An Anatomy of Beasts Read online

  The pleasure that had flashed across his face clouds. His lips twist.

  “Rasimbukar and her friend rescued me from the dirixi, but not before it got a piece of me.” He swallows. “Well, more than a piece.”

  “Everyone thinks you’re dead,” I finally say. I don’t know whether to hug him or keep staring to prove he’s actually alive. If only Rondo and Alma were here for this. “Your father thinks you’re dead.”

  “I know,” he says. “But they’re taking care of me here. Your grandma too. Stars, I can’t wait to see Yaya’s face when she finds out the hundred are alive. And me. How is she? Does she miss me? Was she sad?”

  I ignore the look of longing on his face.

  “The hundred? Wait, what? You mean the missing hundred from the Vagantur?”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “They’re alive?”

  “I mean, yeah. You saw your grandfather by now, right?”

  I whip around to face Rasimbukar, who has allowed us to speak without interjecting. Now, the spots on her forehead drift together and apart.

  “I assumed you understood this as we discussed your grandfather a moment ago,” she says. “He is one of the Acclimates. Your grandparents are two of many who have opted to join our city as they learn the ways of Faloiv.”

  “So she knew?” I say. “My mother knew about all this? She knew there was an entire separate population of humans living on Faloiv?”

  “Yes.”

  “She knew . . .”

  I find myself sitting on the ground without fully realizing how I got there, the jungle spinning slowly around me. Jaquot moves awkwardly over to offer help, but I wave him away. The air seems too thin, my lungs too thirsty. Of all the lies and all the secrets, the truth about my grandmother burns most hotly in my mind. I think of the photo on the wall of my ’wam, so far away in N’Terra, how my mother had stood before it, longing for her mother and father. I had believed there was nothing left of them but that photo.

  “But why?” I say. “All this time . . . my grandmother just left us? I’ve believed she was dead since I was eleven!”

  The surge of anger isn’t strong enough to pull me up from the ground, so I just glare up at Rasimbukar.

  “There are many things that must be explained,” she says. The last time someone told me that there was much to be explained, it was my mother and Dr. Espada in the Greenhouse. Now they’re both dead.

  “I know it’s a lot,” Jaquot says softly. I stare at the green canes he leans on so I don’t have to look in his eyes. “I hardly believed it myself at first. But once you talk to the others, it will make more sense.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, breathing deeply to control the factory of emotions humming through me. I reach out for the smell of the ogwe, the trees that had been something of a constant companion in N’Terra. I find the scent, but it’s different out here in the jungle. Wilder. More joyful.

  “You smell the ogwe,” Rasimbukar says, reading me. The spots on her forehead rise in curiosity.

  “Yes.”

  “Ogwe has a smell?” Jaquot says, and for a moment I’m transported back to the day in the Beak, just moments before seeing the philax that changed everything. Even now I can’t help but smile.

  “Let us walk,” Rasimbukar says, and I sense her relief at my smile. “We can discuss this another time.”

  We walk along a new path, one that winds us around the edge of a lake. From one angle, the reflection of the sky makes it look blue, but when we get closer I see the water itself is a soft pink.

  “Mineral deposits?” I ask.

  “Correct. This is where we will bring your grandmother when the ahugwo have finished with her. This water is very useful for healing.”

  As she says this, I spy someone slowly wading in from the bank across the lake. Their careful movements tell me they are old, but from here I can’t tell if they are human or Faloii. I’m suddenly eager to lay eyes on these hundred people, people like me who have lived a life I can’t imagine. All this time I’ve been suffocated by N’Terra, imagining a life beyond the white walls, and there are people already living it.

  The pink lake is bluer at its edges, and I’m admiring its purity when a voice hails us. I know the person is Faloii by the wooden timbre of their voice, and without fully meaning to I open my mind to see them before I look. She’s already there, greeting me. Her name is Hamankush.

  “Hello,” I say when she approaches. She has just stepped out of the jungle and joins us as we make our way toward a round building that reminds me of the Greenhouse.

  “Anoo,” she says.

  “Anoo is a species of insect,” Jaquot says. “Extinct, I think. But it means hello in their language.”

  “What is it called?” I ask, looking at Rasimbukar. “Your language?”

  “We speak Anooiire,” she says. The spots on her forehead spread wide. “The parts that are spoken, that is. Hamankush is an archivist.”

  We continue toward the round building. Its brown walls are in fact mottled with a deep green, lines and ridges like veins mapping its surface, beginning at the ground.

  “Come in,” Rasimbukar says, and she lays her hand on the wall, peeling up a thin opaque layer with her fingertips. It gently gives way, a sort of flap-like covering that conceals a doorway. I glance at Jaquot, but he passes through without remark. A stab of competitiveness surprises me: he’s only been here for a week at most and already he is comfortable, knows more than I do.

  Inside, the air is cool, and, like the Greenhouse, the light is tinged green. No windows that I can see, but the sun seems to pierce through the roof, filling the low-ceilinged hallway with a soft glow. I inhale through my nose and it hits me, with a scent as delicate as it is sturdy.

  “This is a plant,” I say. “Are we inside a plant?”

  Rasimbukar offers me a flash of her teeth. “Yes. Good.”

  But she says nothing more, leaving me to trail after her beside Jaquot while she confers with Hamankush. In the tunnel I find nothing: they are having a private conversation.

  “I heard your grandmother fainted,” Jaquot says. “Is she going to be okay?”

  I don’t tell him that she hadn’t merely fainted: that it was my own intensity—and inability to control it—that made my grandmother lose consciousness.

  “I hope so,” I say. I trail my fingers along the wall, but jerk them back when the wall trembles slightly at my touch. In the tunnel, there is a humming green presence. When I listen carefully, I get the feeling that the hum is a stream of communication that is too fast and dense for me to understand. It doesn’t address me, but it is aware of me. Its hum isn’t for any one audience: it’s more like a heartbeat, but a heartbeat full of information. I gently close the tunnel.

  “Did they tell you about my mom,” I say without looking at Jaquot.

  He doesn’t answer right away. The dull thump of his canes is the only sound.

  “Yes,” he says. “I’m so sorry. Were you . . . there?”

  “Yes.”

  Rasimbukar pauses in the hallway and lays her hand on the wall. Like in the infirmary where my grandmother is being kept, a doorway appears by way of the simultaneous separation of many tiny vines. Hamankush is gone. Rasimbukar gestures for us to enter.

  At first the only thing I can focus on is the fact that I’m somehow high in the air, and seemingly outdoors. Inside the plant, it had felt as if we were walking along a level surface. We had climbed no stairs; entered no lift. And yet I look out at the Faloii city from the vantage point of what seems like a small tree. The city and the jungle sprawl out before me, the colors almost overwhelming in their vibrancy. My first impression is that we’re outside, but I quickly realize a thin membrane exists between me and the outdoor air, the bright chamber I stand within still cool and smelling vaguely of soil.

  It’s not until my awe of the city view wears off that I notice the dozen faces tilted toward me in what turns out to be a small bright room. Both human and Faloii, they
stare at me from where they sit in the sunshine, a scattering of materials between them. The humans are all my age or younger. The Faloii, I assume, are young too: they look different from Rasimbukar. Their skin is lighter, a yellower shade of the rich brown and carrying more of a greenish tinge. None of them seem to be aware of or interested in the majestic view of the city and planet.

  “Your peers,” Rasimbukar says. “They will help you acclimate to Mbekenkanush.”

  “I’m sorry, to what?”

  “This is Mbekenkanush,” Jaquot says. “The city.”

  “But my grandmother—” I start as Rasimbukar moves back toward the door.

  “I will send someone for you when she wakes.”

  And then she’s gone, leaving me staring at the place where the door had been. I almost go to the wall to try to open it again, anger sprouting in me like a sapling. My grandmother, who I thought was dead, is in a room unconscious with my grandfather, who I also thought was dead, and Rasimbukar wants me to socialize?

  “Anoo,” says one of the people behind me, and I turn to find a human girl a little older than me standing next to Jaquot. She studies me.

  “You are the kin of Amara,” she says in the same measured accent as Rasimbukar, just without the wooden timbre. “You have the same eyes. The same look.”

  “Yes,” I say, sizing her up. Her hair is cropped very short, as short as Rondo’s. She has a round face like Alma’s, full cheeks, and a broad shiny forehead. I miss my friends so much I see them everywhere.

  “You are a friend of Jaquot?” says another human boy, his skin as pale as the tiny roots I have seen at the base of small plants. He doesn’t stand. “From the same place?”

  “N’Terra,” Jaquot says. With the help of the full-faced girl, he eases down to the ground. I find myself angry at how comfortable he is among them. As if he has been here all along.

  A prickle in my mind grabs my attention, and I reach for the tunnel. In it, the Faloii in the room greet me with expressions of surprise and delight, a few with reservation, to find that I can hear them and they can hear me.

  You are like your grandmother, one says. You speak very well. You will learn more.

  Clumsy though, says another, but I don’t think they mean any harm by it. They, I notice. I gather from the impressions offered by the Artery that Faloii youth decide upon both their sex and gender at a time of their choosing. In the group before me, everyone is undecided.

  What are you doing in here? I ask them. I’ve never addressed more than one person at a time in the tunnel, and it flexes a part of my brain that I’m unaccustomed to using. It’s not hard, exactly: just a matter of allowing each chain between us to remain illuminated.

  Here we study, one says. They have not shown me their name. The Faloii our business, and your people theirs.

  What is the business of my people? I ask, curious.

  They enjoy learning about the past. Among other things.

  Jaquot is looking at me strangely, along with the other humans. The round-cheeked girl says, “Oh, like Amara in that way too.”

  “Huh?” Jaquot says, not understanding at first. “Oh. Oh. Stars, Octavia. I guess it all makes sense now?”

  “I guess. So, wait,” I say, addressing the girl. “You guys don’t have it? The . . . you know, the way to talk?”

  “Very few,” the girl says, and turns her head to look at the work she studies, as if this doesn’t bother her.

  Join us, someone tells me. They show me their name: Kimbullettican. Sit.

  The humans are studying what Jaquot tells me are called books. I know this word, of course, but not like this: these are not documents on slates but thick heavy objects with many delicate leaves. We have them in N’Terra, but they are fragile and protected carefully.

  “No slates?” I say, eyeing what Jaquot is reading, a thick text with many diagrams that appear to be geographical in nature.

  “We have a version of them,” he says. One hand goes to rub a leg that is no longer there, and he quickly snatches his hand back. “But the Elders use them mostly. Limited supply. They have us doing legwork, so they say, but these books have been read hundreds of times. They just want us to know this stuff.”

  Jaquot eyes the book in his hands and I can’t tell if he’s reading or if he’s searching the page for something to say. My mind is full of noise. Not from the tunnel—the Faloii youth are quiet, absorbed in their own conversations—but a clamoring of death and questions. The shadow that looms over N’Terra feels as if it’s clinging to the soles of my feet, trailing me these many miles through the jungle and hunting me here. I study the faces of the humans around me. The full-cheeked girl has turned her face down to her book and seems to be reading in earnest. How can they be studying so calmly with everything that has transpired?

  “Most of these are about the Origin Planet,” Jaquot says, holding up the book. “The geology of this planet isn’t so different once you get underground, based on what the Faloii say. Dr. Albatur and them always made it sound like Captain Williams was an idiot for landing us here, but under the circumstances I think she did a pretty good job and got damn lucky.”

  “If lucky is dying in the crash,” I say, trying not to sound snappish. “Why do they have you studying the Origin Planet? That seems like a waste of time.”

  “You think? I don’t know, I guess so. But rather than starting blind, it kind of makes sense to compare things we know to find similarities in what we don’t know.”

  “But we don’t know,” I argue. “What do you know about the Origin Planet besides what you’ve been told? Those books were written generations ago by people who destroyed the place they lived. I wouldn’t call them the ideal models of scientific progress.”

  He closes the book.

  “The Elders here mostly agree. Except . . . there’s this nostalgia, you know? Not for the planet itself, but what they had to leave behind, kind of. Remember Dr. LaQuinta Farrow?”

  “Wait . . . ,” I say slowly. The name tugs a string in the back of my mind but I can’t find what it’s connected to. “LaQuinta Farrow . . . why do I know that name?”

  “Yaya’s grandmother’s friend,” he says with a sideways smile. “Remember, we argued about it that day in the Zoo? The woman Yaya’s grandmother says died? Well, Yaya was wrong—don’t tell her I said that, seriously—Dr. Farrow is still alive. Old, but alive. She’s an Acclimate!”

  “Starssss,” I hiss. “I wish Alma was here! She would have so much to say.”

  “So does Dr. Farrow.” He smiles. “She’s full of fire! She came in to talk to me and the other students a couple days ago. Wasn’t an admirer of Dr. Albatur.”

  I lean forward. “What did she say?”

  “In some ways she’s like a lot of the Acclimates. They talk differently about the Origin Planet here. Like what they were escaping wasn’t just the planet but its people.”

  “Hmm,” I muse, making a note of this. When my grandmother wakes up, we will have a lot to discuss.

  “You know how Dr. Albatur started taking down people’s flags and stuff in the communes? Replacing them with the N’Terran banners?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I told Dr. Farrow about it and she lit up! Not in a good way. She said that’s the kind of thing that happened on the Origin Planet; it’s why we know so little about it. According to her, there was nothing to know. The only thing people had for themselves was their research.”

  “Doesn’t sound so bad,” I say, whitecoat logic still clinging to me.

  “This is how Dr. Farrow described it: she said imagine a whole city full of Albaturs, telling you what you could and couldn’t study. Deciding what was valid science and what wasn’t . . . and what they decided was valid science was only ever for the benefit of the Council. And that being your whole life. No escape. Just studying what they tell you to study, and your discoveries being used to hurt people.”

  I chew on this. I had once dreamed of doing nothing but living in the labs,
occasionally sleeping at home, the way my parents had. Those dreams had fallen away with the peeling back of N’Terra’s secrets, but it leaves a void in my life, empty like lightning striking the jungle and leaving a razed patch in its wake.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugs when I’m silent. “It’s just funny how similar some things in Mbekenkanush are to N’Terra. Different versions of the past. In N’Terra, Albatur was always trying to re-create the Origin Planet: what we ate, how we lived. But here, it’s subtle things that the Acclimates are searching for. Who we were. What we were like. It’s like they don’t remember what the world they came from was like. Let some tell it, the ground on the Origin Planet was collapsing underneath them. Others talk about war. It’s hard to ever really get one story.”

  The word war strikes a chord in me, vibrating through my ribs.

  “Does everyone here know about N’Terra?” I say, dropping my voice to a whisper. All this talk about N’Terra, and we’re not even discussing the truth.

  “What? How N’Terra pretends everyone here died? Some people know about that, yeah.”

  “No, not that. I mean what’s happening there.”

  He stares at me blankly, and the blankness makes me want to shake him. What does he think? That Dr. Albatur is just a regular whitecoat and that the shady practices and whispers and banners and propaganda are just . . . differences of opinion?

  “I mean what’s happening in the labs,” I whisper. “The vasana. What they’re doing to them.”

  Hamankush appears beside me. I hadn’t heard her enter the room—the doors here don’t give any warning like the whispers in N’Terra. She hails me in the tunnel.

  Come with me, she interrupts.

  Rasimbukar told me to wait, I say.

  I am telling you to come.

  I don’t even look at Jaquot before I follow her to the wall. The eyes of the group are like lasers on my back, each of them wondering what my problem is. As I pass through the parted vines, I receive a violet shape of sympathy from the Faloii youth called Kimbullettican. They understand my grief, the way it twists everything inside me. I thank them as the vines close behind me.