Origin

by Jessica Khoury

  “Uncle T,” I say, trying to be as nonchalant as possible, “what’s Manaus like?”

  His back is turned to me, and I see the muscles in his shoulders tense. As he turns around, I put on my most determined face. “Well? Is it true you have to go through Manaus if you want to get anywhere?”

  He looks around, but no one heard my question. He leans over and puts his dark face inches from mine. “Now don’t you be asking me questions like that, Pia. You know it’s against the rules. Do you want to get me in trouble?”

  I frown, and beside me Alai raises his hackles slightly. “I won’t tell anyone you told me. Come on, Uncle T! I know all about protozoons and mitochondria, and I can tell you the genus and species of all the animals in the menagerie, but all I really want to know about is my own jungle!”

  “No, Pia.” He turns away and pretends to be busy moving some boxes around.

  I watch for a while, but not even the prospect of more of those Skittles interests me now. Delivery day is ruined. I leave the warehouse with Alai at my side, angry at Uncle T, angry at Mother, angry at Uncle Antonio, and angry at that Dr. Klutz for ever mentioning Manaus.

  The rules. The stupid rules that have been in place for over thirty years. A list of them hangs in the lounge, in huge print, so that no one can forget. No books, magazines, or movies from the outside, unless they’re science textbooks, and even those get edited by Uncle Paolo. I have biology books full of blacked-out paragraphs and defaced photos. All music played must be instrumental only, no lyrics. No one can talk about the outside world, at least not when I’m around. No maps. No radios. No photographs. Anything deemed by Uncle Paolo, as the director of Little Cam, to be a “corruptive influence” is seized and locked up somewhere, probably in Uncle Timothy’s room, until its owner retires. And that’s if the item isn’t destroyed altogether.

  I know why the rules exist.

  Two words: the Accident.

  THREE

  Uncle Antonio tries to run on the treadmill and read from his quiz sheet at the same time. Not a good idea, but I don’t say anything. We’re in the gym, doing a microbiology lesson. There’s no one else in the room, which is unusual in the early afternoon, but I know where everyone is: helping that Harriet Fields settle in. She was all anyone talked about at dinner last night, and her table was crowded with scientists vying to awe her with their intellects. I sat in a corner with Mother, the pair of us watching with dark looks over our tuna salad. I don’t think Mother’s any fonder of Dr. Klutz than I am.

  Uncle Antonio’s voice is husky from running. “Typhus fever is contracted by Rick—”

  “Rickettsia prowazekii,” I finish.

  Uncle Antonio hits the stop button on his treadmill and jogs to a halt. He’s panting heavily, and there are more sweat stains than dry spots on his blue tee. After he catches his breath, he says, “That wasn’t the question, Chipmunk. I was going to ask, what animal carries—”

  “Lice. Pediculus humanus.” I crank the speed of my own treadmill up a notch, my stride lengthening to match the whir of the belt.

  “Hey, who’s doing the teaching here?” Uncle Antonio comes around to the front of my treadmill and throws his arm over the safety rail. His other hand grips his water bottle as if it is the only thing keeping him alive. He looks at the digital display on the machine and shakes his head. “You’re something else, kid.”

  “Why is everyone so worked up over that new woman?” I ask, my tone more than a bit terse. “What’s so special about her?”

  His eyebrows lift quizzically. “Why, Chipmunk, are you jealous?”

  “No!”

  The amusement in his eyes makes me more irritated. “I think you are. You’re jealous of the attention she’s getting.”

  “I am not,” I reply. “It’s not like I want everyone hanging all over me all day.”

  “No?” He sits on the weight-lifting bench that no one ever uses. “Because it seems to me that’s the normal order of business.”

  I glare, but he only laughs.

  “She’s new and different, Pia. That’s all it is. Couple of months and she’ll be one of us, just another regular face. But you’ll always be you, immortal and special. So don’t worry. No one’s taking your place.”

  “I don’t see why we need her, anyway. Soon I’ll be part of the Immortis team, and then we’ll make more immortals. What do we need Harriet Fields for?”

  The smile leaves his face, replaced by a strange, shadowed look. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think they’ll stop bringing in new scientists once I’m in charge?”

  “I don’t know.” Still that grim look in his eyes. Maybe I’m pushing the Dr. Klutz thing a little too far.

  “You’re wrong,” I say. “I’m not jealous of the attention she’s getting. But do you think…do you think she’s here because Uncle Paolo doesn’t believe I’m ready? Does he think we need someone as backup, in case I don’t pass the next Wickham test?”

  Uncle Antonio stares at me. “No,” he says softly, but I wonder if he said it just because it’s what I want to hear.

  “So, where do you think she’s from?” I ask, trying to lighten the conversation.

  “Dr. Fields?” He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh, come on, Uncle Antonio.” I stop the treadmill to retie my ponytail, which came loose while I ran. “You’re just as interested in her as everyone else. I saw you last night, hovering at her elbow all through dinner.”

  “I was not hovering.”

  “You were so.”

  A smile plays on his lips. “Well. Maybe a little.”

  “It’s strange, isn’t it? These new scientists who come here, they have whole other lives outside Little Cam. Do you ever think about it? About where they must come from? Who they were before they came to the jungle?”

  He gives me a guarded look. “Why? Do you?”

  “It’s a natural question. And I’m a scientist. It’s my job to ask questions. Uncle Antonio.” I sit beside him and chew my lip a moment, then ask in a hush, “Do you ever…you know…wonder what it would be like? Out there?”

  Uncle Antonio stares at his hands. “Out where?”

  “You know what I mean. Outside…the fence.”

  When he finally meets my eyes, his lips are a thin, taut line. “No. I don’t.”

  Without another word, he stands up and leaves.

  I stare at the door as it swings shut. I don’t believe him.

  Not for a minute.

  When I go to my laboratory for my weekly checkup that afternoon, I pass Harriet Fields in the hall. She says hi and gives a little waist-level wave, and I give her a little jerk of my chin in response. I feel her eyes on my back as I pass her.

  I call it my laboratory because it’s the one entirely devoted to me. It’s like a second bedroom, and I’m quite proud of it. I keep a row of potted orchids along the window sills, and there are pictures of me all over the walls. They’re kind of boring, having been made to chart things like the development of my facial bones, but still.

  Uncle Paolo is waiting for me as usual. He sits by my metal examination table, thumbing through a stack of past checkup reports.

  “Morning,” I say to him, and I pause by a glass cage in the corner. The fat, sleepy rat inside wiggles his nose at me. “Morning, Roosevelt.”

  Uncle Paolo smiles. “Morning, Pia,” he says as I take my place on the exam table. “Find anything good in the delivery?”

  “Skittles.” I swing my legs back and forth under the table and watch him make some notes on a clipboard.

  “Ah, yes.” He pulls out a stethoscope and takes my heartbeat. “I haven’t had Skittles in years. I’ll have to get some.”

  “Too late. I got dibs already. They’re for the party.”

  “The party,” he repeats. “Still planning for your fairy-tale ball, eh? Open.”

  I open my mouth, and he swabs the inside of my check with a cotton wad. “It’s not a fairy-tale ball. It’s a real party
, like the ones they have in cities.”

  “And what would you know of cities?”

  “I read about them in the dictionary. ‘An urban area where a large number of people live and work,’” I quote.

  He only grunts as he deposits the saliva sample on a microscope slide.

  Then, just to see what his reaction will be, I add, “I know that Manaus is a city.”

  Uncle Paolo drops the cotton swab. “Damn. Open again, I’ll have to get another.”

  I wonder if that damn was for the lost saliva sample or my lucky guess. “So it is a city!”

  “Pia.” He sets the second sample on a small metal tray and starts pulling off his squeaky latex gloves. “Never bring up Manaus again.”

  “Why?”

  His hands pause with one glove half off, and he draws in a sharp breath before continuing. “I have told you many times, Pia. It’s dangerous out there. Those people wouldn’t understand you. You would frighten them with what you have, and they would soon grow jealous. You cannot die, but that does not mean they can’t hurt you.”

  “Those people,” I repeat softly.

  “Yes. The ones out there. They don’t see things as we do here, Pia. They would put you in a box and never let you out, don’t you see?”

  I nod my head, thinking of the sparrow and the electrified cage, imagining myself in the place of the bird. I shiver.

  “Do not bring up Manaus again.” He speaks in the tone he usually reserves for testing days, but then his face softens. He covers my hand with his own. “You’re safe here. For now, this is where you belong. One day, Pia, you’ll see the world. Don’t doubt that. But until the world is ready to see you, I’m afraid Little Cam will have to suffice.”

  “All right,” I respond meekly.

  He smiles and squeezes my hand. “I was here the day you were born, you know. I was the first one to hold you. I was the one who chose your name.”

  “You were?” He’s never mentioned it before.

  “Yes. Pia, because it means reverent, and that’s exactly what I felt when I saw you.”

  His eyes, locked on mine, are warm and earnest, and I find myself smiling.

  The rest of the examination goes as usual. It doesn’t take long. I’m so used to the exam that I could do it myself. Heartbeat, saliva sample, eyes, ears, and nose, check, check, check, and we’re done. Uncle Paolo gave up on taking blood samples years ago. No matter what material the needles are made of, and no matter how hard he presses, nothing punctures my skin.

  “All done, Pia. Go and work on planning your party or something.”

  “I need to water my orchids.”

  He nods and does a few more little tasks around the lab before he leaves.

  I am watering the first flower when I hear footsteps and turn to see what Uncle Paolo forgot. But it isn’t him. It’s Dr. Klutz.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  She raises her eyebrows in surprise. They are as red as her hair. “Relax, why don’t you? I just want to chat. We didn’t get to properly meet one another yesterday.”

  Great. I turn back to my orchids. “Hi. Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you too,” she returns in an equally blank tone. “Good heavens, girl, at least give me a chance before you decide to make an enemy of me. Here, let me help.”

  She tries to take the watering can from me and ends up knocking it over and pouring water all over my shoes.

  “Oops!” she says, and as I stare openmouthed at the mess, she finds a towel and hands it to me. I sop up the water, biting my tongue to keep from snapping something I’ll later regret. Dr. Klutz perches herself on the examination table and looks around.

  “Terrible pictures,” she says as she studies my portraits on the wall.

  I normally wouldn’t throw it in someone’s face like this, but I can’t help it. The woman rubs me the wrong way. “They’re perfect.”

  “That’s right,” she says thoughtfully, eyeing me. “I hadn’t even had a chance to wash the dust from the road off my face when your Doctor Paolo Alvez had me cornered. I got the whole Pia talk, oh, yes.”

  “The Pia talk?” My curiosity bests my stubbornness for a moment, and I step closer. “What’s that?”

  “You mean you didn’t get it too?” She draws a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and lights one. I hate cigarettes. They are the only thing in the world that make me ill, though Mother tells me that I just don’t like the smell and that I’m not really ill at all. “Yes, I was properly backed into a corner, with Alvez breathing down my blouse about secrecy and signing contracts and consequences and all sorts of spookiness. And at the center of it all”—she inhales deeply and blows a stream of disgusting smoke toward me—“was you.”

  “Well,” I reply stiffly, “I am the reason this place exists.”

  “I must confess, I had no idea what I was getting into when I took this job. Thought I was coming down just to study the cell structures of mosquitoes, maybe clone a few rats. They told me this was a research center that targeted the ‘big ones’—cancer, heart disease”—her face goes suddenly still, as if she’s looking at something far off—“cerebral palsy. Though I did think it odd I had to sign on for a minimum of thirty years, but…” Her cigarette seems forgotten between her index and middle fingers. Its thin tail of smoke curls across her face. “Well, let’s just say the deal this place offered was very convincing.”

  Her eyes refocus, finding me and then narrowing suspiciously. “And then there was all the cloak-and-dagger stuff on the way here. That giant moose of a man, Timothy, wouldn’t tell me anything. And what do you think but the first thing he asks me is if I can go buy a dress for a seventeen-year-old girl?” She shakes her head, and I notice for the first time that her wild red frizz is tamed into a braid over her shoulder. With the hair under control, she’s quite pretty, and younger than I’d first thought.

  “The dress was all right.” I shrug. No need to tell her I love it. I don’t want her thinking we’re friends or something.

  “It’s weird, having a black-tie party in the middle of the wilderness.”

  “You just say whatever pops into your head, don’t you?”

  “Always. Without question. That’s the only way I know I’m being truly original.”

  “Why did you come to Little Cam?”

  “Didn’t you hear? To study tapirs and three-toed sloths.”

  “What did Uncle Paolo say about me?”

  “That you’re immortal.” I can tell from the twitch of her lips around her cigarette that she doesn’t believe it.

  “I am.”

  “Huh. He also said you were perfect.”

  “I’m that too.”

  “Psh. Sure, honey.”

  “I am!” I’m bristling like Alai now. “Watch.”

  I pick up a scalpel from Uncle Paolo’s tray of tools. Dr. Klutz’s eyes widen. “Pia…”

  “Just watch.” I run it down my arm, pressing as hard as I can. It stings, but only mildly. I can feel pain, but not as intensely as other people. A faint white line is the only evidence of the blade’s touch, but it disappears in seconds.

  Dr. Klutz gapes, her eyes wide, cigarette forgotten between her fingers. “My sweet, giddy aunt…”

  That seems like an odd thing for someone to say, but I feel strangely pleased with her response. Setting the scalpel down, I reach into a drawer, pull out a rolled-up chart, and spread it on the exam table beside her. She watches my every move with rapt attention.

  “What’s that?”

  “This,” I announce with no small amount of pride, “is my family tree. Did Uncle Paolo tell you the story behind Little Cam, me, all of this?”

  “He said we’d cover that in orientation tonight, but”—she leans forward and whispers—“I’m rather an impatient woman. So go on. Tell me.”

  “Well,” I begin, thrilled to have an audience. I’ve never had the chance to tell someone my story before, not like this. “It all began one hundred years ago,
in 1902. A team of scientists were going through the jungle in search of new plants to use for medicines. They went deeper than anyone else from the outside had gone before and met natives who had never seen people with white skin and mustaches. They were led by a biologist and botanist named Heinrich Falk, who heard of a plant in the very heart of the jungle that could extend human life. Everyone else thought it was a myth. Stories like these were more numerous than the leaves of a kapok tree, and none of them had ever been proved. But Dr. Falk found it. Epidendrum elysius. Elysia, he called it. In all of the rainforest—and in all of the world—it’s found in only one place. Falk’s Glen. It’s not far from here, I’m told, though I’ve never been there myself.”

  “So what did this magical flower do, then, eh?” she asks. I can hear the skepticism creeping back. That’s fine. I’m not done with my story yet.

  “It’s not magic. It’s science. And it kills you within minutes if you eat it or drink the nectar that pools in the cup of its petals.” I have never seen Falk’s Glen, but I have seen elysia. Uncle Antonio brought me a stem once, a single stem of the precious plant that is the basis of my existence. It is a deep purple, and the tips of its petals are tinged with gold. It doesn’t look much different from some of my orchids in the window. I tried to replant it, but it died. I wasn’t the first to try it. One of the Little Cam scientists’ greatest hopes is to figure out how to replant elysia. So far, no luck at all. It wouldn’t be such an issue if we knew how it reproduced, but that’s another mystery. The same flowers that grow in Falk’s Glen now are the exact same blossoms Falk and his team discovered. The life cycle of elysia has never been discerned; for all we know, it doesn’t reproduce.”

  Dr. Klutz snorts and remembers her cigarette. Before she inhales again, however, she says, “Sounds like some bully magic. So that’s what happened to Falk, then? Shows up bold as brass, names the flower, names the place after himself, and then promptly eats the bloody thing and drops dead?”