“Please wear your gloves at all times and handle the pages as little as possible. Please keep all manuscript materials inside the box as you examine them. If you need further assistance in examining the document, please…”

Listening absently to the rote instructions the girl offered, his mind had already moved ahead to his task for the evening. He’d copied the first third of the small volume over the summer. He estimated careful transcription of the manuscript would take another four to five months at the rate he was working. Fortunately, time was not an issue for him on this project.

He settled down to take advantage of the two hours he had left to work on the transcription. He hoped to finish the second of the six sections by the end of the week so he could have Caspar fax it to Nima with his notes.

“Dr. Vecchio?”

“Hmm?” He bit his lip, lost in his own thoughts.

“Did you have any questions?”

He flashed her a smile before turning his face back to his work.

“No, I’m fine. Thank you, Beatrice,” he said, his concentration already shifted to the manuscript in front of him. He heard the young woman quietly return to her seat behind the computer.

They worked for the next two hours, both occupied in their own projects. Every now and then, she would glance at him, but he barely noticed, engrossed in his careful transcription. The soughing of the air-conditioner provided background noise to the turning paper, the scratching of his pencil, and the quiet click of the young woman’s keyboard as she typed.

Shortly before nine o’clock, she closed her books and walked to his table. He looked up at her, dazed from concentration. He saw her take note of his precise transcription of the characters. They were a nearly exact copy of the original, down to the thickness of the brush strokes he recreated with the tip of his pencil, over and over again.