“We come to experience, not to change,” I whispered. “Health takes priority over that philosophy, though.”
I shut my mouth with an audible snap. I had to be more careful. The humans hardly wanted a lecture on soul philosophy. Who knew what would anger them? Or what would snap their fragile patience?
Jeb nodded, still thoughtful, and then ushered us onward. He wasn’t as enthusiastic as he continued my tour through the few connecting caves here in the medical wing, not as involved in the presentation. When we turned around and headed back into the black corridor, he lapsed into silence. It was a long, quiet walk. I thought through what I’d said, looking for something that might have offended. Jeb was too strange for me to guess if that was the case. The other humans, hostile and suspicious as they were, at least made sense. How could I hope to make sense of Jeb?
The tour ended abruptly when we reentered the huge garden cavern where the carrot sprouts made a bright green carpet across the dark floor.
“Show’s over,” Jeb said gruffly, looking at Ian and the doctor. “Go do something useful.”
Ian rolled his eyes at the doctor, but they both turned good-naturedly enough and made their way toward the biggest exit—the one that led to the kitchen, I remembered. Jamie hesitated, looking after them but not moving.
“You come with me,” Jeb told him, slightly less gruff this time. “I’ve got a job for you.”
“Okay,” Jamie said. I could see that he was pleased to have been chosen.
Jamie walked beside me again as we headed back toward the sleeping-quarters section of the caves. I was surprised, as we chose the third passageway from the left, that Jamie seemed to know exactly where we were going. Jeb was slightly behind us, but Jamie stopped at once when we reached the green screen that covered the seventh apartment. He moved the screen aside for me but stayed in the hall.
“You okay to sit tight for a while?” Jeb asked me.
I nodded, grateful at the thought of hiding again. I ducked through the opening and then stood a few feet in, not sure what to do with myself. Melanie remembered that there were books here, but I reminded her of my vow to not touch anything.
“I got things to do, kid,” Jeb said to Jamie. “Food ain’t gonna fix itself, you know. You up to guard duty?”
“Sure,” Jamie said with a bright smile. His thin chest swelled with a deep breath.
My eyes widened in disbelief as I watched Jeb place the rifle in Jamie’s eager hands.
“Are you crazy?” I shouted. My voice was so loud that I didn’t recognize it at first. It felt like I’d been whispering forever.
Jeb and Jamie looked up at me, shocked. I was out in the hallway with them in a second.
I almost reached for the hard metal of the barrel, almost ripped it from the boy’s hands. What stopped me wasn’t the knowledge that a move like that would surely get me killed. What stopped me was the fact that I was weaker than the humans in this way; even to save the boy, I could not make myself touch the weapon.
I turned on Jeb instead.
“What are you thinking? Giving the weapon to a child? He could kill himself!”
“Jamie’s been through enough to be called a man, I think. He knows how to handle himself around a gun.”
Jamie’s shoulders straightened at Jeb’s praise, and he gripped the gun tighter to his chest.
I gaped at Jeb’s stupidity. “What if they come for me with him here? Did you think of what could happen? This isn’t a joke! They’ll hurt him to get to me!”
Jeb remained calm, his face placid. “Don’t think there’ll be any trouble today. I’d bet on it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t!” I was yelling again. My voice echoed off the tunnel walls—someone was sure to hear, but I didn’t care. Better they come while Jeb was still here. “If you’re so sure, then leave me here alone. Let what happens happen. But don’t put Jamie in danger!”
“Is it the kid you’re worried about, or are you just afraid that he’ll turn the gun on you?” Jeb asked, his voice almost languid.
I blinked, my anger derailed. That thought had not even occurred to me. I glanced blankly at Jamie, met his surprised gaze, and saw that the idea was shocking to him, too.
It took me a minute to recover my side of the argument, and by the time I did, Jeb’s expression had changed. His eyes were intent, his mouth pursed—as if he were about to fit the last piece into a frustrating puzzle.
“Give the gun to Ian or any of the others. I don’t care,” I said, my voice slow and even. “Just leave the boy out of this.”
Jeb’s sudden face-wide grin reminded me, strangely, of a pouncing cat.
“It’s my house, kid, and I’ll do what I want. I always do.”
Jeb turned his back and ambled away down the hall, whistling as he went. I watched him go, my mouth hanging open. When he disappeared, I turned to Jamie, who was watching me with a sullen expression.
“I’m not a child,” he muttered in a deeper tone than usual, his chin jutting out belligerently. “Now, you should… you should go in your room.”
The order was less than severe, but there was nothing else I could do. I’d lost this disagreement by a large margin.
I sat down with my back against the rock that formed one side of the cave opening—the side where I could hide behind the half-opened screen but still watch Jamie. I wrapped my arms around my legs and began doing what I knew I would be doing as long as this insane situation continued: I worried.
I also strained my eyes and ears for some sound of approach, to be ready. No matter what Jeb said, I would prevent anyone from challenging Jamie’s guard. I would give myself up before they asked.
Yes, Melanie agreed succinctly.
Jamie stood in the hallway for a few minutes, the gun tight in his hands, unsure as to how to do his job. He started pacing after that, back and forth in front of the screen, but he seemed to feel silly after a couple of passes. Then he sat down on the floor beside the open end of the screen. The gun eventually settled on his folded legs, and his chin into his cupped hands. After a long time, he sighed. Guard duty was not as exciting as he’d been expecting.
I did not get bored watching him.
After maybe an hour or two, he started looking at me again, flickering glances. His lips opened a few times, and then he thought better of whatever he was going to say.
I laid my chin on my knees and waited as he struggled. My patience was rewarded.
“That planet you were coming from before you were in Melanie,” he finally said. “What was it like there? Was it like here?”
The direction of his thoughts caught me off guard. “No,” I said. With only Jamie here, it felt right to speak normally instead of whispering. “No, it was very different.”
“Will you tell me what it was like?” he asked, cocking his head to one side the way he used to when he was really interested in one of Melanie’s bedtime stories.
So I told him.
I told him all about the See Weeds’ waterlogged planet. I told him about the two suns, the elliptical orbit, the gray waters, the unmoving permanence of roots, the stunning vistas of a thousand eyes, the endless conversations of a million soundless voices that all could hear.
He listened with wide eyes and a fascinated smile.
“Is that the only other place?” he asked when I fell silent, trying to think of anything I’d missed. “Are the See Weeds”—he laughed once at the pun—“the only other aliens?”
I laughed, too. “Hardly. No more than I’m the only alien on this world.”
“Tell me.”
So I told him about the Bats on the Singing World—how it was to live in musical blindness, how it was to fly. I told him about the Mists Planet—how it felt to have thick white fur and four hearts to keep warm, how to give claw beasts a wide berth.
I started to tell him about the Planet of the Flowers, about the color and the light, but he interrupted me with a new question.
“What about the little green guys with the triangle heads and the big black eyes? The ones who crashed in Roswell and all that. Was that you guys?”
“Nope, not us.”
“Was it all fake?”
“I don’t know—maybe, maybe not. It’s a big universe, and there’s a lot of company out there.”
“How did you come here, then—if you weren’t the little green guys, who were you? You had to have bodies to move and stuff, right?”
“Right,” I agreed, surprised at his grasp of the facts at hand. I shouldn’t have been surprised—I knew how bright he was, his mind like a thirsty sponge. “We used our Spider selves in the very beginning, to get things started.”
“Spiders?”
I told him about the Spiders—a fascinating species. Brilliant, the most incredible minds we’d ever come across, and each Spider had three of them. Three brains, one in each section of their segmented bodies. We’d yet to find a problem they couldn’t solve for us. And yet they were so coldly analytical that they rarely came up with a problem they were curious enough to solve for themselves. Of all our hosts, the Spiders welcomed our occupation the most. They barely noticed the difference, and when they did, they seemed to appreciate the direction we provided. The few souls who had walked on the surface of the Spiders’ planet before implantation told us that it was cold and gray—no wonder the Spiders only saw in black and white and had a limited sense of temperature. The Spiders lived short lives, but the young were born knowing everything their parent had, so no knowledge was lost.