She hit him above the temple with her closed fist. His eyes rolled and he sank to the floor. “I’m sorry,” she said. She hated violence. Always, she had been a person of the deepest humanitarian ethic.

She took the stairs three at a time.

Tom could not contain his own excitement as finding piled on finding. These results were marvelous. There was going to be recognition for everybody. Extraordinary discoveries. Fame. It was like the best of Christmases. No, better.

All it would take would be a few more weeks of intensive testing of Miriam and they would be ready to make everything public. The discovery of the new species could be announced at the same time they announced the antidote for aging. During her deep sleep, it seemed, Miriam’s body generated the same lipofuscin inhibitor that had been briefly present in Methuselah’s blood before he broke down. The difference was that for Miriam there were no breakdowns. It was only a matter of time before they understood why.

He thought of that cell on the Psychiatric Ward. Involuntary commitment. Unpleasant, but unavoidable.

Hutch reeled into the room, shattering Tom’s thoughts and the whole meeting with the sound of the door crashing back against the wall. Hutch didn’t have to speak, they all knew that something had gone wrong with Sarah.

“Which way did she go?” Tom heard Charlie Humphries ask.

Tom waited until he heard Hutch breathe the word “stairs” before he was off.

He headed for the sixteenth floor. Bursting into the reception area, Tom caused the attendant to vault his desk, his nightstick in his hand.

“Is Doctor Roberts up here?”

“Jesus! You goin’ to a fire?”

“IS SHE!”

“Lessee. She signed into room fourteen ten minutes ago. Signed out three minutes later.”

“Goddamnit!” He signed himself in, waited for the attendant to buzz him through the door to the ward, rushed down to Miriam’s room. The special guard sat with his chair tilted against the wall. “Open it.”

The man looked up, recognized Tom. “Hasn’t been a sound since Doctor Roberts left.” He unlocked the door, swung it wide.

The room was cold with the night wind. The window, its bars gone, gaped darkly. “Sarah left here alone?”

“Yeah! Not five minutes ago. She didn’t say a damn thing about this.”

Tom went over to the window. He couldn’t have climbed up or down from there. But Miriam evidently could, because she was gone.

Miriam went swiftly through Central Park, heading for the West Side. She was literally wild with hunger. By the time Sarah had come she had already pushed the bars off the window. It was just as well. Sarah had wanted to be held. Miriam did not trust herself so far, not in this state. She reassured the suffering woman that there would be relief, and told her to meet her at her house in half an hour. Then she had climbed down to the sidewalk, with Sarah leaning far out the window, watching her progress.