She is closing the door and taking the trailer’s light with her. I think she is wanting to hear me cry at news that Ify is dead, like what red-blood human is doing. Like woman whose loved one I am burying or like man and old woman who are seeing remembering of person who they are loving who is dead. She is wanting me to cry, but it is wasteful to cry for this. I am remembering how Xifeng is standing and holding herself when she is telling me about Ify, and I am remembering what my brain is telling me about how her body is talking to me when she is telling me words, and I am knowing that when Xifeng is telling me that Ify is dead, Xifeng is telling lies to me.

CHAPTER

11

Ify walks up and down the rows of children, checking for the same thing—vital signs—while Grace strides at her side. “Have they shown any trace of plague? Or disease? If necessary, we will need to quarantine them.”

Grace has her tablet out in front of her and clicks through tab after tab. “No sign, Doctor.”

Ify doesn’t have the time or energy to correct her.

“The first few cases were staggered. Some of them were children who had been living in Alabast or adjoining Colonies for several years. They were students at local primary and secondary schools. Their parents were employed locally, although many of them had jobs as unskilled labor. There is no sign in any of the scans of underlying neurological conditions.”

Ify stops in her tracks. “Are they all red-blood?”

Grace nearly runs into her. “Um, Doctor. By law, we are forbidden to check. I had just assumed . . .”

“If they have brought a disease with them, perhaps it is something with a delayed fuse. Or worse, like cholera.” Ify stops at the bed of a boy who looks like he has just begun high school. Hair comes in patches above his lip and on his chin. He has a cleft lip, and his hair—grown long—is like a pool of ink on his pillow. She picks up his wrist, raises it a few inches over his forehead, pauses, looking for any reaction, then drops it.

It lands with a smack on the boy’s face, and Grace winces. When she recovers, she returns to her tablet and says, “They are totally passive. Mute, unable to eat or drink, incontinent, and”—looking down at the boy while Ify leaves his arm draped across his forehead—“unreactive to physical stimuli or pain.”

“When was the first case?” Ify asks, her voice devoid of emotion. She now has a puzzle in front of her to focus on. She’s been looking for this.

Grace taps a sequence into her tablet. “Someone with similar symptoms appears in the system from six years ago.”

“Is that the first?”

“The first that matches up, Doctor.”