We three males all scrambled in our pockets; the comedy routine concluded when Daniel was the first to produce a tissue.

Peter sat back and blew out his cheeks. “Deeper and deeper. So who was the father of this second kid?”

“The same guy,” said Daniel. “The same asshole. This Giuliano, whatever.”

Peter frowned. “Then how come she doesn’t know his name?”

Daniel took a breath. “Because he only slept with her once.”

Peter thought that over, and laughed out loud.

Daniel, hotly embarrassed, said, “You don’t know the half of it, man.”

Lucia said desolately, “I told you they wouldn’t believe me.” With a tissue clutched to her nose, she looked up at me through water-filled eyes heartbreakingly like my own.

“Let’s all take it easy,” I said. “Lucia, you say you don’t want to have baby after baby . . . Is that what they asked you to do? The Order—umm, my sister?”

“Yes. But they never asked,” she said, with a trace of sulky petulance.

“And why you?” Peter asked.

She looked away. “Because I had grown up.”

It took a little probing to establish that she meant that she had begun her periods.

Peter asked, “So it’s some kind of baby factory down there?”

“Peter—”

“George, if you are unscrupulous about it a healthy white kid can bring in a lot of money. The big adoption services in the States—”

“It’s not like that,” Lucia said.

“But,” Peter said, “every time a girl begins her periods she is made pregnant. Right?”

“No.” She was finding this difficult, but there was determination in her face, I saw, a strength. “You just aren’t listening. Not all girls. Just some. Just me. The other girls can’t have babies.”

The rule of three mothers, I thought absently, thinking of Regina’s biography. “You mean they aren’t allowed to?”

“No,” she said. “They can’t.”

Peter thought that over. “They’re neuters?” Again he laughed.

Daniel glared at him. “It’s true, man. I’ve met one of them. A woman called Pina—about twenty-five, I think. Calls herself Lucia’s friend, but she’s no friend; she betrayed her to the other creeps. You should have seen her—no tits, hips like a ten-year-old boy’s. She’s twenty-five, but she’s prepubescent.”

It was impossible, of course. Absurd. But now I thought back to my own incursion into the Crypt, and I remembered those ageless people who had clustered around me in the corridors and mezzanines—mostly women and girls, few men, not slim, but with no figures, no busts or hips . . . Rosa, I realized, had been the only woman I saw there who had looked mature. It hadn’t struck me at the time—I suppose I was simply overwhelmed by that dense, dizzying environment, by too much strangeness to notice such a simple thing—and yet, now that I thought back, it was startling.