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“Carrow,” she says, sounding glad. She must have been looking for me, too, which feels good. She smiles and gestures to the people in the courtyard. “Everyone else has discovered this place. ”
She’s right. I can count at least fourteen other people sitting in the sun. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” I say. “Something interesting happened in our last transfer. ”
“What was it?” she asks.
“A patient came in with a more acute form of the rash. ”
“What did it look like?”
I tell her about the lesions and what the virologist said. I try to explain selective pressure to her but I do a bad job of it. Still, she catches on. “So it’s possible that the cure caused the mutation,” she says.
“If it even is a mutation,” I say. “None of the other patients have a similar rash. Of course, it could be that they haven’t had time for it to manifest yet. ”
“I wish I could see them,” she says. At first I think she’s talking about the patients, but then I see that she’s gesturing in the direction where the mountains would be if the walls didn’t block them out. “I always wondered how people lived without mountains to tell them where they were. Now I guess I know. ”
“I never missed them,” I say. All we had in Oria was the Hill and I never really cared about that. I always liked the little places—the lawn at First School, the bright blue of the swimming pool. And I liked the maple trees in the Borough before they took them down. I want to build all those things again, but this time without the Society.
“My other name is Xander,” I say to Lei suddenly, surprising us both. “I don’t think I ever told you that. ”
“Mine is Nea,” she says.
“That’s good to know,” I say. And it is, even though we won’t break protocol and use each other’s first name while we’re working.
“What I like best about him,” she says, her tone and the change of subject almost abrupt, “is that he is never afraid. Except when he fell in love with me. But even then, he didn’t back down. ”
It takes me longer than usual to think of the right thing to say, and before I can come up with anything, Lei speaks again.
“So what do you like about her?” Lei asks. “Your Match?”
“All of it,” I say. “Everything. ” I hold my hands out to my sides. Once again, I’m at a loss for words. It’s an unfamiliar feeling and I’m not sure why it’s so hard for me to talk about Cassia.
I think Lei’s going to get frustrated with me but she doesn’t. She nods. “I understand that, too,” she says.
My time’s up and the break is over. “I’ve got to get back,” I say. “Time to see how they’re all doing. ”
“This all comes naturally to you,” Lei says. “Doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Taking care of people. ” She’s looking in the direction of the mountains again. “Where were you living last summer?” she asks. “Had you already been assigned to Camas?”
“No,” I say. Back then, I was home in Oria, trying to make Cassia fall in love with me. It feels like a long time ago. “Why?”
“You remind me of a kind of fish that comes to the river during the summer,” she says.
I laugh. “Is that a good thing?”
She’s smiling, but she looks sad. “They come all the way back from the sea. ”
“That seems impossible,” I say.
“It does,” she says. “But they do. And they change completely on the journey. When they live in the ocean, they’re blue with silver backs. But by the time they get here, they’re wildly colorful, bright red with green heads. ”
I’m not sure what she thinks this has to do with me.
She tries to explain. “What I’m trying to say is that you’ve found your way home. You were born to help people, and you’ll find a way to do that, no matter where you are. Just like the redfish are born to find their way back from the ocean. ”
“Thank you,” I say.
For a second, I think about telling her everything, including what I really did to get the blue tablets. But I don’t. “Time for me to get back to work,” I say to Lei, and I dump the last of the water in my canteen on the newroses near our bench and head for the door.
I walk along the backs of the houses in Mapletree Borough, near the food delivery tracks. Even though it’s late and no meals are being delivered, I can hear the soft scrape-whine of the carts in my mind. When I go past Cassia’s house I want to reach out and touch one of the shutters or tap on a window, but of course I don’t.
I come to the common area for the Borough, where the recreation areas are clumped together, and before I even have time to wonder where the Archivist is he appears beside me. “We’re right behind the pool,” he says.
“I know,” I tell him. This is my neighborhood and I know exactly where I am. The sharp white edge of the high dive looms in front of us. Our voices whispering in the humid night sound like locust wings grating.
He climbs over the fence swiftly and I follow. I almost say, “The pool’s closed. We can’t be here,” but, obviously, we are.
A group of people waits under the high dive. “All you have to do is draw their blood,” the Archivist tells me.
“Why?” I ask, feeling cold.
