The silence sits between them like a third person, a demanding child that one of them must feed.

Something very beautiful just happened, says the cell biologist. Do you mind if I share it with you?

Not at all, says Logan, though, again, he thinks it likely he will mind very much. What man wishes to be larded with another’s happiness?

I just realized— says the man, but goes no further. Logan is afraid he might be properly crying. Thankfully they are sitting side by side, so he can pretend nothing is happening.

Yes? he says after a polite interval.

People assume the nucleus is the brain of the cell, says his companion.

Logan is enormously relieved to hear they are discussing science. Real science. Petri dish and pipette science.

It isn’t? says Logan.

No. It’s the equivalent of the gonads. A denucleated cell can still function. It just can’t reproduce.

Oh, says Logan. The water, he thinks, looks very thick, like a fountain of treacle.

You know what part of the cell is equivalent to the brain? his companion asks. Logan feels the shift of the man’s attention onto him; those Elizabethan eye beams are most certainly directed at his face. The cell membrane. The membrane is the brain. It receives input from the environment and sends signals to the rest of the cell. It controls gene activation.

Okay, says Logan. That’s interesting.

His companion shifts forward, elbows on his knees, so he is looking right into the treacle of the fountain.

Have you ever heard of those transplant cases where someone gets someone else’s heart and they start behaving like the donor? A vegetarian hiker becomes a meat-eater and takes up motorbiking?

I guess, says Logan. They’re just stories, right?

There’s less light in the garden now. A few of the corridors around them have fallen into darkness.

I used to think that too, says the man. The silence clings to him until he continues. There are receptors in the cell membrane called self-receptors. You know what I realized today? What they’re receiving. They really are receiving the self. Like receiving a broadcast, the unique consciousness stream of an individual.

Logan remembers where he is.

You’ve been speaking to Dr Salmon, he says.

Gabrielle? No. But you’re right, I must. I must! And the cell biologist is off, catapulted out of his seat by the urgency of the thought, half-running down the path, and only just remembering to call back, Goodbye, it was lovely talking to you, as he darts through the door by which Logan had entered.