The Worm pulls through the Paw’s gates a little after dawn, its geothermal energy panel gleaming blue. I’d been all but sleepwalking until Rondo emerged, but at the sight of him sleep is a memory. We stand apart, surrounded by the other Paw students, everyone yawning except Rondo. Something about him wires me, but the sluggishness brought on by sleeping poorly empties my brain of interesting things to say. The kids sit and eat slices of hava that their parents have prepared for them, and I wish I had some too, to have something to do with my hands. When the Worm comes to a stop outside the main dome and the driver signals us to climb on, Rondo herds the kids aboard as if he’s been living in the Paw all his life.
When I get on the Worm, he’s in my seat. And although he can’t possibly have known this, when I stand next to him in the aisle and stare, he gives me a quiet smile.
“I figured you’d sit up front,” he says. He’s already moved over to make room for me. In my seat. “First off the Worm, so first into the Greenhouse.”
“Yeah, well,” I say, sitting down.
The ride to the Greenhouse isn’t long: the building is situated behind the Paw, on another small rise in the land. The Greenhouse is actually in the center of the main research compounds, the others spread around it like a honeycomb. Except the Council’s building, where all the meetings about the happenings in N’Terra are held. It’s the newest of the domes, and I haven’t laid eyes on it, as neither of my parents have offered to take me when they go. Apparently it sits just beyond the arrangement of the compounds, like a satellite observing our little solar system.
Rondo is so close his arm brushes mine when he breathes deeply. He inhales and I turn to catch whatever it is he’s about to say to me when I realize his words are directed at the driver.
“Nice morning, isn’t it?” he says.
“I fail to see what’s so nice about it,” Draco replies. I should have warned Rondo not to talk to him—Draco is always irritable. He’s an old man: too old, some have said, to be driving the Worm. But trying to get the steering column out of his hands would be tempting fate.
“Well, you have us, don’t you?” I’m surprised to hear the humor in Rondo’s voice. Only a few words exchanged with Draco and already he seems to have pinpointed what makes the old man tick. Or what ticks him off, to be more specific.
Draco makes a growling sound as the Worm turns a corner. Somewhat roughly, I think, as if Draco imagined trying to send Rondo off the side. I swallow a laugh.
“You?” Draco says when he’s done growling. “The only thing my morning wouldn’t be complete without is this drive. You don’t even enter the equation, young man.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Rondo says, straight-faced. “I think you might be lonely if you drove without us. Otherwise what would be the point?”
“The point,” Draco scoffs. I can’t see his face, only his hands on the steering column: wizened and deeply tanned. “The drive itself is the point. When I was a young man on a planet you know nothing about, I’d drive for miles on my own. Miles!”
“Going where?”
“Nowhere! Can’t do that here.” His hands tighten on the steering column, some of the color fading from them as he squeezes hard. “Can’t waste the energy. Besides, our hosts wouldn’t have that, would they?”
“Who?”
“Don’t be dense, young man. The Faloii.”
Draco pronounces it differently than what I’ve learned is correct—he condenses its three syllables into two, as if the third isn’t worth enunciating. Rondo catches my eye, raises his eyebrow. I keep staring—something about Rondo’s eyes don’t let you go. Held captive by his irises, I only hear the tail end of Draco’s gripes.
“Dr. Albatur will change that though,” the old man complains. “People can’t live as tenants forever. Faloiv is ours now too. They’d do well to get used to that.”
At the mention of Dr. Albatur’s name, I finally turn my eyes away from Rondo.
“What does Dr. Albatur plan to do?” I ask.
“Take back control,” Draco grates. “You kids are too young to know: you don’t understand anything but your sad, small world. But at one point, we made the rules. We wanted to build? We built. We wanted to drive?” He slaps one palm against the steering column. “We drove!”
I have more questions, but the Worm jerks to a stop—not as gently as it usually does. Draco turns to Rondo and me with a sour expression.
“Off.”
We get off.
Our Worm is gone in a heartbeat—Draco enjoying his drive—but the Worms from the other compounds are pulling up now; I put the old man out of my head, squinting in the sun for the vessel from the Newt. Alma will be on it and I have things to tell her. Looking for her, I see Jaquot step off the Worm from the Beak and we briefly make eye contact. I look around for Alma, but as usual she sees me first.
“Octavia,” she calls, with a gesture of her hand to come meet her. Alma doesn’t say much without a hand gesture accompanying it.
She steps off the Worm from the Newt, her hair an enormous cloud around her head. It’s different almost every day: some days she braids it to her scalp like me, some days she gathers it into six or more puffs. Today nothing restrains it—an explosion of soft brown.
“Look at you,” I say, greeting her with a shoulder bump.
She smiles her wide smile.
“My hair is getting so long. My mother says her grandparents called this an Afro.”
“That’s correct,” says a voice I know to be Dr. Espada’s. Our teacher stands in the doorway of the Greenhouse, his arms folded and his smile broad. “One of the most regal hairstyles in the galaxy. The captain of the Vagantur wore one. Captain Williams.”
Dr. Espada doesn’t wear a white coat like the other scientists: he says it gets in his way when he’s teaching. Which is true. He gesticulates a lot, like Alma. She would make a great teacher as it is, so her gestures put her ahead of the curve.
“Oh?” says Alma, patting her hair gently. “I like the sound of that.”
Dr. Espada gestures for us to come into the Greenhouse, where the younger kids are already trailing off to, led by Dr. Yang, who taught us when we were younger. Dr. Espada will be my last teacher—after him, the Zoo.
“What’s on the agenda, Doc?” says Alma, the first through the door after him. I follow before the other greencoats start to push in for good places.
“Always so eager.” Dr. Espada laughs. “Take your seats, tortoises. We have lots of new material to cover.”
“What are tortoises?” Alma says quickly.
“Ahh. A reptile from the Origin Planet. Very slow.”
“I see.” Alma’s round face is serious, her eyes squinted. I shake my head at her, laughing. The rest of us roll our eyes when Dr. Espada and the other whitecoats use words that have no place on Faloiv, but Alma mentally records each one, as if they might be worth something later.
Alma and I take our seats down front, closest to the transparent display board where most of Dr. Espada’s presentation will appear. Rondo chooses a seat behind me, and my entire body stiffens. He never sits here—always in the back with Jaquot and other Beak dwellers. Jaquot even shoots his friend a quizzical look, glancing undecidedly toward the back row, before sitting down next to him. I try to act like I don’t notice, straightening my back.
“What’d you do on your rest day?” Alma asks me, settling in and powering on her slate. “I sent you a message but you didn’t write back.”
I swallow. I don’t want to talk about what happened in the Beak here in class. Too many opportunities to be overheard—specifically by Rondo.
“All right, let’s get started,” Dr. Espada begins, and I can’t help but feel relieved that we’re interrupted. A gentle hum rumbles through the walls as Dr. Espada powers on the three-dimensional projector, the sound of energy being drawn from the Greenhouse’s solar store. He’s just raising his hands to start gesticulating, when his eyes flick to the doorway, away, and then back again in a double take.
“Oh,” he says, and his hands drop.
The heads of my classmates turn as if attached to a single curious neck. It’s rare that class is disrupted: I can recall only one other time, when the Slither was flooding, that we were excused early. But the person in the doorway doesn’t look urgent as if an emergency has brought her. She glides into the classroom.
“Council,” Alma murmurs in my ear, just as I glimpse the gold Council pin on the breast of the woman’s lab coat—a delicate likeness of the Vagantur surrounded by five circles representing the compounds.
“May I come in?” the woman says, though she’s already in. Her voice is unexpected for someone so broad, its tenor reedy and thin like a blade of grass.
“I . . . of course,” Dr. Espada says.
“Dr. Albatur has sent me to make an announcement,” she says, turning to us. I note the frown that flickers across Dr. Espada’s mouth.
“He couldn’t have come himself?” Alma whispers. “Everybody knows he doesn’t actually do any of his own research.”
I conceal my smile. I’ve heard my mother say the same thing—that it was his long rambling speeches that got him elected, not his work.
“An announcement? Has something happened?” Dr. Espada says.
“You could say that.” The councilwoman shoots him a flash of teeth. Her smile remains focused on him a beat longer than is called for, and I’m not surprised when he doesn’t smile back. Her expression is like the painted clay decoy animals used in some field experiments. False. Hollow.
“There has been an exciting breakthrough in N’Terra,” the woman says. She spreads the fingers on each hand wide like two fans. “Tomás, could you please bring up a photo of a myn?”
“Certainly.”
A moment later, we all gaze up at the image of a fish presented before us, slightly blurry: it’s light gray in color with a long wispy dorsal fin, eyes an opaque orange in sharp contrast to the dull color of its body.
“And now an oscree, please,” the councilwoman says. She still hasn’t told us her name.
Alongside the fish appears an image of the common oscree, its delicate wings folded along the length of its body.
“Two different animals,” the councilwoman says. “Two different species. And yet today we have discovered that they have more in common than we could have ever predicted.”
She pauses. I dart my eyes at Dr. Espada and find that his face has lost its frown. Instead, every wrinkle seems to have been laid smooth. It’s like looking at a mask.
“Would anyone like to hazard a guess?” the councilwoman goes on. She lets her eyes drift across the room, and as they wander through my row, I swear they pause on my face for just an instant too long. I wonder, my breath becoming shallow, if Dr. Albatur had told her about me, if I’m already getting a reputation in the Zoo.
“Myn and oscree? How about”—Jaquot draws out the words comically—“they instantaneously die of boredom when they come across each other in the wild?”
A subdued current of laughter courses through the room, and the councilwoman’s hollow smile widens. Her eyes don’t change. I glance back at Jaquot and find him reclining in his chair, grinning. Ordinarily I would be throwing ocular poison in his direction, but today I send a subtle salute, which he accepts with a kingly nod.
“I was under the impression that your students were erudite,” the councilwoman says, turning her teeth on Dr. Espada again, whose neutral mask falters. Jaquot’s smile fades. “Apparently not. So I’ll get right to it. In these two unrelated species, we have a confirmed study that proves myn and oscree are able to communicate without any means of physical or aural input.”
“Excuse me.” Alma beats me in breaking the silence. “What does that mean exactly? Psychically? If they’re communicating without physical or aural signals, then you mean they’re communicating . . . how? Telepathically?”
“Someone is paying attention after all,” the councilwoman says, beaming, but Alma doesn’t smile. “Yes, that’s what our studies appear to conclude. Preliminary studies began by exploring intraspecies communication and found that mammals may be communicating psychically. Then, thanks to Dr. English’s research, we realized there was more to it.”
“Dr. English?” Dr. Espada says quickly.
“That’s correct,” the councilwoman says, and this time her gaze is definitely on me, that empty smile lasering in on me with almost predatory intensity. “Samirah English, that is.”
The class claps, as we always do when one of our parents is recognized for a breakthrough in N’Terran science, but I barely hear it. I sat in the kitchen with my mother last night, eating and talking, and she didn’t mention this discovery at all—she just disappeared into her study and whispered about pulling me out of the not-yet-announced internships. A movement from Dr. Espada catches my eye—he reaches for his slate at his desk, typing something in a flurry of silent finger taps while the councilwoman resumes her speech.
“Quiet now,” she says, her hands fanning out again. “There’s one more thing. As you know, under current policy, you won’t be assigned to a specialty of study until you’re eighteen, after you’ve shown some aptitude for a particular branch. And then won’t be in the labs until you’re twenty-one, after extensive guided research.”
Everyone is holding their breath. I feel Rondo’s eyes drilling into the back of my head. Dr. Adibuah’s rumor is already at the front of my mind when the councilwoman continues.
“As you can imagine, this new discovery is significant and could change the way we gather information about survival on this planet. There will be shifting priorities in N’Terra. So as of next week, students sixteen and older will have the opportunity to take part in an internship in one of our research compounds. We’ll also be introducing children to hands-on procedures at age ten, and shortening their time in the Greenhouse. . . .”
It’s like being in a bubble at the center of an explosion—around me, scholarly decorum is shattered with the roar of exhilaration, the room dissolving into chatter. The councilwoman has more to say about children getting less formal Greenhouse instruction, but her voice is lost. Alma is standing, gripping my arm and shaking it as Jaquot fake-brags about how he’d already known about internships. Somehow the excitement doesn’t sink into my skin—I’m watching the councilwoman slip out of the room, Dr. Espada’s eyes on her back as if observing a dangerous species in the wild. I don’t hear the notification from my slate over the din of the classroom, but I see it light up and tap the mouth icon that appears. It’s a message from Rondo.
Interspecies telepathy. So even if I was a bird, I could still tell you you’re pretty, it says.
I stare at the black text for a moment, allowing the feeling of pleasure to overtake the gloom the councilwoman left behind—even if I’m the only one who feels its shadow. The text is like a wave of sunshine that sweeps down from my head to my chest.
That’s assuming a bird would even find me attractive, I type back.
I would say your beauty is pretty much universal.
I don’t know what to say to this. My fingers tingle as if they have their own message they’d like to send. Alma, sitting again now that Dr. Espada is attempting get the class under control, leans over. I minimize my messages with one swift stroke.
“I wonder if everybody gets an internship,” she says under her breath. “You know good and well some of these fools aren’t ready to be around specimens.”
Dr. Espada has begun to lecture, and again I’m grateful for the interruption, because if I’d had to answer right then, I might have choked. Alma’s words stir a fear that hunkered low in my belly and send it fleeing into the sky. What if I can’t go into the labs?
Another message from Rondo pops up on my slate.
What’s the matter?
I swallow. Is he psychic like the damn myn?
What makes you think something is?
I pay attention.
For some reason reading these three words makes my eyes prickle. So simple, the idea of being seen. Rondo might be one of the only people on this planet who actually sees me. The thought is so sharp, like a bite, that I’m responding before I can even stop myself:
Maybe you should pay attention to Espada’s lecture instead.
I regret it instantly. I want to look back at him, to feel the comfort of his brown eyes like a salve on whatever wound I’ve exposed in my own skin. But I force myself to keep my eyes on the screen.
He sends back one word—Okay—and that hurts even more.
Later, when we break for our midday meal, Alma and I are the first outside. Even the heat can’t crush her excitement.
“Internships. Incredible,” she gushes. We had two hours of lecture after the councilwoman dropped the news of internships on us, but it’s still the first thing out of everyone’s mouths when we’re released for break. “Can you believe it? Incredible. Absolutely incredible.”
“You just said incredible three times,” I say.
“Because it is! Octavia, we have to be in the same compound. We have to. It’s going to be incredible.”
“Four.”
“Okay, okay. But seriously! We could discover something amazing together! Like your mom.” She sighs. “Oh, stars, your mom is brilliant. Did she tell you anything about how she discovered the telepathic thing?”
I slowly chew the bite of food I’ve just taken, wondering how to tell her that I hadn’t a clue, that my mother cares more about protecting her secrets than sharing the truth with her daughter. Alma presses on without waiting for my answer.
“I have to be in the Paw. I want to learn everything there is to know from her. Your dad too, of course. But you know . . . your mom. She’s a legend now.”
“You’d really want to be in the Paw?” I ask. She’s finally settling down and eating. “Not the Newt?”
Alma nods, one of her cheeks huge from the bite she finally took.
“Of course,” she says. “Mammals have always been my favorite—you know that. Besides, if I end up working in the Newt, I’m going to have to live around my parents forever. And nothing against them but, um . . . no thanks.”
We both laugh. At one point I would have welcomed working alongside my mother and father. But lately . . .
“Weird that they’re letting us in now,” I say.
“And ten-year-olds doing hands-on work?” she says. “Did you catch that bit? The old Council Head spent so much time building the pathway to working with actual specimens. Now Albatur wants to let kids do it.”
“They trust kids a lot more than I do,” I say. “Can you imagine Jaquot when he was ten? I wouldn’t want that terror in the labs.”
“The Council likes to switch things up. Like this,” she says, gesturing around us. “They never used to let us come outside. And now look: we’re out here for mid-meal every day.”
“Yeah, with the company of a bunch of buzzguns,” I say, glancing around at the gray-suited guards that roam the Greenhouse perimeter.
“Hey, I don’t mind the company, as long as I’m out here.” She squints at the sky, hoping to catch sight of something, anything. “The buzzguns are weird though.”
“So many since Albatur got elected. They’re everywhere now.”
“Surprised Dr. Espada doesn’t carry one while he teaches.”
I laugh at that.
“Oh shut up. I guess they have them out here in case something dangerous happens to come by. A dirixi or something.”
“Don’t even say that—”
“Or to protect us from the bloodthirsty Faloii!” yells Jaquot, leaping out of the long grass behind us. We jump and he laughs.
“Don’t be a fearmonger. The Faloii aren’t bloodthirsty,” Alma says, bopping him with her water canteen.
“Can you prove that?” He laughs, doing his best whitecoat impression. I chuckle in spite of myself. He does sound like my father.
“No,” says Alma, “but if they wanted to kill us, they wouldn’t have let us onto Faloiv in the first place.”
“Still. The Faloii think we’re their prisoners. We can’t do anything without their permission.”
“That doesn’t disprove what I just said,” Alma says. “They want a say on what happens on Faloiv—so? That’s not bloodthirsty. It’s their planet, after all. They let us build the compounds and they leave us alone and let us study their world.”
“But never them,” says Rondo, emerging out of the tall grasses behind Jaquot. My smile fades and I’m very aware of the blood in my veins. I wonder if he’s mad after what I said. In any case, my blood feels happy to see him, even as nervousness pools in my stomach. Illogical, I tell myself, annoyed by my contradictory reactions to his presence, and I find myself examining my fingers. Is attraction quantifiable? My heartbeat is empirical, but what does it actually mean?
“Go on,” says Alma, sounding like Dr. Espada. I focus on looking at her instead of Rondo.
“We know so much about the animals here, but we know almost nothing about the Faloii,” he says, his voice even. He stands above us with Jaquot. I wipe my hands and stand up. Alma follows suit.
“Why does it matter?” says Alma. “They let us study the life on their planet. It’s not a big deal if we don’t study them specifically.”
“I’m not saying it against them,” he says. “I’m saying it against us.”
“Why against us?” I ask. I try not to sound combative, but I do. Here I go again. It makes talking to him easier. If I don’t make my voice hard, it will inevitably be too soft. “From what I understand, we haven’t seen the Faloii since the landing. They laid out the rules and then went back to wherever they live. It’s not really our fault if they don’t want to be studied. Can you blame them, really?”
“I’m not saying we should study them. But it would make sense to have communication with them. Right now the only discussion I ever hear about the Faloii is when someone is angry. What they won’t let us do. What they’re keeping us from building. It’s all pretty . . . hostile.”
“Exhibit A: the drivers,” Jaquot throws in. “Rondo told me about Draco. The driver for the Beak is the same way—an old guy. He knows the deal. They’re always complaining about the Faloii.”
“Really?” I raise my eyebrow.
Jaquot nods, still laughing.
“Always. ‘The Faloii think they’re benevolent rulers.’ Blah, blah, blah. ‘If we had our way, N’Terra would be twice the size.’ Blah, blah. ‘When freedom is kept under lock and key, the captive will break the lock!’ On and on. I don’t know what lock Draco thinks he’s going to break. He’s like a hundred years old.”
“Freedom? We have freedom,” I say, confused.
He shrugs, looking uncomfortable. I imagine the topic rising up between us like a crag in the riverbed, splitting the water’s flow.
“I don’t know. I guess he wants more. My dad wants to expand the compound too. Lots of people do.”
I look at Alma—I always look to her when I want to know if something makes sense or not. I can generally trust my own logic, but hers is infallible. Her eyes squint the way they do when she’s studying research—she’s considering all the variables, weighing the arguments of everyone present.
“You don’t think it’s weird to live on a planet and not have any communication with its people?” Rondo adds when no one says anything.
“They probably don’t speak any of our languages, my friend,” jokes Jaquot. I don’t know how I never noticed it before, but I’m starting to see strategy in some of his comedy. Tension diffusion. He’s been a clown since we were children. I’m suddenly curious about what his parents are like, if there’s a chasm in his ’wam too that he’s had to build a bridge across.
“Yaya’s at it again,” Alma says, and nods toward the Greenhouse.
We all look. Dr. Espada’s standing at the doorway, the rounded figure of Yaya beside him, her slate in her hands in note-taking position.
“There she goes.” I sigh.
“Has she still not spoken to you since you disproved her theory on dunikai migration?” Alma says, chuckling.
“Nope.” I can’t help but smirk at the memory. Yaya isn’t exactly a rival since she’s always preferred talking to Dr. Espada more than greencoats, but the dunikai debate was one of the few head to heads we’ve actually had. Since then—two years ago—she’s seemed even more determined to interact solely with whitecoats. Some days I think she doesn’t consider herself a greencoat at all; not a student but a colleague of Dr. Espada who just happens to sit in the audience.
“Still on her quest to the top!” Alma says, shaking her head.
“Gotta love a girl with goals,” Jaquot says, and I turn my eyes on him in surprise. With Alma packing her things for class and Rondo standing off to the side in his own world, I’m the only one who hears it. Jaquot shoots me a bashful smile.
Ahead, Dr. Espada is turning to go back into the Greenhouse, when he almost bumps into the councilwoman, who doesn’t make way in the entrance. He steps aside for her and she strides toward her waiting chariot. I watch my teacher watching her before my gaze wanders again to the scattering of gray-suited guards, their heads turning this way and that as they scan the trees. As my group moves toward the Greenhouse, Jaquot telling jokes and Alma gesticulating, I think of my grandmother. Since she died, I’ve imagined filling the void she left with my own scientific discoveries; my parents’ sadness soothed by the advances I would make in turning Faloiv into a place where they can be happy. But Rondo has planted a seed in my mind that sprouts into a flower I avert my eyes from. Maybe he’s onto something, and it bothers me that it’s not a theory I considered before. I turn to him, not quite ready to let the subject of the Faloii drop.
“Maybe they’re starting internships to begin studying the Faloii,” I say. “There has to be a reason they’d let us in the labs all of a sudden.”
Rondo looks past me at the guards, gripping their buzzguns with both hands.
“‘Shifting priorities,’” he says. “That’s what she said. Maybe you’re right. But I’m interested in where they’re shifting.”