He doesn’t wait for us to reply, disappearing through another door, and we file into the observation area alone.
Inside, the room is nearly full of whitecoats, all crowded in before they have to go to procedures of their own, eager now to watch and take notes. I don’t recognize any of them, and they don’t look up from their murmured conversations as we shuffle into their midst. It’s dimmer here than in the hallway, the front of the deck brighter with light shining through a glass wall. The procedure room on the other side is almost empty, resembling the illusion rooms that line the hallways outside, and I’m not entirely sure that this isn’t an illusion too until a door in the room slides open, admitting Dr. Depp and another whitecoat, his assistant, a youngish man. Two other whitecoats enter behind them, bearing a medium-size cage.
The two whitecoats place the cage on the raised center platform, where one of them dons heavy white gloves and opens its door. Reaching in, he draws out the still, prone body of a kunike. It’s very small—not yet an adult but already with the characteristic large ears. The animal appears to be sedated, the ears not standing erect but flopped loosely down from its delicate head.
“Aww . . . ,” Yaya says in a hushed tone. I almost smile, to hear this kind of reaction from her of all people. It is cute, even if it does have razor-sharp teeth hiding in that small, fuzzy mouth.
The whitecoats place the kunike on the platform, securing it with thin white straps. They’re not gentle and I frown at their careless handling of the small body.
Alma glances at me, catching my eye. She lowers her chin slightly, her eyebrows raised in a wordless question. I shake my head. No, I don’t hear anything. Only a steady, buzzing lull. Maybe it’s because the animal is sedated, or maybe the glass is effective at separating my mind from the kunike’s.
Dr. Depp has already begun talking, describing every move that he and his assistant, Dr. Wong, make. It occurs to me that they’re recording the session for future analysis, three-dimensional data that will go onto one of the innumerable slides my mother is always studying. Dr. Depp approaches the platform, grasping a long thin instrument like a wand. He brings it into contact with the kunike’s small neck, and I watch as the tip of the instrument glows a pale blue.
The kunike stirs. My consciousness prickling, I feel it waking up before its body even begins to move. The tunnel in my brain widens slightly, noticing it. The kunike is afraid. His fear is mild compared to the tufali’s terror, which had caused her to gore the female whitecoat, but it’s also because he’s groggy. Alma’s eyes are on me again, as if I too am a specimen she’s monitoring. This time I nod.
Dr. Depp begins the procedure, followed by the rustle of whitecoats taking notes.
“We are now removing a small sample of Kunike 13’s fur. Based on the modifications we have made to its nutrition—introducing plants not normally found in its diet in the wild—we will see if its camouflage abilities have been affected by the change.”
A lump of sadness hardens in my core. This sounds like something my grandmother would have studied: the effects of an animal’s food on its biology. Somehow, though, I don’t think she would have approved of this method of observation.
Dr. Depp is snipping a small chunk of the trembling kunike’s fur from around his shoulders. I can almost hear the sound of the tiny scissors slicing in my ear. The kunike doesn’t understand that only his fur is being taken: he thinks his life could end at any moment and his fur shifts to the bright red color it takes on when alarmed. I hold my breath. I wish I could soothe the kunike, and I even try sending something through the tunnel the way Rasimbukar—and my mother, I think—had. But I can’t. It feels like trying to flex a phantom limb, attempting to curl fingers I can’t even see or feel.
Dr. Depp painstakingly places the fur sample between two transparent films and passes them to his assistant, who binds them and moves to the other side of the procedure room. There’s a projector set up that I hadn’t noticed before, connected to a microscope.
“Assistant Dr. Wong is placing Kunike 13’s fur sample under the microscope for examination.”
The microscopic view of the kunike’s fur is projected on the wall and I hear the uniform sound of the observing group’s motion as we all lean to see the image. The whitecoats in the room with us murmur to one another: there must be something worth seeing.
“Kunike 13’s fur sample displays minor but noticeable change after six weeks of dietary adjustment,” Dr. Depp says. “This suggests that the highly advanced sets of camouflage that kunike are able to employ as their chief defense mechanism can be expanded based on the foods they consume.”
Then I hear something else. At first I think it’s the kunike, his fear growing larger the longer he is held captive on the platform, but it’s bigger than that. The feeling pulses through the tunnel and fills my head with cavernous humming. I can’t tell where it’s coming from. The hall? Another procedure room? Just how far does the tunnel travel? Is the noise—this cacophony of brain activity—coming from the containment room nearby? I try to control my breathing: there are too many whitecoats in the room and I don’t want to draw attention to myself. Alma, of course, notices.
“What’s up?” she whispers.
In the procedure room, Dr. Wong is holding the kunike’s head still while Dr. Depp swabs inside the large floppy ear. The kunike’s heartbeat spikes in my mind, but the other thing—the humming—is larger, louder, more intense.
“I hear something else,” I whisper. “I think it’s nearby. I can’t tell what . . .”
“Focus,” Alma says. “Calm down and focus.”
I breathe deeply through my nose, trying to widen the tunnel enough to let more through. Forcing my mind to open is like attempting to grip vapor. It twists around, following its own pattern. But I close my eyes and find myself asking it to open. Let me see, I think, but not in words. The shape of words.
At that, the tunnel opens, and the larger fear thrusts itself into my head like a fist. My breath catches. Rondo and Alma are both looking at me now, each of them glancing up at the whitecoats ahead of us to ensure that no one has noticed. Inside me, the fear is a clash of orange and yellow, and I find myself sliding along the wall to the door, which whispers open to admit me into the hallway. Rondo and Alma are on my heels, slipping through before the door has a chance to hum shut again.
“What is it?” Alma asks. “You hear something?”
“It’s a vasana,” I say, closing my eyes around the buzzing.
“What’s that?” Rondo says. He stands very close, both of them do, bodies rigid as if to catch me if I fall.
“Herbivore,” Alma says, reciting her brain’s contents as if from a slate. “Large, a little bigger than a tufali. Pale green coat that’s short and shiny. Long muzzle. Slopey ears.”