That was why Vivian had gone synthesizing at the replicators, presenting the angel-lady with perfect shroom specs, to seek that feeling again. And to help Jemma recreate from her terrible morning and worse day, the whole afternoon spent trying to arrange imaging studies for little Pickie Beecher, for whom Dr. Snood had declared the necessity of a full workup when his guaiac card had turned bright blue. It was the right time of the month, anyway, for a trip.
“To understanding,” Vivian said, raising her tiny cup in salute. She hated that she could make no sense of the Thing. Of other tragedies people always said they were senseless, and yet Vivian maintained that they rarely were. She could always find a reason for them. She said it was like reverse synthesizing an organic molecule; she took the hideous end products and, step by step, took them back in time to the disparate originals that combined to create them. To all the late horrors of the war she’d reacted analytically, where Rob Dickens reacted empathetically. The two of them were a study in contrasts, on the dreary mornings after a new piece of miserable news had broken. They’d sit all in a row in the lecture hall, Rob on the one side of Jemma, imagining the last thoughts of victims, and Vivian on the other making international connections in her head, and calculating the force of an explosion by the distance it blew an average-sized baby. It had to be the same, with this — if she could just approach it correctly, it would prove vulnerable to figuring, though she knew it was going to be the biggest project of her life. Everybody needs a project, Jemma thought, or a very distracting hobby to get them through this difficult time. How many times had people suggested it to Jemma, and how many knitting starter kits had she gotten, a new one after every death. The medicine itself would probably be enough, she thought. Certainly it was going to keep her busy — she wasn’t sure she’d survive another week with Dr. Snood, and wondered if she’d ever even figure out which child was Kidney, let alone fix her constipation.
Jemma raised her own cup, pinching the tiny handle to bring it to her lips. The tea tasted not unpleasantly of smoke, but it had a bitter aftertaste that twisted Jemma’s face and made her gag.
“Hold it in,” Vivian said. It was her plan to let the mushrooms settle for a while here, and then go to the roof, or at least a high room, someplace where they could look down at the water. She put her cup down, and Jemma did the same, placing it carefully onto the saucer. “It shouldn’t be long,” Vivian said, folding her hands in her lap and staring down at them. Jemma put her hands on either side of her teacup. She stared at the table. It was painted with a maze of the sort you find on the back of cereal boxes. In the bottom left corner, close to Jemma’s left hand, a forlorn unicorn wandered among black trees with cruel faces shaped in their bark. In the upper right corner, near Vivian’s left hand, a vapid blond princess cried at a castle window, missing her magic pony. Between them lay yards and yards of squiggle. Jemma traced the path with her eyes, again and again coming to a dead end or else losing her place along the lines, so she’d have to go back and start all over.
Just as she had nearly followed a true path all the way through the maze, Jemma saw the unicorn rear up and shake its horn at her. “Are you feeling it yet?” she asked Vivian. Jemma hadn’t noticed her getting up from the table, but now she stood at the window. Jemma went to her and asked the question again.
“We’re in the wrong place,” Vivian said. “We need to find the front. We need to see where we’re going.”
“Okay,” Jemma said placidly, and let herself be led from the playroom. They creeped, as much as it was possible to creep down well-lighted corridors, and peeked their heads into various rooms on the fourth floor. They were just above the water line. On the third floor you could look up through the water at the sky, like looking up from the bottom of a swimming pool. On the fifth you looked down at the surface, and at particular times of day you could see your reflection staring back through the glass. On the fourth floor the water met the air at about the level of your hips.
The breaking room was designed originally as a conference room for administrative assistants associated with the NICU — Jemma had been in there once before, for her orientation to the nursery. Its only charms were a picture window, a refrigerator, and a wall poster that featured a cat coupled to an encouraging motto. Jemma doubted anyone had been in there since the Thing. She went reflexively to the fridge and opened it up. Inside were three yogurts, a tub of cottage cheese, and a pale blue container that was discovered to contain, when Jemma opened it up, somebody’s retainer. She shrieked as she dropped it, because she thought it was some fabulous, palate-shaped insect flying at her face, about to bite her with its metal teeth.
“Hush,” Vivian said. “Here it is.” She had sat on a table underneath the window and put her hand on the glass. Just in the middle, on either side of her hand, the water swept away to both sides. “Come up and figure it,” Vivian said. “This is the place.”
“Are you feeling it?” Jemma asked again, once she was kneeling on the table next to her friend.
“Of course I am,” Vivian said. She took Jemma’s hand and put it with her own. “Put your hand here,” she said, pressing Jemma’s palm to the cold glass. “Put it there and tell me why it happened.”
“I don’t know why it happened,” Jemma said slowly.
“Yes you do.” She peered closely at Jemma, and even in the dark room Jemma could see that her eyes had become almost all pupil. “You know the reason. Tell me the reason.”
“There was no reason,” Jemma said tentatively. Vivian squeezed her hand hard, as if she were trying to wring the blood from it.
“There was a reason. And more than one. There were reasons and reasons. The only question is, which reason. Which was the straw that broke the patience and the promise? Which do you think?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t guess.”
“You don’t have to guess. You just have to look. Can’t you see it?” Vivian turned her face away from Jemma’s to look up at the starry sky. “Something obscene. Something to push the squash button. I’ll start. I’ll start, then you go, all right? It was the talking babies. Talking butter He could abide, and talking animals, and even the isolated talking vagina did not provoke His wrath. But the talking babies were too obscene. They are called infants for a reason. Speech corrupted them, and could He overlook it? It was the talking babies.”
“That doesn’t seem like enough,” Jemma said, watching the two edges of water and air. The little waves of the splitting wake shaped themselves like dancers while she watched, flailing silver arms or kicking silver legs before collapsing into foam.