I find my mother there waiting for me, images from her pushing through the tunnel almost immediately. I try to control their flow, focusing on each feeling and shape rather than letting it all rush past me in a cascade. I see my mother and father as children, becoming friends. He an orphan and she with only one parent, her father gone. I feel their loneliness, my mother’s mother buried in lab work, venturing into the jungle to learn more about our new planet. My parents grow, bond, and live together, have me. I watch fragments of their lives flying through the universe of my mind like comets: my father holding me, my mother’s joy for him as he revels in parenthood. They make promises to each other. My father vows to do whatever it takes to make a future that is safe. My grandmother behind him frowning.
The chariot whips past a small group of marov, which scatter into the bushes. Their clustered fear slips through the tunnel to mingle with my mother’s thoughts. Above, oscree flap and cry, and a hefty roigo settles on a branch silently: I get the impression of its attention as it focuses on our chariot passing by. My brain is too loud now: too many lives and minds coming from all sides, filling my head with their worries and desires. How does my mother keep them all out? I clamp my mind around the tunnel and force it to shut, the buzz of feelings slowly fading.
“Where’d you go?” my mother calls as we round the corner to the Greenhouse.
“I can’t keep everything straight! It’s too much. How do you do it?”
“We’re a little different,” she says, but I barely hear her over the wind.
“What?”
“Just wait. We’re almost there.”
The Greenhouse is quiet on the outside: all the younger students will have already eaten second meal and are back in the building with Dr. Yang learning the scientific method or basic species differentiators. I’m gripped by a sudden pang of nostalgia, longing for those days when everything was simple: before abnormal brain scans and bloodthirsty dirixi, before secret labs and dead animals disguised as food. My mother brings the chariot to a stop outside the Greenhouse and hops off, walking quickly to the entrance before I’m even fully on the ground.
“Hurry,” she says, disappearing through the doorway.
When we open his door, Dr. Espada is sitting at his desk, his slate shining up on a face lined deeply with concentration. A three-dimensional image of a maigno hangs suspended in the air in front of his desk, displayed there by his projector. He looks over in surprise at the sound of the door folding open, the surprise turning into a smile at the sight of us.
“The English women,” he says, standing slowly. He greets my mother with a kiss on each cheek.
“Bad news, Tomás,” my mother says, keeping her voice low. She motions for me to slide the door shut, then ushers Dr. Espada over to the windows, the thick green glass lending an emerald tint to both their faces. I close the door and hurry over to them.
“It’s just what you were afraid of,” she’s saying when I join them. “Albatur has already begun weaponization.”
“What?” Dr. Espada says. “How can he? The Council!”
“The Council said no before he was elected,” my mother says. “Now that he’s the Head, he’s slowly turned more and more of them. Those spineless fools. But it’s true. Octavia saw it with her own eyes. Afua, tell him what you’ve seen.”
I tell Dr. Espada about the secret lab, about Albatur, the vasana and its terror, the horrifying teeth growing from its mouth on Albatur’s command.
“Stars,” Dr. Espada says, removing his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“What did you say he called the specimen?” my mother says, looking at me.
“Eleven,” I say. “Vasana 11.”
“Eleven!” Dr. Espada says. “So many . . .”
“There’s going to be a war, isn’t there?” I say. “This is what Rasimbukar meant by us breaking the rules.”
“Rasimbukar? Where did you hear that name?” my mother whispers.
“I met her in the jungle,” I say. They both stare at me, their lips pressed tightly together. There are so many secrets: I forget who knows what. “She . . . she told me . . .”
“She told you what?” my mother demands.
“She told me she needed my help getting her father out.”
“Has she told the rest of the Faloii that we have him?”
“Wait, what?” Now it’s my turn to eye her. “You know her? And, wait, you knew that we have her father?”
I take a step away from her.
“Yes, of course,” my mother says. “Not that I was supposed to know. I figured that out on my own. Now, has Rasimbukar told the rest of the Faloii that we have her father?”
“No,” I say uncertainly. “They don’t know that he’s missing—he’s not expected back from his journey yet. But they’re going to find out when he doesn’t come back. Or when Rasimbukar decides she’s sick of waiting for me.”
“I should have known she’d be out in the jungle that day,” Dr. Espada says. “When I sent Octavia to the rhohedron field, I should’ve gone with her to explain to Rasimbukar.”
“When you sent me?” I interrupt.
He puts his spectacles back on and looks at me with his usual expression of patience. “You didn’t see the rhohedron field in your head?” he says. “You didn’t suddenly know where you needed to run?”
I pause, remembering. The fear had been so intense, so hectic, that everything now seems blurry. I recall Dr. Espada shouting at me to run . . . and then the image of the enormous red flowers floating before my eyes.
Suddenly my brain is buzzing: something is hailing me from the tunnel. I slowly muscle the tunnel open, cautious about what I might find.
It’s Dr. Espada. I gasp, feeling him there, his gentle spirit and his probing mind, nudging me with his consciousness. He’s passing me an image, blurry around the edges: an echo. It’s us, him and me, in his classroom, the day he’d assigned the internships. I hear his voice—Listen—and I understand.
“You too,” I say, withdrawing from the tunnel, letting it close slowly.
“Yes,” he says.
“Who else?”
“Just the three of us. And your grandmother. She was the first.”
“We don’t have time to tell you everything right now,” my mother says, and holds up a hand before I can argue. “I understand your anger. But there’s too much that needs telling. I’ll say this: trust Rasimbukar, and trust us. The Faloii gave us a gift to protect life on Faloiv—ours and theirs. There are those of us in the compound—N’Terrans—who are making decisions against the wishes of the Council that put us all in jeopardy. We cannot let that happen, or all is lost.”
“But why is this happening?” I stammer. “Why did we take Rasimbukar’s father to begin with?”
“It’s complicated,” my mother says. She shoots a look at Dr. Espada.
“What?” I growl, and when neither of them answers, I repeat it a little louder. “What?”
My mother looks at me frankly. “Your father is playing a dangerous game with Dr. Albatur. Albatur wants to leave Faloiv and he has convinced your father to help him.”
Surely I’ve misheard her—the stupidity of it seems impossible to believe. Leave Faloiv?
“To go where?” I say. “Why?”
“Many reasons,” Dr. Espada sighs. “They believe that the past is more valuable than what the future holds. Re-creating it is easier than imagining something new.”
“Now that you’ve met Dr. Albatur, you can see why he would desire something else,” my mother says. “His body cannot tolerate Faloiv. Tomás and I believe that he has preyed upon your father’s desires to draw him into a plan. A plan that violates our agreement with the Faloii.”