They’re both staring at me strangely, Rondo with an expression that is open, bright, as if waiting for more.
“What did you say?” he says quickly.
“What? When? About my mother telling my father? She would, I know she—”
“No, about Rasimbukar showing you pictures in your head.”
“Oh.” It sounds stupid when I hear it said like this. It’s more than pictures in my head: they are feelings, communicated as clearly as if spoken words. I can still call up the sensation of Rasimbukar hailing me, my mind buzzing as I felt her consciousness prick at mine.
“I thought you said you spoke to her in our language,” Alma says, her frown deepening as she tries to solve this new puzzle.
“I did. Some of the time. For other parts we—we talked in a different way. Well, she did. That’s how I know her name. She showed it to me.”
“She showed it to you?” Alma says, her head tilted. She’s not disbelieving—not quite. She’s willing, but she needs more.
“Yes,” I say. “I know it sounds impossible.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Alma interrupts. “It’s not impossible at all. I mean, your mother already proved it is possible.”
“My mother?”
She nods.
“Animals on Faloiv communicate telepathically,” she says. “It stands to reason that the people of Faloiv probably do too.”
“But Octavia’s not Faloii,” Rondo says. He’s working it out too. They’re greencoats: this is what we do.
“No,” Alma says, frowning. “She’s not. I have to think about that. But maybe the Faloii can communicate with any life-form that way. We know hardly anything about our interactions with them since none of the whitecoats want to talk about it.”
“But it’s not just Rasimbukar,” I say. The pieces are floating around in my head like petals on the surface of water. I’m crunching my brain hard, making ripples that move the petals closer to one another.
“What do you mean?” Rondo asks. They’re both standing closer to my bed now.
“The containment room,” I say. “The philax. The tufali. It’s not just Rasimbukar who can . . . you know, reach me. I wondered before, but after meeting her, talking to her, it’s starting to add up. I can hear them. The animals. And they can hear me.”
There’s silence in my small room; the only sound is the barely audible hum of our ’wam’s power system, churning on scraps of vegetable peels. Rondo and Alma stare at me, both of their minds stirring the same way. Alma’s eyes flicker. She’s quicker than Rondo, she always has been. Quicker than me, if I’m being honest.
“Can you stand?” she says. She’s gripping the arm without the intravenous needle and glancing down at my body.
“What?” I say, surprised.
She tugs on me gently. “Can you?”
“Yes,” I say. I lean forward and swing my legs slowly over the edge of my bed.
“Rondo, hand me that,” Alma says, pointing at a skinsuit hanging from the wall by my door.
“Wait, what?” Rondo demands, not moving. “She’s on bed rest!”
“We have to do an experiment,” she says, still pointing.
With my feet on the floor I feel strong. The bed at my back is like a trap, as if the longer I stay in it, the worse I’ll feel. I reach for the bowl of water Rondo had given me before and sip from it on my own.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Um, nowhere!” Rondo insists. He stands closer to the door, as if to block it.
“Rondo, don’t be ridiculous,” Alma says with a long look. “She’s fine. They only put her on bed rest because she was dehydrated and they wanted to check for toxins. Plus the procedure was on her hands, and she doesn’t need her hands to walk.”
“My hands feel fine,” I offer.
“And what if she does have toxins?” Rondo says. I can’t help but smile at the expression on his face. Ordinarily I would have felt awkward wearing my nightclothes in front of him, but he’s already seen me in them. That just makes me smile more.
“If I have toxins, I’ll have them whether I’m in this bed or out of it,” I say, trying to be gentle. But he’s not going to keep me in this room. “Besides, they would have been back with my test results by now if something was wrong with me.”
He stares at me, saying nothing.
“Rondo,” I say. “I’m fine. I’m not an eggshell. Now hand me my skinsuit.”
He glares at both of us a moment longer, then removes the skinsuit from its hook and tosses it at me.
“Be careful removing your intravenous,” he says, sliding open my bedroom door. Then he pauses. “Do you need help?”
“Rondo, get out!” Alma says.
He laughs and disappears.
“Honestly,” she says, with a small laugh. “You’d think he was in love with you.”
“Well, not exactly, but . . .”
Her fingers pause on my intravenous. “Excuse me?” she says, dropping her chin.
“I have some stuff to tell you.” I grin.
“What’s new?” She rolls her eyes and helps me take the needle from my arm. “Later.”
On the path through the commune, I munch the hava Rondo forced into my hand, my arm linked through Alma’s as they tell me about what happened in the jungle.
“Yaya hasn’t talked much to us since then,” Alma says. “I think what happened to Jaquot really messed her up. I didn’t see him get taken, but Rondo thinks Yaya might have.”
I glance at Rondo, who nods solemnly.
“It was really scary,” Alma continues. “Dr. Espada came back to the tree without you and he was frantic. He had cuts all over his face from running through the jungle and he was, well, crying too. It was terrible. He said, ‘Samirah will never forgive me.’”
“How did they find me?” I say.
“You found yourself,” Rondo says as we turn a corner. “A search party of finders came back from looking for you in the jungle and found you curled up outside the Mammalian Compound. Somehow you got past the gate without the guards seeing you. You were right by the front door, like you just walked home.”
“I think Rasimbukar brought me.”
“Oh,” he says, his forehead crinkled. “I guess that makes sense. You’d think the guards would have seen her for sure.”
“Her skin changes, remember? Camouflage. Better than anything we’ve seen with the animals.”
Neither of them reply. I wonder if the talk about Rasimbukar makes them afraid, or if the scientist in each of them is jealous. Maybe a little of both. The sudden quiet makes me notice the absence of hammering and I look for the tower the engineers have been working on. It stands there, unmanned. Rondo sees me looking.
“It’s kind of been an unofficial rest period the last few days,” he says. “With . . . what happened to Jaquot.”
I nod. The desire to steer the subject away from his death is so strong it burns.
“So what’s your experiment?” I say, glancing at Alma.
“Okay,” she says, motioning with the hand that’s not looped through my arm. “What do you feel right now? Are you thinking anything?”
“What?”
She sighs impatiently.
“Your brain, Octavia. Do you hear anything? The buzzing you’ve been talking about.”
“Oh. Uh.” I stop talking and pay attention. “No. Nothing.”
“Okay.” We’re approaching a bridge to cross the stream and she stops us. “Rondo, think something at Octavia.”