Dragonfly Girl

by Marti Leimbach

  “You’re bleeding,” she says as I come in. She’s noticed where I’ve chewed off just a little too much fingernail. I push my hands behind me.

  “Sorry.”

  “Sorry you’re bleeding?” she says. Then she turns and looks at me. “So what crime got you banished from the kingdom this time?”

  “Using the word raisin.”

  “There is nothing offensive about the word raisin. It’s a very cute word.”

  “Too cute for Will.”

  “Ah yes, always use big words around Will. Big masculine words.” She laughs. She has a huge smile and beautiful brown eyes, and she never looks exhausted like I do. “Put on some gloves and check my stem cells, would you? Stamp anything that is differentiating.”

  It’s like Chandni to include me in whatever task is at hand. I pull up a seat and peer into the microscope. Then I begin marking cells in which the borders are no longer clean because the cells are spreading apart and transforming into heart or lung or blood cells.

  She’s brave to trust me with this. I appreciate her confidence and work carefully, silently.

  Eventually, Chandni says, “So, we are considering transplanting an organ into a human that originally came from a pig. Give me a well-documented objection to doing so.”

  When I don’t answer right away, she adds, “You have no concerns about putting something from a pig into a person?”

  I wince. “I’m probably wrong—”

  “Then be wrong,” she says. “Wrong is okay.”

  “Maybe worry about a pig retrovirus being transmitted to humans?” I say, then watch with relief as Chandni’s face lights up.

  “Bingo!” she says. “So why don’t we just treat the pigs for the virus before using any part of the animal’s organs?”

  “Because it wouldn’t work. The retrovirus is built into the pig’s genes.”

  “Correct!” Chandni yelps. She seems so pleased with me that I blush. “Anything we can do to remove them?”

  “We can use gene editing and remove the gene from the DNA of the pigs. But the big problem is getting people to agree to the procedure. And it’s expensive.”

  Chandni nods. “So you understand what prevents us isn’t what is in here,” she says, pointing to her temple, “but what is in our wallets. Science is business. We can be as clever as we like, but the truth is simple: money makes the world go round.”

  “Is that why this laboratory works on biological weapons?” I say. “Because of money?”

  “That’s why this laboratory works on countering biological weapons,” she says. “And yes.”

  Dmitry finds me at the sinks, scrubbing yet another bassinet, and pulls me away.

  “Where are we going?” I ask as we pass by his lab without stopping.

  “To a jungle,” he says, leading me to another part of the building.

  We arrive eventually at something called the Greenhouse.

  “This is Betty,” he says, pointing to a spray of leaves that rises up from a yellow ceramic base. “She withers in the presence of high levels of radiation.”

  I look at Betty, who appears to be an ordinary fern.

  “Smart plant,” I say, “being a natural-born biosensor ’n’ all.”

  “Well, not exactly natural,” Dmitry says. “We edited her genes first.”

  “How do you dream this stuff up?”

  He looks at me shyly, as though wanting to impress me but not wanting to have it show too obviously. “One of my researchers is a botanist, and we were having a chat one day and somehow we just came up with it!” he says.

  One of his researchers. He’s only a few years older than I am and already has people working for him.

  He brings me to another area, where he is trying to turn chemical weapons into harmless organic substances. It looks a little like an abandoned garden shed, with pots and tubs of soil instead of vegetables, and a distinct humus smell.

  “I’m trying to neutralize chemical weapons using bacteria,” he says.

  I think about that for a moment. “You make chemical weapons into dirt?” I say.

  “Yes, and it’s brilliant idea! But my finicky bacteria don’t work outside of optimal temperatures.”

  “What do they do instead?”

  “Die.”

  “Oh. Well, what else are you doing?”

  “Little of this, little of that.” I love the way he speaks, his accent making the word little into lee-tel. “I will show you. You will become my student and I will become your student. That is how we play at science.”

  That sums it up. Science is a game for Dmitry. With his threadbare clothes and disheveled hair, he looks like a large child, moving around his laboratory as though it’s a playground. But the “playground” is also a serious place.

  “Do you ever sleep?” I ask.

  “Do you?” he says, and we both laugh.

  One night, when I get home, there’s Biba with his greasy hair and his stupid motorcycle, watching me as I get out of the car.

  “What?” I say, passing him.

  “Your mother says no more money.”

  “That’s right,” I say.

  “But your house needs improvement. Look, I took photos.”

  He gets out his phone and flicks through images on the screen, all of them shots of my house, the roof collapsing.

  “What did you do, climb a tree?”

  “You need money for the roof? I’ll give it to you.”

  “I like the roof as it is,” I say.

  “Whaddya do in that lab?” he says.

  I say, “We imagine answers to problems not yet posed. We think big and loudly and fearlessly.”

  He makes a face. “What exactly?” he insists.

  I might tell him that one team is developing programmable microbes that can produce flu medication on demand, while another is growing a human heart. Or maybe that Dmitry neutralizes weapons. Instead, I say, “We grow plants.”

  “This is ridiculous. Perhaps you can give me information,” he says. “Information worth a roof.”

  “Worth two roofs,” I say.

  “Don’t get greedy. I will arrange a meeting.”

  “Like I said, we grow plants. And then we name them. I met Betty today.”

  “Crazy. You’re all crazy,” he mutters.

  In school I eat alone, but here I have lunch with physicists, biologists, chemists, cytologists. And, of course, Dmitry and Chandni—that is, if I can get here quick enough from class. I’m stuck with Will, sure, but he’s just one among a crowd.

  Rik arrives. As always when I see him, I find the urge to tidy my hair or sit more elegantly or smile more broadly, hoping he’ll notice. I see he has a pile of paperwork with him, a clipboard, a laptop.

  Everyone scoots around so he can sit down. He chats with Chandni about some logistics on lab equipment. Then, out of nowhere, he turns to me and says, “Munn mentioned you.”

  Me? I’m embarrassed.

  To Will he says, “It must be very exciting working with Kira.”

  Rik knows exactly what Will thinks of me and is just trying to irritate him. Meanwhile, I turn red.

  “Why would that be exciting?” Will says.

  “Because Munn thinks so highly of her!” Rik smiles.

  I’m sweating with embarrassment, but there’s nothing I can do. Rik loves to tease Will. And he knows the greatest counter to Will’s low opinion is Munn’s high opinion, and it is something about which Will cannot argue. But this kind of talk will only strengthen Will’s resolve to get rid of me. If he could have me scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush, he would.

  “Do you want to hear how many times your paper has been downloaded?” Rik asks me. “More than any other at SFOF.”

  “Because of the scandal!” adds Will quickly.

  “What scandal?” says Rik.

  I feel my cheeks growing hotter. The last thing I want is to draw attention to the debacle in Sweden.

  “We keep acting like it’s fine to have a hig
h school student hanging around,” Will says, “but we’re keeping her like a pet. It’s no good for us and no good for her.”

  “Oh stop,” says Chandni, waving him away.

  “You act as though it’s a good thing to have a child in the building,” he says, “as though what we do here has no consequences.”

  “Now you’re pretending to worry about children?” says Chandni.

  “I think it’s imprudent. That’s all.”

  “Ha!” laughs Chandni, unconvinced. “It’s your ego. You don’t like being shown up by a teenager—”

  “I’m hardly being shown up!”

  Dmitry looks uncomfortable as the arguing continues. Finally, he says, “I think you have an overinflated notion of how dire these consequences might be.”

  “Really, Gloom?” shoots back Will. “Anything dangerous in your lab? Maybe a few microbes or pathogens that could potentially cause severe epidemics?”

  “I am not exposing Kira to any danger,” says Dmitry.

  “Yes, you are,” says Will. “We all are. She should be at a school. Here she’s just in the way.”

  With that, Will gets up and moves swiftly through the dining room and then upstairs. If he’s going to complain to Munn about me, I need to be there to defend myself. I race after him, his words echoing in my head: Here she’s just in the way.

  “Why are you always so mean to me?” I call up the stairs. He turns and walks down a few steps.

  “Well, it’s scarcely astonishing.” He makes a gesture with his hand as though to punctuate his point. “If I’d been told I’d be babysitting, I’d never have taken the position.”

  “Why don’t you ask Munn to move me?”

  “I already have.”

  For some reason this hurts me more than all the other awful things he’s done and said before.

  “You shouldn’t be in a laboratory like this. It’s not appropriate. It might even be dangerous,” he says.

  “Dangerous why?”

  “Other than the toxic chemicals you haven’t been trained to handle?” he says, Then, lowering his voice, he adds, “And I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors.”

  At first I’m stumped. Rumors about what? Then I remember Dmitry talking about the researcher with the gambling debts who’d gone missing. Poof, Dmitry had said, and reasoned he’d been kidnapped. “Are you talking about the kidnapping?” I say.

  Will comes closer now, whispering, “Do you know how old he was? Fifteen.”

  “That guy is probably living on an island.” I’m trying to sound like April, trying to sound confident and breezy and all the things I’m not feeling right now. Because I’m thinking that fifteen-year-olds don’t generally rack up gambling debt. And I’m wondering if the guy really was kidnapped.

  “Munn found him living on the streets selling card tricks for a dollar. He walked in here and within months was running two different labs. He had a once-in-a-century kind of intelligence. Even more interesting because he hadn’t had access to computers.”

  “What do computers have to do with anything?”

  “Just that his brain was unaffected by technology. Our generation was raised on computers. All that information spilling in at once as we surf the net gives someone like you a bloated working memory.”

  “People like me but not like you?” I say pointedly.

  He sighs. “I don’t pretend to be your equal in raw ability,” he says. It’s the only time he’s ever said anything remotely complimentary, and for a moment I’m stunned. “But I’m trained and you’re not. Nor are you an adult. And this boy . . . I don’t know . . . I just find it weird that Munn hires so many baby geniuses.”

  I think about what the red-haired man told me about his boss. Something about hiring people with unusual talents and training them up himself. Maybe this is a new idea taking shape across the globe.

  “Plenty of places do that,” I say.

  “Oh really? Well, I find it odd. Very odd. I don’t think any of us should be too comfortable here. I heard Munn say something once. He said, ‘A certain type of mind is as valuable as plutonium and just as dangerous.’ That is your friend Dmitry, a thousand times over.”

  “Dmitry isn’t dangerous,” I say. “He’s sweet.”

  “Fine, don’t listen to me. Do whatever you like,” Will says. He walks off, calling over his shoulder, “Go keep Dr. Gloom company. You know how certain birds create elaborate nests to attract their mates? Well, I’m sure he’s using his death agents to call you.”

  Dmitry’s lab is the largest and messiest in the place, cluttered with beakers, tongs, strikers, ring stands, everything clumped together as though on a flea market table. It looks like the inside of a tent that bears have ravaged, and right now it carries a trace of something that smells like paint thinner.

  “You’re not dangerous, are you?” I say.

  He stops what he’s doing. “Sorry about the smell,” he says. “I was testing a strain of D. radiodurans, a chemical found in radioactive waste sites.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  He shrugs. “Well, yes. But I’m hoping that D. radiodurans can break down radiation in the case of nuclear attack,” he says matter-of-factly. I notice his T-shirt reads, Bacteria: It’s the only culture some people have.

  “Doesn’t radiation kill bacteria?” I say.

  “Not this one. D. radiodurans is strong. It eats sewage. We call it Conan the Bacterium.”

  “So does it work?”

  “Hmm, not sure. I’m hoping for a fortunate accident. You know, like when the Germans came up with sarin gas. They were looking for a good insecticide, but then it killed an ape.”

  “Oh!” I’ve still got Will’s words in my head, so I say, “You want the bacteria to kill something?”

  “No!” he says, lurching back at the idea. “I mention the unfortunate ape only because its death is an example of unintended consequences.”

  He disappears out of the lab, leaving me standing in the mad disorder of his workspace, then returns carrying two giant mugs of hot chocolate. “Come with me. I will give you a primer in toxicology,” he says. “Also, predictive toxicology, that is with computers. It would be a waste if you didn’t study computer science along with everything else. You’d be very good at it.”

  “But you definitely don’t develop nerve agents, right?” I ask cautiously. I’m sure he doesn’t, but I have to ask.

  “The opposite,” he says, sipping from his mug.

  I breathe a sigh of relief.

  “I develop antidotes, detection systems, diagnostic tools. I told you that my father and my sister were killed? It was nerve gas that did it. I vowed to dedicate my life to solutions that neutralize biological weapons so that, perhaps, I can contribute to saving a future Alina.”

  “Alina was your sister?”

  He nods. “I used to have a dream where I injected them with an antidote, set up fluids, rushed them to a hospital, and saved the day. Like, you know, a hero.” He smiles, embarrassed. His round face is flushed. “But of course, that didn’t happen. I did not save them. But I do have ideas about how to recover people who have died in such a way. To bring them back from the brink of death or even after they’ve died.”

  “That’s impossible.” It slips out faster than I intend.

  “But as you’ve heard, I’m crazy,” he laughs. He looks a little nutty, his hair wild around his head, sweat glistening above his upper lip. But his dark eyes are intelligent, defiant. “I usually keep my ideas to myself.”

  I smile. “I like your ideas,” I say. “And I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  We sit together at the coffee bar. He tells me there’s little that can’t be fixed in the human body if treated fast enough. Then he writes out a few examples. It’s the kind of lesson I’ve never had. Another person might find our conversation difficult to follow because of the leaps and references and the way we constantly interrupt one another. But I’m used to the way Dmitry talks. And he understands me intuitively. Our m
inds sync up. It feels a little like magic.

  Then he says, “People make you nervous,” as though it’s just another fact.

  I look down at my bitten fingernails. “Not you,” I say.

  “Then can I tell you my craziest idea?” He leans forward.

  “Is it . . . dangerous?”

  “No . . . ! Well, I don’t think so,” he says. He begins scribbling on the paper in front of us again, drawing out his idea as he describes it.

  It really is a crazy idea. Brilliant, in fact. But I can see where he’s erred already. Not in the science, but in how he evaluates it. Because the idea that he’s describing, that he’s showing as perfectly viable, would change the way we understand death. And I imagine that when you start redefining what it means to die, you can find yourself in some dangerous territory.

  “You want to cure death,” I say. A statement, not a judgment, because I don’t know if what he’s dreaming up is good or bad.

  “Of course,” he says. “Don’t you?”

  13

  WILL HAS A new strategy to get rid of me. Instead of keeping me on the sidelines, he puts me right in the middle of everything, expecting me to perform functions in the lab that I’ve never been taught to do.

  Inevitably, I make mistakes: unbalancing the centrifuge or using media so hot that it kills all my bacteria. Every mistake is carefully documented by Will, presumably to show Munn at a later date.

  “I think you’ll agree it just isn’t working out,” Will says.

  I’m falling even further behind in school and have to cut hard into my sleep just to hand in assignments on time. I ran into Greevy in the hall and he said, Mind you graduate. Meanwhile, Will is making sure I fail at the lab, too.

  “Why don’t you show me how to do stuff, and then I can be more useful?” I say.

  He shrugs. “I suppose that is the reason why students get an education,” he says.

  The words sting. Not because he’s being mean again, but because he has a point.

  A few days later I’m bending over a burner that isn’t lighting. I stretch down, listening for the sound of forced gas. All at once the stream of gas lights up against my ear. I spring away from the flame, screaming. A burning sensation blazes on one side of my head and I can’t see for the blurring of tears or stop the pain or even find a sink; I’m yelling for help when Will charges over. “What is that awful smell?” he demands.