“I already talked about it,” Vivian said, sighing deeply. Jemma heard an answer in the sigh — Yes, you are too lazy. Yes, you are not smart enough. Yes, the office is bigger than you and you are not ever going to grow into it. “You can come with me,” Vivian said.
“Come where?” Jemma asked. With her hand she indicated the window and the endless sea.
“Away,” Vivian said. “You know what I mean. Don’t keep going the same way as everybody else. They’re all going to get fucked, and you will too. Even you, Jemma.”
“There’s no place to go,” Jemma said, “and I couldn’t go, anyway. I was elected. So were you.”
“We’ll find a place to make ourselves different. You and Rob could come. You could even bring that weird kid.”
“You were elected,” Jemma said again. Vivian shrugged.
“I know what I have to do, even if I don’t know what I’m doing.” She smoothed her hand over her underwear and closed the top of the suitcase.
“Don’t they have underwear, where you’re going?” Jemma asked.
“You can come, too,” Vivian said, and picked up her suitcase. She waited patiently for Jemma to finally step out of her way, and then she walked out the door, leaving behind a whole closet full of clothes. Jemma sat down on the bed and picked up a framed picture of the ocean horizon. She read the inscription on the back: You make me remember that I once knew people who were beautiful in their bodies and their souls.
Dr. Snood put himself far forward for the office of Third Friend. He had had the most votes of the also-rans, and he played that distinction to maximal advantage. Jemma wondered who had actually written the law governing emergency successions — she didn’t remember it ever really being discussed, except as a package of duty dispensed to some subcommittee. They all turned to it with panicked interest after Vivian made her speech. There would be a temporary appointment, drawn from the Council or the general population, and then another election.
She watched Dr. Snood make his speech. He wasn’t so bad, she supposed, or he was bad in a way that would probably be good for the Council. The weeks and months had modified his smarm — everybody was different, weren’t they? Look at what happened to Vivian, she thought, and wondered what she would see if the fire in her eyes let them look into people’s minds, if she could see their secret hearts as easily as she could see their ordinary hearts. She tried it with Dr. Snood: from across the room she became aware of the beating of his heart, of his respirations, of the cascade of impulses flowing across and through his brain in a pattern that was certainly the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in him. She knew he had an erection, but she didn’t know what he was thinking, or what he wanted more than anything, or if he was really in love with Dr. Tiller: all things she wondered about. Because I am smarmy, she thought, because I once was somebody, because I consider myself to be rather swell, because I have big feet and soft hands, because I know a lot about poop — for these reasons I should lead you. They were about to make a vote — Connie, Jordan Sasscock, and the withered old volunteer had also thrown their hats in the ring — when the angel announced a code in the PICU.
Jemma was too pregnant to leap over the table, but she managed to lift her bottom over the top and do a swift scoot-and-roll, and she made good time down the hall to the unit. The fire was already in her hands when she passed through the double doors, green auras around her clenched fists. In the room next to the boy’s a body was laid out, pale and seizing, naked except for a scrap of cut pants that lay across one thigh. The room was hardly converted back to its old use. There were still paper alphabets on the wall, and the monitor — was that v-fib or just the seizures? — was framed in drooping green fur, and sported a pair of goggle-eyes on its top. “Get out of the way,” Jemma said, full of fire now, so it choked her and made her sound like she was about to cry. The seven bodies in the therapeutic cluster leaped away and revealed the patient’s face. Jemma almost faltered when she saw it was Maggie, death throes making her chinless rat-face less attractive than ever. Jemma brought her hands up and let the fire spill out as she brought them down. Maggie jumped when Jemma hit her chest, her whole body rising in a bounce before it settled again on the bed.
She knew what was happening as soon as she touched her. Sickness was there, a deep, black mark, as plain as Maggie’s absence of chin, or her unpleasantness — but even that had changed. Hadn’t she become a nicer person, or a more joyous one, at least — somebody who was filled with the spirit of clogging in a way that smothered the petty angels of her personality? It was almost like reading her mind, the way that Jemma read the natural history of the disease. A week before Maggie had noticed a dry spot on the skin of her neck, and tried with partial success to moisturize it away. When it faded another one popped up on her thigh. That one grew, no matter how much lotion she slathered on it. Another popped up on her bottom, but she wasn’t aware of it — she wasn’t one of those girls who was always looking at her bottom in the mirror, trying to predict the happiness of a day based on the degree of firmness and lift. She had a sore throat and a headache — these passed, but every now and then she’d have a nasty belch, like she’d just eaten something bubbling with rot. Then came the thing on her heel, another dry spot at first, but then a strange circle of scale that penetrated deeper and deeper into her foot. She scratched at it every night — it didn’t hurt at all — and dug a hole in her heel, night by night. It didn’t affect her dancing, though she thought it was a product of her dancing — she’d never clogged this much in her life, and didn’t quite know what to expect. Waking up happy was a surprise — why not get onion skin on your foot, too? Three nights of scratching dug it only a few centimeters, but she was restraining herself. When she woke that morning it was itchy, but she left it alone until after her morning class. Then she sat on her bed, lifted her foot, lay it across her leg with the heel up, and began to scratch. It was drier than ever — she dug in with her nail. It still didn’t hurt. She began to dig in earnest, feeling nauseated as she scratched into her foot, but unable to stop — suddenly it was very itchy indeed, and she wanted to know how deep she could go. All the way to the bone, that was the answer. That was firm, and hurt to touch. She looked into the hole in her foot, not quite appreciating what she had done, as the scale turned black around the edges, and then inside. She started to cry, feeling sick all of a sudden. She vomited, right in her own lap, and then her whole foot began to hurt, and the pain marched up her leg, all up her right side to the right side of her head. Then she had her first seizure. She was post-ictal for an hour, and when she was awake enough she crawled to her bathroom and pulled that little cord by the toilet.
I see you, Jemma said to the sickness, and burned at it. From her toes to the tips of her hair she filled Maggie with fire, but what was in her was already ash, and didn’t care how much she tried to burn it. Through the fire she could see Maggie getting paler and grayer. Spots appeared on her cheeks. She stopped breathing, so Jemma tried to breath for her, but it was like trying to squeeze an oiled cucumber. She kept slipping away.
“What the fuck?” Jordan Sasscock asked, when Jemma fell back, right on the ground, knowing suddenly that she had a terribly shocked and stupid look on her face.
“I don’t know,” Jemma said, shaking her head. Janie screamed “Oh fuck! Oh fuck! Oh fuck!” but all the others put back on their old roles and fell back on Maggie with needles and monitors and defibrillation glue. They continued the code in earnest, one of them bagging her while Dr. Sasscock got his tube ready and fastened the blade on a laryngoscope.