He said gently, “You are like no woman I ever encountered. Like no mother, certainly. And yet you endure; I can’t deny that.” He strode and began pacing around the room, fingering the hilt of the dagger at his belt. “But I must get out of here,” he said. “The airlessness—the closeness—forgive me, madam.”

She smiled, and rose to show him out.

Chapter 31

Chapter 31

The changes in her body seemed to come terribly quickly. She passed water almost hourly. Her breasts swelled and became sensitive. She tried to maintain her normal life—her classes, her after-hours work in the scrinium—but if she had stuck out from the crowd before, now it was by a mile.

She sat with Pina in a refectory. “Before they ignored me. Now they stare the whole time.”

Pina grinned. “They’re just responding to you. A very basic human reaction. You glow, Lucia. You can’t help it.”

“Do you think they envy me?” She looked at her friend. “Do you?”

Pina’s expression became complex. “I don’t know. I will never have what you have. I can’t imagine how it feels.”

“A part of you wants it, though,” Lucia said bluntly. “A part of you wants to be a mother, as all women were mothers, in primitive times.”

“But what we have here is better. Sisters matter more than daughters.”

“Of course,” Lucia said mechanically. “But I’ll tell you what, if anybody does envy me, they can watch me throwing up in the mornings.”

Pina laughed. “Well, you can’t go on working in the scrinium.”

“No. I distract everybody.”

“Shall I speak to Rosa? You ought to continue your schooling. But perhaps they will find you an apartment down with the matres.”

“Wonderful. Order my false teeth and smelly cardigan now . . .”

The day after that, her morning nausea was worse than ever. Soon she felt so exhausted that she had to give up her classes as well as her work.

By the sixth week, as Pina had suggested, she was moved to a small room on the third story, in the deep downbelow.

It was dark, the walls coated with rich flocked wallpaper and the floor thickly carpeted, and it was cluttered with ancient-looking furniture. It was an old lady’s room, she thought miserably. But she had it to herself, and though she often missed the presence of others, the susurrus of hundreds of girls breathing all around her in the night, it was a haven of peace.

Her body’s changes proceeded at their own frightening pace, and the weight in her belly grew daily. From the eighth week a doctor attended her twice a day. She was called Patrizia; she might have been forty, but she was slim, composed, ageless.

Patrizia pressed Lucia’s gums, which had become spongy. “Good,” she said. “That’s normal. The effect of pregnancy hormones.”