torture device. “I wanted to ask you about the Season.”
“Ah,” the doctor says. He’s just going right on with his examination. I mean, couldn’t he stop for a second?
“Does it change people?” I say it all at once, trying to get it over with as quickly as possible.
“What do you mean?”
The doctor’s metal thing slips. The woman grimaces, but doesn’t say anything. She’s staring at the ceiling blankly.
The glazed look in her eyes, the passive way she’s lying there, it all reminds me of the way that couple acted when I was attacked. Those people’s apathy wasn’t normal… but neither is this woman’s. In fact, all the women I saw in the hallway were a bit off. They were all sitting so patiently, so quietly… so
“What’s your name?” I ask the woman. Her face shifts downward so she can see me, and I can tell that she’d forgotten I was there but isn’t entirely put out about it.
“Filomina,” she says in an even tone, even though the doctor’s doing something to her now that would have made me squirm with unease.
“Are you happy?” I know it’s a weird question, but it was the first thing I could think of.
“I’m not unhappy.”
“Amy, what do you want?” the doctor says.
“It’s like she’s not even human,” I say. “Can’t you tell? You’re a doctor! You should know this isn’t normal!”
“What’s not normal?” the doctor asks as the woman lets her head slide back to the center of the pillow. She stares blankly up at the ceiling, her eyes blinking but otherwise showing no sign of life.
“This,” I say. “Her.”
The doctor squirts clear lube jelly on the woman’s stomach, then rubs a flat-bottom handheld instrument across it. I think, at first, that he’s doing an ultrasound, but there’s no screen to show a fuzzy black-and-white picture of a fetus. Instead, a small monitor on top of the handheld device beeps. STATUS: HORMONE LEVELS OPTIMAL GENETIC LIKELIHOOD OF PHYSICAL DEFORMITIES: MEDIUM GENETIC LIKELIHOOD OF MENTAL DEFORMITIES: MEDIUM-HIGH INCESTUOUS INFLUENCE ON GENETIC SEQUENCE: HIGH
“Well, Filomina, looks like you are pregnant!” the doctor says as he puts away his device.
She sighs with contented delight — the only real emotion she’s had the whole time.
“How do you know?” I say.
The doctor turns to the table by the bed. “What do you mean?” he asks.
“They’ve only been doing it for like a few days. Don’t you have to wait a couple weeks before you can tell someone’s pregnant?”
The doctor wipes off the lube jelly from Filomina’s bare stomach, then rubs her skin with something that smells of rubbing alcohol. He reaches down and opens a drawer from the cabinet beside the stirrup bed and pulls out a syringe as long as my forearm. The long glass cylinder is filled with amber liquid. Near the plunger is a tiny label; I can tell words are written on it, but I am too far away to read them.
“Her hormone levels indicate that she’s got a good chance at fertilization. And if she wasn’t pregnant before, she will be after this. This will sting a little,” the doctor adds to Filomina, who doesn’t seem to care.
Then he stabs her with the needle, ramming it deep inside her — into her uterus, I’m guessing.
I shrink back in horror, my own stomach clenching at the sight, but Filomina just gives a tiny
“That stuff is there to change the baby,” I say in a choked whisper.
The doctor looks at me, still depressing the plunger. “It makes the baby stronger, better.”
My mouth is dry. I remember what the girl in the rabbit field said about the “inoculations.”
“Is that why all these women are so odd? Because you changed them before they were born?”
“All I did,” the doctor says as he starts to pull the needle from Filomina’s abdomen, “is give this baby additional DNA sequencing, so that the part of its DNA that’s weaker because of incest can be remade. I’m not affecting its personality.”
“If you change it, you are.”
The doctor pulls the needle out. I can’t stop staring at the tiny jewel of blood rising from the puncture.
The doctor drops the needle in a waste bin and finally turns his full attention to me.
“This is all perfectly normal,” he says, stressing each word. “There is nothing wrong here. This is the way normal people are.”
“Oh, yes,” Filomina says in a flat monotone. “This is normal. I’m normal.”
I back away, fumbling with the doorknob. I spill out of the room and run down the hall. The women stare at me silently as I race past. And even though I know their eyes aren’t interested in me, the soullessness of them fills me with a dread I cannot explain.
48 ELDER
“TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE BAT. HOW I WONDER WHAT you’re at.”
“Pardon?” I ask, smiling.
“Just a text from Sol-Earth,” Orion says, turning back to the floppy in his hand.
I didn’t expect to see Orion in the Ward’s common room again, but I’m glad he’s here. A friendly face. Harley commed me yesterday to say he took my shift in the cryo level. I’ve been stuck with Eldest most of the day.
“Have you see Harley or Amy?”
Orion shakes his head.
“What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you didn’t want Eldest or Doc to see you.”
Orion laughs. “Oh, no worries. They’re both quite busy, I’m sure.” I almost think he’s trying to tell me something secret with his eyes, but whatever it is, I can’t figure it out. Sighing, Orion turns back to his floppy. “These Sol-Earth texts are just so fascinating.” He taps on the screen, flipping through different texts.
“You should be careful. If Eldest finds out you gave Victria a Sol-Earth book… You’re a Recorder. You know the Sol-Earth books aren’t supposed to leave the Recorder Hall and aren’t meant to be seen by Feeders.” I try to peer over his shoulder to see what he’s reading. “What is that?”
Orion holds the floppy out to me, and I see a line drawing of a winged man with three faces. “It’s a story about hell. The bottom layer’s all ice.”
I’m not looking at the floppy anymore — I’m looking at Orion.
“Oh — access?” he says. “Don’t worry. I have access.”
Something about the casual way he speaks of access makes me pause. “What do you know?” I ask, my voice low so the others in the common room can’t hear. Orion’s the one who showed me the blueprints that led me to Amy. Now he’s talking about hellish ice.
Orion stands. Too close. I take a step back, but he leans in next to my face. “What do
49 AMY
