Lotus and Thorn

by Sara Wilson Etienne

  My arrival in the Dome had displaced Marisol and she was desperate to cling to whatever power she could. I wasn’t fond of Marisol, but I had no interest in fighting a war with her. And no interest in hurting her.

  “I’ll bring her back to you after she gets the okay from Jenner,” Edison said.

  “Jenner?” And when Marisol said the name, fear rippled out from her, infecting me. It was the first confirmation that I was right to suspect him and I pushed.

  I grinned at them both, trying out my Kisaeng role and said, “Oh no! Should I be scared? Am I in trouble?”

  Aaliyah and the Ellas managed a nervous titter, but Marisol looked at me with a warning. A small shake of her head told me this was not something to joke about. And there was real concern in her eyes.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there was a piece of Marisol that didn’t fit into her own flighty Kisaeng fantasy.

  Maybe Marisol had changed.

  CHAPTER 19

  “A CHECKUP?” I hesitated in the filtered sunshine of the Promenade. I’d wanted to get a closer look at Jenner but this wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind. And Edison wasn’t exactly my favorite person right now either.

  “It’s routine. And painless, I promise. I know I haven’t given you a very good impression of Jenner, but his intentions are good. He just wants to make sure you’re acclimating to the Dome.” We stood looking up at the huge glass building we’d seen the night before.

  Cold, vague memories from isolation still floated at the edges of my mind. Chilling me in a way I didn’t fully understand. I tried to push them away. To be brave. But I’d seen the fear in Marisol’s eyes at the mention of Jenner’s name.

  Still. If Lotus was right and the Curadores had killed Tasch, there had to be some sign of it somewhere. Some evidence that they were connected to the recent outbreaks. And if this was my way to get inside the Genetics Labs to look for it—to see what Jenner was doing in there—I had to take it. “Okay.”

  “Good. Because afterward, I have a surprise for you in the Lab.” Edison took my hand, and this time it wasn’t a show. He punched a series of buttons on a panel next to the entrance to the Lab—like a smaller version of the ones at the magfly stops—and the glass door slid open. The door code had been too fast for me to catch, but now I knew to keep an eye out. There was a rush of frigid air as Edison pulled me into a huge lobby.

  The light was dazzling. It rainbowed through the glass ceiling several stories above. But it also flashed and flickered on wide screens around us—a constant flow of numbers and images pouring across them.

  Flys buzzed in every direction. Swarming high into the air. Crawling across the thousands of blue glass bricks that made up the walls. But I was drawn toward the center of the room—to a mass of buzzing machines. Fans whirled and lights blinked. “What is this thing?”

  “The main computer makes up the heart of the Lab, controlling all the experiments from here. And monitoring the entire Dome.”

  “Experiments? I thought you said this place was a glorified nursery?” I walked up behind one of the Curadores, watching numbers stream across the monitor. Trying to see what he was doing.

  The Curador seemed surprised to see me, but as soon as he caught sight of Edison, he gave us space. The man reached up and touched something on a screen, reciting instructions into thin air—like he was having a conversation with himself.

  A swarm of flys burst into action. I flinched as they buzzed over me and up toward the ceiling.

  “They won’t hurt you.” Edison squeezed my hand.

  “Tell that to the Kisaeng I saw this morning. What are they doing anyway?”

  A shadow passed over Edison’s face as he checked the screen. “Well, it looks like that swarm is headed to the Meat Brewery to fix the chiken vat. When they’re working correctly, this whole Dome is self-regulating. The flys monitor and repair everything . . . food synthesizers, reprocessors in the Salvage Hall—”

  “Magflys,” I filled in.

  He nodded. “Magflys. They’re all controlled from here.”

  My brain churned away at the new information—seeing all the implications this had for the Dome, for the magfly accident. If I was going to find out anything about what the Curadores were really up to, I needed to know how this place worked. Or didn’t work. “But this morning, those flys . . . they . . .” And I saw it happening all over again, too fast for me to do anything about. “They embedded that girl in metal.”

  “Yes, like I said, when they’re working correctly.” Edison tried to leave it at that. But as I stood there, arms crossed, he realized that half answer wasn’t going to satisfy me. “If something breaks, the flys alert the computer, or we do, and the computer tells the flys how to fix the problem. But a while ago, before I was born, the whole system started getting buggy—pardon the pun. Here or there, a fly would develop a glitch. And either the computer couldn’t fix the glitch or the glitch got integrated into the learning systems . . . and then into the copies. And into the copies of the copies. So whenever the computer shuts them down and orders the reprocessors to make a new fly, the problem just gets worse.”

  “If the computer can’t fix them, then why don’t you do it?”

  “We don’t know how. The Curadores are great at interpreting data and making decisions based on it—choosing which egg is the best genetic match for which sperm or what parts of the Dome to shut down in order to be more efficient. But we don’t actually know how to do those things anymore. That knowledge was lost hundreds of years ago.

  “We instruct the computer and it splices genes and cables and wires. It’s an imperfect system, but no one ever anticipated that the plague would kill off most of our scientists. Or that we’d lose our link with Earth’s databases. Like I said last night, the Dome is falling apart. No one—”

  Edison cut off as Jenner came in from a side entrance. The man practically bellowed his greeting. “Hello, my boy! So this is where you’re hiding our lovely new addition.”

  In Jenner’s presence, Edison’s whole manner transformed. He became more tentative. More formal. I’d noticed the same thing the night before. “Sorry for the delay. Leica was fascinated by the computer.”

  “As she should be! This lady’s the only reason we’re all here.” Jenner fondly patted the whirring machine. “I doubt the Colonists who built her had any idea she’d still be keeping us alive half a millennium later.”

  “What was she supposed to do, then?” I stepped closer, injecting a little awe and confusion into my voice.

  Jenner took the bait. “Well, long before the plague, Ad Astra Colony was intended to be a place of research and development. Planetary exploration. Robotics and computers. Food production. Recycling resources. Next-generation technology. Biotech.” He slipped an arm around me—leading me toward one of the monitors—and I let him. I concentrated on smiling and nodding at what Jenner was saying, instead of his hand . . . inching down my waist. If there was ever a time for Marisol’s be-whatever-they-want-you-to-be advice, this was it.

  “They provided the Colonists with anything and everything that was needed to keep a civilization like this self-sustaining. But it was only meant to be a jumping-off place. Still, when the plague hit Gabriel, the Dome was exceptionally well-equipped to survive.”

  I nodded encouragingly, not saying anything. I didn’t need to. Some people loved to fill up the room with their endless streams of words. As if they were waging war on silence.

  “Perhaps a demonstration of her abilities can be arranged as part of your checkup,” Jenner said. “What do you think, Edison?”

  Edison nodded deferentially, almost cringing. And Jenner, who was over a head shorter than Edison, reached up and clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s put on a show for our girl.”

  Jenner punched a code into the monitor. I tried to see it—in case it might come in handy at some point—but his hand
blocked my view. Then he said, “Kisaeng, Leica. Blood sample.”

  A long list of names scrolled across the screen and for a second I thought I caught Olivia’s name in the list. Then a picture of my face, eyes closed, flashed up on the screen and next to it: Sample number 2789: Two Pints.

  It was unsettling to see the unconscious Leica lying there. I wanted to shake her awake.

  “You see, this whole Dome functions like a giant insect colony. You could think of us, perhaps, as a beehive. This room would be the center of the hive and our computer here would be the queen bee. She makes all the decisions and sends out messages to her workers.” Then, illustrating his point, Jenner said, “Computer, retrieve sample.”

  Immediately, a swarm of flys took flight, but this time I didn’t flinch. My eyes followed them as they traveled up toward the high ceiling.

  “Of course, if they were truly bees, they’d use chemicals and movement to communicate. Cryptic dances spelling out the answers to the cosmos. But Ad Astra is much more sophisticated than any of that. Within the Dome, our computer—our queen, if you will—can send data through the air, communicating with her children. For they are, in essence, tiny infinitely useful computers.”

  The cloud of flys finally stopped several stories up and hovered along the left wall. Then one of the blue blocks popped forward and pushed out—revealing a little drawer. A cloud of fog spilled from it, and for the moment, the flys were lost in the mist.

  “Are all of those drawers?” I marveled at the upper stories, which were made out of what I’d assumed were small glass bricks.

  Jenner nodded. “The Colonists were sent here with hundreds of thousands of samples of DNA . . . and not just human, but animal and plants as well.”

  I tried to comprehend the mass of life this room represented, but it was impossible.

  Then the drawer shut itself again, immediately disappearing back into the wall. One square among thousands. As the fog cleared, I saw the swarm had disappeared. In its place was a small black metal cylinder, descending toward us.

  “Put out your hand,” Jenner said.

  I hesitated, nervous, and suddenly Jenner grabbed my wrist, yanking it up. He was still smiling and his voice still had its swagger, but there was danger there too. “Put. Out. Your. Hand.”

  Edison took a step toward us, his face thunderous. I gave a little shake of my head—calling him off. Jenner’s grip was painful, and I was unnerved by the man who wore this plastic smile even as he hurt me. But what I needed now was to see the rest of Jenner’s little demonstration. Edison nodded, though his jaw was clenched tight.

  I opened my upturned hand.

  The cylinder landed precisely in the center of my palm. Then the black metal coating liquefied, trickling away, exposing a clear vial, filled with red blood. The glass was icy, and I almost dropped it when the pooling metal suddenly congealed and reformed into flys—their feet scritch-scratching over my skin.

  Then Jenner, still crushing my wrist, said, “Verify match.”

  One of the flys crawled along the length of my index finger. There was a sharp prick as it stuck a proboscis into my flesh. The fly stayed there, its tiny wire embedded in my fingertip—the pain traveling down my finger, becoming a throbbing ache in my hand. I fought the urge to smack it and Jenner away, gritting my teeth and forcing myself to stay put. Finally, the nearby monitor beeped and the computer said, “Match verified.”

  Jenner released my wrist with a little laugh—leaving pale fingerprints on my skin. I took a step back, putting space between us, though I suspected the whole Dome wouldn’t be enough distance. But then the screen behind him was flooded with diagnostics. Blood type. Levels of nutrients and chemicals. Blood pressure.

  “Well done. Looks like you’re healthy and adapting to life inside the Dome,” Jenner said.

  I didn’t know what most of the information meant, but my eyes honed in on one detail—making sure my excitement didn’t show in my voice. “What does that mean, ‘Disease Resistance Markers Detected’? Does that mean you tested it against Red Death?”

  “We don’t use the disease itself . . . that would be too dangerous,” Jenner said. “We merely check the blood for genetic markers. We’ve known for decades that a few of your kind carry an immunity to Red Death. In fact, we wasted a lot of time trying to replicate it. But it turns out it’s not just one gene. Immunity results from a slough of complex, tiny variations across many genes . . . probably one of the reasons it’s so rare even within your own people. We probably haven’t even identified all the pertinent factors. And to be honest, we haven’t invested any more resources into it either. Let me show you what we’re doing instead.”

  Jenner slipped his arm around my waist again and guided me out of the main room and down a long hallway. Your kind. That’s what Jenner had called the Citizens. As if they were just some species of animal to be studied. Who cared that my people were still dying by the hundreds of Red Death? It was like the glut of food at the party last night, when people in Pleiades were barely getting enough—if it wasn’t affecting the Dome, then it didn’t matter.

  “As Edison has probably explained to you, the Curadores have been isolated for so long, we are without resistance to many, many diseases. That’s why we’re so strict about who goes in and out of the Dome. And it’s why it would be impossible for us to leave without losing a vast percentage of our population. So it’s essential that we find a way to access the computer and fix the pieces that are wearing out.”

  We arrived outside a busy-looking room. Like so much of the building, this wall was made of glass, letting us see into the lab. Metal tables were lined with trays of test tubes and clear plastic dishes. Flys clouded the air and Curadores in isolation suits monitored computer screens. Robot arms descended from the ceilings, siphoning droplets of liquid from the test tubes into complicated-looking machines.

  “This area is really Edison’s domain,” Jenner said, deferring to the younger Curador.

  But Edison looked uncomfortable, like he wished he was anywhere but here. Finally Edison said, “Let me introduce you to my children.” Edison gestured to the lab. “Well, they’re really the Dome’s children. When Red Death infected Gabriel five centuries ago, only the scientists that happened to be in one of these sealed-off ‘clean labs’ survived. With only a handful of Curadores left, they decided to use the genetic bank to repopulate the Dome.”

  Jenner cut in. “And now we’re using that same bank to make smarter, stronger Curadores. Aren’t we, my boy?”

  And when he said my boy, I heard it. The disdain disguised as pride. And I realized that Jenner meant smarter and stronger than Edison. I’d heard the same veiled tone somewhere before without registering it . . . the condescension masquerading as kindness. And I was shocked to discover that it was in my memories of Sarika.

  All her words to me, her actions, had been kind—loving even. But still, there had been a thread of revulsion there. I remembered her eyes flicking toward my hands as she said, I blame myself for not being vigilant. For not seeing what was right there in front of me.

  Now I realized that Sarika had forgiven my betrayal not because she thought of me like a daughter, but because she thought me as Corrupt—incapable of doing better. Sarika might have loved me, but in her heart of hearts, she believed God had damned me. She believed I was wrong.

  I could only recognize it now that I saw that same wrongness reflected in Jenner’s interactions with Edison. All the fatherly affectations—all the shoulder claps and my boys—were simply Jenner’s way of underscoring that Edison had failed him. A sort of inverted hatred. I wondered how Edison could stand it.

  Then I thought about myself and Sarika—and I wondered if Edison could even see it.

  CHAPTER 20

  “DO YOU REALLY RUN that whole lab?” I asked when Jenner was called away. Edison was preoccupied as he watched Jenner’s receding figure—the
older man’s hands animated as he discussed something with another Curador—and I tried to summon Edison back to me.

  “Yeah,” Edison finally answered, turning to lead me down a different hallway. “I do.”

  “You don’t sound too happy about it.” And honestly, I wasn’t either. I wasn’t happy about anything I’d seen here.

  Because one thing was clear: the Curadores certainly had the technology to manipulate Red Death and to infect Pleiades. But if that’s what was happening, then why would Jenner allow me to see all this? Or did he think I was so insignificant that it wouldn’t matter if I figured it out? And the fact that I had no real read on what Jenner’s motives were worried me. Marisol seemed terrified of him. Edison was cowed by him. All the other Curadores were intimidated . . . a perfect setup for Jenner’s authority to go unchecked and unquestioned.

  But authority to do what? And why? This wasn’t just about retribution for Tasch’s death—this was about the thousands of Citizens out in Pleiades who were still at risk from whatever was going on. Suspicions would not help me protect my people.

  “It’s important work, don’t get me wrong,” Edison continued. “It’s just when I was a kid, that place used to give me nightmares. Nikola too.”

  And I wondered when I might meet this brother of Edison’s. We turned a corner and now the floors slanted downward a little. The lighting was dimmer here and there were no more glass walls. Only windowless doors.

  “What I don’t understand is, after the plague, if there were so few Curadores left, why didn’t they just let in the rest of the survivors from Pleiades?”

  “They couldn’t . . . not without dying,” Edison said. “It wasn’t until much later that they figured out a way to bring Kisaengs into the Dome using the isolation rooms and intensive blood filters and tests. The people outside—your ancestors—survived because they had some natural resistance to the disease, but they could still be carriers. And the remaining Curadores had no resistance at all. They were only alive because they hadn’t been exposed in the first place. The Curadores had to think of the big picture.”