“Is better,” Noah had said in his accented, still clumsy World. “We want not bunch of dead vegetation dangle from our ears.” At least, that’s what he hoped he’d said. Everyone had laughed.
Noah reached out one finger to stroke Llaa^moh¡’s hair. A miracle, yes. A whole skyful of miracles, but none as much as this: Now he knew who he was and where he belonged and what he was going to do with his life.
His only regret was that his mother had not been at the mating ceremony. And—yes, forgiveness was in order here!—Elizabeth and Ryan, too. They had disparaged him his entire life and he would never see them again, but they were still his first family. Just not the one that any longer mattered.
Llaa^moh¡ stirred, woke, and reached for him.
Robbie Chavez, recovered from Respirovirus sporii, gave so many blood and tissue samples that he joked he’d lost ten pounds without dieting. It wasn’t much of a joke, but everyone laughed. Some of the laughter held hysteria.
Twenty-two people left aboard the Embassy. Why, Marianne sometimes wondered, had these twenty-two chosen to stay and work until the last possible second? Because the odds of finding anything that would affect the coming die-off were very low. They all knew that. Yet here they were, knowing they would die in this fantastically equipped, cut-off-from-the-world lab instead of with their families. Didn’t any of them have families? Why were they still here?
Why was she?
No one discussed this. They discussed only work, which went on eighteen hours a day. Brief breaks for microwaved meals from the freezer. Briefer—not in actuality, but that’s how it felt—for sleep.
The four people exposed to R. sporii worked outside the slammers; maintaining biosafety no longer seemed important. No one else became ill. Marianne relearned lab procedures she had not performed since grad school. Theoretical evolutionary biologists did not work as immunologists. She did now.
Every day, the team sent samples data to the Denebs. Every day, the Denebs gave thanks, and nothing else.
In July, eight-and-a-half months after they’d first been given the spores to work with, the scientists finally succeeded in growing the virus in a culture. There was a celebration of sorts. Harrison Rice produced a hoarded bottle of champagne.
“We’ll be too drunk to work,” Marianne joked. She’d come to admire Harrison’s unflagging cheerfulness.
“On one twenty-second of one bottle?” he said. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, maybe not everyone drinks.”
Almost no one did. Marianne, Harrison, and Robbie Chavez drank the bottle. Culturing the virus, which should have been a victory, seemed to turn the irritable more irritable, the dour more dour. The tiny triumph underlined how little they had actually achieved. People began to turn strange. The unrelenting work, broken sleep, and constant tension created neuroses.
Penny Hodgson turned compulsive about the autoclave: It must be loaded just so, in just this order, and only odd numbers of tubes could be placed in the rack at one time. She flew into a rage when she discovered eight tubes, or twelve.
William Parker, Nobel Laureate in medicine, began to hum as he worked. Eighteen hours a day of humming. If told to stop, he did, and then unknowingly resumed a few minutes later. He could not carry a tune, and he liked lugubrious country and western tunes.
Marianne began to notice feet. Every few seconds, she glanced at the feet of others in the lab, checking that they still had them. Harrison’s work boots, as if he tramped the forests of Hudson’s Bay. Mark Wu’s black oxfords. Penny’s Nikes—did she think she’d be going for a run? Robbie’s sandals. Ann’s—
Stop it, Marianne!
She couldn’t.
They stopped sending samples and data to the Denebs and held their collective breath, waiting to see what would happen. Nothing did.
Workboots, Oxfords, Nikes, sandals—
“I think,” Harrison said, “that I’ve found something.”
It was an unfamiliar protein in Marianne’s blood. Did it have anything to do with the virus? They didn’t know. Feverishly they set to work culturing it, sequencing it, photographing it, looking forward in everyone else. The protein was all they had.
It was August.
The outside world, with which they had no contact, had ceased to exist for them, even as they raced to save it.
Workboots—
Oxfords—
Sandals—
Rain fell in the garden. Noah tilted his head to the artificial sky. He loved rainy afternoons, even if this was not really rain, nor afternoon. Soon he would experience the real thing.
Llaa^moh¡ came toward him through the dark, lush leaves open as welcoming hands. Noah was surprised; these important days she rarely left the lab. Too much to do.
She said, “Should not you be teaching?”
He wanted to say I’m playing hooky but had no idea what the idiom would be in Worldese. Instead he said, hoping he had the tenses right, “My students I will return at soon. Why you here? Something is wrong?”
“All is right.” She moved into his arms. Again Noah was surprised; Worlders did not touch sexually in public places, even public places temporarily empty. Others might come by, unmated others, and it was just as rude to display physical affection in front of those without it as to eat in front of anyone hungry.
“Llaa^moh¡—”
She whispered into his ear. Her words blended with the rain, with the rich flower scents, with the odor of wet dirt. Noah clutched her and began to cry.
VI: S minus two weeks
The Commons outside the lab was littered with frozen food trays, with discarded sterile wrappings, with an empty disinfectant bottle. Harrison slumped in a chair and said the obvious.
“We’ve failed, Marianne.”
“Yes,” she said. “I know.” And then, fiercely, “Do you think the Denebs know more than we do? And aren’t sharing?”
“Who knows?”
“Fucking bastards,” Marianne said. Weeks ago she had crossed the line from defending the aliens to blaming them. How much of humanity had been ahead of her in that? By now, maybe all of it.
They had discovered nothing useful about the anomalous protein in Marianne’s blood. The human body contained so many proteins whose identities were not understood. But that wouldn’t make any difference, not now. There wasn’t enough time.
“Harrison,” she began, and didn’t get to finish her sentence.
Between one breath and the next, Harrison Rice and the lab, along with everything else, disappeared.
Nine, not counting him. The rest had been put ashore, to face whatever would happen to them on Earth. Noah would have much preferred to be with Llaa^moh¡, but she of course had duties. Even unannounced, departure was dangerous. Too many countries had too many formidable weapons.
So instead of standing beside Llaa^moh¡, Noah sat in his energy suit in the Terran compartment of the shuttle. Around him, strapped into chairs, sat the nine Terrans going to World. The straps were unnecessary; Llaa^moh¡ had told him that the acceleration would feel mild, due to the same gravity-altering machinery that had made the World section of the Embassy so comfortable. But Terrans were used to straps in moving vehicles, so there were straps.
Kayla Rhinehart and her little son.
Her sister, Isabelle.
The surly Tony Schrupp, a surprise. Noah had been sure Tony would change his mind.