“Yes. But they never asked,” she said, with a trace of sulky petulance.

“And why you?” Peter asked.

She looked away. “Because I had grown up.”

It took a little probing to establish that she meant that she had begun her periods.

Peter asked, “So it’s some kind of baby factory down there?”

“Peter—”

“George, if you are unscrupulous about it a healthy white kid can bring in a lot of money. The big adoption services in the States—”

“It’s not like that,” Lucia said.

“But,” Peter said, “every time a girl begins her periods she is made pregnant. Right?”

“No.” She was finding this difficult, but there was determination in her face, I saw, a strength. “You just aren’t listening. Not all girls. Just some. Just me. The other girls can’t have babies.”

The rule of three mothers, I thought absently, thinking of Regina’s biography. “You mean they aren’t allowed to?”

“No,” she said. “They can’t.”

Peter thought that over. “They’re neuters?” Again he laughed.

Daniel glared at him. “It’s true, man. I’ve met one of them. A woman called Pina — about twenty-five, I think. Calls herself Lucia’s friend, but she’s no friend; she betrayed her to the other creeps. You should have seen her — no tits, hips like a ten-year-old boy’s. She’s twenty-five, but she’s prepubescent.”

It was impossible, of course. Absurd. But now I thought back to my own incursion into the Crypt, and I remembered those ageless people who had clustered around me in the corridors and mezzanines -

mostly women and girls, few men, not slim, but with no figures, no busts or hips … Rosa, I realized, had been the only woman I saw there who had looked mature. It hadn’t struck me at the time — I suppose I was simply overwhelmed by that dense, dizzying environment, by too much strangeness to notice such a simple thing — and yet, now that I thought back, it was startling.

I looked at Peter. “How could this happen?”

“And why? … I’ve no idea,” he said uneasily. “But if any of it’s true, I think this means we’re facing more than just some money-grabbing cult here, George.”

Lucia cried out, clutched her belly, bent over, and vomited.

Peter and I responded reflexively, jumping back out of the way of that stinking splash. But Daniel had better instincts. He leaned forward to grab her shoulders. “It’s okay. It’s okay …”

Peter dug in his pocket for his cell phone.

I said to Daniel, “I don’t know what the hell’s going on here. But she’s going to the hospital. Now. ”

“No,” he said. “The Order—”

“The hell with the Order.” One-handed, Peter had punched in 113, the code to call an ambulance. “They aren’t the fucking Illuminati — hey!”

Daniel had snatched the phone out of his hand and terminated the call. “Okay. But at least let’s take her somewhere they might not expect.”

Peter made a grab for his phone, but I pushed him back. “Where, Daniel?”

“There’s an American hospital on the Via Emilio Longoni. Thirty minutes out of town.”

“Too far,” Peter growled.

I held him back. “Let him follow his instincts,” I said. “He’s done okay for her so far, hasn’t he?”

Peter was unhappy, but subsided.

By the time Daniel had completed the call, Lucia had done vomiting. We had to help her stand. Peter and I walked at either side of the girl. She draped her arms over our shoulders, and we held her around her waist. When I brushed against her skin, she felt oddly cold, I thought, clammy.

We emerged from the Colosseum entrance into the bright light of midmorning, where the fake gladiators continued to milk the lengthening queues. People stared at us as we limped past. It struck me how helpless we were. We were essentially strangers. Poor Lucia was trapped in the travails of an evidently unwanted pregnancy, and all she had to protect her was a confused, headstrong kid and two screwed-up middle-age blokes — and we weren’t even sure if we should be getting involved in the first place.

Daniel gave Peter his phone back, and he produced a floppy disc from his waist pack. “Here. I knew you wouldn’t believe me.” He handed it to Peter.

Peter slipped it into his pocket. “What’s this?”

“About Pina no-tits. I hacked into hospital records. Lucia told me Pina was in a traffic accident a couple of years ago. Not serious, but she busted her leg, and she ended up in a city hospital for a few hours — long enough for the doctors to notice her, umm, peculiarities. And they ran some tests. The results were weird. But by the time they turned around to figure out more, she’d already gone. Whisked away by the witches from the Crypt.” He glared at Peter. “Take a look at the disc. It’s all there.”

“Oh, I will.”

Daniel walked jerkily, his shoulders set. He was angry and scared. He said, “And if you don’t believe that, wait until we get to the hospital. Wait until the American doctors see her. Then explain to me how Lucia can have gone through a full-term pregnancy in three months. Explain how she can have got pregnant again without having sex.”

Lucia bowed her head, biting her lip.

Peter and I exchanged a glance. I murmured, “Three months?”

“One thing at a time,” Peter said, and he rolled his eyes.

We all rode in the ambulance.

The Rome American Hospital turned out to be bright, modern, efficient, the reception area full of light cast from big picture windows. Lucia was taken out of our hands as soon as the ambulance doors opened, and she disappeared into the maw of the hospital.

We were quizzed about our relationship to Lucia. Peter lied with surprising smoothness. I was her uncle,

he said, visiting from England — hence the family resemblance. Daniel and Peter were friends of the family. He had already contacted the direct family, who were on their way … I thought the nurse looked skeptically at us, and perhaps she was remembering Lucia’s torn and dirty dress. But there was nothing to be done about that now.

I had to produce a credit card to guarantee payment for whatever treatment Lucia was going to need. “Ulp,” I said to Peter. “I wonder if my travel insurance will cover this.”

“I kind of doubt it. Are you concerned?”

I said, “That my bank account is about to be flattened?” I watched Daniel roaming around the reception area, restless, helpless, frustrated. “I don’t think I am, no, given the circumstances.”

“ Conception without sex. The kid actually said that, didn’t he? And three-month pregnancies. Jesus. What have we gotten into here?”

I studied him. “What’s wrong with you, Peter? I’ve never seen you so — aggressive.”

He snorted, and fixed his invisible glasses. “We came here looking for your sister, remember. Not for this.”

“Do you want to back out?”

“Rosa isn’t my sister. Do you ?”

I thought about it. I sensed that this murky mystery of poor Lucia tied in on some deep level with what I’d glimpsed of the Crypt — the biological strangeness I’d experienced, but which I’d not been able to express to Peter. If I wanted to unravel all that, I was going to have to deal with Lucia. And besides — I pictured Lucia’s face: so pale, such deep shadows around her eyes. She was just a kid, and she really was in deep trouble, I realized, and I felt a sharp instinct to help. Peter’s peculiar behavior — the furtiveness he’d shown since he’d arrived here in Rome, the half secrets he’d dropped about dark matter and the rest — was just complicating things. But it didn’t change the essentials.

“No. I’m not backing out,” I said firmly. “Simple humanity, Peter.”