The Night Masquerade (Binti, #3)(44)

“I will,” was all I said, looking away. Do they really need to know I’m alive yet? After all that? With what is probably happening over there right now? I preferred to allow my family to focus on the present, for the time being. And that present meant getting away from the Meduse-Khoush War and opening themselves to the Enyi Zinariya. I felt a pang of guilt for not being there and then quickly pushed it away.

“Ah yes, and we’ve already heard from the people you met in Saturn’s ring,” President Haras said. “They’ve been tested and, oh my, those people have several youths and even a few elders who will make fine students here.”

“Really? Already?”

“Oh yes,” President Haras said. “They don’t waste time when they are sure of something. And they said the recommendation they got made them very, very sure. I suspect at some point one of you three will meet them.”

I glanced at Mwinyi. He was grinning again.





Chapter 13

Medical

Twenty-five hours later, I walked up the path to the white building. On the front was a symbol that was a combination of individuals (only one humanoid) standing together. Leaving my dorm room, ignoring the stares of classmates, and feeling the sun directly on my skin and okuoko, had been extremely difficult. Not only had most people heard bits and pieces of what had happened to me on Earth after a few students overheard a professor who’d just spoken with the president, but I looked very different. Without my otjize, my dark brown skin was that much more noticeable, compared to the few other human students who were all Khoush. In addition, without the otjize covering them, my ten thick okuoko were on full display. I was a human with soft transparent blue tentacles with darker blue dots at their tips that hung nearly to my knees now. People associated me even more with Okwu, whom they feared so much already.

My friend Haifa was the only one who’d come to my room and demanded I tell her every detail. And as I had, she’d stared and stared at my face and I’d felt so uncomfortable that I’d begun to sweat and had to tree a little in order to finish. I’d missed Haifa and even in my discomfort, I was happy to see her. However, her staring and the feeling of being naked left me tired.

Now at my medical exam, I felt the same anxious fatigue. I’d considered bringing Mwinyi, but he seemed to be having too much fun running around barefoot and meeting everyone for me to drag him along. Okwu had disappeared into its dorm, telling me nothing but, “Go to your exam. I will be here.” As I walked into the building, New Fish hovered above.

*

My doctor was surprisingly a human being, a tall plump Khoush woman who was about my mother’s age. She wore flowing black robes and a sparkling earring on each ear that matched her equally green eyes. President Haras probably had made this happen. She towered over me as she held out a hand. “Hello, Binti. My name is Tuka.”

I shook her hand and said, “Hello” as I glanced around the small room. It looked similar to the patient rooms back home, though the examination table was much wider, longer, and sturdier than any I’d seen.

“I spoke at length with President Haras this morning,” she said. She smiled, looking keenly at my okuoko. “You’re amazing, my dear.”

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“I want to put you through a series of tests—blood, skin, digestive, brain; I want to look at everything. We’ll be able to talk about the results in a few hours.”

“Hours?” I said.

She nodded. “And yes, I’ll be able to tell you how far you and your ship can go from each other.”

My heart started racing and I sat down heavily on the yellow chair behind me.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, worried.

“I’m afraid of what you’ll find.”

“We’ll definitely find some interesting things, but nothing you can’t deal with, Binti. You already are what you are and you’re fine.”

“Am I?” I asked.

She patted me on the shoulder. “Let’s get started. You can stay sitting. We’ll test your reflexes.”

*

Afterward, I was in the waiting room for three hours, too paralyzed with worry to get up and move when a Meduse-like person came and hovered beside me. It was probably worried too, because it puffed out gas constantly and barely bothered to suck it back in. I would have had my astrolabe play some soft music for me, but mine was broken and, unlike my edan, its broken remains weren’t anywhere to be found when I’d awoken on New Fish. Since I’d died and returned, I’d been able to speak through the zinariya with ease, no more vertigo and no gaping tunnel or strange planet appeared behind me anymore. However, speaking to my grandmother or Mwinyi through the zinariya was out of the question because they’d both just ask me if I’d gotten the test results yet. At some point, I curled up on the blue chair and fell asleep.

I immediately awoke when my name was called and followed the small hovering droid back to the same patient room I’d been in before with Dr. Tuka. She sat on a high chair with a tray on which she had her astrolabe projecting a chart before her eyes.

“Have a seat,” she said without looking away from it.

I sat in the yellow chair, unable to hide my shivering.

“So, your tests have all come back,” she said, turning to me.