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“The officers think they’ve found someone who can help us,” the Pilot says. “A man who knew the person who planted these fields and is willing to talk about it. ”
The two of us cross the grassy ditch between the field and the dusty road. Spirals of barbed wire fence in the area. But I can already see the lilies.
They stick out at awkward angles from the little hills and valleys of turned-over dirt, but there they are—white flowers waving banners over the cure. I reach through the wire and turn one toward us; its shape is perfect. Three curved petals make up the bloom, with a trace of red on the inside.
“The Society plowed them under last year,” the man from the town says, coming up behind us. “But this spring, they all came up. ” He shakes his head. “I don’t know how many of us even noticed or thought to come out here, with the Plague. ”
“You can eat the bulb for food,” the Pilot says. “Did you know that?”
“No,” the man says.
“Who planted the fields before the Society bulldozed them over?” the Pilot asks.
“A man named Jacob Childs,” the man says. “I’m not supposed to remember that the fields were plowed under, but I do. And I’m not supposed to remember that they took Jacob away. But they did. ”
“We need to arrange a careful harvest of these bulbs,” the Pilot says. “Can you help us with that? Do you know people who would be willing to work?”
“Yes,” says the man. “Not many. Most are sick or hiding. ”
“We’ll bring our own people in, too,” the Pilot says. “But we need to get started immediately. ”
A slight wind ruffles the flowers. They’re little waves dancing in their green bay of grass.
Days later, I’m on my way back from taking another round of cures to Central when the Pilot’s voice comes over the speaker again. His voice startles me and so does the timing of his communication—does he know what I have planned? My flying shouldn’t have given him any indication yet. The path he assigned me was perfect, close enough to where I need to be that I can do what I have to do.
“There’s no record of the man named Jacob Childs,” the Pilot says. “He’s vanished. ”
“That’s not surprising,” I say. “I’m sure the Society didn’t waste any time Reclassifying him and sending him out to die. ”
“I also had them run a search for Patrick and Aida Markham,” the Pilot tells me. “They are nowhere in the databases, Society or Rising. ”
“Thank you for taking the time to look,” I say. There are plenty of us who want to know about family, but we have limited resources for searching, even through the data.
“I can’t have you looking for them now,” the Pilot says. “We still need you and your ship for the cure. ”
“I understand,” I say. “I’ll look for them on my own time. ”
“You don’t have any of your own time right now,” the Pilot says. “Your rest hours are intended to be exactly that. We can’t have you flying exhausted. ”
“I have to find them,” I tell him. I owe them everything. Through Anna, I learned what Patrick and Aida traded and sacrificed—even more than I’d originally thought. I ask the Pilot something that I could never have questioned him about before. “Isn’t there anyone,” I say, “that you still have to find?”
I’ve gone too far. The Pilot doesn’t answer.
I look down at the dark land below and the bright lights coming into view, right where they should be.
In the weeks that I’ve been flying out the cure, I’ve stopped in every Province in the Society several times over.
Except Oria.
The Pilot won’t let any of us land in the Provinces where we’re from, because we’ll know too many people there and we’ll be tempted to change the pattern of the cure.
“There were people I had to find,” the Pilot says finally, “but I knew where I needed to look. This is like trying to find a stone in the Sisyphus River. You don’t even know where to begin. It would take too long. Now. But later, you can. ”
I don’t answer him. We both know that later often means too late.
The cure works, and so does Cassia’s sorting, telling us where to go next. We’re saving the optimal amount of people. She tells us what she thinks we should do, the computers and other sorters corroborate it—her mind is as fine and clear as anything in this world.
But we’re not saving everyone. Of the still who go down, about eleven percent do not come back at all. And other patients succumb to infections.
I bring the ship in lower.
“I thought I made it clear that you couldn’t look for them now,” the Pilot says.
“You did,” I say. “I’m not going to make people die while I hunt for something I might not find. ”
“Then what are you doing?” the Pilot asks me.
“I need to land here,” I say.
“They’re not in Oria,” the Pilot says. “Cassia found it extremely unlikely that they would be anywhere in that Province. ”
“She put the highest likelihood that they died out in the Outer Provinces,” I say. “Didn’t she?”
