Rosa’s calm composure enraged Lucia. “Why didn’t you tell me that my pregnancy would only last thirteen weeks instead of thirty-eight?”

“Is that what the Internet says a pregnancy ought to be? Lucia, there are twenty-seven mamme-nonne, who must among them produce a hundred babies a year—three or four each and every year . . . If you hadn’t filled your head with nonsense from the outside, you would have expected a thirteen-week pregnancy, because that’s the way we do things here. And whether you knew what was going on or not—Lucia, there was nothing to fear. It is what your body is designed for, you know.” Rosa leaned closer and touched her hand. “Let her go, Lucia. You are one of the mamme now. In a sense you are already the mother of us all.”

Lucia tried not to draw back. We always touch, she thought with a faint sense of distaste, we are always so close we can smell each other. “And this will be my life? Morning sickness and labor rooms forever?”

Rosa laughed. “It needn’t be so bad. Here.” She went to her desk, opened a drawer, and produced a cell phone.

Lucia studied the phone. It had gone dead. “It is my cell. Patrizia took it.”

“Have it back. Use it as you like. Look at the Internet, if you want. Would you like to go outside again? There’s no reason why not. I can talk to Pina—”

“I thought you didn’t trust me.”

“You mustn’t turn this into some personal conflict between the two of us, Lucia. I am not your monitor. I am merely reacting to how you behave, in the best interests of the Order, which is all any of us do.

“Lucia, things are different now, for girls like you. You saw the pictures in Maria Ludovica’s apartment—scenes like the Sack of Rome. Once a girl growing up in the Crypt had no realistic choice but to stay here. The world outside, chaotic and uncontrolled, was simply too dangerous. Now things have changed.” She pointed to Lucia’s phone. “Outside is a bright and superficially attractive world. Technology has liberated people in a way that could not have been imagined a couple of centuries ago. People are free to travel wherever they want, to speak to whoever they want, at any time, to call up any information they like.

“And all this penetrates even the Crypt. It is all shallow, of course.” She snapped her fingers. “The great information highways could break down tomorrow, just as the Roman aqueducts once fell into ruin. But the world outside looks attractive. That’s my point. You feel you have a choice, about whether to stay on in the Crypt, or seek some new life outside. But the truth is, you have no choice. Perhaps you must see that for yourself.”