"Do you like your room?" she asked one day.

Because he preferred to be alone he had been given this room to himself, a small but uncluttered chamber on the second story of the easternmost wing of the largest house. There was a window overlooking the desert, and Isaac had put his desk and chair in front of that window, his bed against the farther wall. He liked to keep the shutters open at night, to let the dry wind touch the bedsheets, his skin. He liked the smell of the desert.

"I grew up in a desert," Sulean told him. A slant of sunlight through the window illuminated her left side, one arm and the parchment of her cheek and ear. Her voice was almost a whisper.

"This desert?"

"No, not this one. But one not very different."

"Why did you leave?"

She smiled. "I had places to go. Or at least I thought I did."

"And this is where you came?"

"Ultimately. Yes."

Because he liked her, and because he could not help being aware of what was unspoken between them, Isaac said, "I don't have anything to give you."

"I don't expect anything," she said.

"The others do."

"Do they?"

"Dr. Dvali and the rest. They used to ask me a lot of questions—how I felt, and what ideas I had, and what things in books meant. But they didn't like my answers." Eventually they had stopped asking, just as they had stopped giving him blood tests, psychological tests, perception tests.

"I'm perfectly satisfied with you the way you are," the old woman said.

He wanted to believe her. But she was new, she had walked through the desert with the nonchalance of an insect on a sunny rock, her purposes were vague, and Isaac was still reluctant to share his most troublesome secrets.