"Why don't you take a stroll around the grounds?" I suggested. "Commune with nature. The fresh air will do you good. This can't take long. Mainly I just want to get some literature and try to gain a feeling for the place."

That wasn't entirely, or even partly, true. What I really wanted to find out was threefold: How did they manage to get beautiful healthy Caucasian babies for two single women in just a few months; how could those babies be only six months apart in age and still obviously be siblings; and (this was where my feelings got complicated) could they get a baby for me the same way, never mind how they did it. It was the third thing that actually bothered me the most, since I was far from sure I wanted to be a part of whatever was going on.

Lou just shrugged and leaned back in his seat. "Take as

long as you like. I'll just wait here in the car. I'm not the nature type."

That was certainly the case.

I walked across the cobblestones to an arched entryway that had no door. I wondered at this—most convents are like a fortress—and then I realized the front door had been re­moved, leaving only its ancient hinges still bolted into the stones. Perhaps it was intended to be a symbol of openness, inviting you in.

There was no sign of anybody—the saccharine-voiced Ramala was not on hand to greet me—so I just headed on down a wide hallway, past a table of brochures. The place had been decorated with expensive good taste: tapestries all over the stone walls, perfect Persian rugs, classic church statuary—all of it calling forth powerful feelings from deep in the psyche.

Then I entered a vast interior courtyard, where a central fountain splashed cheerily in the midday light. The courtyard was circled with a picturesque gallery of cells, all with mas­sive wooden doors, most likely rooms once inhabited by chaste sisters.

The place did seem to be a clinic-commune now, just as Paula had said. Not nuns this time around, but rather New Age acolytes whose tastes ran more to secular music than to religious chants, as witness the cacophony of sounds that wafted out from several of the cells. Only it wasn't any kind of conventional music; it seemed a mixture of Japanese flute, North Indian ragas, African drumming. I liked the ragas, even recognized my favorite, "Bhairavi."

Then I spotted something that riveted my attention. At the back of the courtyard, just past a final wooden door, stood a huge South Indian bronze statue, about five feet high, of the Dancing Shiva. It appeared to be presiding over the arch­ way that led out into a dense natural garden behind the build­ing.