“Are there still cars?” he asked Ben.

“Oh, no. Very little mechanical nowadays.”

“How do you travel?”

“Walking. Always walking,” Ben said. “Sometimes we use a flyer, for traveling long.”

“Is a flyer an airplane?”

“Somewhat,” Ben said. “But no motor and no jets.”

“How does it work?”

“Nobody knows,” Ben said. “No need to know.”

“Who does the cooking around here?”

“Cooking?” Ben said.

“Yes. Preparing food to eat.” He almost said “always” before “eat.”

“Food is always assembled,” Ben said. “Assembled from little atoms by the cooker. Like clothes and buildings.”

“Oh,” Arthur said, and thought Jesus. “Then nobody does any work?”

“I study things. Always ancient America. Others study things. And we talk a lot.”

“And that’s all you do?”

Ben smiled at him benignly. “Always.”

“I’ve never seen any children around, Ben. Do you have children in other places?”

“No. No children. And there are only very few and small other places and no children there. Only big ones like you and me.”

“Then what…? Then how do you reproduce?”

Ben smiled and shook his head. “Oh, we never reproduce. We always live ourselves. Always.”

“You’re immortal?”

“Oh, of course,” Ben said. “We live forever. And you indeed will live forever too in that strong body.”

“Jesus,” he said aloud and lay back against the pillows. And then, “Don’t you get bored?”

“Oh, sure,” Ben said. “But it goes away. And we forget a lot and always learn things over.”

“How old are you, Ben?”

Ben shook his head. “I never know at all how old. Centuries. Someday I’ll die myself by fire as others do and that will be an end.”

“Then someday you’ll tire of it and kill yourself. And that’s been happening for some time now and there aren’t many left.”

Ben smiled dolefully, his youthful and bland face registering a kind of pleasant painfulness. “That’s all there is to know,” he said.

Ben turned to leave, walking out of the room with his loose-jointed gait, his long hair covering his narrow shoulders and back. At the door he stopped and turned back toward Arthur. “Long life is good enough for most,” he said, “and death is not so bad.”

Arthur said nothing. When Ben was gone he began working at the room’s little table on the chess set he was making from a soft material like Styrofoam. He was using a knife that Ben had gotten him, and he began working on the most difficult pieces, the knights, carving them with a great deal of care.

When he had finished the first one and had begun to copy it for the second, Annabel came in. She was wearing a green robe and she looked beautiful to him.

At first he did not know what to say. Then he looked at her and said, “Thanks. Thanks for last night.”

“Sure,” she said. “It was strange. But I liked it.”

“Then you aren’t a lesbian,” he said, trying to make his voice light but feeling some kind of embarrassment in it. He set the unfinished piece and the knife on the desk in front of him and swiveled in the chair to see her better. She was tall and fair-skinned—a beautiful woman. “Would you like to take a walk?” he said. “I think I could make it to the woods.”