Barry shook his head impatiently.

For a moment Ben could sense their unhappiness. “I have a theory about Molly that perhaps applies also to me.” They waited. “Always before us, in infancy there was a period when ego development naturally occurred, and if all went well during that period, the individual was formed, separate from his parents. With us such a development is not necessary, or even possible, because our brothers or sisters obviate the need for separate existence, and instead a unit consciousness is formed. There are very old studies of identical twins that recognized this unit or group consciousness, but the researchers were not prepared to understand the mechanism. Very little attention was paid to it, and little further study.” He stood up and moved again to the window. The rain was steady and hard now. “I suggest that we all still have the capability for individual ego development latent within us. It becomes dormant when the physiological time passes for its spontaneous emergence, but with Molly, and perhaps with others, if there is enough stimulus, under the proper conditions, this development is activated.”

“The proper conditions being separation from the brothers or sisters under stressful circumstances?” Barry asked thoughtfully.

“I think so. But the important thing now,” Ben said urgently, “is to let it develop and see what happens. I can’t predict her future behavior. I don’t know what to expect from one day to the next.”

Barry and Bruce exchanged glances, and then looked at the other brothers. Ben tried to interpret the looks and failed. He felt chilled and turned to watch the rain instead.

“We will decide tomorrow,” Barry said finally. “But whatever our decision about Molly is, there is another decision that we made that is unaltered. You must not continue to see her, Ben. For your own welfare, and ours, we must forbid your visits to her.”

Ben nodded in agreement. “I’ll have to tell her,” he said.

At the tone in his voice Barry again looked at the other brothers, and reluctantly they agreed.

“Why are you so surprised?” Molly asked. “This had to happen.”

“I brought you some tea,” Ben said brusquely.

Molly took his package and looked down at it for a long time. “I have a present for you,” she said softly. “I was going to give it to you another time, but . . . I’ll go get it.”

She left and returned quickly with a small packet, no more than five inches square. It was a folded paper and, when opened, it had several faces, all of them variations of Ben’s. In the center was a man’s massive head, with fierce eyebrows and penetrating eyes, surrounded by four others, all resembling one another enough to show relationship.

“Who are they?”

“In the middle is the old man who owned this house. I found photographs in the attic. That is his son, David’s father, and that one is David. That’s you.”

“Or Barry, or Bruce, or any of the others before us,” Ben said curtly. He didn’t like the composite picture. He didn’t like looking at the faces of men who had lived such different, inexplicable lives, and who looked so much like him.

“I don’t think so,” Molly said, squinting her eyes at the picture, then studying him. “There’s something about the eyes they just don’t have. Theirs only see outward, I think, and yours, and those of the other men in the picture, they can look both ways.”

Suddenly she laughed and drew him to the fire. “But put it away and let’s have our tea, and a cookie. I’ve been getting more than I can eat and I saved a lot. We’ll have a party!”

“I don’t want any tea,” Ben said. Not looking at her, watching the flames in the grate, he asked, “Don’t you even care?”

“Care?”

Ben heard the pain there, sharp, undeniable. He closed his eyes hard.

“Should I weep and howl and tear my clothes, and bang my head on the wall? Should I beg you not to leave me, to stay with me always? Should I throw myself from the topmost window of this house? Should I grow thin and pale and wither away like a flower in the autumn, killed by the cold it never understands? How should I show I care, Ben? Tell me what I should do.”

He felt her hand on his cheek and opened his eyes and found they were burning.

“Come with me, Ben,” she said gently. “And afterwards perhaps we shall weep together when we say goodbye.”

“We promise never to harm her,” Barry said quietly. “If she has need of one of us, someone will go care for her. She will be permitted to live out her life in the Sumner house. We shall never display or permit others to display her paintings, but we shall preserve them carefully so that our descendants may study them and understand the steps we have taken today.” He paused and then said, “Furthermore, Ben, our brother, will accompany the contingent who will go down the river to set up a base camp for future groups to use.” Now he looked up from the paper before him.

Ben nodded gravely. The decisions were just and compassionate. He shared his brothers’ anguish, and knew the suffering would not end until the boats returned and they could hold the Ceremony for the Lost for him. Only then would they all be freed again.

Molly watched the boats glide down the river, Ben standing in the prow of the lead boat, the wind streaming his hair. He didn’t turn to look at the Sumner house until the boat started around the first curve that would take it out of sight, and then briefly she saw his pale face, and he was gone, the boat was gone.

Molly continued to stand at the wide windows for a long time after the boats had disappeared. She remembered the voice of the river, the answering voices from the high treetops, the way the wind moved the upper levels without stirring a blade of grass. She remembered the silence and darkness that had pressed in on them at night, touching them, testing them, tasting them, the intruders. And her hand moved to her stomach and pressed against the flesh there, against the new life that was growing within her.

The summer heat gave way to early September frosts and the boats returned, and this time another stood in the prow. The trees burned red and gold and snows fell and in January Molly gave birth to her son, alone, unaided, and lay looking at the infant in the crook of her arm and smiled at him. “I love you,” she whispered tenderly. “And your name shall be Mark.”

All through the latter stages of her pregnancy Molly had told herself almost daily that tomorrow she would send a message to Barry, that she would submit to his authority and allow herself to be placed in the breeders’ quarters. Now, looking at the red infant with his eyes screwed so tightly closed he seemed without eyes, she knew she would never give him up.

Each morning the Andrew brothers brought firewood, her basket of supplies, whatever she asked for, deposited it all on her porch, and left again, and she saw no one, except at a distance. As soon as Mark could understand her words, she began to impress upon him the need for silence while the Andrew brothers were near the house. When he grew older and started to ask “why” about everything, she had to tell him the Andrew brothers would take him away from her and put him in a school and they would never see each other again. It was the first and only time she saw him react with terror, and after that he was as quiet as she when the young doctors were there.

He learned to walk and talk early; he began to read when he was four, and for long periods he would curl up near the fireplace with one of the brittle books from the downstairs library. Some of them were children’s books, others were not; he didn’t seem to mind. They played hide-and-seek throughout the house and, when the weather was pleasant, up and down the hillside behind the house, out of sight of the others in the valley, who would never under any circumstances enter the woods unless ordered to do so. Molly sang to him and told him stories from the books, and made up other stories when they exhausted the books. One day Mark told her a story, and she laughed delightedly, and after that sometimes she was the storyteller and sometimes he was. While she painted he drew pictures, or painted also, and more and more often played with the river clay she brought him, and made shapes that they dried in the sun on the balcony.