She closes the file and opens another. It’s an image of a brain scan. The brain she shows me now has the same extraordinarily colored tentacles, snaking out from a mass near the center. The mass is smaller, though, the colors less varied.
“And this is my brain,” she says. The moonlight has shifted and falls only on our hands, up to the wrist. “And if you were to look at the brains of the Faloii people, they would look very similar. Not identical, but similar.”
I stare at her. The speed at which my mind has been running seems as if it’s slowed to the crawl of a worm.
“Are we . . . aliens?” I ask, barely able to get it out of my mouth.
She laughs softly and touches my cheek.
“No, Afua. No, we’re not aliens. Well, to the Faloii we are. But we’re human, you and me, even if you were born here.”
“Then why are our brains like this?” I say, taking the slate from her hand and staring at the tendrils erupting in the image of my mother’s brain. A flurry of incidents rush to the surface of my mind. “What’s wrong with us? I passed out when the philax was tranquilized. My nose bled when a tufali . . .”
“Nothing. Nothing is wrong with us. Headaches, blood, fainting, your body is adjusting to a gift, Afua. It was triggered when you made eye contact with the philax. We’ve been given a gift.”
“What kind of gift? From who?”
“The Faloii. And from Nana.”
“But—”
We both freeze at a sound in the hall. It’s my parents’ bedroom door, sliding open.
“Samirah?” my father calls softly. “Are you sick? Are you all right?”
“Stay here,” my mother whispers. “Go back to your room only when it’s quiet. We’ll talk soon.”
She moves swiftly to the study door and out into the hall. She leaves the door open. I sit in the dark like a statue.
“I’m fine, Octavius,” she says, yawning. “Just wanted to jot down a thought I had about Igua 27 before I forgot. I’m coming back to bed.”
He murmurs something. A moment later the soft sliding of their door, closing them back into their bedroom. Only then do I exhale.
I don’t know how long I sit there, folded up in the shadow of my mother’s desk. I hold the slate in my hands like a statue, unable to look away from the strange shapes in the center of my mother’s brain, my brain. The feeling of the tunnel having been opened persists like an echo, but there is no stirring, no buzzing. The tunnel remains closed.
When I leave, I place the slate carelessly on her desk. Nothing to hide from her now.
CHAPTER 21
Yaya stands near the entrance to the Zoo, alone. Rondo, Alma, and I had been whispering about the events in my mother’s study last night—Alma convinced that my father and mother are on opposing sides of a rising battle—but at the sight of Yaya, we all fall silent as if on cue. Grief encircles her like a planet’s rings.
“Hi, Yaya,” I say as we approach. She looks up, her face expressionless, eyes swollen.
“Hey, guys.”
“Are you . . . are you doing okay?”
She shrugs, not looking at me.
“I’m . . . fine. I will be fine.” She swallows. “I’m . . .”
“Did you . . . did you see . . . ?”
“Jaquot?” she says, and winces, as if just saying his name causes her pain. “No, not exactly. I saw him run away from the group, before any of us were even up in the tree. I think he was looking for another one to climb. But he ran right into the part of the jungle the dirixi came out of a minute later, so I guess that’s when . . . when it happened.”
“It’s so sad,” I say. I don’t know what other words to offer.
“Yes,” she says. “We thought it got both of you. I hope we don’t ever have to go back out there again.”
Jaquot’s absence makes us stiff. Our group stands quietly until my father appears in the door of the Zoo, beckoning us inside.
“Welcome back to work,” he says. “I know you’ve all had a shock. But I expect you to give your duties the time and attention they require now that you’re back in the labs.”
None of us reply. We follow him down the long pale hall. I look side to side at the empty exam rooms. Rasimbukar’s father could be in any one of them. I could be passing him as we speak.
“What are we working on today, Dr. English?” Yaya says. She’s back to leading the group.
“Today you will be observing a procedure,” he says. At the end of the hallway he turns left, leading us down the next corridor with its endless empty rooms on either side. The idea of observing piques my interest, of course: this is what I’ve always wanted, to gain insight into how we can make Faloiv a place for our future. But then I realize the procedure will probably involve a live specimen, and my stomach lurches. I know what the buzzing in my head is now, but I still have little understanding of how to control it. Like Rasimbukar, my mother had seemed able to shut the tunnel by her own volition, but I can’t imagine how to begin shutting out the communication I can now expect to receive from all Faloivan life-forms.
My father leads us to a door with a sign that reads Observation Prep 4. I look around for Observation Prep 1 through 3, but I don’t see them. The mazelike quality of the labs is frustrating. He opens the door and holds it for us, nodding for us to go in.
“You know the prep instructions. Dr. Depp will be in for you soon.”
He steps back into the hall and closes the door, leaving us alone. Our surroundings are similar to the scrub room we prepped in before our visit to the containment room last week: washbasins and hanging white coats. Rondo pulls on a lab coat and reaches for a headwrap hanging from a hook. There are different colors and the one he grabs first is purple.
“Here,” he says, handing it to me, letting his fingers brush mine. Then he lowers his voice, his next words just for me. “You look pretty in purple.”
I smile but look away and busy my hands, wrapping up my braids in the purple cloth. How is it possible that with everything that’s going on I still have space in my brain to think about that night outside my ’wam with him? I try to put it out of my head and focus on tying my wrap. Maybe when all this is over I can think about Rondo.
By the time Dr. Depp comes—a whitecoat I’ve never seen before—we’re all prepped and ready for whatever happens next. Dr. Depp doesn’t greet us. He just sticks his head in the door.
“Ready? Good. We’re on a schedule.”
We follow him down the hall, deeper into the labs. He’s not unfriendly, but he’s brusque in a way that reminds me of my father. Once through a thumb-locked door, he leads us to the end of a short hallway, where another door whispers open.
“In here,” he says. “This is the observation deck, from which you’ll be able to watch. I’ll be going down into the procedure room. There is an intercom that will allow you and the other observers to hear me. I’ll be available afterward if you need clarification on any of the procedures you witness.”