* * * * * There seemed to be no immediate danger, and Rena needed to get out of that house. There was nothing for Benedetto to do but wait, and Zorchi's servants could help him when it was necessary. I took her by the arm and we strolled out into the garden, breathing deeply. That was a mistake. I had forgotten, in the inconspicuous air conditioning of Zorchi's home, that we were in the center of the hemp fields that had nearly cost me my dinner, so long ago, with Hammond. I wondered if I ever would know just why Hammond was killed. Playing both ends against the middle, it seemed--he had undoubtedly been in with Slovetski's group. Rena had admitted as much, and I was privately certain that he had been killed by them. But of more importance was the stench in our nostrils. "Perhaps," said Rena, "across the road, in the walnut grove, it will not be as bad." I hesitated, but it felt safe in the warm Italian night, and so we tried it. The sharp scent of the walnut trees helped a little; what helped even more was that the turbinates of the nostril can stand just so much, and when their tolerance is exceeded they surrender. So that it wasn't too long before, though the stench was as strong as ever, we hardly noticed it. We sat against the thick trunk of a tree, and Rena's head fitted naturally against my shoulder. She was silent for a time, and so was I--it seemed good to have silence, after violent struggle and death. Then she said: "Strange man." "Me?" "No. Oh, yes, Tom, if it comes to that, you, too. But I was thinking just now of Zorchi. Is it true, what you told me of his growing legs and arms so freely?" "I thought everyone in Naples knew that. I thought he was a national hero." "Of course, but I have never really known that the stories were _true_. How does it happen, Tom?" I shrugged. "Heaven knows, I don't. I doubt if even Zorchi knows. His parents might have been involved in some sort of atomic business and got radiated, and so they produced a mutation. It's perfectly possible, you know." "I have heard so, Tom." "Or else it just happened. Something in his diet, in the way his glands responded to a sickness, some sort of medicine. No one knows." "Cannot scientists hope to tell?" "Well--" it was beginning to sound like the seeds of one of our old arguments--"well, I suppose so. Pure research isn't much encouraged, these days." "But it should be, you think?" "Of course it should. The only hope of the world--" I trailed off. Through the trees was a bright, distant glare, and I had just remembered what it was. "Is what, Tom?" "There isn't any," I said, but only to myself. She didn't press me; she merely burrowed into my arm.