“One hundred and twelve,” she says without hesitation.
“Good,” the whitecoat says, already melting back out into the corridor. “Come with me. It’s your allotted time to eat. I’ll be taking you to the Atrium.”
“Yes, sir,” she says, and it seems she has now established herself as the leader of our little class. I make a mental note to find a way to distinguish myself later.
We troop out into the hallway where the whitecoat had gone. I don’t see him anywhere. We stand there, alone, and it feels cold compared to the sorting room: the eggs seemed to lend a warmth to the air. Despite the chill, the hallways beckon to me. I’m considering taking a few steps back down the impossibly long entrance corridor, just to peek into some of the previously empty research rooms, when the squat whitecoat reappears. He tells us to follow him, Yaya leading the way under the glaring artificial lights. Out here, away from the warmth of the eggs, I realize how sluggish I am. My energy feels as if it has leaked out of my veins and pooled invisibly on the stark white floor. Alma falls back from the group and walks beside me.
“It feels so weird,” she says in a soft voice. We must speak quietly if we don’t want our words to bounce off the walls.
“What?”
“No windows. I’m used to seeing the sky.”
I look up, expecting to find the transparent ceiling of all the domes in our compounds, including the Greenhouse. But my eyes meet only glaring white lights.
“Yeah,” I agree. “I hadn’t even noticed until now. Maybe that’s why I feel so tired.”
A cluster of whitecoats makes its way toward us, and we stand to the side to give them room as they pass us in the hall. Two women and one man, all with serious looks on their faces, murmur softly to one another. I catch a thread of their conversation as they hurry by.
“They should just build it anyway,” the man says. “Damn the landing agreement.”
“Truly,” his colleague says. “Those people are a threat to our safety.”
“If you can even call them that,” the second woman whispers. “Dr. Albatur’s right—we need a barrier.”
“Did you hear that?” I whisper to Alma.
“Hmm?”
“Ah . . . nothing.”
I dart my eyes around, looking for Rondo, but he’s several paces ahead. The white-clad trio disappears down the hallway. I can only assume they were talking about the Faloii. A barrier? Rondo sees me lagging and drops back to join us.
“I’ve never even seen some of these people before,” he says as another group of whitecoats passes.
“The woman with the freckles used to live in the Newt,” says Alma.
“It’s easy to forget how many of us there are,” I say. “With everybody in different compounds. There’s gotta be hundreds of us.”
“There were already five hundred people on the Vagantur when it landed,” Rondo says. “Over two hundred of them were scientists. And that was over forty years ago.”
The whitecoat is leading us to doors at the end of the corridor. As we approach them, the doors open and two whitecoats enter the hallway. With them comes a scent from what I realize must be the Atrium, its doors still wide open. Inside there are groups of whitecoats sitting and talking at various long platforms. The light is softer, and I know even before walking through the entry that the space ahead has a transparent domed ceiling: the light we see is the sun. I feel like one of the myn that’s been flopping on a bank, gasping for air, finally tossed back into the compound’s stream.
“What’s that smell?” Alma asks.
I ignore her, taking in our surroundings. It’s a dome much smaller than our commune, and smaller than the main dome too. Thirty or so whitecoats sit and stand at various platforms, some at ground level with us and some above on a small hilltop, into which stairs have been dug. Ogwe trees dot the land, most of them average in size, aside from a large one growing near the center, around which a cluster of platforms have been molded from Faloiv’s abundant white clay and in front of which a short string of whitecoats has formed a line. The scientist who escorted us from the egg-sorting room gestures toward the central ogwe.
“You can get your food there. Take your time eating. Someone will come get you when it’s time to return to your duties.”
He removes himself without another word, marching back the way we came. Jaquot is already making a beeline for the central ogwe, leading the way with long urgent paces. I remember now that I’d skipped first meal and my stomach clenches in a gurgling fist.
“Whatever that is, it smells amazing,” says Yaya.
The whitecoats ahead of us in the line pass through with their platters, and I note that the platforms bearing the food are being manned by two youngish men wearing the same headwraps we wear, except theirs are green, matching their leaf-colored skinsuits. The green is nice, and I wonder if the color has a purpose or if it serves only as a demarcation of their duties. It bothers me, for some reason, the idea that wearing green as opposed to white might not have a function other than differentiation. N’Terra has always put those who study in the Zoo on a pedestal—especially since Dr. Albatur was elected—but the scowls on the faces of the men in green makes me wonder if the pedestal is higher than I thought.
“Do we serve ourselves?” Jaquot asks, and one of the greensuited men nods.
We take our platters and pile food onto them: hava slices, strips of zarum, the thick red paste of tangy waji. Jaquot makes a big show of loading his platter into a massive mound. In a basin at the end of the platform are some brown chunks I don’t recognize, flecked with black.
“What’s that?” Yaya asks, pointing.
“Zunile,” one of the greensuits says. The frown that had been etched on either side of his mouth eases a little when he looks at her, taking in her big brown eyes, the lashes that curl so dramatically they almost touch her eyebrows, her locs that reach her shoulder blades. She notices but just nods.
The zunile doesn’t look appetizing, but new food is exciting—it takes a long time to vet whether something is safe for N’Terrans to eat. I add a small mound of it to my platter and follow Jaquot, who has made a direct path to an empty platform close to one of the smaller ogwe trees. Our group sits and eats immediately, speaking only after we’ve taken the edge off our hunger. It’s not until after I’ve taken a few bites that I realize Rondo has chosen the space next to me, and even though his leg is five inches from mine, I imagine I can feel the warmth of it. Alma catches me staring at him and bats her eyelashes exaggeratedly, stopping to laugh into her waji only when I mouth I will kill you.
“This place is brilliant,” Yaya says, looking up and around as she chews.