“Hello, Dr. Adibuah.”
I follow my father and Dr. Adibuah through the dome, simultaneously admiring the Beak and eavesdropping on their conversation. We pause as a large flightless bird appears at the edge of the path, eyeing us almost irritably, as if commanding us to make way. I’ve seen this species before—the molovu—but only in the floating three-dimensional displays of the Greenhouse, where my peers and I go for our daily classes. The animal is so close now—just out of arm’s reach. My head seems to buzz with the wonder of it. I squint, looking for the tentacle it hides in its orange breast plumage, an opposable, trunk-like limb that it uses to essentially vacuum seeds from the jungle floor. But the bird disappears into the bushes on the other side of the path.
“Today is the first day that we were able to manipulate the oscree pattern to appear on a skinsuit,” Dr. Adibuah is saying, not bothering to conceal his excitement.
“Good,” says my father, who never gets excited about anything. My grandmother’s death had stolen the light from his eyes, and she wasn’t even his mother.
Dr. Adibuah opens his mouth to add something else, but a flash of red through the trees draws his attention and mine. We’re almost through the indoor jungle to the entrance of the Zoo, and Dr. Albatur stands ahead with his cluster of whitecoats like a drop of blood seeping through gauze, the red hood still shielding his face from the sun pouring in from above. The gloom returns to Dr. Adibuah’s eyes. He turns to me as if to distract himself from the sight of the Council Head.
“You’ll be in the Zoo with us one day,” he says.
I smile at Dr. Adibuah’s teasing use of “Zoo”—whitecoats don’t usually call it that; it’s another greencoat nickname for the laboratories in each compound, and is the place where greencoats such as myself desire to go most—a territory we won’t be allowed to enter until we’re twenty-one. It’s where all the important animal-focused research takes place, and while I’ve heard rumors that Dr. Albatur wants to cut back on zoology for other avenues of research, the Zoo is still the place where my grandmother said we would find the keys to our survival.
Dr. Albatur is absorbed in conversation with one of the guards, but he turns to eye me, as if I’ll come charging at the doors to the Zoo with a battering ram. Dr. Adibuah must notice my scowl because he pauses to give me one more smile before he and my father join the other whitecoats.
“One day at a time, O,” he says, and it seems like something he might be saying for his own benefit as well. “I hear they’re considering introducing internships, so you may be in sooner than you think.”
“Internships? Seriously?”
“I hope I haven’t given anything away,” Dr. Adibuah says, smiling. “Let’s keep that between us.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“Octavia, you can occupy yourself while I’m with Dr. Adibuah? You have your research?” my father asks as we near the Zoo’s doors.
He doesn’t wait for me to say yes, but instead turns to the guard, who stands aside and allows my father and Dr. Adibuah to register their thumbprints on the scanner. The door slides open without a sound. Dr. Albatur doesn’t bother to scan his thumb—he sweeps in through the entrance and everyone else follows.
When the door closes, I turn back to the main dome of the Beak. As much as I’d like to be in the labs, the fact that I’m unaccompanied for my first visit to this compound means I can actually explore. Everywhere there are whitecoats with slates and recording equipment, standing and observing different birds as they hover and dart and do the things that birds do. Some of the whitecoated doctors are even perched in trees, motionless as they watch a bird in a nest or an egg hatching. The animals go about their business. Many of them were born in the compound; they don’t know anything else. Like me.
I eye a whitecoat twenty paces away using an oxynet to snag several avian species from a passing flock. The triggering of the oxynet is silent, but the net itself makes a whistling sound as it flies through the air, trapping the birds in a sort of bubble. It’s a new technology that’s supposed to be gentler on the animals than an actual net. Part of the Faloii’s rules when we settled, I’m told, is that we’re forbidden to cut down trees or harm wildlife, and as I wander along the dirt path, letting reaching branches brush my arms, I’m glad. I look up. Beyond the arched dome ceiling, I catch a glimpse of a cluster of birds not contained in the Beak flying fast and free. I envy them as I breathe in the scent of the towering ogwe trees. The trees aren’t edible—my grandmother’s studies had focused on functional nutrition, and I know as much about plants as I do about animals—but the smell is almost delicious. It’s hard to explain, but even their scent is striped, like their trunks: smooth but complicated, with a pattern of undertones that cross one another inside the nose when I breathe deeply.
“What are you smelling?”
My eyes snap open—I hadn’t even known they’d been closed. Beside me is Jaquot, the braggart of the Beak and my classmate in the Greenhouse.
“The trees.”
“Which ones?”
He’s testing me, like all greencoats do to one another.
“The ogwe.”
“Distinguishing quality?”
“Each ogwe leaf is perfectly identical, for one,” I say.
“Why?”
“No one knows. But we will.” I recite N’Terra’s motto, reluctant to give him what he wants.
“Good,” Jaquot says smugly, as if he’s satisfied I’m not an idiot. “Except one thing: ogwe trees don’t have a scent.”
“What?” I don’t need him to repeat himself, but what he’s said seems so stupid that I’m not entirely sure I’ve heard it correctly.
“No smell,” he says, smiling in a way that shows too much of his gums. “Not discernible by humans, anyway.”
“Wrong,” I say.
“No, I’m not.”
Jaquot leaves my side and walks toward the center of the dome where the trees grow thickly. The back of his head is flat, and I mentally compare it to the thick-headed marov that stump around the bushes of the jungle. I don’t follow him, but when he notices he’s alone, he turns back and beckons at me.
“Come on, English!”
“Do you ever get sick of the sound of your own voice?” I stay where I am.
“Oh, you don’t want to defend your theory?”
I follow him so he’ll keep his voice down, and we approach an ogwe tree. He reaches out a palm, laying it flat against the gray striped skin of the trunk. He closes his eyes and inhales deeply through his nose, lifting his chin for dramatic effect. I roll my eyes.
“See?” he says. “Nothing.”
“You can’t prove that empirically,” I say. “I have no way of knowing what you do or do not smell.”
“You smell something?”
I inhale deeply. I don’t need to close my eyes: there it is again, the powerful, crosshatched smell of the ogwe.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s strong.”