I sit crouched in the corner of the sorting room for what feels like hours, my body trembling. Eventually workers will be coming in—they have to, it’s been too long. If they find me here there’s no doubt that my father will be summoned. I stumble to my feet, my legs shaking underneath me. I walk quickly to the door, flexing my cramped fingers. I need to get out of here, and I know where I’m going.
The door whispers open, admitting me into the hall. I look in each direction: no sign of Alma or Rondo. They’ve either returned to the Atrium or have been ushered off to another procedure room. I don’t have time to look for them: right now I need answers, and the person who has them is my mother.
The trip from the Zoo to the commune is a blur, sounds and colors running together. The gray-suited guards at the entrance to the labs speak to me, but even if I wanted to reply, I think the sound that escaped my throat could only be a roar. My anger is rising: it propels me at a sprint past the ’wams of my neighbors, right up to the yellow cloth hanging from the door of my own. I practically fall into the ’wam, panting.
My mother, standing in the hallway as if moving toward her study, turns at the sound of my entrance. She looks surprised to see me but pleasantly so.
“Why . . .” I pant. “Didn’t. You. Tell. Me.”
She raises an eyebrow, assessing me with her dark eyes.
“Tell you what, exactly?” she says.
“Everything!” I explode. I still haven’t caught my breath, and I stand there with my chest heaving, glaring at her.
“I thought I could wait to tell you until everything was figured out,” she says. “I didn’t think you’d have any contact with actual animals until you were twenty-one, when you were in the labs. The philax was an accident and then the damned internships.”
She flops her hands to her sides, the hands that look like mine.
“And the dead animals?” I demand, my anger still large and bright. “What about that? They’re eating animals in there!”
My throat convulses at the thought of eating something dead, a body that was once alive and walking around, stripped and lifeless and cooked like zarum.
“It’s wrong,” my mother says, her jaw setting. “It was never supposed to happen. But it was commonplace before Faloiv—a custom passed down from the Origin Planet—and many of the elders of N’Terra resisted the Faloii’s order when we landed.”
“The Faloii specifically said we can’t eat animals and we’re doing it anyway?” I’m practically screaming. “We’re barbarians! Why did our ancestors eat animals?”
My picture of the star people before us has changed from what I’ve always imagined: they look fanged and dead eyed now, crouching in the shadows like beasts.
“It was called ‘meat,’” she says.
“That’s meat? But Dad said he’s eaten meat . . .” I’d managed to catch my breath but now it feels ragged again.
“Yes. I have eaten it too. You must understand: it was customary. People cling to their customs.”
“Customs?” I demand. “Who cares about customs! You said the Faloii forbid it! Why would we do anything they forbid us to do?”
My mother sighs, her body leaning as if considering coming toward me for the first time. Her face is a map of sorrow, and I almost feel bad for shouting. But not quite.
“There are those in the compounds who”—she pauses, anger rippling across her face before she continues—“who don’t agree that we should remove meat from our diet. Among other things. There are people in N’Terra who believe we shouldn’t obey the laws of the Faloii. Who believe we should be making our own laws. This is one area I have fought against for some time now. It appears the Council is making decisions behind my back.”
“And Grandfather,” I say. “What about him? I know he didn’t die the way you said. I saw the files. He was here. He was on Faloiv.”
She looks as if she’s taken completely by surprise, her eyes squinting.
“Your grandfather . . . ,” she says but can’t seem to finish; her eyes lose their steel and turn soft and shiny. “I miss him. But, Afua, there are things that we must do.”
I shake my head, waving my hands. I don’t want to hear any more. She sounds like my father: “There are things that we must do as scientists” if we want to survive. Obscure things that don’t tell me anything about what happened to my grandfather. Everything I’m hearing sounds as if we’re doing whatever we can to ruin our chances of survival.
“No!” I shout, staring at her accusingly. “You sound just like him! Things we must do to survive here? Like what? Like killing animals and eating their dead bodies? Like implanting vasana with dirixi teeth? Altering their brains so that they become killers? No wonder we’re so worried about war, we—”
But she’s rushing over to me from the hallway, the space between us closed in an instant. Her fingers grip my shoulders like talons, her eyes inches from mine.
“What did you say?” she snaps, all the softness gone from her eyes.
“Wh-what?”
She shakes me and I almost hear my brain rattle.
“What did you say?” she repeats. “About the vasana? What did you say?”
I shake her off, stumbling backward, fear creeping in to share space with my fury.
“The vasana!” I shout. “I saw Dr. Albatur with Vasana 11. The dirixi fangs. I saw the procedure. I know what you’re doing back there in the secret parts of the Zoo! Don’t act so—”
“Dr. Albatur?” she interrupts. “You saw the Head of the Council tampering with the brain of a vasana?”
I wonder briefly if she’s manipulating me: running an experiment on my strange, colorful brain; an experiment she’s recording with some hidden device.
“Yes,” I snarl, sizing her up for any discernible reaction. “I snuck into a restricted part of the Zoo. I saw Dr. Albatur. I saw the vasana. I saw everything.”
At first I think she’s attacking me. She springs forward and I cringe, waiting for I don’t know what: for fists, for a tranq gun she hid somewhere in her lab coat. But instead she’s at the front entrance to the ’wam, standing there in the open door looking back at me with her eyes slanted into piercing slits.
“Hurry up,” she says, jerking her head at the commune outside.
“Wh-where are we going?” I’ve already taken a step toward her, but I pause, unsure. Is she taking me to the labs? To find my father and tell him what I’ve done? I feel the way the vasana must have felt; fear and anger erupting in my veins like a serum. If she tells me we’re going to the Zoo, I think, preparing my body for my blooming plan, then I will run. I’ll run and find a way out of the compound, find Rasimbukar. . . .
“To the Greenhouse,” she says, turning her back on me, forcing me to follow. “We need to find Dr. Espada.”