“It is,” I agree. I’m watching a row of bright red flowers. Their stamens keep extending, reaching up several feet into the air with movements so fluid they could be underwater, before slithering back down into the conical shape of their petals. “It’s so different from the rest of the Zoo in here.”
“Seeing the sky helps,” Jaquot says. “And, you know, having good company.” He directs this to Yaya, the rest of us seemingly invisible. I take a bite of food to hide my smile, remembering how in the Greenhouse he always sat in the back row. Now I know why—that’s where Yaya sits.
“What’s with the face?” Jaquot says, jutting his chin at me with a smile.
“Good company does help,” I say. Then I turn to Yaya. “Matter of fact, Yaya, Jaquot was just telling me how much better our group is because of you.”
“What?” Yaya draws her attention back from observing the Atrium, squinting like maybe she missed a punch line. Under the platform, Jaquot’s feet are searching for my shin to kick. I pull my ankles in closer to my seat.
“A small intern pool could be tricky,” I say, trying to sound casual. “Only five? The wrong fifth could have made us all look like idiots. I mean, we all know Jaquot isn’t the sharpest scalpel in the set, so he was really happy to hear you were placed in the Mammalian Compound.”
Jaquot glares at me until he sees that Yaya has turned her wide dark eyes on him; then his expression immediately goes smooth as glass.
“I think he’s plenty sharp,” she says, and then dips her head to her tray of food, like she possesses only a measured volume of flirtation and is rationing the rest. Still, it was enough for Jaquot and he shoots me a grin that tells me I’m absolved. I can’t help it—I grin too.
“Why did they build the labs like this to begin with?” Alma says. “Why wouldn’t they make everything with a transparent ceiling? It’s so much better in here.”
“Looks like the whitecoats like it, too,” says Rondo, nodding in the direction of a platform of them, who are laughing. The serious silence that has seemed the norm in the rest of the Zoo is like a broken spell in the Atrium: hushed voices and solemnity are abandoned as whitecoats gather around the surfaces of eating platforms, stuffing food in their mouths and talking.
“Except them.”
I almost don’t understand Jaquot, who continues to speak with his mouth full. But he points with his eyes at a group of whitecoats sitting at a secluded platform toward the back of the Atrium. It’s almost as if they have a bubble forming an invisible atmosphere around them, deflecting the relaxed energy of the rest of the dome. Their food sits nearly untouched in front of them, their faces long and grave as they converse.
“At least two of them are on the Council,” Rondo says. He doesn’t look at them, instead directing his gaze upward as if studying the branches of the central ogwe. Rondo has a way of seeing everything at once, missing nothing. I start to ask him how he knows they’re on the Council when even I have never been to their dome, but I realize I already know. Hacking, I think. Of course. The identity of councilmembers isn’t exactly a secret, but the fact that Rondo knows them by sight tells me he’s been doing more snooping than he’s admitted.
I observe the councilmembers more closely: two women and two men, their gold Council pins glinting from their lapels, and one person whose face I can’t see until someone leans forward to whisper across the table, revealing him. His face stands out like a bone protruding from soil: pale and unpleasant looking, with sharp edges to his cheekbones that remind me of an insect’s mandibles. He’s leaned forward in his chair, speaking with squinted eyes to the rest of the table.
“That’s Dr. Albatur,” I say. “The pale one. The Council Head.”
“That’s him? We saw him in the Beak that day,” Jaquot says. I hear the hitch in his voice as he realizes what he’s broached. He pilots right around it, and I cast him a look of gratitude. “That day you and your dad came to visit.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” Alma says.
“Oh . . . well, it was no big deal,” I say. I pretend to focus on scooping waji onto bread and tell them about my encounter with Albatur outside the Beak that day with my father, the strange red hood he has to wear. I leave out everything else.
“He seems to be okay indoors,” Alma says, eyeing him. “Did he happen to say what his condition is called? I wonder if it’s only direct sunlight that’s a problem for his skin.”
“Could be there’s something protective in the dome’s roof,” Yaya says, pointing upward. “To block the rays and keep him safe while he’s inside.”
“What a wretched life,” Jaquot says. “To be stuck on a planet that your body hates.”
I think back to the day I met Dr. Albatur, his disdain for Faloiv. It’s more than his body that hates our planet, I think. He hates it too, no matter what the shopkeeper thinks.
“What did Draco say on the Worm that day?” I muse. But Rondo only shrugs, not yet following my train of thought. “Didn’t he say Dr. Albatur plans to change things?”
I almost mention that it had something to do with the Faloii, but I close my lips around this part of the thought. I want to think about it a little longer myself.
“I guarantee he has whitecoats working on projects that can help cure him,” Alma says. “There has to be an organism here that we can learn something from for that. I wonder if it’s genetic? I’d hate to live on this planet if I were him.”
“I’d hate to be sitting at that table. They all look miserable,” Jaquot says, and Yaya laughs. They share a small smile. Yaya has always made herself a secret, but I’ve been hanging out with Jaquot at the Greenhouse since I was six—it still baffles me that I missed this crush of his. A key part of what we do in N’Terra is observation, but somehow I missed this. What else have I overlooked?
“They need to eat instead of just sitting there—that would cheer them up.” Alma interrupts my thoughts, turning her gaze from the whitecoats to me. “Are you going to try the zunile, O?”
The brown chunks are the only thing that remain untouched on my plate. They’re the source of the tantalizing smell hanging in the room.
“I mean . . .” I raise my eyebrow at the small pile. “Do I want to?”
“It’s actually pretty good,” Jaquot says. He puts a piece in his mouth, the massive quantities of food he heaped almost entirely consumed. “Really chewy—I can’t compare it to anything. It must be a new plant the finders discovered on one of their trips. Don’t be a coward, O. You’re supposed to be our future nutritionist.”
“Okay, okay, fine.” I pick up one of the brown chunks between thumb and forefinger and eye it. It looks fibrous and squishy. The odor is interesting. I open my mouth and bring my hand up to drop the zunile in, when another hand appears in front of me and fastens its iron grip around my wrist.
CHAPTER 10
I stare blankly at the hand for a half second, but by the time I realize it’s my mother’s, she’s already released her grip.