Birthmarked

"Yes," he said to Yvonne, his voice warming. "But they were very interesting spoons, all made out of chrome, and each one was a little different from the others so you could tell them apart. And then, to your surprise, you opened your father's birthday gift, and it was twenty three more chrome spoons. When you looked at them closely, you could match up your father's spoons with your mother's spoons into pairs."

Yvonne scrambled off her stool and came back with a couple of spoons. "Like this," she said, setting them on the table under the light.

Leon nodded. "Yes. But remember, there are forty-six all together, half from each parent."

"Chromosomes," Oliver said, coming reluctantly forward from his corner. "We learned about this in school. The chrome spoons are chromosomes, and we have them in every cell of our bodies."

"Go on," Pearl said.

Leon held his soupspoon up toward the light so that its edges gleamed. "Each spoon has dents all along its length, so many you can hardly see them all, each right against the next, some longer and some small. The dents are genes. How a dent on one spoon interacts with its matching dent on its matching spoon determines what traits you have, like brown eyes, or connected earlobes."

"Or blood that clots properly," Pearl said softly.

Gaia looked over to see her watching Leon closely.

"Yes," he said.

Gaia expected Pearl to mention Lila, but she said no more. Yvonne fidgeted restlessly beside her, and Gaia patted her knee reassuringly.

"Are we getting to my parents?" Gaia asked.

"I said it was complicated," he said.

Her pulse jumped at the slight edge in his tone. That was more like Leon.

"We 11 get there, Gaia," Yvonne said. "What's DNA? That's what I want to know."

"It's the chrome of the spoon," Leon said, running his finger-tip along the whole length of the spoon. "It's what makes up every dent, the basic material of every gene, from one end to the other. I'm not saying everything about you is determined by your genes, but they matter a lot."

That fit with what she knew, Gaia realized, with her eyes fixed on his spoon. She had never quite understood what DNA was, but with the chrome in all the variety of those spoons and dents, she could easily see that each person's DNA was unique.

"Okay, go on," Yvonne said.

Leon frowned briefly. "There's another part of the story. They've found an Enclave boy, a toddler named Nolan. He has the genes that say he should have hemophilia, but he doesn't have it. His blood is fine."

Pearl gasped. "How can that be? Did they cure him?"

"No," Leon said. "His parents brought him to Mabrother Iris's lab when his older brother's hemophilia became apparent. His was mild, but they worried Nolan's would be bad. Instead, the lab determined that Nolan was born with some beneficial suppressor gene that's counteracting the hemophilia." He paused. "It's like there's a dent on some other spoon, far from the hemophilia dent, that cancels out the hemophilia."

Gaia frowned. "Is that possible?"

"Yes. And that's why Mabrother Iris is so excited." His voice darkened. "Nolan's mother is from the outside. And she has a freckle tattoo on her ankle."

Gaia exhaled an enormous breath and leaned back in her chair. "Oh, no," she whispered. Focus on the freckle tattoos would bring more attention to Western Sector Three, which could only make things worse for people there.

"I still don't understand," Yvonne said. "Why does that matter?"

Leon brushed back the hair over his ear, and turned toward the girl. "There are really three steps for what happens next. First, the Enclave has to identify more kids like Nolan who don't have hemophilia even though their genes say they should. Second, they want to identify the suppressor gene," he said. "They can find it one of two ways: breed Nolan with other kids like him, or track back through their family trees to narrow in on the gene by a process of elimination. Of those two options, the second one is far more humane and faster, too. Once they identify the suppressor gene, they're ready for the third step: they can test everyone to see who has the suppressor gene, and those people can be selected to marry hemophilia carriers to eliminate hemophilia in their children."

Gaia watched him stir his spoon once through his soup, as if he were losing his appetite.

"My head's spinning," Pearl confessed. "What does this really mean for us? For all of our friends inside the wall right now?"

Leon set the bowl aside. "They're taking the freckle-tattooed girls and boys to test them to see if they're like Nolan, carrying the suppressor gene. It won't be very invasive. They'll just take some blood and a swab sample from inside their cheeks. When they identify a few more people like Nolan, then they'll locate their parents."

"From outside the wall?" Pearl asked.

"Yes. From outside the wall. And they'll work back from those parents to study the family trees."

"But the freckles aren't a guarantee of anything," Gaia objected. "There's no connection between the tattoos and the genes."

"I know," Leon said. "And Mabrother Iris and the Protectorat know that. But the people with freckle tattoos are the only ones we can work with, the only ones with known birth parents."

"Because of my mother's code," Gaia said.

He nodded. "It was the key," Leon said. "They were watching us through a camera. I should have known. Bartlett should have told me. They've deciphered it all by now."

"They were using you, too?" she said.

He nodded once. "When they saw me go into your room, all on my own, they couldn't believe their luck."

"Did Sergeant Bartlett set you up?"

"I don't know for sure. It wouldn't be like him. Not on purpose. He just knew I was interested in you."

Her heart gave another little kick. What, she wondered, did Leon say to Sgt. Bartlett about me?

"What will they do once they identify the suppressor gene and find the people who carry it?" Gaia asked.

Leon templed his fingers together, and they cast a sharp shadow on the tabletop. "They're thinking long term. Once they can identify the suppressor gene, they'll test all the babies outside the wall and take the ones who have it. They're patient," he said.

The dawning horror made Gaia momentarily speechless. "All of them?"

"They'll be the most desired, most precious advanced children ever," he said flatly. "The mothers of those children will be encouraged to have as many babies as possible, all for advancing. And when those babies grow up, they'll have their pick of the elite families to marry into."

Pearl cleared Leon's soup bowl away. "It all sounds awfully farfetched," she said.

"Accept it. It's fact," Leon said.

Gaia leaned forward and gripped her hands together upon the table. "What happened to you, after you left me?" she asked.

A muscle clenched in his jaw. "I went to my fa-- to the Protectorat and Mabrother Iris. Mabrother Iris congratulated me on my progress with you and explained the promise of the suppressor gene." His voice dropped to a low, mocking frequency. "He told me who my parents are. Always a reward with Mabrother Iris. And then he wanted to know if I could find the baby you saved, the one from the executed couple."

"You're kidding," Gaia said.

Leon passed a hand before his eyes, and when he lowered it, he still wasn't looking at her directly. "That baby could be another one like Nolan. They want you back, Gaia. They want to hold you up as a hero for saving him."

"No," Pearl muttered.

Gaia s breath caught.

Leon shook his head. "I told them the baby was dead," Leon said.

Pearl was leaning against the sink. "Is it?" she asked.

Leon turned to her and spoke quietly. "I don't really know. There's no trail in the black market for babies, unless Masister Khol keeps some record. And she'd be a fool to do so." He shifted back toward Gaia's direction. "That's why you have to leave. You re not safe anywhere here, not in the Enclave, not in Wharfton. If they find you, they'll use you. You won't have any choice."

Gaia sat in silence among the others, her mind reeling with the new information. The Enclave wanted to use her for political purposes. That was worse than them wanting her dead, but she was even more concerned for what would happen to the families in Western Sector Three. They stood to lose even more babies.

"They must be stopped," she said.

"How?" Oliver asked.

"I don't know. But there has to be a way."

Leon shook his head. "You can't do it, Gaia. They're too powerful. And they'll persuade people this is for the best. They always do." He closed his eyes briefly and rubbed his forehead, as if he were deeply weary. "And maybe it is for the best, in the long run."

"You can't believe that," she said.

His voice dropped low. "I don't know what I believe. I don't trust them, but I can, actually, see how finding the suppressor gene could help."

"You're saying reproductive slavery would be all right?" she demanded. "You're saying taking more babies from their mothers would be fine?"

He finally, reluctantly, lifted his gaze to meet Gaia's. If she had ever thought there was something dead inside Leon, it was nothing compared to the bleak, unfeeling emptiness she saw in his eyes now.

"What happened to you?" Gaia said.

His gaze dropped and his hands went still on the table.

Pearl put a hand on her shoulder. "Be easy, Gaia," she said. "It's a lot to take in. I have to tell you, if I heard there was some little boy growing up outside the wall right now who could marry Yvonne some day and they could have healthy children, it would open doors, not shut them. A lot of us trust the Enclave to do the right thing in the long run. They always have."

"If that's true, why are you helping me right now?" Gaia demanded. "Don't you realise you have to take a side?"

Pearl folded her strong arms across her chest in a way that implied she could not be budged. "I have to live here," Pearl said quietly. "My life is here. It's not perfect, but it's the best we have. I'm helping you because my heart tells me it's the right thing to do and because I can. That's enough for me."

Gaia struggled with her confusion and forced herself to think ahead. "We still have to get my mother out," she said. "That's our first priority. Agreed?"

A sigh of relief went through Yvonne and Oliver, and Pearl hitched up another stool with a shuffling noise. "Here," she said, producing a roll of wide paper.

"What's this?" Leon asked.

"A map," Oliver said. "We were looking at it earlier."

For the first time, the old Leon seemed to stir. "What's your plan, precisely?" he asked, pivoting the map to face him.

Gaia tilted her face to try to see it at his angle. The parchment was tattered at the edges, and some of the lines were smudged and reworked from repeated updates, but it -was a complete map of the Enclave and Wharfton, with streets and sectors carefully marked. Gaia found it odd to see her world set out in two dimensions, without the elevation that was so much a part of rising from the unlake to the gate, or entering the Enclave and climbing gradually toward the Bastion. Still, it gave a clear perspective on how near and far things were. She traced her finger gently over the little line of Sally Row, where her home stood in Western Sector Three. Her father, she knew, would have loved this map.

"Mace has gone to ask Masister Khol to take me up to my mom," Gaia said. "I'm going to be disguised as one of the boys, carrying a bag for her. We'll take a cutting tool in case there's a lock or chains we need to deal with, and then we'll throw a rope out the window for me and my mother to climb down."