She was never physically isolated—that was impossible in the Crypt—but everywhere she went she was alone in a crowd. At work in the scrinium, her work assignments were left on her desk or as impersonal email messages. They were instructions that might have been sent to a robot, she thought, a thing without identity. In the dormitory, little knots of conversation would unravel as she approached. In the refectories people would turn away and talk as if she weren’t there. Cut out of the endless babble of gossip, it was as if a great story were moving on without her.

Listen to your sisters. That was another of the three great slogans of the Order’s short catechism, incised on every nursery wall, repeated endlessly. But how were you supposed to listen when nobody would speak to you?

Now she was excluded, it had never been so apparent how closely everybody in the Order lived. People walked together, talking endlessly, arms linked, hips bumping together, heads bowed closely, lips brushing in platonic kisses. Sometimes, in the refectories, you would see groups of ten or fifteen or even twenty girls, joined one to the next by linked arms or hands on shoulders, or bodies pressed together. At intense moments people would grab each other’s arms and shoulders, even kiss. At night, too, it wasn’t uncommon for two, three, or four to cluster together in a few pushed-together beds, whispering, kissing, at last sleeping in each other’s arms. There was nothing sexual in any of this, for there was nothing sexual about the sisters. As slim as seven-year-olds, they huddled together innocently for companionship and warmth.

But not Lucia, not anymore. Nobody came near Lucia, no nearer than a yard or two, never near enough to touch. It was as if she were trapped inside a big bubble of glass, around which people walked without even noticing what they were doing.

Or it was as if she smelled bad. And perhaps she did, she came to wonder. Sometimes, when she walked into a crowded room, she would detect a subtle scent, a kind of milky sweetness, gentle and welcoming. It was the smell of the sisters. By comparison her smell must be of blood and sweat, of a rutting animal, as if she was a beast in the field, not a human being like the others at all.

Once she was aware of it the scent of rut seemed to fill her head, day and night. She took to showering, two, three, four times a day, scrubbing at her skin until it was raw, and changing her clothes all the time. But still that stink gushed out of her body, a foulness that she couldn’t escape—for it was the essence of her.