“What else would he mean?”
“N’Terra,” Rondo says. He’s not even addressing her, or any of us. He’s thinking, gazing at the door but not really seeing it. His fingers tap out their silent melody, and I wish more than anything that my head was full of his music and not the buzzing.
“No one would leave N’Terra when the Faloii are out there killing people,” Yaya says, and I wonder where the rational girl from the Greenhouse went. Is this what fear does to people? “The Faloii probably threatened us and people are afraid to work in the labs. Afraid of all their absurd rules.”
I sit up a little straighter on the stool.
“Why would that be your theory?” I demand.
“You know why!” she snaps. “We don’t know anything about them. I know what my grandmother told me, and Magellan said—”
“Who in the stars is Magellan?”
“Magellan. The finder who was bitten that day in the jungle. Weren’t you paying attention? He said the Faloii won’t let us expand N’Terra. And they won’t let us study them to see how they survive here so easily.”
“Why should they let us study them?” I say loudly, standing. “This is their planet. They don’t owe us anything. And they damn sure don’t owe us running experiments on them.”
Rondo and Alma stand uncertainly between us, Alma’s hands half-raised as if to tell us to keep our voices down, but not wanting to say it.
“Magellan said they still act like they’re the only ones that live on this planet. They won’t even let us explore their part of Faloiv—”
“Why should they?” I snap again. “You’re stupid enough to give that argument weight?”
“Don’t call me stupid,” Yaya says, taking a half step toward me. The shine of tears in her eyes is gone: she’s fully angry now and it shows. But I’m angry too. Is this how humans got ourselves into this mess? By believing that we have as much right to this planet as the Faloii? Do we think we own the galaxy? I’m surprised they haven’t already thrown us back out into the stars.
“Guys,” Alma says, keeping her voice low. “We can talk about this later. This really isn’t the place.”
Yaya and I glare at each other, and I find myself wishing for the prickle in my brain. What could I hear in Yaya’s mind that she’s not saying out loud? Maybe I would understand her better.
“To answer your original question,” I say, hearing the nastiness in my tone but unwilling to remove it, “I don’t know anything about Jaquot that you don’t know. But I will tell you this: if you’re as smart as you think you are, it’s not the Faloii you should be worried about.”
The whisper of the door opening turns our attention to the front of the room, where my father is stepping in through the doorway with his eyes on his slate.
“What’s this?” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Still in white coats? You must have enjoyed the procedure.”
“It was brilliant,” Alma says quickly. She moves almost imperceptibly to stand between me and my father. Maybe she thinks there’s still some trace of emotion left on my face. “But I do have a question about the procedure with Kunike 13,” she continues. “What purpose does the data serve for human use? Altering the specimen’s diet means that if it ate foods not usually in its nutritional regimen, it could eventually change its fur pattern to camouflage itself with the flora it consumes, correct? But what’s the implication for humans?”
She already knows the answer, I’m sure. She’s buying me time to calm down.
“The hope is that we will be able to find the proteins that give the kunike this ability and imitate them synthetically for our own use,” my father replies. “Just like our skinsuits, the technology of which is a synthetic reproduction of a maigno’s ears.”
“Do we have their permission?” I can’t stop myself from saying. My father tilts his head sideways to look past Alma, who moves out of the way so he can see me.
“Do we have the animals’ permission?” he says. It wasn’t what I meant—I had meant the Faloii—but now that he says it, it doesn’t seem stupid at all, the way I know he thinks it does. “No, we haven’t asked the animals’ permission. We will, however, continue to do our duty as scientists of N’Terra and study them for our benefit. We will learn from the kunike’s camouflage, for instance, as we design future skinsuits.”
“For camouflage,” I say. “What are we hiding from? The Faloii?”
“Not at this time,” my father says. I don’t think such coldness has ever existed on Faloiv. “The dirixi, for one, is high on my list of things we need to hide from.”
I almost feel Yaya’s heart clench at the reference to Jaquot’s death. I can assume that’s the part of my father’s statement that got her attention, not the more sinister “not at this time.” “Not at this time” doesn’t mean “never.”
“I have a procedure in the Avian compound very soon,” he says, addressing the group without taking his eyes off me. “I’ll walk you to the Atrium before I’m off. Remove your lab coats and gather your things.”
We walk in silence down the long bright hallway. My father isn’t even staring into his slate: he leads us down the hall with his eyes forward.
He turns to face us as we catch up to him. He ignores me, instead addressing Alma, Rondo, and Yaya.
“Get something to eat. Afterward someone will find you an empty room to work in.”
He takes a step away to leave us, and Yaya surprises me by stopping him.
“Sir, may we continue our work in the Atrium?” she asks.
“The Atrium?” he says, turning slightly.
“Yes. It’s . . .” She hesitates, as if realizing she shouldn’t have asked. “The light. The light is better there.”
“The light.”
He squints at her, then glances at me, perhaps to see if this is something I put her up to. But I’m as surprised as he is.
“Yes,” he says, turning back down the hall. “Stay out of the way.”
“Yes, sir.”
He’s gone, sweeping down the hall with the tails of his lab coat waving behind him. Off to the Beak, I think—off to oversee more horrors.
“Let’s go in,” Alma says gently, touching my arm.