I’m due at the Institute.”

“What about that favor?” Vivienne asked.

Eric hesitated. Would she tell Talmidge about the letter? No, she said she was headed home. Besides, what could be more natural than one doctor writing to another? He decided to chance it, and taking the letter from his pocket, handed it to her.

“I, uh, need to mail this to a friend in the States,” he explained, “and as you can imagine, the mail service from here is pitiful. If you’d just drop it in a mailbox when you get to Barcelona, I’d appreciate it.”

Vivienne took the letter nonchalantly, but her thoughts were racing. “Sure,” she said casually. “No problem.”

They stood smiling at each other for a moment. “See you this evening,” Eric said and set off across the square toward his car. Vivienne shoved the letter deep into her handbag, then turned and looked after him. When he’d driven off, she went into the bar to arrange about her room.

Dear John,

I’m in! And it’s everything we suspected, and a whole lot more. This letter will give the top line; the rest will have to wait until I get back, whenever that may be. Problem is, I know what he’s doing but not quite how. He’s very secretive - wouldn’t you be? - but I think he sees me as the son he never had or a kind of acolyte or something, and if I stick around long enough and keep my nose clean, I think he’ll tell me eventually. Only I’m not sure how much longer I can take it because it’s tearing me apart.

On the one hand, I find the work terrifically exciting. Mind-boggling. On the other, it’s appalling.

Talmidge is indeed cloning organs. The exciting - and appalling - part is that he’s doing it by cloning people. Abbott is here, or rather his clone is. I watched them give him a medal for donating a kidney. Cloning techniques have come a long way since Talmidge first cloned his mouse (yes, he really did do it, then apparently thought better about sharing his discovery and skulked off to Spain to go it alone), but he’s still way ahead.

Basically, he’s discovered a technique which not only produces cell cloning, but also uses hormones to accelerate growth in the developmental stages. The accelerated-growth technique can be so tightly regulated, he can produce clones of any age. I say “clones” but what we’re talking about here is people. People who walk and talk and paint and make music. They’re organized in groups called clusters and controlled with highly advanced psychological techniques and selective drugs. At the moment, there are about three hundred people, completely isolated, deep underground, and you’d never guess they were there. I bet most people who “have coverage” at the Institute don’t suspect that’s how it’s done.

There are twin operating rooms for removal and implantation of organs, and the techniques here are what you would expect, except that Talmidge insists on using Cyclopropane, which makes surgical procedures even more exciting than usual.

The guy is nuts, absolutely certifiable, but he’s also a genius, and I want to hang on and learn from him even though he horrifies me. When I first came, he tried to palm me off with the sucker tour: frozen cell slides and old organs in bottles. But after we’d worked together, he started showing me the real stuff. Now, every few days he reveals a little more.

Yesterday he took me to what he calls his gardens, huge mechanical “wombs” in which he “grows people,” as he puts it, using subliminal conditioning and teaching techniques during the incubation period. He’s smart; he builds slowly, making sure I’m ready for the next horror and won’t writhe on the floor with my eyes rolling back in my head. Not that I haven’t come close.

He’s a megalomaniac, but that actually helped me. He’s so sure of himself and his operation, he actually appears to use the same computer code to secure all the sensitive areas in the building. In case something happens to me (I don’t mean to sound dramatic, but the possibility does exist), someone should know it: 7-2-6-21. Still, he’s not as naive as I’m making him sound; I broke into his office one night and got into his computer, and although I found a sort of philosophical treatise on cloning, his real secrets were locked away with a code word I couldn’t discover before he nearly discovered me.

San Lorenzo is a pretty strange place too. It owes its continued financial existence to the Institute, so people are pretty closemouthed about what’s going on there. Many of the townspeople work for Talmidge, so they know about the people “on the other side,” even if they don’t know the real story about how they got there. And last night a woman was attacked - not the first time, apparently - and although people seem to connect the attacks with the hospital in some way, they accept them as a sort of price they have to pay for having the Institute support them financially. This is a poor area, and there’s a weird, almost feudal feeling here. We’re all at the mercy of Lord Talmidge.

To sum up, I’m alive and I’m learning, and hopefully I’ll be back in the States by mid-September, at which point you’ll clear my name and get me my job back - right???

For the record, I’m staying at the only hotel in town, the El Lobo Bar, If you’re tempted to write to me, don’t.

Eric

Vivienne stared at the letter for a very long time. I wasn’t wrong, she thought. I wasn’t.

At last, she retrieved the carefully opened envelope she’d dropped on the floor and fitted the letter back in. Immediately she pulled it out once again, and taking a pen from the depths of her handbag, she carefully copied the computer code into her address book. In a burst of inspiration, she also wrote it on the skin of her wrist, under her watch strap.

So Eric was a kind of spy too. And Harris was involved too, but not the way she’d thought. Good; he was an ally people would believe. She’d take the letter to Harris personally.

She resealed the envelope and wrapped it in a scarf, then pushed it in among the clothes in her open suitcase.

Now what?

She walked to the small window and stared out. Eric Rose. Now that she knew he was one of the good guys, she admitted to herself that she found him quite attractive. He has a great smile, she thought. And sexy eyes. And that great Belmondo nose. She found herself looking forward to talking to him, and not just because he could tell her about the Reproduction Institute.

Eric drove slowly, thinking about Vivienne. She was very beautiful, but there was something that didn’t quite compute. He was disturbed by her involvement with the Institute, then reminded himself that most people probably had no idea what really happened there. Meeting her had highlighted the sexual isolation in which he had been living recently. Not surprisingly, he found himself looking forward to the evening with an eagerness he hadn’t felt in a long time.

He cut and sutured his way through the morning with a light heart, removing a portion of lower intestine in a tandem procedure which had become routine.

Lunch was exceptionally tasty, he decided.

He was fantasizing about whether he could convince Vivienne to extend her stay (“So many fascinating ruins in the area . . .”) when Talmidge joined him at the scrub sink. Perversely, Talmidge continued to brief him on each procedure only minutes before they were due in the OR.

“Got an interesting one for you this afternoon,” he told Eric.

Talmidge’s smile should have alerted Eric, but his mood was too ebullient. “Good,” he said. “I like a challenge.”

Talmidge noted Eric’s mood, wondered at its cause, and then proceeded to destroy it utterly as he began to describe in some detail what they were about to do.

Eric stopped scrubbing.

“Remove her what?” he asked Talmidge in disbelief.

“That’s right,” Talmidge said. “Are you finished here? Then go get robed. I’ll see you inside.”

Instinctively Eric gripped the edge of the scrub sink as a wave of nausea flowed through him. “Goddammit, Rose!” Talmidge exploded. “Now you have to scrub all over again! You with me or not?” Eric nodded weakly. “Then get a grip on yourself, man!”

Silent and angry, Talmidge watched as Eric re-scrubbed. “Stay here,” he ordered when Eric was through, as though he thought Eric might disappear if he turned his back. While he scrubbed, Talmidge began again to describe the procedure, looking up from time to time to make sure Eric was paying attention. When both men were sterile, Talmidge walked him into the main OR, where the scrub nurse robed and gloved them both. Only then did Talmidge allow Eric to go through into the tandem OR, and he watched him carefully.

Throughout the operation, Eric sweated copiously. Sponging the moisture from his face, the scrub nurse admired the concentration that could produce so much sweat. At last the large piece of bloody skin and tissue was placed in the sterile transfer container and carried across to the main OR. Eric looked down at the exposed mass of red tissue as a nurse hurried to him with a second transfer container. Slowly he fitted the older, wrinkled tissue in place and began to stitch.

The delicate microsurgery required for the procedure was highly specialized, and the procedure itself was completely unheard-of, in Eric’s experience. He would have said it was impossible, but not, apparently, for Ben Talmidge. Talmidge’s work would be perfect, but Eric knew his own stitches would be far too big. I’m sorry, Anna, he thought, his eyes filling with tears. I know you’re only a clone, so nobody cares, but I’m truly sorry.

Talmidge got him out of the dressing room afterward and brought him along to his office for a brandy.

“You didn’t do at all badly for a first-timer,” he told him.

Eric drank the brandy but said nothing.

“Don’t be a baby,” Talmidge said. “You’ve done bigger stuff than this . . . kidneys, lungs. Why make such a big deal over a face lift?”

Evening comes quickly in the mountains. You admire the glow of sunset slanting across the far hills and then you turn around and find the leaves on nearby trees are black shadows, and you need a candle to read the menu.

Eric and Vivienne sat across from each other, wine poured, dinner ordered, silent. For Vivienne, it was a comfortable silence; she knew, or felt she knew, who Eric was. But he was troubled; still affected by the surgery he had performed, he wondered if Vivienne was the sort of woman who would turn up here twenty years from now, requesting the same procedure.

“More wine?”

“Thank you.”

Somewhere a dog barked. Despite his mood, Eric felt warmed by their shared circle of candlelight, which seemed to insulate them from the night, the world.

“It’s a long way to come, just to see where your money’s going,” he said. “Did you like what you saw?”

“Not much,” Vivienne said.

“Really?” Eric refilled his own glass. “What did you see?”

“I got the sucker tour,” she said. Rose looked up sharply. “I read your letter,” she told him.

“Shit!”

“It’s okay. We’re on the same side.”

“The hell we are! Who are you?” Eric’s fear showed in his face.

Vivienne reached out and touched his hand. She felt the nerves jump, but he didn’t pull away. Softly she told him who she was, how she’d learned about the Institute, how her imagination, then her investigation, and finally the attitude of her friend, had driven her to come here. She told him she’d even spoken to John Harris. Eric listened, wondering if this were some kind of test, or trap. Talmidge would be perfectly capable of it, he knew.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she said at last.

“Why should I?”

“I don’t know,” Vivienne said. “Maybe because it’s true.”

“Or maybe you’ll go right back to Talmidge and show him the letter and he’ll . . .” Just what would Talmidge do in such a case? Eric wondered. He shivered slightly.

“If I were going to do that, I would have done it already,” Vivienne said.

“Maybe you did.”

“I didn’t.”

“How do I know that?” Because I’d be dead by now, he thought. That’s how I know. Talmidge would never have let me leave the hospital tonight if he’d seen that letter.

“Get the letter,” he told her.

“Now?”

“Right now. Where is it?”

“In my suitcase, wrapped in a scarf. Look, I’ll be happy to give it back to you. I mean, I only wanted to find out what was really going on there. It’s no use to me anymore. But . . .”

“Hola, my friend.” Vincente materialized out of the murk. “No, thank you, but I will not interrupt you and your rubia - such a beautiful blond color, her hair. You call it honey, do you not? Miel?”

Vivienne didn’t understand the Spanish, but she knew he was complimenting her, and she managed to smile at him. How long has he been standing there? she wondered. How good is his English?

Eric, who was wondering the same thing, pressed Vincente to join them for a copita, but he refused. “Tomorrow,” Vicente said and winked. “Tomorrow you can tell me everything!” He bowed to Vivienne, saluted Eric, and sauntered off across the square.

Eric turned to Vivienne to find her eyes, large with fear, looking at him. And suddenly, he was absolutely certain that she was not a Talmidge trap. No, she was on his side, and he could trust her.

Her hand had fled from his at the sudden appearance of Vincente; now he reached for it and held it and something passed between them, a bond was forged, something they were never afterward able to explain, and the fear slowly left her face.

They talked long into the night, mostly about themselves, their dreams, their feelings. By tacit agreement they avoided the subject of the Institute; there would be time for that unpleasantness. But not tonight.

Perhaps it was the isolation they both felt here in this foreign place, coupled with their shared attitude toward Talmidge and his hospital of horrors. For each of them, the other was a refuge of sanity and hope, someone who not only knew what Talmidge was doing but also abhorred it.

The emotional stress each was under certainly played a part, as did some good old-fashioned chemistry. The combination was heady; within the magic circle of candlelight they grew calm and close.

And later when they went up to Vivienne’s room, the letter remained hidden in her suitcase.