Devin worked at it until it was almost mindless — the snap-snap of the ends, the bigger crunch in the middle. The chore had a rhythm to it, a soothing pattern. Before long, he had relaxed into the repetition, let it become routine, and his mind began to wander.
His grandmother was real. She had sounded so...happy. Like she had a fun life. No worries. Maybe it really was like that for her. Maybe when he got to Minneapolis, he could figure out how to contact her. They could meet, his grandfather, too, and with them he would learn how to live like normal people.
“You and that young man seem awfully close.”
Devin had almost forgotten Maribou was there. He shifted in his seat and stretched to buy himself time to think of a not-gay answer. “We get along good. Like the same things.”
“What do you like, Devin?”
“Food, mainly,” Devin said, and got rewarded with a chuckle. “Also reading.”
“Oh?”
“Not now, obviously, because of the vision stuff, but before. I read a lot. Romances, mostly.” Was that too weird? “And books about sheriffs.” That was sort of true, at least. A couple of the romances had featured roguish, widowed sheriffs just looking for the right woman to make them happy again.
“I like to read, too. Clinton isn’t much for it.”
Better. If they talked about her, he wouldn’t have to say too much. The medicine made him feel slow and stupid, too. “What do you like to read?”
“It’s pretty boring. I like biographies. Science journals.”
Definitely boring. “Why that stuff?”
The soft snap-snap coming from Maribou’s side of the table stopped. “I was a geneticist. For the New American government.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I helped program human and animal DNA, engineer organisms to withstand The Change better, for example.”
That all sounded like a bunch of nonsense to Devin, but he was curious. Flix had told him the woman was black. And, well, a woman. “Aren’t you a black lady? How did you get to be a scientist?”
Maribou started snapping beans again. “You’re blunt, aren’t you?”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, just...different. Are you asking because you don’t think black women are capable or because —”
“Oh, Jesus, no.” Devin knew he had to be blushing. “I meant, Joe said only white people got to be citizens and women don’t get the chip anymore, and I guess you can still get an education if you aren’t a white male — Joe hopes to — but I thought it was weird.” God, the pill was wearing off and his headache was roaring back. Soon the nausea would start. He laid his clammy hand against the back of his neck and tried to keep it together enough not to sound so stupid. “I’m sure you’re very smart.”
Maribou burst out laughing. The sound was rich and hearty, and even though it hurt Devin’s head, he was thrilled to hear it after he’d been such an ass.
“I am very smart,” Maribou agreed. “Top of my class in the science school at college. And you’re right about New America. You can’t generally be anything but a white male — a heterosexual white male — if you want to get perks like college and living in a dome.”
“Did you live in a dome? It seems like they’d want to hog all the scientists in one of their bubbles.”
Maribou’s laughter died out. “I did. Clinton and I.”
“Why did you leave? Did you get kicked out?”
“Did you ever want something very much? More than cake on your birthday or flowers in the winter?”
Devin had never had cake. He’d never seen flowers in real life. But he wanted Joe. He nodded.
“That thing that you wanted, what if when you got it, it wasn’t all you hoped it would be?”
Maybe wanting Joe wasn’t such a good example. “I don’t know.”
“I grew up out here, in Iowa, before the domes went up, when women still had rights, and even if black people were discriminated against, we still got to go to school. But we were poor. And there was about as much out here then as there is now.”
“Nothing but cows to fuck, Flix says.”
Maribou snorted. “True then, true now. I dreamed of leaving, of going off to school and proving just how smart and worthy I was, of fitting into the white man’s world.”
“And then you did. That’s amazing, right?”
“I thought so at first. College was wonderful. Iowa State, up in Ames. Still a good school with lots of folks in the city, even if it’s not a dome. Anyway, Clinton and I had been dating for a few years, and he stayed back here but said he’d move to the dome with me just as soon as I graduated and got a job.”
“How long did that take?”
“We moved into the prototype Minneapolis dome within five years. I got a job with the government. Money. Food. Conditioned air in the dome. Trips to the other domes.” Maribou’s voice came closer, like she’d leaned in. “I’ve seen oceans, son. Mountains. Volcanoes.”
“Sounds like a fairy tale.”
“It was, in a way. But fairy tales don’t have happy endings.”
The sourness was building in Devin’s stomach. He’d have to track down Aria soon and get another pill. Maybe he should go before he heard the end to Maribou’s story. His fingers were scraping the bottom of the bowl of beans anyway. He made a motion to stand, but Maribou’s voice stopped him.
“I got all the things I thought I wanted as long as I didn’t get the things that made me happy. Clinton and I were unable to marry. No miscegenation. And no one looked at me like I belonged. I got stopped by the police, harassed by random men, disrespected and marginalized by my colleagues.”
“So you left?” What she’d gone through sounded awful, no doubt, but after all the shit he and Joe had been through in Texas Territory and then on the journey this far north, he couldn’t imagine bailing just because times were hard.
“Clinton and I decided that no job was worth my dignity. We saved up our money, came back here.”
The first wave
