“I don’t know about any records,” Yaya says. “But of course they’re not going to keep a record of what they don’t want people to know.”
“Well, exactly,” I say, confused by her lack of confusion. “They’re keeping it a secret. Why would they pretend that my grandfather died on the Origin Planet when he actually died on Faloiv?”
“Oh, your grandfather was one of them?” she says, looking sorry but sounding like a robot. “That’s too bad. I’m sorry, but at least you know he didn’t just disappear.”
He did just disappear: he’s not on a casualty list. I look at Jaquot, my mouth hanging open, to see if he’s anywhere as unbothered as Yaya. But he’s lost too: his eyes dart from me to Yaya, searching for a side to take. I know if it comes down to it, he’ll take hers.
“What are you talking about?” Alma demands. Our slates lie forgotten on the platform.
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Yaya shrugs, her eyes wide. “The Faloii killed them all.”
I gawk at her, my mouth still open, trying to make sense of what she’s saying.
“How—how do you know?” I manage to get out.
“Well, I didn’t lose any grandparents. But my grandmother always told me about her old friend from the Vagantur, Dr. LaQuinta Farrow, who never made it to N’Terra. I remember hearing that name all the time growing up: Dr. LaQuinta Farrow. Dr. LaQuinta Farrow. And, well, my grandmother died last year—she was very old; don’t feel bad—and in the last few months she talked a lot about things none of us really understood. And she started talking about Dr. LaQuinta Farrow again, and how it was so sad that she never got to see N’Terra, all because of the Faloii. She called them murderers.”
It’s an interesting theory, but I don’t like it.
“How did you know about the missing one hundred? Or—whatever—the missing one hundred and two?” Rondo’s fingers are tapping a soundless rhythm on his thigh.
“My grandmother. She always said ‘One hundred and one, gone. Plus LaQuinta.’ She’d say it all the time. My mom always shushed her, like it was confidential and she shouldn’t be saying it.”
“Did your mother know? About the missing?” Alma asks.
Yaya shrugs. “She said she doesn’t remember a LaQuinta Farrow. She was too young to know anything about the elders on the Vagantur. But I believe my grandmother.”
“So wait,” I say. “Your only evidence is stuff your grandmother said on her deathbed?”
“Octavia,” Alma says in a hushed voice, sounding like my mother.
Yaya looks indignant and jerks her neck. “No,” she says. “Your encrypted files are evidence too.”
“Evidence that one hundred people are missing,” I say, resisting the urge to jerk my neck as well. “Not that one hundred people were murdered by the Faloii.”
“It only makes sense,” Yaya argues, sitting forward in her chair again. “Where else would they have gone? Boarded another starship and flew away? Impossible.”
I bite my lip. This is different from the time I sought to disprove Yaya’s theory on dunikai migration. When I learned the circumstances of my grandfather’s death were a lie, some part of me believed that meant he might still be alive. Something inside me wilts.
“I don’t want to be cruel,” Yaya says, her tone gentler now, some of the mechanical pitch easing. “But the likelihood that the Faloii killed the hundred and two is high.”
“There’s no record of a landing war,” I say.
“There’s no record of the hundred and two either,” Yaya says. “If anything, their deaths have been kept a secret to keep us from waging war or something. That’s why the whitecoats don’t tell us much about the Faloii. They threatened us.”
“A blood agreement,” Jaquot says, and I grit my teeth to keep from snapping at him. I don’t want to hear about blood.
“Let’s just work,” I say. “We have to get this finished before we go into the jungle.”
No one says anything. I pick up my slate and pretend to stare at the words on its screen for what feels like ages before the others follow suit. For a while I think they’re not actually reading either: the air is tight with tension. But eventually it fades as they all fall into the assignment, absorbing the regulations we’ll need to know for our trip outside the compound tomorrow. I don’t read, however. I stare at the words, watching them blur together. I think about my father, his office filled with things he barely remembers, his parents’ bones somewhere far away. My mother tells me he’d gotten close to her mother before the Vagantur’s landing—his own parents hadn’t made it in time. My mother told me the story only once, but it’s burned in my memory as if I saw it myself: my father’s father bringing him to the Vagantur, then going back to the chaos, searching feverishly for his wife. They never made it back. It must have been terrible to lose first his birth parents and then Nana on Faloiv too, after she had become something of a mother figure for him. No wonder my parents had partnered: after so much loss, they had to come together. I think of my father in the compound that night with the spotted man—had that been why he tranquilized him? Is this why the spotted man was in our compound? Some long-stewing conflict that had begun before I was born? Eventually the idea of the assignment feels less taxing than my own thoughts, and I begin to read, trying to put the idea of my grandfather’s blood out of my mind.
Alma and I agreed to go to sleep early to prepare for the collection trip the next day, and it’s close to midnight when the soft wooden clink of my slate wakes me. I was studying when I fell asleep and my fingers bump the hard edge of the device down by my hip. I sleepily pull it up to my face, squinting at the brightness of the screen.
Bridge, says the message from Rondo, and I suck my teeth at the fact that his messages get more and more abbreviated. I lie there, and consider ignoring him and going back to sleep. It’s the middle of the night. But the fact that it’s the middle of the night is what drives me to sit up in bed, nearly smacking my head on Alma’s cot above me. I duck, listening. She breathes steadily, deeply. Asleep. Like I should be.
I swing my feet to the floor, still deciding. I’m wearing my loose nightclothes, the woven pants slithering against the tops of my feet, the white shirt glowing against my skin. If I get up, I think, I’m not getting dressed. It’s too much work to pull on the tight, stretchy skinsuit, let alone my chest wrap.
The wooden sound clinks again. I groan silently and look at the slate.
Door.