“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.”
CHAPTER 4
I don’t see my father for four days.
“He’s working on a new project,” my mother tells me when we eat alone in the evenings. “It’s taking up a lot of his time.”
A lot is an understatement, I think.
It’s also been four days since the councilwoman announced the internships. I haven’t broached the topic with my mother, afraid of what she’ll say. It floats between us now at our kitchen platform like a bubble, invisible but present.
“How is Alma?” she asks me when we’ve been silent for a while. She has taken her fruit and arranged it on top of the flatbread that I made in our oven of clay bricks. She takes a bite and chews with her eyes on me.
“She’s good. She wants to do her internship at the Paw,” I say, and pretend to focus on breaking off a piece of the bread.
My mother stops chewing, pausing and looking at me intently. When I look back into her face, she has already resumed, as if the pause never happened.
“Well,” she says, “I hope she gets what she wants. From what I understand, Dr. Espada will be asking for student input, but placing students himself based on aptitude.”