I pull away and move toward the door, which opens. Yaya catches my eye, her expression closed and flat. She’s angry with me. Our friendship was really just beginning and now it’s bent and broken. I was harsh with her, but I wonder which of my words had done the damage: implying that she’s stupid or damaging her trust in N’Terra.
As we make our way across the Atrium, I’m grateful that it’s almost empty—I have to stop myself from glaring at every whitecoat I pass. How could N’Terrans be so stupid? My temples are throbbing, as if everything I have learned is screaming inside my head. I try to relax and breathe deeply through my nose. Doing so, I catch a whiff of the smell of cooking food, the same scent from the first time we visited the Atrium. I know it’s the same smell—full and smoky—but it feels different in my nose. It’s as if I only smelled it on a shallow level before, and now I’m taking in the whole of it. It’s pungent. Inhaling deeply, it’s almost as if the scent takes the shape of something else, knotting in my nostrils and sticking there. I pause, bending slightly, nausea gripping me unexpectedly. What is wrong with you now? I think to myself, irritated. My friends didn’t notice: they continue toward the central tree, eager to see what the men in green skinsuits offer in the way of food today.
I catch up, drawing even with Rondo. He’s already taken a platter and is piling it with zarum and waji. There are the chunks of brown food that we’d seen before too, the dish I’ve never had a chance to try—zunile, I remember it was called. It’s the source of the pungent aroma. I inhale again, trying to identify the scent. It’s familiar, somehow. An echo. Rondo dips the spoon into the dish of zunile, stirring up the juices and releasing the odor more fully into the air.
I recoil. It’s as if fire has sprung from the very air and burned me, and I double over, retching involuntarily.
“Octavia?” Rondo lets the spoon clatter back into the dish and he drops his platter onto the platform. He reaches out for me. “What’s the matter?”
“The zunile,” I gasp. It’s all I can say before I clamp my mouth shut to keep from vomiting. I bite my lip so hard it bleeds, my hands trembling before I ball them into fists.
“Zunile? The food?” He glances quickly at the dish, as if expecting to see a slimy creature crawling out of the juices. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”
Now Alma and Yaya have also noticed. They swing back from the other end of the platform, their eyebrows low and faces squinted in worry. I can’t wait. I turn and run, sweeping past the whitecoats, who look up with only mild interest. I race through the door, out of the warm sunlight and back into the glaring halls of the labs.
The hall is mercifully empty and I tear down the corridor, its whiteness a blur. Finally I reach the sorting room, unoccupied by both animals and humans. Far down the hall I hear Rondo and the others calling for me as loudly as they dare.
I pay them no attention, careening through the gap in the sorting room’s door as soon as it opens wide enough. Inside, the piles of eggs wait there impassively. No attendants. I stumble to the corner of the room, sinking down where two walls meet. I breathe deeply, willing the vomit to stay down. Even here, far from the Atrium, I still smell the stink of the zunile. The smoky brown chunks were on the platform as if they too are food, but they’re not. Zunile isn’t food. The smell is of death. Zunile is a dead animal.
CHAPTER 23
I sit crouched in the corner of the sorting room for what feels like hours, my body trembling. Eventually workers will be coming in—they have to, it’s been too long. If they find me here there’s no doubt that my father will be summoned. I stumble to my feet, my legs shaking underneath me. I walk quickly to the door, flexing my cramped fingers. I need to get out of here, and I know where I’m going.
The door whispers open, admitting me into the hall. I look in each direction: no sign of Alma or Rondo. They’ve either returned to the Atrium or have been ushered off to another procedure room. I don’t have time to look for them: right now I need answers, and the person who has them is my mother.
The trip from the Zoo to the commune is a blur, sounds and colors running together. The gray-suited guards at the entrance to the labs speak to me, but even if I wanted to reply, I think the sound that escaped my throat could only be a roar. My anger is rising: it propels me at a sprint past the ’wams of my neighbors, right up to the yellow cloth hanging from the door of my own. I practically fall into the ’wam, panting.
My mother, standing in the hallway as if moving toward her study, turns at the sound of my entrance. She looks surprised to see me but pleasantly so.
“Why . . .” I pant. “Didn’t. You. Tell. Me.”
She raises an eyebrow, assessing me with her dark eyes.
“Tell you what, exactly?” she says.
“Everything!” I explode. I still haven’t caught my breath, and I stand there with my chest heaving, glaring at her.
“I thought I could wait to tell you until everything was figured out,” she says. “I didn’t think you’d have any contact with actual animals until you were twenty-one, when you were in the labs. The philax was an accident and then the damned internships.”
She flops her hands to her sides, the hands that look like mine.
“And the dead animals?” I demand, my anger still large and bright. “What about that? They’re eating animals in there!”
My throat convulses at the thought of eating something dead, a body that was once alive and walking around, stripped and lifeless and cooked like zarum.
“It’s wrong,” my mother says, her jaw setting. “It was never supposed to happen. But it was commonplace before Faloiv—a custom passed down from the Origin Planet—and many of the elders of N’Terra resisted the Faloii’s order when we landed.”
“The Faloii specifically said we can’t eat animals and we’re doing it anyway?” I’m practically screaming. “We’re barbarians! Why did our ancestors eat animals?”
My picture of the star people before us has changed from what I’ve always imagined: they look fanged and dead eyed now, crouching in the shadows like beasts.
“It was called ‘meat,’” she says.
“That’s meat? But Dad said he’s eaten meat . . .” I’d managed to catch my breath but now it feels ragged again.
“Yes. I have eaten it too. You must understand: it was customary. People cling to their customs.”
“Customs?” I demand. “Who cares about customs! You said the Faloii forbid it! Why would we do anything they forbid us to do?”
My mother sighs, her body leaning as if considering coming toward me for the first time. Her face is a map of sorrow, and I almost feel bad for shouting. But not quite.
“There are those in the compounds who”—she pauses, anger rippling across her face before she continues—“who don’t agree that we should remove meat from our diet. Among other things. There are people in N’Terra who believe we shouldn’t obey the laws of the Faloii. Who believe we should be making our own laws. This is one area I have fought against for some time now. It appears the Council is making decisions behind my back.”