The more she considered Sarah, the more certain she became that she had a companion—or a jailer. The trick would be to excite hunger in Sarah before she could fully understand what was happening to her. Hunger would ride like the red moon over her psychic landscape. Sarah would be ripe then for whatever harvest might suit Miriam’s needs.

It would be a matter of exploiting Sarah’s need for love. Each age and each human being betrayed itself with a characteristic falseness. The Romans had their decadence, the Middle Ages its religion, the Victorian Era its morality. This age, so full of equivocation and guilt, was much more complex than the others. It was the age of the lie. Its nations were built on lies, and so were the hearts of its people. Miriam could fill the hollow that a lie leaves in a human being. She could fill the hollow in Sarah.

She remembered the trembling shoulders, the humid touch of her lips on her breast . . . she breathed deeply, closed her eyes, tried to touch Sarah’s heart.

There was an impression of an empty forest. Here was Sarah, desperately lonely, rushing into the details of her outer life to avoid the secret emptiness within.

Miriam could bring Sarah the gift she most craved: the opportunity to fill that void, absent as it was of real purpose, bounded by the terror of a pointless death. The forest could be peopled with meaning and love and direction. Miriam sat, her eyes narrowed, looking inward. Sarah had despaired of ever really being loved. She wanted Tom, enjoyed him sexually, but the old hollowness asserted itself, the reality once again emerging. Miriam could work in the forest of Sarah’s emotions. She knew well her role in this age: the bringer of truth.

Tom scraped his mug as he stirred his coffee. To Sarah the small sound was like screeching chalk. The horrible, unbelievable pleasure of the thing that had happened in the examining room made her want to retreat from any sort of intimacy. Tom turned toward her, kissed her cheek. To escape she shuffled the Blaylock computer printout. “Let’s check out the cubical again.” She couldn’t endure kissing him right now, facing his love of her.

“You enjoy that? We’ve already done it twice.”

“So let’s do it again. I don’t want any problems. I can’t afford to spend another night up here.”

“You were invited, Sarah, not commanded.”

“I had to come. The woman’s got night terrors.”

“You aren’t the only doctor who can treat night terrors.”