26

FEN? FEN DE LA GUERRE?

“Shit.” I shake my head. “Yes, Dr. Warren,” I say for the first time in eleven years.

FEN. ARE YOUR PARENTS HERE?

“You know they dead the minute they left you. We made it five years.” Nobody survive as a freesteader for long.

I watch the screen. But it ain’t like him to say sorry or nothing like that. On to the next thing, then. “Where Priscilla at?” I ask.

“Who’s Priscilla?” Daniel whisper.

“His granddaughter. She twice my age but the closest thing to a kid the Professors ever had. When they got sick, she took over, caring for them and running the project. I thought she the one you been looking for.”

Through the glass, Dr. Warren’s screen lights up. SHE LEFT US. IN THE NAME OF THE WORK.

“Left you?” I think of the way the door been left cracked open. She ain’t planning on coming back here. Dr. Warren really be dead. He just don’t know it.

“Is she coming back?” Daniel ask. I hear the hope in his voice, like he might still find what he looking for here.

I shake my head. “Man, you don’t even know if she alive. Walk away, Daniel.”

“But I have questions . . .”

I shake my head. He ain’t gonna come with me ’til he ask. “Go ahead. But then we leaving.”

Daniel face the glass, so close I think he about to hit his nose on the pane. “Dr. James, my name is Daniel Weaver. I’m a military research scientist from over the Wall. We’re making progress on a cure for Delta Fever, but we still have questions. Where is your research kept?”

The screen stay blank for a long time. I shift Baby Girl to my other hip and wait.

THERE IS NO CURE.

“Not yet, but we’re working on one . . . I’m working on one. And I’m very close. But I don’t have access to samples in the States, the way you do here. Finding a cure was one of your objectives. Any work you’ve done on the subject might hold the key for me.”

THERE IS NO CURE. PRISCILLA? ARE YOU THERE?

Daniel sigh and look at me. “Doesn’t he understand?”

“Sure. You the one not understanding. Why you think my parents left? They ain’t working on a cure here, Daniel. Orleans just a lab to them. We ain’t people, we rats.”

“If they weren’t looking for a cure, what is all this for?”

“You from the other side of the Wall. Don’t you know?” I ask. He stare at me. “Dr. Warren’s pet project,” I prompt him. “He ain’t interested in the Fever. He studying tribes.”

Daniel frown. “Ending racism,” he say. “For the most part, the rules of blood make race irrelevant. Blood types cross all ethnicities.”

I nod. “If folks stop hating each other ’cause of skin color, the only difference be blood type.”

“A new form of racism,” Daniel say. His face go pale. “It’s like Tuskegee all over again. They never wanted a cure.”

I don’t know nothing about Tuskegee, but if it mean folks with power always gonna abuse it, then I got to agree. “How else they gonna study tribes?” I say.

Daniel look back into the infirmary at them dried-up husks. His fist clench and unclench, and he drop his head against the window. Then he turn to me.

“What do we do now? Just leave them here?” He point at they IV bags, more than half empty. I shrug.

“Why not? They ain’t tribe.”

“That’s insane,” Daniel say.

“That the world they made,” I say. “Now, I got a baby to take care of. You coming?”

Daniel hesitate. He maybe thinking how he saved me and Baby Girl out there just last night. And he be realizing I wouldn’t have done it for him. It ain’t wrong, but I don’t like the way it make me feel, so I look away.

“All right, Baby Girl, we going,” I whisper to Lydia’s little girl. This time, when we leave, I make sure Daniel and his virus come with us. No more “every man for himself.” If Orleans gonna have a better future, we in this together now.