“Maybe after I’m done with it,” she said. “Cortisol kicks off spontaneous combustion. But oxytocin—the social-networking hormone—puts the Dragonscale at ease. Anytime you feel the pleasure of group approval, you increase the Dragonscale’s sense of security and make it less likely to burn you to death later. That I understand. I can’t understand how you could be here in your cabin, while also seeing things that were happening two miles away.”
“But I told you, I didn’t see them. I remember them, and that’s the difference. The Phoenix has a cloud of Dragonscale burning at its core. That Dragonscale contains a crude copy of my thoughts, my feelings, my responses. It’s an outboard brain. Eventually it returned to me, came back to the nest, where it died out, having done its job. The ash fell on me like snow while I was unconscious on the beach, and in the hours that followed, I dreamt everything the bird did and saw. It all came back to me, fragmentary at first, but eventually the entire awful scene.”
Harper weighed this notion in her mind. Ash that could think and flame that lived and a spore that could swap impulses and memories with the human mind. It was, she thought, just exactly the sort of fantastical nonsense that evolution was always going in for. Nature was a grand one for sleight of hand and magic tricks.
When she spoke again, it concerned the Dragonscale not at all. “You need a course of antibiotics. As it happens, I have some. I’ll send Michael over with a bottle of azithromycin. He should be able to slip over during the changing of the watch at dawn. Come on, Mr. Rookwood, let’s have a look at your arm.”
“I take it you won’t be available to bring my medicine yourself?”
She declined to meet his gaze. Instead she gently loosened the sling and unbent his elbow. He grimaced, but she thought it was more from the anticipation of pain than any actual suffering.
“Things are going sour here, John. I’m confined to the infirmary, on house arrest and forbidden to leave Father Storey’s side. I’m only here tonight because Michael drew watch, and Mike isn’t playing by Carol’s rules anymore. Neither is Allie, who is on permanent house arrest in the girls’ dorm. Michael was afraid if he let me go see you, I might not come back. He doesn’t want me driving off without him.” She considered for a moment. “It’s only a matter of time before a couple dozen defectors try to make a run for it. Fill some cars with supplies and light out. Renée has already talked about leaving with Don and the prisoners and a few others.”
“Where would you go?”
“Oh, I don’t know that I’d head out with them, whatever Michael thinks. While there’s still a chance for Father Storey, it wouldn’t be right to abandon him.”
The Fireman did a strange thing then. He glanced past her at the furnace—then leaned in and spoke in a soft voice, as if he didn’t want to be overheard. “I admire a good bit of foolishness more than anyone, Harper, but in this case it won’t do. Your first obligation is to yourself and that baby, not to Tom Storey. He had the biggest heart of any man I ever knew and I’m sure he wouldn’t want you to stay for him. He’s been under for—how long? Six weeks? Seven? After a crushing blow to the head? At the age of seventy? He’s gone. He’s not coming back.”
“Men have recovered from worse,” she said, although as she spoke, Harper found herself wondering if she even still knew the difference between a diagnosis and a denial. “Besides. John. I’m close. Nine weeks? Eight? I need somewhere to have this baby. The infirmary is a good place. I don’t know if I can find better. Don could deliver the child. He’s reeled in plenty of fish—I’m sure he can manage one more. Right now, so close to my due date, I wouldn’t leave camp unless there was no other choice.” She did not mention that if Father Storey died, she really would have no other choice. She would run with the baby or be sent into exile without it. But she did not want to distress John by telling him about Carol’s threats, not now. John was sick; he was beat up and feverish and his lungs were full of filthy damp. Her job was to give sympathy and care, not elicit it.
She got up, went through some drawers beneath what had once been a worktable, and came back with some scissors. Harper snipped the filthy tape away from his wrist. It was still swollen and grotesquely discolored but it was only a little stiff when she asked him to rotate it, and she decided it didn’t need to be re-bound.
“I think we can be done with the sling as well. But keep the brace on your elbow until you can bend the arm without sharp pain. And try to rest it. Until you’ve had a little more time to heal, you better limit yourself to intellectual masturbation only. We don’t want to put any undue strain on this wrist.”
For once he had nothing to say.
She sat back and said, “You know, Michael won’t leave camp without Allie. And I’m sure Allie won’t run without Nick. It scares the shit out of me to imagine them ditching camp and taking their chances out in the wild. What about you? They’d be safe if they went with you. You could look after them: Allie and Nick.”
His gaze shifted briefly to the furnace behind her, then dropped. “And do you really think I’m in any condition to go anywhere?”
“Maybe not now. But we’ll make you better. I’ll make you better.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There isn’t even a plan yet. Just a lot of loose talk.”
Harper cast a slow and uneasy glance at the open furnace herself. She saw no one looking back at her from the flames: not a mystery woman and not Sirius Black. She thought of how John had glanced at the fire before leaning close to speak in a soft voice, as if he did not want to be overheard. Something else occurred to her, almost randomly, something he had said about the Phoenix: It’s an outboard brain. The thought raised a chill on the nape of her neck.
“No,” she said. “But we better get working on one. I think we should try to meet here. All of us. Even the prisoners, if it can be managed. We don’t need to work out just how we’re going to leave, but also where we’re going to go and how we intend to survive.” She steeled herself and added, gently, “You say Father Storey wouldn’t want me to risk my life or the baby’s life by staying. I say Sarah wouldn’t want you to risk your life by staying.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “It wouldn’t be so bad: to be buried here. Why not? In some ways I feel like this is where my real life started. Here in Camp Wyndham, where I met Sarah, and where we all returned after we came down with Dragonscale. There would be a certain narrative elegance in my life ending here as well.”
“Fuck narrative elegance. How did you all wind up deciding to hide out here?”
“Nowhere else to go. That simple, really.”
“You can do better than that,” Harper said.
“If you insist,” he told her.
13
“We were all marked. The first lines appeared on Nick’s arm and back. Three days later we looked like we had all gone to the same tattoo parlor in hell. Except for Sarah. In the space of seventy-two hours, Sarah had to face the idea of losing her son, her daughter, her sister, her father, and her boyfriend. You’d expect a person to quit functioning.
“But she didn’t quit. Her children still needed her, and as long as they could feel and think and be comforted, she was set on being whatever they wanted her to be. Besides, for a couple of weeks she assumed she had the infection, too, and just wasn’t symptomatic. I think when she finally realized she didn’t have it, she was more upset and shocked than she would’ve been if she did. How could every one of us have it except her? She got mad at me a couple times, as if it were my fault she wasn’t crawling with Dragonscale. Why all of you and not me? That’s what she kept asking.”
“She was in the pool,” Harper murmured.