“Of course. Yes, collection, like sorting, is one thing most whitecoats do not do on a regular basis: that is the role of finders. However, every intern who eventually becomes a whitecoat in this compound must experience that part of the research process at least once. Where we find our specimens in the wild is as important as learning about them in captivity. A firsthand experience with this planet—however limited—outside the compound is beneficial as well.”
“Will we spend an entire week doing collection?” Yaya asks. She looks uncharacteristically uneasy, as do the others. They were eager to get into the labs, I think. Going out into the jungle wasn’t part of that excitement. Besides, they just witnessed a woman get mauled by an animal inside the lab.
My father smiles, and he looks briefly the way I remember him looking years ago, before my grandmother died. Kind. Those eyes end up on my face rather than Yaya’s.
“That is unlikely,” he says. “I expect you will only accompany the collection group for one or two days.”
He’s addressing me with this and I’m not sure why. He looks down at his slate.
“Now,” he says, extending his hand toward the door we entered through originally with my mother. “I have somewhere to be. I will take you to a research room where I will ask you to complete an assignment about safety and procedure for your collection duty. Each of you must complete this before tomorrow.”
“We’re going tomorrow?” Alma says.
My father chuckles.
“Yes, but think of it this way: the sooner you complete collection, the sooner you will move on to observation.”
Alma raises her eyebrow and nods. I can sense her brain cranking, her potential excitement about seeing new specimens weighing against her unease about going out into the jungle.
Back in the scrub room, Jaquot extends his hand to Rondo.
“Here, give me your coat,” he says. He takes the lab coat with my blood on it and stows it behind a jumble of others, shooting me a look. “Nobody will think it was one of ours back here.”
“Thank you,” I say, surprised. “I . . . thanks.”
“No problem,” he says, grinning his lopsided grin. “They see this and the next thing you know the Zoo is too dangerous for greencoats and we’re out of here. I demand my fair shot at getting mauled by a tufali!”
The rest of the group laughs, but I can’t bring myself to even smile. Jaquot is a good guy. Obnoxious at times but good. Behind the buzz in my head, I make a note to cut him a break. Our little group might be better with him in it after all.
My father leads us down the corridor, still deeper into the labs. Out here, the noise in my brain slowly fades away, leaving an ache like an echo in my mind. I barely notice that we’ve reached a research room until a hand on my shoulder stops me and I look up into my father’s eyes.
“Miss English, if you have a moment,” he says, gesturing with his head. I shrug and follow him, not even bothering to look over my shoulder to see my group’s reaction. My father and I walk two doors down to another door, which he opens with his thumb.
Inside, the air is cool, cooler even than our ’wam, and the light is dim; the room feels small and close. When we step fully inside, a sensor picks up our presence and the room brightens. My sluggishness fades as I look around with interest.
We’re in his office. The room has been made smaller with shelves, all of them filled with various objects. Models, charts, statues. My gaze falls on a three-dimensional model of what looks like several overlapping galaxies: orbs of varying colors, some of them glowing.
“Have you seen any of these?” I say, studying it. “In person, I mean.”
“One of them,” my father says, not adding anything else.
Something else catches my eye: a skull, large and yellow-white, with an angled head and long fangs still curving from its open mouth.
“What was that?” I say, nodding at the skull.
“I don’t know,” he says, settling into a seat behind his cluttered desk. “It’s a fossil, collected by our ancestors. A predator, as you probably guessed from the teeth. An apex predator, based on its size.”
I look over my shoulder at him, frowning.
“Apex predator. Like the dirixi?”
I know very little about the dirixi, as no whitecoat has images of it to show us. But it is the only predator on Faloiv that has no predators of its own. Everything else on this planet is either herbivorous with no predators at all, or, if carnivorous or omnivorous, has predators that prey on it as well. The dirixi, from my limited knowledge, is a perfect killing machine. It was the subject of every cautionary tale whitecoats used to discourage us from wandering away from the Greenhouse as kids, but its terror isn’t something you grow out of. We know how big a maigno is—they wander past the Greenhouse in herds sometimes. Anything that can kill that, alone and without the help of a pack, is nothing short of a nightmare.
“Yes,” my father says. “Certainly not as dangerous. The dirixi’s ability to smell blood from great distances makes it, well, a very sophisticated killer.”
I take this in, still looking at the skull, then gaze around his office, its shelves lined with various stones and glass-encased plants. Other cases display objects I have no name for: something that looks like a buzzgun but smaller and shinier. A model of what looks to be some kind of vehicle, squat and green with a long rigid arm extending from its front. There is a single photograph and its scope dizzies me: a jungle of shining metal, the ground and a lake tiny and distant at the feet of the structures. I want to ask my father something, but I know he doesn’t respond well to these kinds of questions. But I’m here, I think, and who knows when I might be again.
“Why do you have all this stuff?” I ask, resting my fingertips on one of the glass cubes.
“As a reminder,” he says.
“Of what?”
“Of my parents, for one. My father helped build the structures you see in that image. He designed them.” He pauses, his eyes on the photograph, staring through a mist visible only to him. “You know, I barely remember his face. But I remember those skyscrapers. I remember that city. He dreamed those buildings, and then made them real.”
“What about your mother?” I ask, returning my gaze to the photograph on his shelf. The gray of his eyes has gone silver with ghosts.
“An astrophysicist. She died on the Origin Planet as well, one of the scientists who mapped the route to Faloiv. She . . .”
He stops, and I note a pang of guilty relief in my stomach. The past has crept from the stars through the cracks around my father’s door and swirls around us. I stare at the metal jungle, thinking about my mother’s father and where his death lands in my father’s memories. I think of Draco, the driver of the Worm, and his complaints about Faloiv, his longing for dead memories. Dr. Albatur’s desires to control this planet, bend it to his will. The concepts of freedom and control and death and life feel blurry.
“They deserved to survive,” he says finally, and my skin prickles, charged with the emotion crackling from his words. “But they did not. We did. And we must continue to do so.”
“We are surviving,” I say. I face him again and meet his eyes, where the ghosts are shrinking as he settles his gaze on me.
“Not on our terms.”