“You mean his double, the bonobo?” Melanie asked.

Kevin nodded. His face was now flushed, almost as bad as it had been at the commissary.

“You’re taking this animal-rights issue even more seriously than I am,” Candace remarked.

“I’m afraid it goes beyond animal rights,” Kevin said.

A tense silence intervened. Melanie glanced at Candace. Candace shrugged, suggesting she was at a loss.

“Okay, enough is enough!” Melanie said with sudden resolve. She reached up, placed both hands on Kevin’s shoulders, and pushed him down onto his laboratory stool.

“Up until this afternoon I thought we were just colleagues,” she said. She leaned over and put her sharp-featured face close to Kevin’s. “But now I feel differently. I got to know you a little bit, which I must say I appreciated, and I no longer think of you as an icy, aloof, intellectual snob. In fact I think we are friends. Am I right?”

Kevin nodded. He was forced to look up into Melanie’s black, marblelike eyes.

“Friends talk to each other,” Melanie said. “They communicate. They don’t hide their feelings and make others feel uncomfortable. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” Kevin said. He’d never considered the idea his behavior was capable of making others uncomfortable.

“Think so?” Melanie chided. “How can I explain it so that you know so!”

Kevin swallowed. “I guess I know so.”

Melanie rolled her eyes in frustration. “You are so evasive, it drives me bananas. But that’s okay; I can deal with it. What I can’t deal with is your outburst at lunch. And when I tried to ask you what’s wrong, you gave some vague comment about ‘overstepping the bounds’ and then clammed up, unable to talk about it. You can’t let this fester, whatever it is that’s bothering you. It will only hurt you and impede your friendships.”

Candace nodded agreement with all that Melanie had expressed.

Kevin looked back and forth between the two outspoken and tenacious women. As much as he resisted expressing his fears, at the moment he didn’t think he had much choice, especially with Melanie’s face inches away from his own. Not knowing how to begin he said: “I’ve seen smoke coming from Isla Francesca.”

“What’s Isla Francesca?” Candace asked.

“It’s the island where the transgenic bonobos go once they reach age three,” Melanie said. “So what’s with smoke?”

Kevin stood and motioned for the women to follow him. He walked over to his desk. With his index finger he pointed out the window toward Isla Francesca. “I’ve seen the smoke three times,” he said. “It’s always from the same place just to the left of the limestone ridge. It’s only a little curl snaking up into the sky, but it persists.”

Candace squinted. She was mildly nearsighted, but for vanity reasons didn’t wear glasses. “Is it the farthest island?” she asked. She thought she could just make out some brownish smudges on its spine that could have been rock. In the late-afternoon sunlight, the other islands in the chain appeared like homogeneous mounds of dark green moss.