Natural Selection (3 page)

She didn’t say anything for a second, just lay there a couple of inches away from me, breathing. “I’ll think about it,” she said finally. “Not everybody’s as confident as you, you know.”

It was a weird, backhanded compliment—a cross between flattery and accusation—and I didn’t know what to say.
Thanks
? Or maybe:
I’m sorry. I’m sorry you don’t see yourself as the girl I see, a girl who deserves someone way better than Zach Montgomery.

“I’m gonna go,” Morgan whispered. “Before they catch me.”

She slithered out of my tent, leaving me lying there on my side, facing the empty space where she had been a moment before.

The trail to the temple is steep but smooth, with rounded rocks marking the edge. It’s old and well maintained, reminding me that the Imria of Isi Na have been walking this ritual path for millennia. Tiny lights mark the edges of the trail. They’re attached to slender stalks planted in the ground about every ten feet, making it look as if Christmas lights have been strung up the mountainside.

Christmas. It’s jarring to think about that human holiday here, so far away from their God, their religions. I take a deep breath of night air and smell the spicy scent of the conifer trees around us, mingled with the fragrance of night-blooming
inda
. Isi Na is famous for
inda
perfume; Ama even brings it back to Earth with her in a little glass bottle, and every time I smell it I think of this place.

Nasha walks a few feet ahead of me. She stops as the trail makes a sharp right turn and says, “Look.” She points to the left, where the shoulders of the mountain part to reveal a distant view of the ocean. Something sparkles down there. It must be the lights of the nearest floating city, Sakai’uru. Above us, the stars glitter like a city in the sky. The pattern of them sometimes still surprises me. I can’t see the Big Dipper here, or Orion’s Belt. I’m in a totally different part of the universe, and all of a sudden I miss Earth with a deep, startling ache.

“Are you all right?” Nasha asks, taking a step toward me.

I guess it showed on my face. Ama says I have to be careful about letting my feelings show so much, at least back on Earth, where I’m supposed to be keeping a lot of secrets. “I just miss Earth,” I tell her.

She doesn’t respond, and I wonder what she’s thinking. Does she even believe me? Or does she think I’m saying it to show how special I am?
Earthsider.
I’m a little disappointed by her silence. I guess I hoped Nasha would be different tonight. That she would be friendlier.

We continue up the trail. In the distance the moon rises. It’s a little bigger than Earth’s moon and sheds a bit more light. Soon the mountainside will turn silver. About two-thirds of the way up we come to an overlook that gives us another view of the ocean. Up here the wind is cool and the air is thin, and I pull my hood over my head as Nasha walks toward a stone altar on one side of the overlook.

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

I join her at the altar. Three bowls, a pitcher, and two cups have been placed on top. Eres Tilhar, my teacher, told me about this. Three bowls to represent the origins of our people. One contains
buru
, hard red berries that look like cherries but taste more like olives. This is the fruit that sustained us on the mountainsides. One bowl of
kubansurra
, dried, salted fish that tastes kind of foul but represents the richness of the sea. Finally, slices of
nindaba
, flatbread made from coarsely ground grain, to symbolize our discovery of agriculture. It tastes a lot better if you have oil to dip it in or something sweet to spread on it, but we have to eat it plain. The pitcher contains
kurun
, a clear, sour drink that’s kind of like watered down white wine.

Nasha pours me a cup of
kurun
and holds it out to me. “
Sude
,” she says.
A blessing.

In the moonlight I see the expression on her face and I realize she’s not being unfriendly. She’s being serious. Her eyes are steady and direct, her face sober. I feel chastened, and I raise my cup to her before we each take our first ritual sips. “
Sude
,” I say. I’m supposed to be thinking about the fruit that made this
kurun
, but instead I think about how
kibila
is still in many ways foreign to me. Even though I’ve known about it my whole life, it’s always been a distant idea to me, probably because I had nobody to talk to about it on Earth except Ama. Sure, I went to the Imrian equivalent of elementary school here, but little kids don’t care about
kibila
. It’s not until the two or three years before
kibila’sa
that it becomes a real, serious thing.

One year before
kibila’sa
—when you turn fourteen—you begin studying with a special teacher who guides you into a deeper understanding of
susum’urda
and also advises you on choosing your name. Not every Imrian chooses a new name at every
kibila
. Ada has kept the same name for his last three
kibilas
, and Aba for his last two. For your first
kibila
, though, it’s customary to choose a new name. Many Imria think of your
kibila’sa
name as your true name, even if you choose a different one later.

“It’s not simply what people will call you,” my friend Uli told me. I’d been tossing off various name possibilities with her, and she clearly didn’t think I was taking this seriously enough. “It’s who you’ll be. Your new name will change you.”

“Who do you think I’m going to become?” I asked, puzzled.

“I don’t know,” she said solemnly.

I wondered if she was worried about the two of us. “We’ll still be friends,” I said.

Uli smiled. “We’re
hilima
.”

Hilima
is an Imrian word that doesn’t translate directly into English. It means something like
friends who kiss
, and it’s much less serious than the human—or American—concept of a girlfriend or boyfriend. Imrians tend to have many
hilima
when they’re young, especially before their first
kibila
, because it only involves kissing and maybe a little fooling around. There’s kind of a big taboo against having sex before
kibila’sa
because it’s believed that if you haven’t yet chosen your identity, you can’t possibly share it completely with another person.

“Yes,” I agreed. “We’re
hilima
. That won’t change, and if it does, it’s all right.”

“Of course,” Uli said. “But you’ll be different.”

Nasha startles me out of the memory by handing me the bowl of
buru
. “Here,” she says.

“Thanks.” I take the bowl from her and eat the berries. They taste better than I expected, but when she hands me the fish, it tastes worse. The bread evens everything out, and as I chew, I actually do think about my ancestors: the Imrians who built the floating cities on the ocean, who built giant ships that could fly, that eventually brought my parents to Earth, where I was born.

“We can sit here for a while, or I think there’s a resting spot up the mountain where we can sleep for a few hours,” Nasha says.

I’m not sleepy at all, so I say, “Let’s sit here for a while. We have time.”

“All right.” She pushes her pack over and sits on the ground, leaning against the altar. I sit down a few feet away, my back against the mountainside. “Do you mind if I ask you something?” Nasha asks.

“No.” I’m curious about what she wants to know.

“What’s it like on Earth?”

Other Imrians ask me this all the time, but Nasha never has. “It looks different,” I say. “There are oceans and mountains like here, but there are also big flat regions where nothing grows. There are cities and small towns, but they’re only built on land. People drive everywhere in things called cars.” I spend some time explaining transportation to her, because on Kurra nobody drives; we all walk or take what humans would call cable cars, although our cable cars don’t look like the ones on Earth.

“What about the people?” she asks. “What are humans like?”

Imrians really only want to know about one thing: how humans deal with not being able to sense others’ emotions through touch. “Sometimes they’re defensive,” I say, “because they don’t always know where they stand with other people.”

“That must be so weird,” she says.

“Well, they’re not always defensive. Some humans are really open.” I think about Morgan. Before she found out I liked her, she never hid anything from me. I haven’t thought about her in a long time, and it brings back a twinge of sadness.

“That’s not what I mean,” Nasha says. “I mean it must be sad not to be able to do
susum’urda
.”

I’m a little irritated by the pity in Nasha’s voice. “They don’t have any other choice. It doesn’t feel like missing out to them. Besides, we’re not doing
susum’urda
tonight either. We act just like humans during
kibila.
”

“You think so?” Nasha sounds doubtful. “I’ve always thought of
kibila
as a chance to recognize how important
susum’urda
is to us. By giving it up during
kibila
, we appreciate it more afterward. We appreciate who we are as Imrians.”

Her interpretation of
kibila
startles me. I’ve been thinking about tonight so differently, as if it were a chance to be human—or, at least, to play at being human. Maybe I’ve been looking forward to it because I miss Earth, and I miss my human friends at Hunter Glen even if they never knew who I truly was.

In one dizzying instant, my perspective shifts completely. I’ve had human blinders on the whole time I’ve been back on Kurra. It’s as if Nasha reached over and took them off, and for the first time in a long time, I feel Imrian. Without
susum’urda
, it’s not that I become human—it’s that I’ve shut off everyone else’s emotions, and I have to sit here with my own. This is a specifically Imrian experience: deliberately turning inward after knowing what it’s like to be connected to so many others.

“It feels strange, not doing
susum’urda
,” Nasha continues, not noticing how still I’ve become. “It’s like I’m walking around with my eyes closed, and I keep wondering if I’m going to bump into something. Is that what it was like for you on Earth? And how did you feel being surrounded by people who couldn’t experience your feelings?”

I’ve never been asked this question before. I realize it’s because I’ve never had to tell someone how I felt about my time on Earth—not in words. Ama knows, and Aba and Ada, but they know through
susum’urda
. They
know
.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Nasha says when I don’t answer her.

The truth is, I don’t know how to explain it. Dozens of memories and emotions rise up inside me all at once, tangled and messy, and I feel as if I’m struggling against myself. With Nasha looking at me like that—as if she feels sorry for me—I can’t find the words.

“Maybe we should keep going,” she says, and she stands up and offers me her hand.

I look up at her. “We’re not supposed—”

“I’m focused on myself,” she says. “Aren’t you? I won’t sense anything.”

I take her hand. Her skin is cool and dry, her grip firm as she tugs me up to my feet. There’s no mental connection between us; only the pressure of her hand. Without another word she picks up her pack and slings it over her shoulder. We head back to the trail.

On Saturday, Ms. Lucas made us count off into three different groups of four. We were given cameras that printed out small photos, and we were supposed to take pictures of particular rocks and leaves in the forest and classify them on a chart. I wound up with Austin Weaver, Jessica Fowler, and Zach Montgomery.

Zach knew I didn’t like him, but when we discovered we were in the same group, he waggled his eyebrows at me as if to say,
I know Morgan told you what we did.
I gave him a cool look, and he grinned back. He was cute enough for a boy. Not too bad of a haircut, clear blue eyes. He was also full of himself, and I didn’t understand why Morgan couldn’t see that.

All morning, as Austin, Jessica, and I scouted for samples and took photos, Zach made snarky comments. As we flipped through our field guides to figure out whether we’d found the right rock or leaf, it got worse. Austin was a nice boy, kind of nerdy, and he let Zach walk all over him. Jessica’s face got this pinched look on it as Zach started to derail our project, but she didn’t say anything. Finally, as Zach grabbed one of the field guides out of Austin’s hands and waved it around as if he were in a game of keep-away, I said, “Zach, stop being such a jerk. Give that back to him.” Jessica smirked.

Zach’s eyes narrowed on me, and he said, “I don’t take orders from jealous dykes.”

I stared at him as my heart accelerated. I saw Jessica and Austin out of the corner of my eye, looking confused. “What did you call me?” I said in a low voice.

He leaned closer to me, all bully. “Josh told me about you, and I can tell you’re into Morgan. But she’s into
me
, not you, because she’s not some kind of pervert.”

I stood up. My legs were shaking. I wanted to say something back, something mean, but I was tongue-tied. So I left, stalking away from Zach and our two witnesses, Jessica and Austin, whose mouths were open in shock. I heard someone calling after me—an adult, I don’t know who—but I didn’t listen. I kept going, hiking up the trail away from the group, my stomach turning somersaults inside me and my eyes burning.

It was all over now. The word would be out in minutes, and then Morgan would know, and she would never look at me again.

*     *     *

Ms. Lucas found me in a clearing off the trail. I was sitting on a rock, my head in my hands, thinking about the consequences of Zach’s actions. I was sweaty from the hike and from the knowledge that things were never going to be the same. Maybe it was a good thing I was leaving the planet in two weeks.

“You can’t run off like that,” Ms. Lucas said.