“I did hear them talking about a project together,” I say.
She nods solemnly. “Your father wants to change the terms of N’Terra’s existence on this planet. He wants N’Terrans to be in control, free to expand and alter Faloiv as we see fit. He wants the ability to power the Vagantur, to leave and come back at will. None of which is possible without an energy source that is precious to the Faloii. . . .”
“What energy source?” I say. I’ve never read about an energy source: only that when trying to repair the Vagantur, a power cell had always eluded N’Terra.
“We have to get Adombukar out of the labs,” my mother says. “That’s step one. Any attempts we make at peace will be futile if we still have one of the Faloii held prisoner. We must free him and expose Dr. Albatur—then hope the Council listens. If it turns out he’s gotten to the other councilmembers before we do . . . we might be on our own.”
“We might be, Samirah,” Dr. Espada interjects, tugging on the short hairs of his beard. “They’re serving zunile in the Atrium. The Council never voted on that, so that tells me Albatur is reaching as far as his powers as Head will allow.”
My mother makes a sound of annoyance and squeezes her bottom lip.
“Albatur,” she says with disgust.
“Why did you let this happen?” I demand. “You didn’t know about Vasana 11, but you did know about the zunile and you just let it happen! People are eating that . . . that stuff! My friends are eating it! Oh, stars, if they knew.”
My mother grabs one of my shoulders and jars me into silence. “This is complicated, Afua!” she snaps. “We can’t trust everyone on the Council! They don’t know about the gift we’ve been given, that we can communicate with the Faloii the way the Faloii communicate with each other. We mean to do good, but there are those in N’Terra who would see this as an act of treachery. A reversal of the Council’s goals for the settlement.”
“But why? You’re trying to keep the peace!”
“Fear makes people stupid,” Dr. Espada says. “It makes them violent.”
“That’s not an answer.”
My mother and Dr. Espada exchange looks again and I grope in my mind for the tunnel to see if they’re thinking anything I can pick up on. But my mind is silent.
“That’s complicated too,” Dr. Espada says. “Sometimes keeping the peace isn’t peaceful. Right now, based on . . . past events, it’s possible that the Council could view citizens of N’Terra who sympathize with the Faloii as traitors. Violence could ensue, and we can’t allow that to happen.”
“Past events? What past—”
“What matters right now is getting Adombukar out of the labs, and you’re the one who needs to do it, Afua,” she says.
“Why,” I say, not even as a question. I have too many questions and I’m tired of asking them and not getting answers.
“Because you have a gift,” she says.
“So do you,” I counter.
“You’re a little different.”
“How?”
“Later,” Dr. Espada says. “Right now we need a plan.”
“No,” I insist, raising my voice. “I need to know. Tell me what you’re talking about. How am I . . . how is my brain different?”
My mother starts to speak, but Dr. Espada steps forward, his hands raised to placate me.
“We’ll show you,” he says, gesturing toward the door. “Will that satisfy you?”
I follow them back down the hall and out the Greenhouse doors that I know so well. Somewhere behind me I can hear the children in Dr. Yang’s classroom singing a song that helps them memorize the scientific method. I remember myself as a child, sitting cross-legged on the worn woven rug alongside Alma, my mouth open wide, chanting, “First you make an observation of the planet around, take notes to record all the things that you found.” I step out into the sun and breathe a sigh of relief under its heat.
“Listen,” Dr. Espada says.
It’s almost easy now. I flex the invisible muscle in my mind, the unseen fist uncurling and letting the tunnel spiral open. The light comes in, my mind wide and bright. I hear little things: oscree feeding on the ground, wary of the nearby kunike. I feel the kunike, their hungry vigilance. I think of the kunike in the lab on Dr. Depp’s exam table: the creature’s paralyzing fear. There is fear here as well, the ever-present fear for survival, but it’s natural, rhythmic—not the pounding terror and ruin in the labs.
What do you hear? Dr. Espada says.
At first I think he said it out loud, but then I realize that the shape of the words has come through the tunnel. I find him in my mind, along with my mother—their quivering concern for me, their impatience for me to see what they’re showing me about myself.
“The same thing you hear,” I say out loud, annoyed by their impatience. “Oscree. Kunike.”
Not quite.
I notice it, then. The shape of Dr. Espada and my mother in my mind: it’s missing something. Between me and the kunike and the oscree, linking each of us, is a wavering path of . . . something. Not light, not sound. But a . . . string: a feeling like a string, drawing each of us together in a web. I feel the string between me and my mother, between me and Dr. Espada, but they’re connected to nothing else. They float somewhere separate from the animals: untethered, unconnected.
You can’t hear the animals, I say to them, floating the words through the tunnel.
No.
“Now call to them,” Dr. Espada says. “Call to the oscree.”
I’m not sure what he means. Call to them? The oscree don’t speak my language, and I certainly don’t speak theirs.
My mother must feel my confusion because she says, Show them your heart, the feeling behind her words as gentle as her voice when she speaks out loud.
In my mind, I reach out to the oscree on the ground. They are six feet away, pecking at the red dust for insects, cocking their tiny blue heads toward the hidden kunike every now and then. The string between us quivers, as if I strummed it with my finger. Their consciousness prickles and leans in my direction, listening. They’ve noticed me all along: I’d shown up on their mental radar when I first opened the tunnel. But now they pay attention. I don’t know what to tell them, what to show them, so I just think soft yellow shapes, images that, in my heart, feel safe and gentle. I close my eyes, focusing on sending the peaceful greeting down the line toward the small flock of fluttering minds.
Octavia, I hear my mother say.