I’ve been clutching it so tightly, it’s as if it’s grown into my palm, become part of my skin. In the faint light of the moon, I slowly open my hand and look down.
It’s an egg. Or it seems to be an egg, cream-colored and smooth. I’d thought it was round, but it’s not quite: the sloping surface is slightly oblong. It catches moonlight and reflects it back out into the night with a hint of iridescence. Heavy, but small, taking up only the space of my palm.
Rondo reaches out to touch the egg-shaped object. He rests his fingers on its surface for only an instant before snatching his hand back, his gasp making me jump.
“It’s hot, Octavia!” he says. “How can you hold it like that?”
“No it’s not,” I say, surprised. I hold it in both hands, cupping it. I bring it up to my cheek and rub it against my skin. It feels warm and smooth, but not hot.
“It burned me,” he says.
“Oh please. It’s not that hot.”
He shrugs, rubbing his fingertips to soothe them.
“You saw it fall?”
I nod.
“From where?”
“There was a person,” I say, and I tell him what I saw: the tall spotted man, my father, and the tranquilizer.
“Tranquilizing a person?” he says, shaking his head. “Dr. Albatur had to have approved this. Your father’s on the Council—he wouldn’t do anything the Head didn’t authorize.”
“But who would Dr. Albatur want to tranquilize? I’ve never heard of anything like this happening before.”
“Things are changing,” he says.
I don’t respond. His words suddenly seem to apply to so much more than just what I saw. Now, even in the open air of the commune, claustrophobia grips me again, as if the roof of the dome is pressing down on me. Standing here looking down on the ’wams, I picture the rounded domes of N’Terra as a giant nest of eggs. Only I don’t know what species laid them or what beasts they contain. Usually not knowing something just drives me to find the answer. . . . Why does it now make me afraid?
“Hey,” Rondo says. He’s beside me, but his words seem to come from a long way away.
He’s staring at me in a strange way. His face is always so cool and impassive. Now he looks rumpled, as if just under his skin is something reaching for the moonlight.
“What?” I whisper when he says nothing.
Rondo takes a step closer to me. If I leaned forward we would bump heads. The egg thrums warmly in my palm. Rondo studies me with that tense expression. His lips move but I don’t hear anything.
“What?” I repeat.
He raises his hand, slowly. I think maybe he’s going to take my hand, but instead it rises to my face. He rests a single finger softly on my forehead before letting it trail down my cheek.
“You’re . . . ,” he says. He pulls his hand back, as if he’s changed his mind.
Am I leaning forward? Why am I leaning forward? I settle back onto my heels, but it’s as if I fight a magnetic field in doing so. There’s a ring around us I can’t see. I might crumple if I step outside it.
I think I say “what” again.
“Nothing,” he says. His eyes leave my face, sweep back over the commune below.
We part at the bottom of the stairs. I can still feel a hot line on my face where his finger skimmed my skin. He looks at me one more time as he heads down the path toward his ’wam.
“Sleep well. Remember to dream.”
I can’t find any words to reply, and he’s gone anyway—a shadow disappearing down the path. I stand there alone in the dark for a moment, and bring my hand to my cheek. Is this what my face felt like when he touched it? I wonder what his face feels like. I look at my hands, and am almost surprised by the egg I still clutch.
I walk back to my ’wam alone. It’s so dark I can barely see the yellow cloth that was my grandmother’s. I wish I had asked her more questions while she was still living, before she’d wandered into the jungle of Faloiv, never to return. Our motto comes to my mind: “No one knows. But we will.” I look down at the smooth white egg in my palm, glittering softly. No one knows, I think. But I will.
CHAPTER 6
You’re sure you don’t know who it was? Rondo types, and I glance down as surreptitiously as possible to respond. Dr. Espada is lecturing, but he’s unexpectedly called on a few people and I don’t want to be caught unaware.
You keep asking me that, I write. I couldn’t see him well enough.
We talk about the spotted man, but we haven’t talked about Rondo touching my face. I’ve started a message at least three times broaching the subject: What were you going to say to me in the commune? But the moonlight had been a thing that wrapped that part of the night in secrecy. Speaking of it now seems to be breaking some unspoken pact.
“English, what do you think?” Dr. Espada asks. At the sound of my name I jerk my head up from my slate.
“Sir?” I say.
He pauses by the three-dimensional projection that is floating at the front of class. He gives me a quizzical look, unused to not having an immediate answer from me. But rather than asking me again, he continues with the lecture. Embarrassment flares in my cheeks, and I close the text box from Rondo. Stars. I can’t catch a break.
“Learning what we can from animals on Faloiv about how they are able to eat on this planet is extremely important for our continued survival, and not just for identifying plants for our diet. Knowing how different plants interact with different animals’ digestive systems can teach us how we can in turn interact with those animals.”
“Interact,” Jaquot says in that annoying brazen voice. Every time I think he’s not that bad, I hear him speak and detest him all over again. “We don’t really need to interact with them to use them, right? We just need to control their abilities. Not have a conversation.”
Dr. Espada looks uncomfortable.
“Well, there are those on the Council who would agree, yes,” he says.
“The only ones who matter,” says a guy in the back. Probably Julian, Dr. Maver’s son, the only other person in the Greenhouse who has a parent on the Council. I know for a fact that Maver voted for Dr. Albatur—my mother had some choice words about him behind closed doors. Dr. Espada ignores him and continues.
“By knowing where an organism fits in its ecosystem and what tools it uses to survive, we do have the option of simply . . . controlling that organism. But that should not be the ultimate goal.”
“What should it be, then?” Yaya’s voice rings out from the back of the Greenhouse. I almost turn to look at her—she usually saves her questions for after class so she can have a one-on-one with Dr. Espada. I can’t help but wonder if she’s seized on my blankness from a moment before, seeing her opportunity to advance herself. Internships haven’t even begun and she’s already trying to outshine me.
Dr. Espada spreads his arms wide, as if he was hoping someone asked this, and I’m annoyed that it had to be Yaya.
“Understanding,” he says. “Rather than seeking to dominate, we should seek to understand.”
Jaquot laughs.