He shuddered.
“But they wouldn’t keep you as a host. Whether they found the information or not, you would be… discarded.” The word was hard to say. The idea sickened me. Odd—it was usually the human things that made me sick. But I’d never looked at the situation from the body’s perspective before; no other planet had forced me to. A body that didn’t function right was quickly and painlessly disposed of because it was as useless as a car that could not run. What was the point of keeping it around? There were conditions of the mind, too, that made a body unusable: dangerous mental addictions, malevolent yearnings, things that could not be healed and made the body unsafe to others. Or, of course, a mind with a will too strong to be erased. An anomaly localized on this planet.
I had never seen the ugliness of treating an unconquerable spirit as a defect as clearly as I did now, looking into Ian’s eyes.
“And if they caught you?” he asked.
“If they realized who I was… if anyone is still looking for me…” I thought of my Seeker and shuddered as he had. “They would take me out and put me in another host. Someone young, tractable. They would hope that I would be able to be myself again. Maybe they would ship me off-planet—get me away from the bad influences.”
“Would you be yourself again?”
I met his gaze. “I am myself. I haven’t lost myself to Melanie. I would feel the same as I do now, even as a Bear or a Flower.”
“They wouldn’t discard you?”
“Not a soul. We have no capital punishment for our kind. Or any punishment, really. Whatever they did, it would be to save me. I used to think there was no need for any other way, but now I have myself as proof against that theory. It would probably be right to discard me. I’m a traitor, aren’t I?”
Ian pursed his lips. “More of an expatriate, I’d say. You haven’t turned on them; you’ve just left their society.”
We were quiet again. I wanted to believe what he said was true. I considered the word expatriate, trying to convince myself that I was nothing worse.
Ian exhaled loudly enough to make me jump. “When Doc sobers up, we’ll get him to take a look at your face.” He reached over and put his hand under my chin; this time I didn’t flinch. He turned my head to the side so he could examine the wound.
“It’s not important. I’m sure it looks worse than it is.”
“I hope so—it looks awful.” He sighed and then stretched. “I suppose we’ve hidden long enough that Kyle’s clean and unconscious. Want some help with the dishes?”
Ian wouldn’t let me wash the dishes in the stream the way I usually did. He insisted that we go into the black bathing room, where I would be invisible. I scrubbed dishes in the shallow end of the dark pool, while he cleaned off the filth left behind by his mystery labors. Then he helped me with the last of the dirty bowls.
When we were done, he escorted me back to the kitchen, which was starting to fill up with the lunch crowd. More perishables were on the menu: soft white bread slices, slabs of sharp cheddar cheese, circles of lush pink bologna. People were scarfing down the delicacies with abandon, though the despair was still perceptible in the slump of their shoulders, in the absence of smiles or laughter.
Jamie was waiting for me at our usual counter. Two double stacks of sandwiches sat in front of him, but he wasn’t eating. His arms were folded as he waited for me. Ian eyed his expression curiously but left to get his own food without asking.
I rolled my eyes at Jamie’s stubbornness and took a bite. Jamie dug in as soon as I was chewing. Ian was back quickly, and we all ate in silence. The food tasted so good it was hard to imagine a reason for conversation—or anything else that would empty our mouths.
I stopped at two, but Jamie and Ian ate until they were groaning in pain. Ian looked as though he was about to collapse. His eyes struggled to stay open.
“Get back to school, kid,” he said to Jamie.
Jamie appraised him. “Maybe I should take over.…”
“Go to school,” I told him quickly. I wanted Jamie a safe distance from me today.
“I’ll see you later, okay? Don’t worry about… about anything.”
“Sure.” A one-word lie wasn’t quite so obvious. Or maybe I was just being sarcastic again.
Once Jamie was gone, I turned on the somnolent Ian. “Go get some rest. I’ll be fine—I’ll stay someplace inconspicuous. Middle of a cornfield or something.”
“Where did you sleep last night?” he asked, his eyes surprisingly sharp under his half-closed lids.
“Why?”
“I can sleep there now, and you can be inconspicuous beside me.”
We were just murmuring, barely over a whisper now. No one paid us any attention.
“You can’t watch me every second.”
“Wanna bet?”