Miriam was surprised and a little sickened. Never for a moment had she considered that Alice would hold such an opinion. The will to live was universal. Her own race, as ancient as it was, had fought valiantly through the persecutions of the Middle Ages, had fought despite their low birthrate and probable extinction. The very last of them willed only one thing: to continue. “You don’t really mean that, do you, Alice?” There was anger in her voice, anger she had not intended.

The girl reacted.“You sound funny, Miriam. I wish you’d act normal.”

Miriam did not reply directly. Instead she returned to the book. “‘The mystery of how and why lipofuscin inhibition declines as a cellular system ages is the core of the problem. We have determined that the duration and depth of sleep are related to the amount of lipofuscin produced, with deeper sleep producing the greater level of inhibition.’”

“OK, I guess I’m supposed to ask a question. Why are you so strange?”

Miriam laughed at the audacity of it, felt herself flush. “You have a lot to learn. A lot. Just don’t doubt me. You’ll find everything I do is for a purpose.” Alice smiled, her face suddenly filled with an innocence so beautiful that Miriam involuntarily touched her.

There was a moment’s silence. Then Alice clasped her hands around her knees and giggled. “You and John really are strange. You make me feel weird.”

John’s name, intruding so suddenly, broke Miriam’s mood. She got up and put the book away, then went to the bay window that overlooked the garden. These cool, wet springs favored the strains of roses she had developed in Northern Europe, but not the Roman and Byzantine ones. They would require careful attention if there wasn’t some warmer weather soon.

She longed to be among them now, pruning them and forgetting her tragedies. If only John had lasted a few more years the discoveries suggested in Sleep and Age would have saved him. Miriam had hoped once to find an antidote for John and apply it before it was too late. She was convinced that some substance such as lipofuscin must be responsible. In her own body the immunity was permanent, but in a human being the Sleep only delayed it for a time. Then all the familiar symptoms appeared: Sleep ended, and with its termination came rapid aging, desperate hunger, destruction.

Her throat was tight, she could not help but sink into the grief of the situation. She forced her mind back to her roses; once she had created an arbor all the way to the river. They had had their own dock then and kept a pretty red-and-black steam launch with a furious little brass engine. What fun it had been pounding along in that hilarious boat with its clattering steam valves and gushing torrent of black smoke . . .