Pills and Starships (30 page)

Sam was in charge of the refugees until the relocation was finished, because they knew him and they had spent the storm together so there was a level of trust. I’d help Sam out, for now. Our job was just to take direction from Xing and move the refugees.

And so we left again, even though it was late. The sun was already going down so we were carrying flashlights or wearing headlamps, and we were all tired. The site that we were moving to, Xing told me, was just four miles away, not up the mountain, luckily, but kind of around its base to a small canyon. It was a place the rebels already used for certain purposes, where the turtles had been moved to and guarded in the storm, for instance, because it was too hard to move them into the volcano. There were already some structures there, so we weren’t completely breaking new ground, she told me. We weren’t going to start all the way at zero.

I found myself walking beside LaTessa for a while, or trudging wearily more than walking, I should say (and we were the lucky ones because we weren’t carrying heavy equipment, just some packs on our backs that had been handed out to us—heavy enough for a recovering wuss like me). She’d been given some clothes and boots and she had washed most of the mud off her face; her hair was tied back with a piece of twine, though it was so dirty you couldn’t see the usual light-golden sheen.

It was the first time we’d been near each other since she showed up at the camp. It was hella awkward and I didn’t have a clue what to say. Above us the sky had reached that deep indigo blue it can get when twilight is intense, and the stars were beginning to come out. On both sides of the trail there were trees, and ahead of us marched the other refugees, with Sam at the front of the group. We were close to the end of everyone from the camp; behind us there were only some slow-moving guys carrying a hurt person on a stretcher.

“So,” said LaT. finally, and cleared her throat. Her voice, I have to say, sounded lower and rougher, like the whole time in the healing sessions she’d been using some kind of falsetto. “Breaking the ice here. Things have changed. I’m not working for corps anymore. So you don’t have to pretend to listen to me anymore.”

“Man. It’s weird to hear you talk normally,” I said.

She shrugged.

“I guess you got used to being that person?” I asked.

“What I got used to was eating three squares a day.” She cleared her throat again and this time she actually spat. Not at me, just on the ground beside her. It was gross and all that, but coming from a former Aryan Barbie, it was okay with me. “For that I would have done way worse than talk horseshit and dress up like a vestal virgin. I
have
done worse. You better believe it.”

“Sam said you had a hard life before you got that job.”

“I had the life most people have,” she said, annoyed. “Hunger and being sick and weak and doing whatever you gotta do to get through the day with all your digits intact.”

“You didn’t live in the First?”

“First, shee-yit,” said LaTessa. “The First isn’t a
place
, kid. It’s just a way of living when you have money. The First is just wealth.”

“But I mean, you didn’t live in one of the complexes.”

“You got that right.”

“Where—where did you live?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere. The streets, the tent cities, the ghettoes. I had what most people have, which is nothing. The life you knew is barely real, kid. You lived on a stage set. Trust me: you didn’t know the world one bit. Picture a doll’s house, painted pastel pink, in the corner of a stinking toxic dump the size of the world. Well, you and your brother lived in that dollhouse. And the windows and doors were sealed shut.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came out.

“And that,” she said sharply, “is what your parents knew that you didn’t, and why they wanted to die.”

I felt defensive for a second, but the feeling faded quickly. She might have been right, I knew, but it pissed me off that she brought up my parents. She who, until the Six came along, had happily, falsely been in the business of killing them.

“I get it,” I said tightly.

“You should consider maybe they were right. Because pretty soon now the last dollhouse is going to fall.” She sounded angrier by the minute.

“I got it, LaTessa,” I snapped. “Okay? You don’t have to yell at me.”

We walked in silence.

“Sorry,” she said after a while.

“It’s okay,” I said back. But I pushed the words out like they were bags of rocks.

“Look, I know it’s not your fault. Not any of ours.”

“Yeah. Well. Thanks, I guess.”

“And after all,” she said, and switched to her honeyed voice, “why worry?
The world is just a sunset-time glorious nowness of being.”

We could have laughed.

But we couldn’t.

We got to the new camp in pitch darkness.

We were so beaten into exhaustion by then, all we did was help set up the tents. We didn’t look around, we didn’t get a feel for where we were; we just did what we were told in a state of fatigue, staked in the tents and then raised them, with help from Xing. Sam and I were sharing one. We drank some water from the canteens being passed around and each ate a food bar they gave out, these protein bars made of who knows what—tasteless except for the cinnamon they flavored them with. They weren’t wrapped in fiber like I’m used to: Xing pulled them out of a homemade-looking sack. Inside it the bars were in a big pile, crumbling and smelling of something like old fruit. I’m going to have to get used to eating food that’s not safe from germs.

I’m going to have to get used to not being safe myself.

After we ate the tasteless bars we pulled our sleeping bags up over our shoulders, burrowed in, and fell right asleep.

The color of the bruise around his eye had changed—that was the first thing I noticed when Sam shook me awake in the morning. It was yellowish now, where it had been purple and red before.

I also noticed he needed to brush his teeth. And I definitely needed to brush mine.

But that was a small relief, actually, because it meant life had something regular about it again. Even if that one regular aspect had to be morning breath.

I sat up in my sleeping bag and rubbed my eyes and saw he had the door flap folded back and outside there were legs walking past, in both directions, and part of another tent the same dull color as our own, and everywhere low bushes with shiny, big leaves. I could hear the sounds of people talking and laughing.

They seemed to feel safer here.

“Come on,” Sam said. “It’s late, I tried to let you sleep in but then I got impatient.”

It reminded me of Wintermas morning when we were little—how he wouldn’t let me sleep because he was too excited about what his gift might be. So I figured he’d been up for a while and asked him where I could wash my face and rinse my mouth out. Was there water? A bucket or anything?

He said there was actually a hose, hooked up to a spigot—there was a whole pipe system made out of pieces of bamboo. He pointed out the tent opening.

“I’ll go with you,” he said, and we wriggled out of the tent together, still in our clothes from the day before. We found a jug of minty water there and a cup to use, which we had to rinse out afterward, and even a pile of clean washcloths. I was amazed and glad.

When I felt less mealy, my face wet and fresh from the cold water, I waited for Sam to finish and glanced around.

The tents were clustered in a disorganized way, and there were people rushing everywhere, already hard at work. I couldn’t see much of the new camp itself, only the tents and the green trees around us, but I heard something: water rushing. There had to be a stream nearby.

To our right rose the mountain, so close you couldn’t see up to anywhere near the peak—just the side rising away, with more trees on it and a couple of those gray tongues of lava above.

“This used to be the husbandry camp,” said Sam. “I just went over a map of it on Xing’s handface, I know all about what they do here. But I haven’t seen the best part yet. Come on!”

He’d figured out directions already; with me following him we wended our way toward the stream. It turned out to be a sparkling, churning brook, not too wide but deep and dark in places, with lots of miniature waterfalls where clear water was rushing between stones and lava outcrops. There was a trail beside it and we walked along it and up through some trees, where we emerged to a flatter place with fences.

The canyon spread out a little more into a valley, though the flank of the mountain was still close to us on our right. There were the turtles, in a sandy enclosure, and beyond them some livestock—goats and sheep and some chickens.

“Let’s go this way,” said Sam.

We moved between the rails of the fences to a tented area. It wasn’t small, regular tents but an overhead awning kind of thing that stretched back to the mountainside.

There were more enclosures there, and ponds and food stations that looked more or less permanent—they definitely hadn’t been thrown up overnight.

“There,” said Sam, and pointed.

And in the enclosure nearest us I saw a huge lizard the size of an alligator, and then another one, curled up asleep. I wasn’t sure it was an alligator, its head wasn’t quite right for that, I thought, but I had no idea what it was.

“Komodo dragon,” explained Sam. “Supposed to be extinct, like the turtles. They’re from Malaysia or Indonesia—I’m not sure. One of the chaos centers.”

“A dragon,” I said, marveling. “I didn’t know those were
ever
real. Does it breathe fire?”

“It’s not that kind of dragon. And here, follow me.”

We walked to the next enclosure, and there were big white birds with long skinny legs, black faces, and caps on the tops of their heads where the feathers were bright red. Sam’s face lit up when he saw them.

“Look,” and he pointed to a sign on the enclosure, which was actually a clipboard with some markings on it.
Whooping Cranes
, it said at the top.

“That’s cool,” I said uncertainly.

“These are amazing! Once they were almost gone! There were like ten of them in the world, or something. And they brought them back! Of course, they can’t live here forever. They need to fly. One day the dream is to let them back into the wild. When . . . when the wild is there again.”

I looked at the great white birds. They were a puzzle—graceful and kind of absurd at once, skinny necks and heads on top of a big swell of white body.

“These enclosures go on,” he said. “They go on and on, around the base of the mountain. And each of them has a tunnel network, with inside habitat underneath in case of eruption and lava flow. Manmade, not lava tubes.”

“You’re kidding.” The scale of it was starting to dawn on me—what it must take to feed these creatures and keep them alive. To have brought them here in the first place. The skill and dedication of the rebels.

Just then Keahi came out of one of the enclosures, carrying a bucket of what looked like grain. He gave me a slow smile. “Let me show you guys.” He put the bucket down to take me by one arm. The arm, right then, felt like the center of my body. “Look at these,” he said, and he led me past a couple of other bird areas to a muddy enclosure with a big pool of water in it. There we saw these funny animals, large and dark and leathery and covered in mud, with soft square snouts and short, squat legs. “Pygmy hippos.”

The three of us walked along for a while, looking at those animals. There were plenty of things I’d never heard of: spider monkeys that were really smart—their enclosure was full of trees—and anteaters and hairy piglike creatures called peccaries and sections of small cages that had snakes and mice and even bugs and caterpillars in them.
American Burying Beetle
, said one label, and there were these huge black-and-red beetles in there, really dramatic looking.

“We should go back,” said Sam, after a while, and Keahi squeezed my arm almost imperceptibly.

I peered down and noticed my new wristface was blinking—a blue light, which wasn’t an emergency-type alarm but just told us it was time for a meeting.

“This way,” said Keahi, “it’s faster along the stream.”