Nirgal shook his head. He sat down on the concrete coping of the bath, suddenly exhausted. He stuck his feet in the water, which felt like liquid flame. Fish in water, sloshing free, out in the air, the fire within, white in the green, alchemy, soaring with eagles . . . thunderbolts from his fingertips!

3

People looked at him. Even the Zygotes gave him sidelong looks, when he laughed or said something unusual, when they thought he wouldn’t see. It was easiest just to pretend he didn’t notice. But that was hard with the occasional visitors, who were more direct. “Oh, you’re Nirgal,” one short red-haired woman said. “I’ve heard you’re bright.” Nirgal, who was constantly crashing against the limits of his understanding, blushed and shook his head while the woman calmly surveyed him. She made her judgment and smiled and shook his hand. “I’m glad to meet you.”

One day when they were five Jackie brought an old lectern to school with her, on a day when Maya was teaching. Ignoring Maya’s glare, she showed it to the others. “This is my grandfather’s AI. It has a lot of what he said in it. Kasei gave it to me.” Kasei was leaving Zygote to move to one of the other sanctuaries. But not the one where Esther lived.

Jackie turned the lectern on. “Pauline, play back something my grandfather said.”

“Well, here we are,” said a man’s voice.

“No, something different. Play back something he said about the hidden colony.”

The man’s voice said, “The hidden colony must still have contacts with surface settlements. There’s too many things they can’t manufacture while hiding. Nuclear fuel rods for one, I should think. Those are controlled pretty well, and it could be that records would show where they’ve been disappearing.”

The voice stopped. Maya told Jackie to put the lectern away, and she started another history lesson, the nineteenth century told in Russian sentences so short and harsh that her voice shook. And then more algebra. Maya was very insistent that they learn their math well. “You’re getting a horrible education,” she would say, shaking her head darkly. “But if you learn your math you can catch up later.” And she would glare at them and demand the next answer.

Nirgal stared at her, remembering when she had been their Bad Witch. It would be strange to be her, so fierce sometimes and so cheerful others. With most of the people in Zygote, he could look at them and feel what it would be like to be them. He could see it in their faces, just as he could see the second color inside the first; it was that kind of gift, something like his hyperacute sense of temperature. But he didn’t understand Maya.

• • •