He sighed and massaged his temples. “Look, George, if you haven’t believed me up to now, you won’t believe what comes next. In the wild—among the ants or the mole rats—once you get a reproductive advantage like that, of mothers over daughters, no matter how slight, you get a positive feedback.

“People started to change. To adapt. If the daughters aren’t going to get a chance to reproduce, it’s better for their bodies to stay subadult. Why waste all those resources on a pointless puberty? Of course you retain the potential to become mature, in case a queen drops dead, and you have the chance to replace her. Meanwhile, it pays for the mothers to pump out the kids as long and as often as possible . . .”

I felt a deep, sickening dread as his logic drew me in, step by step. “So in the Crypt they have kids every three months. And they stay fertile for decades past any outsider’s menopause age.”

“It’s simple Darwinian logic. It pays.”

“What about the men?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps in the early days they just let the male infants die. Again, given enough time, selection would work; if the only way to pass on your genes is through female children, you have more daughters. Of course you still need fathers. So they bring in males from outside—wild DNA to keep the gene pool healthy—but preferably somebody from the extended family outside. And a candidate has to prove his fitness.”

“Fitness?” In a way this tied in with what Rosa had said to me about why I would be a suitable stud. “Maybe the men have to prove intelligence, by forcing their way in.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. Fitness doesn’t mean strength, necessarily. It just means you fit the environment. Maybe what you, or Giuliano, need more than anything else is a certain compliance. Because your children would have to comply with life in the Crypt. One thing’s for sure: men are essential for making babies, so they have to be tolerated, but they are peripheral to the Order, which is built around relationships among females. Men are just sperm machines.”

“And what about Lucia’s second pregnancy? She said she had only had sex once with this guy Giuliano.”

He hesitated. “I’m flying another kite here. But some female ants have an organ called a spermatheca—a bag near the top of her abdomen. It’s a sperm bank. The queen stores ejaculate there, and keeps sperm in a kind of suspended animation, for years if necessary. She lets them out one at a time, and they become active again and ready to fertilize more eggs . . .”

My jaw dropped. “And that’s what you’re saying is happening inside Lucia’s body.”

He looked defensive. “I’m saying it’s possible.”