It was a very large room, this, with glass walls open to the flat country and the mountains beyond, one of many rooms in this great sprawling three-story medical compound which Fareed and Seth had built in the California desert.

Fareed had found the architecture of this area cold and uninspiring, efficient for work, but sterile for the spirit. So he’d warmed this space and others like it with little touches—marble fireplaces arching over gas grates, his favorite European paintings in gilded frames, and faded antique carpets from his native India. Several immense computers dominated his desk here, monitors aglow and filled with graphs and pictures. But the desk itself was an old Renaissance Portuguese piece of carved walnut found in Goa.

Viktor and Seth had not sat down, though the room was filled with leather easy chairs. They were waiting, and Fareed had to let this go, realize once and for all that he had come to the end of what he could know without confronting the Voice directly.

Finally, Fareed turned in the modern black swivel chair and faced the two who were waiting.

“Everything’s been arranged,” said Seth. “The plane’s ready; luggage loaded. Rose is on the plane, and Viktor will be with her. Rose thinks she is going to New York to see her uncle Lestan.”

“Well, we hope that will turn out to be the truth, don’t we?” asked Fareed. “And our rooms in New York?”

“Prepared, of course,” said Seth.

It had been two years since Fareed or Seth had visited their apartment there or the adjacent small laboratory they maintained on the sixty-third floor of a Midtown building. But this place was always in readiness, and why Fareed was asking foolish questions about this now, he did not know, except that it was a form of stalling.

Seth went on talking as if he were thinking aloud, checking himself on what had to be done. “All the human employees are gone home for indefinite leave with pay; all blood drinkers are in the basement rooms and will remain there until we return. The blood supplies are adequate for a long sequester. The security systems are in operation. This compound’s as safe as it ever was. If the Voice launches an attack, well, it won’t succeed.”

“The basements,” Viktor whispered. He shuddered. “How can they stand it, being shut up in a cellar for nights at a time?”

“They’re blood drinkers,” said Seth quietly. “You’re a human being. You forget over and over again.”

“Are there no blood drinkers with fears of cellars and crypts?” asked Viktor.

“None that I’ve ever known,” said Seth. “How could there be?”

There was no doubt that the cellars were safe. Yet we are leaving here, leaving this superb and secure installation, to go to New York, thought Fareed, but he knew that they had to do it.