The cell was not padded, but it was no hotel room. It stank of despair and madness. There was no further need to act. Miriam sat down on the miserable little bed. She closed her eyes, touching for any faint contact with Sarah that she might pick up.

She thought of the French king and his dungeon, and the sounds of the starving.

** *

Sarah was upset. Tom had become virtually monosyllabic. Now he was forcing her back to Geoff’s lab just as certainly as he had forced Miriam to the Psychiatric Clinic. “I’m fine, Tom. I feel marvelous, as a matter of fact.”

“You look rotten. You’re gray. There must be some sort of cyanosis setting in.”

“Maybe I’m a little shocked! This place is turning into the Third Reich. You just threw that woman in a cell without so much as a trial!”

“We need her. Anyway, the commitment is perfectly in order.”

“She’s sane!”

“Define your terms! I don’t think so. Sam doesn’t think so. In view of the fact that she’s not even a human being—and we have proof that she carried out a totally irrational assault against you—I think we’re doing the right thing. Now come on.”

When he tugged at her arm, anger flared in her. Before she could think, she had slapped him so hard she all but lost her balance. He gasped, shook his head. For a long moment he was absolutely still. She thought he was going to hit her, then he seemed to shake it off.

“If you’re up to it, darling, I think you’d better come.” She didn’t argue further. She was too astonished with herself.

Geoff hardly greeted them. He simply started talking, bringing them up to date.

His eyes were red from the hours he had been spending at the microscope. He extracted a smeared yellow sheet from a pile of papers on his lab bench. “I’m calling this the curve of transference. It shows the amount of time by blood volume that it will take for the native blood to be completely replaced.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Tom’s voice was sharp. Sarah tried to take his hand but he moved away.

“The transfused material will replace the natural blood. No question about it. The native blood is now nothing more than a nutrient bath for the new tissue.”

“The body produces blood. Replaces the whole volume eventually.”

“New blood is the stuff’s food supply. It’s a parasite except that it carries nutrients and performs gas transference.”

“Poorly. She looks gray.”

“It isn’t very efficient yet. But the receptivity is changing. A gas chromatograph shows oxygen uptake subnormal but improving.”

This was bizarre. Sarah rubbed her fingers against her face. Her skin was slick and cool, like Miriam’s. “What color are the leukocytes?”

“Purple. Deep, as if they were oxygen gorged.”