But an hour later an orderly stepped in and wordlessly deposited a cloak on the table by her bed. “Sonofabitch,”

Rebel said softly. She was actually going to break out of this place!

Rebel napped. When she awoke, she spent an excruciating hour staring at the people floating through the eternal twilight before Sister Mary Radha returned.

The nun’s belly overhung her cincture, and she was as heavily mystic-wired as ever.

“Sister,” Rebel said, “the leads in my adhesion disks are out of adjustment. Would you take a look at them?” Then, when the woman’s hands were deep in the wires, she said,

“You know, there’s a verse by one of your prophets that’s been running through my head. But I’ve forgotten part. It starts: ‘Tormented by thirst of the spirit, I was dragging myself through a gloomy forest when a six-winged seraph appeared to me at the crossroads.’ Are you familiar with that? Then it goes”—she closed her eyes, as if trying to bring up the words—“ ‘He touched my eyes with fingers light as a dream, and my eyes opened wide as those of a frightened she eagle. He touched my ears…’ and I forget the rest.”

Sister Mary Radha’s hands stopped moving. For one still, extended moment she said nothing. Then the nun stared up into the infinite depths of night and murmured,

“Saint Pushkin.” Her voice rose. “ ‘He touched my ears, and roaring and noise filled them, and I heard the trembling of the angels, and the movement of creatures beneath the seas, and the growing of the grass in the valleys! And he laid hold of my lips, and tore out my sinful tongue—’ ” She arched her back and shivered in religious ecstasy. Her hands jerked spasmodically. One of the adhesion disks was yanked askew, and Rebel’s head slammed to the side. But she was still paralyzed.

“Sister,” Rebel said quietly. “Sister?”