But beyond the office was a computer center, a big climate-controlled room where high-capacity mainframes hummed and whirred in bluish light. And beyond that were libraries, great echoing corridors, softly lit and laced with fire-preventive equipment. Lucia didn’t know — nobody in her circle knew — how far such corridors extended, off into the darkness, tunneled out of the soft tufa rock; it didn’t even occur to her to ask the question. But it was said that if you walked far enough, the books gave way to scrolls of animal skin and papyrus, and tablets with Latin or Greek letters scratched in clay surfaces, and even a few pieces of carved stone.

In these vaulted, interconnected rooms the Order had stored its records ever since its first founding, sixteen centuries before. Nowadays the archive was more valuable than it had ever been, for it had become a key source of income for the Order. Information was sold, much of it nowadays via the Internet, to historians, to academic institutions and governments, and to amateur genealogists trying to trace family roots.

Lucia worked here as a lowly clerk — or, in the sometimes archaic language of the Order, as one of the scrinarii, under a supervising bibliotecharius. She spent some of her time doing computer work, transcribing and cross-correlating records from different sources. But mainly she worked on transcription. She would copy records, by hand, from computer screens and printouts onto rag paper sheets.

The Order made its own rag paper, once manufactured by breaking up cloth in great pounding animal-

driven pestles, but now directly from cotton in a room humming with high-speed electrical equipment. It was medieval technology. But the rag paper, acid-free, marked by special noncorrosive inks, would last far longer than any wood-pulp paper. The Order had little faith in digital archives; already there were difficulties accessing records from older, obsolescent generations of computers and storage media. If you were serious about challenging time, rag paper was the way to do it.

Hence Lucia’s paradoxically old-fashioned assignment. But she rather liked the work, although it was routine. The paper always felt soft and oddly warm to her touch, compared to the coarse stuff you got from wood pulp.

Her tasks had taught her the importance of accuracy; the archive’s main selling point, aside from its historical depth, was its unrivaled reliability. And Lucia’s calligraphy was careful, neat — and accurate, as proven by the triple layers of checks all her work was put through. It seemed likely, said the supervisors, that the scrinium would be her career path in the future, when she finished her schooling.

But that, of course, was thrown into uncertainty, like everything else in her life, by the unwelcome arrival of womanhood.

Pina sat on Lucia’s desk, her hands clasped together over her knees as if in prayer. They had no privacy, here as anywhere else, of course; there must have been fifty people in the office that morning, working or chatting, and the waist-high partitions hid nothing. Lucia spoke so softly that Pina had to lean closely to hear.

Pina was ten years older than Lucia. She had a small, pretty face, Lucia thought, lacking cheekbones but with a pleasing smoothness. Her eyes were a little darker than most, a kind of graphite gray, and her hair was tied neatly back. Her mouth was small and not very expressive when she talked, which gave her an aura of seriousness compared to other girls — that, and her ten years’ age difference, of course. Still, though, her features were quite similar to those of everybody else, including Lucia’s, the typical oval face, the gray eyes well within the range of variation.

And, though she was twenty-five, she was small, smaller than Lucia, with a slim figure, her breasts only the slightest swellings under the white blouse she wore.

She had been friendly to Lucia since her first day here in the scrinium, showing her the basics of her work and such essentials as how to work the coffee machine. Now Pina looked uncomfortable, Lucia thought, but she was listening.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Anyhow, now you’ve drawn me into your secret.”

“I’m sorry. If it’s one it’s a secret, if it’s two—”

“It’s a conspiracy,” Pina said, completing the crиche singalong phrase. “Well, I’ll forgive you. Especially as it can’t remain a secret for long.”

Lucia pulled a face. “I don’t want any of this. I never wanted to be taller — I don’t want this bleeding.”

“It isn’t unnatural.”

“Yes, but why me? I feel—”

“Betrayed? Betrayed by your own body?” Pina touched her arm, a gesture of support. “If it’s any consolation I don’t think you’re the only one … I suppose my memory is that bit deeper than yours. Things have been different the last few years. People have been—” She waved her hands vaguely. “ — agitated. Every summer the new cadres come up from the downbelow schools, all fresh faces and bright smiles, like fields of flowers. Always charming. There are always one or two who stand out from the crowd.”

“Like me.”

“But in the last few years there have been more.” Pina shrugged. “There are some who say there is trouble with the matres. Perhaps that’s somehow disturbing us all.”

Lucia had only ever heard the word matres a few times in her life. Some called those mysterious figures the mamme-nonne — the mother-grandmothers. She had only the dimmest idea about them. Ignorance is strength — another crиche slogan. You weren’t even supposed to talk about subjects like the matres…

She pulled back from Pina. Suddenly it was too much; she was crashing through too many taboo barriers. “I should get back to work,” she said.

“Why don’t you talk to somebody?”

“Who? Nobody would want to know.”

“I don’t mean the girls in your dormitory.” Pina thought briefly. “How about Rosa Poole?”

Lucia knew Rosa, a woman in her forties who had a job in the remoter layers of the Order’s administration. Rosa had lectured Lucia’s classes a few times on aspects of information technology — database design, programming theory.

“Rosa is approachable,” said Pina earnestly. “She would know what you have to do.”

“Do?”

Pina sighed. “Well, to begin with, you’re going to need towels, aren’t you? You have to be practical, dear. And after that … Well, I’m not sure—”

“Because it never happened to you.”

Pina kept her face blank, but Lucia, her nerves taut, nevertheless thought she detected a little smugness in her friend’s face. “No, it never did. Which means I’m not much use to you. Rosa might be, though. She’s approachable, for a member of the cupola.” The Order had no hierarchy in theory, but in practice, at any time there was a rough-and-ready chain of command among the senior women, known informally by everybody as the cupola.

“I don’t know, Pina.”

Pina said a little harshly, “You think if you keep it secret it might all go away. You think if you were to talk to someone like Rosa it will make it real.” She looked closely at Lucia. “You think even talking to me about it makes it real, don’t you?”

“Something like that,” Lucia said reluctantly. “This is very difficult.”

Pina said softly, “We can sort this out, Lucia. Don’t be afraid. You’re not alone.”

Lucia smiled, but it was forced. She longed only to put the clock back a few weeks, back to the time before the bleeding had afflicted her — or better still back two or three or four years to when she had just been another little girl, just one of the crowd, invisible.

As it turned out her secret didn’t last another twenty-four hours. She didn’t approach Rosa Poole of the cupola. Pina did it for her.