Secret Worlds (551 page)

Maskless, we turn our faces to the sun, to the accompaniment of two hundred red plants humming
food, food, food,
just inside the quadrants.

Blane finds us there. We are belly down, our teeth chewing sand, their grains sandpapering our burned, oozing skin. He drags us inside and onto the parlor floor. Now it’s not just my windpipe and lungs that sting, it’s every part of me that was exposed to the killer sun. I hear him say, “Geez, Ruby, you two must’ve been out there for a good two hours! What were you thinking?”

I have no idea what I was thinking. None. I don’t think that I was. It was more a blind motion—the way the moon follows a sunset. The earlier singing inside my head has transformed into a long yelp of pain. Thorn, too, is rocking and rocking, groaning as tears stream down his red, oozing cheeks.

Nevada stands over us, her expression a combination of horror and anger. “I was just getting ready to tell you that you two could stay on when you do this! Why? Why would you go outside with no mask? Were you trying to kill yourselves?”

Once again, I’m speechless. There’s no way to explain my behavior.

“I should take you back to your Fireseed compound,” she says. “Clearly, you have no interest in following rules.”

In response I emit an agonized moan.

“Is that what you want? You want to go back? Talk to me in English.” Her kohl-lined eyes are monstrous with a gray, whirling intensity. They scare me,
I
scare me, Thorn scares me. The burn on my face scares me. I can’t take much more.

Where’s Armonk? He won’t understand either, but at least he’s kind.

“And your brother,” she continues, “did he learn to break rules from you? First holes in the tarp, then, he disobeys my house laws, and now this. How can I possibly treat your burns? You need to be in a hospital.”

This is when I realize Nevada’s more afraid than angry. She has no idea what to do and it’s clear from the sound of her voice that we are very bad off.

I summon up words. “Tincture.”

“What?” She leans over me. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Armonk,” I mutter as clearly as I can. “Get Armonk.”

Lost in pain as the burns throb to my heartbeat, I clutch my brother who is writhing on the parlor floor next to me. The sting is so bad I feel myself slipping in and out of reality.

I must’ve lost some minutes, because when I come to, Armonk is whispering in my ear. The airflow from his words pierces the skin around my ear with darts of agony. “What can I do to help?” he asks me.

“Upstairs, in the project room,” I gasp. “My elixir. The one I put on your face.” I stop talking to suck in the pain, in order not to scream. “Can you get it?” I add.

He’s already out the parlor door and I hear the thump of him climbing upstairs. The sheer relief that he’s understood me has me floating in another nether zone. When I come to again, he’s swabbing goo on my face with fingers that feel like sharp stones. I swallow another scream.

When he’s finished with me, he slathers the tincture on Thorn.

After what seems like another half an hour, I can unclench my muscles enough to lie flat and stare numbly at the Axiom poster, at its blue scalloped waves. Thorn too, has stopped whimpering. I take his hand and we lie like that, while Armonk keeps watch over us in the dusty armchair.

A strange, humming peace washes over us as the sun lowers itself behind the dunes.

Thorn keeps wandering out to the western quadrant where Blane caught him that first time. I always find him cuddled against a Fireseed stalk and ask him what he’s doing. He never tells me. But every time I go out there now, the humming starts. Sometimes it’s saying
food, food, food,
and I can actually hear the branches sigh as they stretch out through the new cuts in the tarp. Other times they seem to murmur
come, come, come, come outside.
Those times, it’s all I can do to stop myself from ducking under the high fence to stand again in the fevered sun.

Why would my Fireseed gods coax me in this way? Are they turning against me for leaving my home and taking my brother? I choose not to believe that.

More than once, I cheat by standing directly under a cut in the tarp, where the sunlight is streaming down, and where I tilt my head up, hungrily. This fills me. Because otherwise, I’m growing weak, I’m fading in the confines of The Greening.

The last burns were so bad that they formed a permanent pattern of pocked skin—on Thorn’s face as well. First our skin blistered, then oozed, then popped, then it peeled and scarred. It was always on the verge of terrible infection. My tincture helped to hasten our healing, but even my good medicine couldn’t totally stop the scarring. I feel bad for Thorn. Not so much for myself.

In a way, it’s a relief that my face is no longer flawless. My looks often got me unwelcome pinches and leers from the cult men—and always from Stiles. Now the guys here gape at my scars, not at my beauty. It’s helped lessen my need for the Oblivion Powder. I only needed it three times this week. My nightmares of Stiles are finally fading.

Today, before I head up to the project room I look in Bea’s mirror and examine the line of pocks running down one side of my nose and along my opposite cheek. They’re not separate marks and not all identically shaped, more a jumble of scars that form an uneven ridge.

From my side view it’s clear that in the span of about two weeks I’ve become scrawny as well. My appetite’s disappeared. It’s hard to say whether the red powder or the burns were to blame. But I’m shrinking! My pants hang off me. Bea’s been really nice to take them in at the seams, though they’re already loose again. Thorn too, has lost any little boy softness he had, and soon Bea will have to take in his clothes, if she’s willing. I tie on the apron I wear for mixing elixirs. It’s satisfyingly bulky and hides my ribs.

I’m in the middle of revising the concoction made from Antlered Purples that I’m hoping to test today—on my scars, and the Fireseed leaves too, when Thorn runs over to me, and tugs on my arm.

“What?” I say offhandedly. I have patience for Thorn, except when I’m absorbed in experimental work. “I’m kind of busy.”

He pulls on my arm again, and nods to the door.

I sigh, and wipe my hands on my smock. “Can it wait?”

He shakes his head.

I follow him downstairs to the garden door. When he starts outside, I call out to him, reminding him about his suit. But then the humming starts. It says
now, now, now
. For once, I give into it. Thorn is moving fast, navigating the thick jungle with ease. These days I find that it’s easier for me too. I’m practically flying. Faster, through the shivering, singing leaves.

Thorn is headed for the western quadrant. A couple of weeks ago, it would have taken us a half-hour to hike there. Now, we’ve gotten there in ten minutes. He shimmies under the first plant where Blane and I found him up in the branches.

“What are you doing, Thorn?” I crouch under the lowest branch canopy and crawl in on hands and knees.

He lifts his palm and holds it under a wide, curling leaf. Then he gazes over at me with a joy that’s so pure, so uplifting, it washes over me in fantastic waves. “What, Thorn?” He’s always such a puzzle. I’m not expecting the words when they come.

“My. Project!”

“Huh?” I duck further under and crane my neck to peer at the underside of the leaf, examine what his palm is cradling. “That? A leaf bud?” As I focus in closer, I see that it’s no regular bud. It’s bigger and rounder and the red plant skin is stretched so tight, it seems ready to explode. In fact, now I see a slight movement, a probing from the inside. “What is it? Is an insect caught in there?” I ask Thorn.

He laughs silently, and cups his hand around the swollen bud. There’s a harder poke as if something’s making a determined effort to get out, and the membrane rips with a sound like fabric tearing. My jaw drops. “The thing has … wings! What the heck is it?”

Its beaklike protrusion roots around in the air, and two eyes, set far apart, blink out at us. It shakes out its leafy wings like some kind of exotic red sun umbrella, and flaps down to the sandy ground by Thorn’s knees.

The thing has no real body; it’s more just a head with a beaklike snout. And well, a rudimentary body the size of Thorn’s fist that seems mainly designed to support the creature’s wings. Its eyes are expressive, eerily human, dark like Thorn’s. No ears, but tufts of stuff like feathery stamens, some with tiny leaf blossoms.

“What
is
this, Thorn?” As if he would know, as if anyone would know!

“A Red,” he answers, and reaches out to pet it. It flutters but doesn’t fly off.

“A Red?” I echo. “It’s not a Fireseed seedling. It’s not a plant. Is it some kind of parasite that crawled into the plant and used it as a chrysalis?” I ask, as much to myself as Thorn. He may be uncannily smart, but he’s still a kid.

“Made him. My project.” Thorn gazes up at me with his steady brown eyes, and I know, he’s telling me the truth—an impossible truth, yes, but an undeniable truth.

“But
how,
Thorn?”

He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a few of his chewed fingernails. Holds them up. It takes me a beat to make the unspoken connections. When I do, I eagerly ask him more. For the exact place that he put his fingernails, for how he knew this would work, for any more information at all. But he’s done talking. It’s an absolute miracle he’s managed to string so many words together at all.

I look back at the creature. “Red,” I repeat, and touch it lightly with the fingers on my bad hand. It lets me stroke it only for a moment, before it flaps up to a branch behind Thorn. Its expression, if you can call it that, is one of ‘Thorn’s my master. Only he can pet me. But you’re sort of okay, you ungainly beast.’

I turn to my brother. “You’ll need to keep this thing secret so no one finds out until the judging. You’re going to win this Axiom competition, hands down! You know that, right?”

Thorn’s answer is a wide grin that spreads over his serious face, reflecting the crimson brilliance of the miraculous creature called Red.

The next few days are filled with deliveries from George Axiom: new high-tech fencing, and weapons for guarding the perimeter of the field. George’s men, gliding along the perimeter in their white vehicles, help lay down the fence, while Blane and the rest of the guys help secure it in the sand with George’s amazing self-drilling agar posts.

There are maps—a specialty of Axiom Coastal—also silvery handguns that click open and closed, which you load bullets into. Nevada stores them in the shed behind the kitchen under lock and key. We have target practice every other day.

Jan and the other guys are super excited by this. They take the guns out and polish them, and sneak target practice in the field, shooting holes in the Fireseed leaves, which makes me furious. When they do this, the humming in my head swells into a kind of shriek, and I yell for them to stop, at which they shoot more and faster. They don’t know what’s playing in my head.

So, I make them clay pigeons out of shale and fixer. The upside is that I’m popular for it. The downside is that I can hardly make them fast enough, and it distracts me from working on my contest project. The Stream announcements seem designed to make us anxious about getting our projects done, and making them the most inventive things ever. They blast into our heads at totally random times:

Huzzah, Fireseeders! George Axiom here. Who’s the smartest high-schooler with the most ingenious Fireseed project? We, in Vegas-by-the-Sea can’t wait for the Axiom Extravaganza to find out! Only twenty more days for the finalist picks.

Brought to you by the Shark Bar and Grill, in the landmark historic Aquarium Casino from before the Border Wars. Where holo-sharks take a virtual bite out of you only in sim time.

So far, I can’t really tell what Blane is doing, other than poring over data on his holo tablet. The Network goes in and out, more out than in. It’s all so new to me. I’m impressed he knows how to use it without lessons. They never taught us at the compound.

Radius has drawn wing diagrams that would use Fireseed leaves for some type of fancy vehicle. He’s the least secretive, and I take peeks at his sketchbook when he leaves the room. It’s a cool and fanciful glider that almost looks like Thorn’s Red but on a grand scale and without a face! Radius spends time flirting with Bea too. They’re cute together, his curly red hair and adoring manner, her bubbly, affectionate remarks and pats to his back, his cheek. She’s always sketching him, and helping him sharpen the perspective on his own diagrams. He’s always coming up behind her and sneaking in hugs while she’s working.

Jan is stalling on his project. He paces around with a sour, irritated look on his face while his friends are busy. His tall, reedy frame seems brittle, as if it might crack in pieces should someone call him and he had to turn quickly. I wonder whether he’s come up with any project at all. My theory is that he has brain damage, more than my brother ever suffered. I’ve heard it can make a person unpredictable and violent. Blane told me that Jan stumbled around in the desert longer than anyone else here. He hiked all the way from the deep south—a place that used to be called Alabama—and lived on selling wire he stole from some depot down there. I saw two long scars on Jan’s back one time he bent over while he was playing soccer. Blane said it was from a stranger’s knife attack.

Nevada has decided Thorn and I can stay. After all, Thorn saved the plants from blight. I pointed out to her the few remaining puckers to prove the point. No doubt she wants to keep him around in case she needs a human weathervane again. She’s still incredulous every time she looks at the tallest Fireseed that spirals up and up through the tent to kiss the sun. She even starts petting the stalks in her glee like I do.

As far as George Axiom’s deadly arsenal, Armonk says he’s not interested. He still uses his bow and arrow, which, inevitably inspires more ridicule. Jan, Vesper and Blane call him Indian and Tomahawk and names that make no sense to me. Bea and Radius stay out of it.