Your One & Only(43)

“You didn’t even notice, did you?” Samuel said. “Those girls passed that rock around, one by one, and you didn’t even notice.”

“What are they doing?” Althea asked. She couldn’t comprehend what would make the Ingas act like that. They looked happy now, despite the blood seeping into their lace-trimmed socks.

“Your generation is bad, but the 320s are worse.” The Samuel spoke in a detached monotone, like he’d been thinking about how to explain it for a long time. “We don’t feel things like sympathy. Not the way humans did. We feel what our brothers and sisters feel. It should be better, really, than relying on a flawed thing like imagination.” A bleak laugh hitched in his chest. “I tried to imagine being a father, and look what’s happened to me. But you see,” he said, nodding toward the Ingas, still holding hands. “Communing’s not enough anymore.”

Samuel-299’s emotions shimmered in Althea as his eyes met hers. She winced with that sharp stab in her head again, and then she felt nothing at all. The Samuel was blank, and communing with him was suddenly like staring into a deep black chasm.

“They need the blood,” he said.

A chill went down Althea’s back, contrasting starkly with the heated air.

“It will only get worse with each copy we make,” Samuel continued. “And what will happen? What does it mean if we can understand pain only by feeling it ourselves? Not all pain is as simple as a scraped knee. What does it mean for someone like Jack, whose pain we’ll never understand?”

Althea had so many questions. She wanted to stop Samuel, to shake him until that glazed look left his eyes, and make him tell her what to do, but he turned away, retreating inside himself, empty and distant. When she realized she’d lost him, she wanted to get as far from the nursery as possible, from the Ingas bleeding serenely into their shoes, and from Samuel, who was beyond help. She reached out to stroke his arm, but then thought better of it. He was no longer aware of her. She backed slowly away.

Althea was supposed to head back to the dorms and meet with her sisters. They were expecting her, and if she didn’t show up, they’d be angry, and also concerned. But she didn’t want to go back to her dorm right then. The things Samuel had said had scared her, but what she’d seen had scared her more. What other strange behaviors had she missed in her own people, things her eyes had passed over without even seeing? Her brothers and sisters were her entire world, and she was beginning to think she no longer understood them.

The way to the dorms and her sisters lay to the left. Althea went right, down the path that led through the grove of banana trees, to where she could be alone and think.

Bananas hung by the thousands above her. They’d been modified to be sweeter, to drip clear juice with flavors of oranges and strawberries, and to grow in bunches three times the size of early banana trees. The trunks were two feet thick to accommodate the extra weight. Shaggy bark peeled from them and fell, carpeting the ground in papery ribbons.

The ranks of treetops created a cover from the dazzling sunlight, and the air quieted in the dense canopy. After several moments, however, the silence was broken by footsteps behind her. She turned to find Carson-312. He leaned against the trunk of a tree. He must have followed her from the nursery. The shadow of a bruise lingered on his jaw from where Jack had hit him, and his cut lip had scabbed over.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Stay away from him, Althea.”

Whether he meant she should stay away from Jack or Samuel-299 didn’t matter to her. She didn’t want to hear anything Carson-312 had to say. She headed deeper into the trees. He followed her.

“Samuel-299’s fracturing,” he said from behind her. “This business with the monkey-boy is destroying him.”

Althea spun on Carson so abruptly he nearly ran into her. “Stop calling Jack a monkey.”

Carson stepped back. “You do like him.”

Althea kept walking. The banana trees closed in, darkening the path with their fanlike leaves.

“I didn’t really believe it, but it’s true.” Carson said. “He doesn’t belong here, Althea. He knows it as well as you do. The Council should have eliminated him when they had the chance. The only reason they didn’t was to try to keep Samuel-299 from fracturing, but you saw him. It’s too late.”

She hurried along the path, wanting to get away from Carson, yet he continued behind her.

“You’re going to choose him over your own friends, your own people? How can you defend him? He would have killed Nyla.”

“Leave Nyla out of it.”

Carson grabbed her wrist, yanking her around to face him. “You know what they did together, don’t you? What he did to her?”

“Shut up, Carson, or I swear—”

“You swear what?” He pinned her hand and held her waist, keeping her from getting away. The leaves above rustled violently. “You wish it had been you, is that it? Are you jealous, thinking of him kissing her, and touching her, like this? I can’t understand you.” His fingers tightened as he glared. Althea felt his confusion; he truly wanted to figure her out. He shook his head, pleading with her. “Why do you have to be different?”

“I’m not different. Get off me.”

He shifted her trapped hand so it was between them, as if he was showing it to her. His fingers circled her scar, his thumb pressing the raised skin. “You’re not like your sisters; you never have been. I have a scar too, I know what it’s like to feel different. I’ll show you how to make yourself fit.” He leaned into her. “It’ll be okay. I can make you fit.”