Director Towne’s frown deepens. “And where did this eureka moment come from?”
“Excuse me, Director Towne?”
“No one simply comes up with an otherwise unknown and unseen DNA bonding structure made up of tiles that are, in turn, composed of mnemonic material.” There’s a dismissive smirk on his face, but Ify reads frustration in it too. “How did you do this?”
“Sir.”
“Internist Diallo, I don’t think you understand.”
Ify’s eyes go wide at Director Towne addressing her with that title. It drips disdain.
“You’ve cured Alzheimer’s disease.” A chuckle escapes his throat. “Vascular dementia, maybe even Huntington’s disease. What, did this come to you in a dream?”
Ify’s body temperature plummets when she realizes what is going on. He doesn’t believe she did this on her own, that she could discern the molecular structure of the cure, that she could decipher the data of cyberized memories and discern the very fabric of personhood. Who would believe her? But Ify knows that were one of the men sitting next to him to say the exact same thing she said, Towne would have congratulated the man without a second thought, would have praised him and recommended him for any number of awards.
Ify squares her shoulders. “Well, dreams come to prepared spirits, Director Towne. That is how theoretical chemist August Kekulé put it when telling the story of how he discovered the structure of the benzene ring, if I remember correctly. In fact, that was one of your first lessons.”
Towne holds her stare, then reclines in his chair, as though he is conceding defeat.
Ify addresses the rest of the group. “I’d like to tell the story of one of our earliest patients, a young girl named Ayodele, who had immigrated to Alabast prior to the initial cessation of hostilities during the Biafran Conflict in Nigeria four years ago. She was one of the first victims of this most recent health crisis. She had come to Alabast with the remnants of her family: a non-cyberized father and a mute younger brother. The boy had not been born mute. Very quickly, Ayodele enrolled in school and became the most popular student in her class. Academically and athletically skilled. Because the Biafran War had ended, the family’s asylum application was denied. But there exists a provision concerning the welfare of the child. If it is not proven that the applicant will be persecuted upon returning to their country of origin, then the case must be made that deportation would severely affect the child’s psychological health. The headmaster of Ayodele’s school even wrote a letter in support of her family’s resubmitted application. But then the new immigration law went into effect. The first deportation orders were issued that same day. Within a week, the first wave of children had fallen victim.”
The committee members do not disguise their irritation.
“Last week, less than half a month after we began initiating the new treatment, Ayodele opened her eyes. Witnesses would later say that it was her father’s voice that brought her back. She could hear the change in it and decided that their application must have gone through, that they would be permitted to stay in Alabast. But what allowed her to regain her memories and motor functions was the medicine. Without it, Ayodele would have forgotten how she had made it to the hospital, what her journey to the Colonies had been like, even her own father’s face. She would have eventually forgotten how to breathe, and she would have died. Our cure has not only halted the virus that infected the children when they shut down, it is rebuilding their memories. It is reversing the tide. But it is nothing without this activating switch. If the body were not prepared for it, it would have been simple liquid swimming through their blood. Because of last month’s news, it is saving their lives.”
Ify can tell she’s been getting too worked up. So she calms herself. “Ayodele opened her eyes, began making eye contact with people, and began to feed herself. Soon, she was able to walk. After that, she could speak in full sentences.”
Ify is under no illusions that the men sitting before her will truly understand her story. Ayodele was many patients, many of whom have backgrounds too sensitive for Ify to disclose, many of whom, Ify has learned, are synths. Ayodele stood in for refugees who had come before the latest outbreak. Ayodele was those who had fled war in the Pacific and who had journeyed from the Babylonian Republic and from the Americas. Ayodele was those refugees streaming into the Jungle and trickling into Alabast even as she spoke. Ayodele was the refugees who would continue to come.
When Ify speaks, she hears past and future collide and meld, like interlocking rings, with her present. She is speaking of what has happened, is happening, and will happen. She is speaking of all of them, and she is speaking of this one. And, but for a single change, she is speaking of herself as well.
Dr. Langrishe, the Genetics Department head who has thus far been silent throughout the proceedings, leans forward. “This is a remarkable thing you’ve done, young woman.”
Ify blinks her surprise. She had expected acerbic racism from him. She had expected him to ooze a sense of superiority like a cloud of fungal spores. But now he only seems to have eyes for his tablet, which displays the report Ify sent to the committee prior to this hearing.
“However you uncovered this molecular structure and devised this cure, you’ve done it. You’ve not only saved these children, but you may have extended the average life expectancy by another several decades. If there is any justice in the world, your name will appear in our history books. I’d like to think I speak for all of us when I offer you my sincerest congratulations. The Refugee Program is in good hands.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Ify says. “This would not have been possible without the aid of my assistant, Grace Leung. She was essential during the course of our research. Without her, these children would be without a cure.”
“Well noted. I think we can adjourn this hearing,” says Langrishe, sparing only the slightest of glances for Director Towne, who continues to stew. “Dr. Diallo’s testimony has been more than satisfying. Now, hearing adjourned.” He presses at a few buttons on the desk before him before rising to his feet. Amid the shuffle, he looks up and winks at Ify, who bows her head slightly, then turns and walks back to the door, waiting for the feeling to hit. Waiting to feel like a hero, like the top of her class, like she is the reason thousands of people are now alive and well in Alabast. She waits for the ecstasy, for the elevation of her heart rate, for her cheeks to flush with blood. She waits for her fingers and toes to tremble in shocked rejoicing. She waits for tears of gratitude.
Even as she heads back to her office, Grace beside her, glowing with guarded admiration, Ify still doesn’t feel it.
Grace begs leave, and Ify lets her go. In another time, Grace would be talking excitedly with all her friends in a group chat about having played so essential a part in the miracle of scientific discovery. But now, she is more likely than not heading off somewhere to sit alone in silence. And to process everything that has happened to her over the past several months. Instead of chatting with her colleagues and peers, she has left Ify alone to wait for the warmth of victory to surge through her.
Staring out at the now-empty rows and rows of beds, extended almost endlessly into the distance, Ify feels nothing. Not even a whisper of satisfaction.
Céline has likely destroyed all evidence of Ify’s past by now.
All trace of the chaos and violence that had plagued Abuja during that night of terror is very likely gone as well. Wiped away as though it never happened. When people speak of the damage or skirt the edges of an absence—a lost possession or a missing piece of furniture or even a person never to be seen again—talk will likely return to some storm, as though what had happened was a natural disaster, a cosmic event. Something biblical like a flood or fire raining from the sky. Then they’ll talk admiringly about the government’s valiant efforts to reverse the effects of climate change. The erasure will be complete.
If there is no sc
ar, was there ever even a wound to begin with?
Whatever miracle Ify has accomplished seems hollow in the face of that question.
* * *
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
“I’m still not moving as fast as I’d like,” Peter says around a mouthful of spaghetti and a meatball, chunky meat sauce dripping down his chin, “but I can feel it getting better, you know?” He swallows before fully chewing, and Amy and Paige can’t help but smile lovingly at the mess, even though Paige makes a show of chastising him, warning him to eat like he’s been to a restaurant before. She’s on the verge of making some comment about the jungle or the bush when she spots Ify, who smiles politely over her own plate.
“They say it’s like that with any sport, really,” Peter says. He lets his utensils rest. “Repetition. You try to do a thing over and over and over again, and then one day you’re trying and you do it. You get it right. Like you were building up materials in your brain or in your muscles or something. They say the disease was in my body as much as it was in my brain, so . . .” He returns to attacking his spaghetti.
“What was it like?” Ify asks, sitting across from him at the dinner table. “What did you see? While you were . . . while you were out?”
Peter looks up from his plate, then glances at Paige and Amy on either side of him, as though he’s silently asking for permission. Then, he swallows another bite of food. He shrugs. “I didn’t want or need anything when I was in that place. No food, no water. No school. Everything felt useless. What was the point of it all? If I couldn’t stay in this place I’d come to for safety, then what was the point of any of it? I wanted to live and I wanted to live here, and it was like everything short-circuited.”
Synths never needed food or water to begin with, Ify wants to say to the table, outing Peter. But the impulse dies inside her. His disease was real, no matter how it afflicted him. “Did you dream?” she asks instead.
He shakes his head.
She has heard other children describe it as being deep underwater, at the bottom of the ocean, but not needing to breathe. Yet, if they realized that they needed to breathe and opened their mouths, they would drown. So long as they refused to believe they needed to breathe at the bottom of the ocean, they would be safe. It was a paradoxical understanding, but Ify saw the logic in it, the necessity of needing to believe a lie to survive. That was what allowed Nigeria to still function as a country, she realizes wryly. The lie agreed upon.
Peter again looks to Paige, then to Amy, perhaps wondering if there’s something wrong with Ify or if there’s some arcane rule or bit of manners that he’s forgotten.
Ify listens to him, the way he talks, the way he moves. Listens to the way he sometimes taps the tine of a fork against his plate, just so softly. Listens to his massive inhales that push back his shoulders, then the way he exhales through his nose. Listens to the way it seems like electricity is running through him, making him move and talk and walk as though he were being fast-forwarded. She finds she’s listening to all of him, hearing not the synth she’s spent all this time mistrusting, but a boy. Who just wants to be safe.
That’s what it is.
Everything he had done before that Ify saw as malicious and evil, as manipulative—that wasn’t him being a synth. That was him being a boy.
Everything he had done that had made Amy smile or that had delighted Paige or that had caused either or both of them to look at him with wonder and gratitude—that wasn’t him being a synth. That was him being a boy.
“So, when are exams?” Ify asks him, twirling together her own spaghetti.
Peter registers a moment of shock before smirking, then throwing his head back in annoyance. “Ugh, I’m gonna be fine for exams. Don’t worry. I know how to study for these things.”
Around a meatball, Ify says, “Every child that has come through this family has made high marks, so . . .”
“It’ll be easy!”
And like this, Ify listens to him. Truly listens. And sees his past in front of her—the damage, the trauma—but also his future. The promise, the potential, the triumph. All of it coming together to infuse the present moment with a glow. So bright Ify almost doesn’t register the loving smiles that both Paige and Amy have sent her way.
* * *
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
A breeze catches Ify and Peter on their faces as they sit next to each other on the front porch. Even though Peter is younger than her, his gangly limbs have him colonizing multiple steps while Ify’s comfortable enough on two.
“Will you ever go back?” Peter asks.
With a start, she realizes that he must not know that she has done just that. Maybe he knows nothing of what happened, how he was cured, that it was another synth that had rescued him. Ify contemplates opening up to him, thinks about telling him the truth. Maybe this is what she needs to do to really reach a person. Make herself vulnerable. She thinks of Xifeng. She thinks of Céline. She’d told both of them her truth, and she’d lost them for it. “No,” she says.
Peter looks at her for several long minutes. Maybe he’s waiting for a reply, thinking that she, a lowly red-blood, isn’t nearly as accustomed to long silences as he, a synth. But he gives up and turns his gaze to the cul-de-sac.
Ify gets up. “I’m going home,” she says, dusting off her bottom. And that’s exactly what she does, telling herself that she did the right thing and that Peter is just a boy.
A contented smile glides onto her face.
CHAPTER
54
There is chaos when they are letting everyone be free from the hospital. Some people they are taking information from, so they are updating their records, but some people are getting out or are being taken out before there is chance to update the system. And it is never because of bad thing. Every time I am seeing this thing, it is because people are too happy to be waiting. That is how I am sneaking out. No one is looking for me, and I am thinking that no one is even knowing I am here.
I am thinking this thing even while I am watching celebration in the streets and parade that is coming out of nowhere but that is just being enough people in one place being happy. I am feeling happy that I am saving life but not because I am saving life but because it is being easy to tell myself now that I am good person and not just child of war.
Part of me is being glad that no one is seeing me, but part of me is sadding, because I am wanting for someone to be so happy to see me that they are pulling me tight to their chest and saying I am never letting you go and I am wanting for someone to be throwing me into the air and catching me and throwing me and catching me or putting me onto their shoulders and skipping down sidewalk or crying when they are seeing me blinking my eyes or moving my fingers. I know it is not normal for synth to be wanting this thing but I am not synth anymore. I am something else, and this something else is wanting all of these thing.
But part of me is being happy that no one is seeing me because then I am not having to hide in shadow all the time and I am not having to move from hiding place to hiding place and nothing is chasing me here—not drone, not juggernaut, not police. Not Enyemaka.
So very easily I am finding where Peter is living and I am waiting for the lights in this place with homes to grow dark so that it is looking like nighttime even though we are being inside Space Colony. And I am waiting for the light that is hanging above all of the porches to be going out one by one by one until only one is left. And under that one porch light is sitting Ify and Peter.
And because no one is seeing me, I am waiting and waiting for Ify to be finished talking to him and to be standing and to be wiping dirt from her bottom and to be walking away.
Then because no one is seeing me, I am holding knife in my hand, and I am seeing Peter.
And then he is seeing me.
* * *
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
I am telling this story to you, but I am
telling it to myself too. I am telling it to myself because it is important to be remembering.
You are being kind to me and you are listening. You are seeing me arrive in Centrafrique, and even though there is no peeling on my skin and you are not seeing metal inside me and I am not dizzying or sadding, you are seeing someone who is needing healing. And when I am telling you what I am, you are not turning your face at me and you are not crying. You are not looking at me like disgusting thing. You are accepting me. Sometime, I am worrying when I am telling my story that you will be thinking I am demon or that I am evil thing. That I am bad person. And you will stop listening to me.
But you are seeing me. Even though I am not being like you, you are seeing me and you are hearing me. And even though I am suffering, you are not just seeing my suffering. You are seeing me. You are seeing girl who is loving thing and who is hurting but who is remembering what it is being like when friend is spraying her with water and it is feeling like it is raining on my body, and I am hearing sound, and sound is me giggling.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My sincerest thanks to my editor, Jess Harriton, for her work not just on this book but on the entirety of the journey these girls have endured, through war and its aftermath. Many thanks, too, to my agent, Noah Ballard, for spurring me on this odyssey to begin with. Shane Rebenschied created such a stunning cover for this book, and I thank Tony Sahara and Kristin Boyle for their art direction. It is a cover that celebrates the beauty and intelligence and fierceness Mante Dalton has brought to this book. Readers may notice in this book some of the stylistic and syntactical liberties I took, and to the degree that I’ve achieved any measure of success in that regard, credit must go to Marinda Valenti for her astute and precise copyediting. Thanks also to Abigail Powers for proofreading.
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