You talk to him sometimes, don’t you? Who is he?”
“I don’t know. He’s important.”
For an instant, Nicholas froze. “What does that mean?”
“Important.” The girl was feeling her knees, running her hands back and forth across them.
“Maybe everybody’s important.”
“I know you’re just a tot, Nicholas, but don’t be so stupid. Come on, you wanted to go; let’s go now. It’s pretty well stopped.” She stood, stretching her thin body, her arms over her head. “My knees are rough—you made me think of that. When I came here they were still so smooth, I think. I used to put a certain lotion on them. Because my dad would feel them, and my hands and elbows too, and he’d say if they weren’t smooth nobody’d ever want me; Mum wouldn’t say anything, but she’d be cross after, and they used to come and visit, and so I kept a bottle in my room and I used to put it on. Once I drank some.”
Nicholas was silent.
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I died?” She stepped ahead of him, pulling aside the dripping branches. “See here, I’m sorry I said you were stupid.”
“I’m just thinking,” Nicholas said. “I’m not mad at you. Do you really know anything about him?”
“No, but look at it.” She gestured. “Look around you; someone
“You mean it cost a lot.”
“It’s automated, of course, but still . . . well, the other places where you were before—how much space was there for each patient? Take the total volume and divide it by the number of people there.”
“Okay, this is a whole lot bigger, but maybe they think we’re worth it.”
“Nicholas . . .” She paused. “Nicholas, Ignacio is homicidal. Didn’t Dr. Island tell you?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re fourteen and not very big for it, and I’m a girl. Who are they worried about?”
The look on Nicholas’s face startled her.
A
fter an hour or more of walking they came to it. It was a band of withered vegetation, brown and black and tumbling, and as straight as if it had been drawn with a ruler. “I was afraid it wasn’t going to be here,” Diane said. “It moves around whenever there’s a storm. It might not have been in our sector anymore at all.”
Nicholas asked, “What is it?”
“The Focus. It’s been all over, but mostly the plants grow back quickly when it’s gone.”
“It smells funny—like the kitchen in a place where they wanted me to work in the kitchen once.”
“Vegetables rotting, that’s what that is. What did you do?”
“Nothing—put detergent in the stuff they were cooking. What makes this?”
“The Bright Spot. See, when it’s just about overhead the curve of the sky and the water up there make a lens. It isn’t a very good lens—a lot of the light scatters. But enough is focused to do this. It wouldn’t fry us if it came past right now, if that’s what you’re wondering, because it’s not that hot. I’ve stood right in it, but you want to get out in a minute.”
“I thought it was going to be about seeing ourselves down the beach.”
Diane seated herself on the trunk of a fallen tree. “It was, really. The last time I was here it was further from the water, and I suppose it had been there a long time, because it had cleared out a lot of the dead stuff. The sides of the sector are nearer here, you see; the whole sector narrows down like a piece of pie. So you could look down the Focus either way and see yourself nearer than you could on the beach. It was almost as if you were in a big, big room, with a looking glass on each wall, or as if you could stand behind yourself. I thought you might like it.”
“I’m going to try it here,” Nicholas announced, and he clambered up one of the dead trees while the girl waited below, but the dry limbs creaked and snapped beneath his feet, and he could not get high enough to see himself in either direction. When he dropped to the ground beside her again, he said, “There’s nothing to eat here either, is there?”
“I haven’t found anything.”
“They—I mean, Dr. Island wouldn’t just let us starve, would he?”
“I don’t think he could do anything; that’s the way this place is built. Sometimes you find things, and I’ve tried to catch fish, but I never could. A couple of times Ignacio gave me part of what he had, though; he’s good at it. I bet you think I’m skinny, don’t you? But I was a lot fatter when I came here.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Keep walking, I suppose, Nicholas. Maybe go back to the water.”
“Do you think we’ll find anything?”
From a decaying log, insect stridulations called, “Wait.”
Nicholas asked, “Do
“Something for you to eat? Not at present. But I can show you something much more interesting, not far from here, than this clutter of dying trees. Would you like to see it?”
Diane said, “Don’t go, Nicholas.”
“What is it?”
“Diane, who calls this ‘the Focus,’ calls what I wish to show you ‘the Point.’ ”
