I have no idea how long I looked at her before I was able to force myself to stand up and take the next step.

The odd thing is that there were no decisions to be made. It was as though, unconsciously, I had established a research facility ideally suited to my present needs. I took the DNA sample at once and placed it into a sequencer and segmenter. While sequencing proceeded I lifted Paula’s body, complete with clothing, and carried it to the organic disposal unit.

Full dissociation at the cell level would take at least twenty-four hours. The DNA sequencing and segmenting would be completed long before that. I wondered where I would store Paula’s genome, but again it seemed as though the necessary arrangements had been made ahead of time. I had been experimenting with the storage and later reconstitution of DNA segments in the chromosomal introns of an old box tortoise that I had inherited from a previous research worker. Although the tortoise’s age seemed indeterminate, its gender was not, and the name Matilda, painted in pink block letters on his back, was highly inappropriate.

I had cleaned his shell and renamed him Methuselah. Now Methuselah’s introns would safely contain Paula until the time, perhaps years ahead, when I had a facility big enough to clone a human. Then I would bring her once more into the world, and to the perfection that was hers by rights.

When all was done that had to be done I went to my desk and sat down. I wanted to work, but I could not. I was quite calm and at the same time enormously excited. Sex had never produced sensations remotely like this. In my giddy joy I knew, even then, that what had happened with Paula would happen again. This time it had been a chance combination of circumstances. Next time, and on all later occasions, everything would be planned to the smallest detail. It had to be that way, because I would not stop and I did not intend to be caught. Ever.

Ah, the hubris of youth. I was caught, of course I was. Just as, forty years on, the murderer on Sky City would be caught. There would be a fatal moment of carelessness or indecision, or a too-long pause for savoring or pleasure. At the moment of dispatch, as I well knew, time stretches. Interval becomes meaningless. How long had I sat, suspended outside of time, and stared at Paula’s calm and lifeless face?

A hand shook my arm. I opened my eyes. It was evening, and a shaft of late sunlight struck through the low western window of the castle and lit the face in front of me.

It was Paula’s face, Paula changed to an eleven-year-old. She was bending over me, panting, dark hair wild and liquid eyes aglow.

“We’re back!” she cried. “I won, I got here first!”

I blinked, and the present came crashing in on me. Here they were, filling the rooms, all my darlings. There was chatter, there was laughter that rang from the stone walls and the high rafters and ceiling, there was the brimming energy of eighteen stampeding girls between the ages of seven and eleven.

Behind them came a woman in her forties. She was breathing heavily and shaking her head.

“Honestly, Mr. Baxter, I don’t know how you do it. They wear me out, and that’s a fact.”

I glanced down at my lap, making sure that the gruesome records from Sky City were safely closed.

“They’ll do the same for me, Mrs. O’Keefe, before this night is over. They still have to have their lessons, and after a couple of days in Londonderry it’s always the devil to get them settled in again.”

“Well, they’re all fed, sir, so you need have no worries on that score. And they all bought outfits for autumn. Not that that was easy, if you’d seen some of the things they wanted to be buying and wearing before I put my foot down.”

“I’m sure that I’ll approve of whatever you chose.”

“I hope so.” She glanced through to the dining room, where the girls now had the long table covered with clothes. Almost without thinking, I ran the count. It was not that I didn’t trust Mrs. O’Keefe completely, but …

Paula, Amity, Katherine, Rose, Gloria, and Bridget, all age eleven. Darlene, Charity, Beth, Dawn, Trixie, and Willa, age nine. Crystal, Maxine, Dolores, Lucy-Mary, Alyson, and Victoria, age seven. Originally I had wanted them all the same age, but limitations on cloning equipment made it impossible. There had also been a temptation to give each of them a new name drawn from classical sources. Finally I decided that would not work-for me, rather than for them. I could think of their names only as they had been when first we met.

“So I’ll be on my way,” Mrs. O’Keefe was saying. “And I’ll see you in two weeks. Oh, but I was asked to give a message to you. It was sent in to the Dunglow center and I said I was on the way here and could save them a delivery.”

Her tone was a little chiding. It said, Come on, Mr. Baxter, why don’t you put a communication center here in the castle and get in line with the rest of the world? It wouldn’t be as much trouble as you seem to think.

She had no idea that in the basement I had access to all the global nets and services. Passive receive-only, of course, because I would do nothing to draw outside attention.

I held out my hand for the message, but she shook her head. “It’s too simple to be worth writing. Just a man who says he’s figured out how to do it without you going anywhere. He didn’t leave a name.”

Any more than I would. I wondered about Seth’s penchant for secrecy. Was it natural, or did he have good reason? It would be nice to know, and maybe have another lever to use on him.

Mrs. O’Keefe was leaving. On the way out she stared again into the long dining hall, where my darlings were now squabbling as they compared their purchases from Londonderry.

“Look at them,” she said as she headed for the front door. “Like a bunch of magpies they are, chattering and chuntering away. You never complain, but running an orphanage like this has to be harder than anyone knows. I’ll say it again, Mr. Baxter. You’re a saint.”

A saint. Indeed.

Given the suspect hagiography of Ireland, which includes such stalwarts as Saint Terence the Wastrel and Saint Brendan the Fornicator, her statement was not as improbable as it sounded.

Before I went through to coerce the girls to evening studies, I sat for a moment reviewing my efforts of the day. What had I learned, in my attempt to summon up remembrance of things past?

One thing, but an important one. The Sky City murderer and I had no commonality of motive or feeling. The deaths of my darlings had been clean and painless, leaving them as beautiful in death as in life. The notion of stabbing, bludgeoning, and sexual mutilation sickened me.

But that left a mystery. If serial killings represent consequence rather than cause, what driving need was compelling the murderer on Sky City?

It was not, I felt sure, passion as I knew it. Was it, indeed, passion of any kind? And yet there had been mutilation-evidence, surely, of a killing frenzy.

I thought once more of the dates of death, from number one, Myra Skelton, to number twelve, Kate Ulrey.

Almost three weeks had passed since Kate had died, her brains bashed out on a well-traveled and well-lit corridor close to the central axis of Sky City. Another murder was overdue. Would it happen?

If it did not, that would be a clue. A clue as to what, I could not say. But murder, especially murder of this type, keeps its own schedule and imposes on the killer its own imperatives.