“No. To receive. And then to react.”
He was quiet.
She looked at him more closely, then turned her palms up. “That’s what the mind does. That’s all it does.”
Still, he was silent.
Watching his face, she grimaced in frustration. “No,” she said. “I’m using the wrong words again.”
For a moment her eyes closed, and she mouthed two syllables. Mama.
Eyes narrowed, she looked across the table at Shapiro. “That’s not what the mind does. It’s what it is.” Her eyes narrowed. “You all know this, don’t you? You’ve lived among them for so long. It must be obvious to you.”
“But it’s not,” Shapiro said, speaking the words as if she hated them. “Aisha Rose—we’re not like you. You know that by now. We don’t see.”
Aisha Rose frowned a little. But when she spoke again, it was with more patience. “You know that the majizi—the thieves—communicate one to the next. Almost as fast as you can think.”
Shapiro nodded.
Aisha Rose put her hands together on the table, the slender undamaged one and the one whose bandage made it look like an outsized paw. “I used to ask Mama what communication is,” she went on. “What it means.”
“It means—” Jason said. “It means understanding. And reacting.”
“Yes.” Then, more quietly. “Yes. That’s what the majizi do, what they’re made to do. Hear. Understand. React.”
She looked at his face. “And because they’re created to hear,” she said, “and because they’re created to react, I can make them do what I want them to.”
Her shoulders twitched in what looked to Jason like a shiver. “Not as well as he can, though. He is so much stronger than I am.”
But Jason was still focused on the first part of what he’d said. “I get all that,” he said. “I saw it every day. The thieves gather information, millions, billions of bits of information every second, and model their behavior on what they learn. I just don’t understand how you make them do it.”
But now, at last, it was Shapiro’s turn. “Oh,” she said, “that part’s easy. Because of the worm inside Mama. Isn’t that it, Aisha Rose? The worm inside Mama changed her, and it changed you, too.”
Now Aisha Rose was silent, but after a moment, she gave a nod.
Shapiro turned to Jason. “You must have seen it all the time, the way thief venom can remodel its victims’ brains.”
He nodded. “Change their chemistry, even alter their DNA? Yes, I think so.”
He paused. “The ridden slaves, the last-stage hosts, they’re both part of the mind. They need it to function.”
“And the others?”
“Which others? The born slaves? They don’t even need to be injected with venom to know what their responsibilities are.”
“See? Exactly. They’re an evolving species.”
For a moment, her gaze went cloudy. Then she shook her head. “New species changing to fit an empty ecological niche, just as new species have always done.”
She gestured at Aisha Rose, whose eyebrows rose. “And that’s what you are. Another leap forward.”
Aisha Rose tilted her head, thinking about it. Then she gave a little smile.
“Maybe,” she said with a shrug. “Still low on the totem pole, though.”
* * *
JASON WAS MORE interested in what was in front of him than any discussion of evolution. “Okay, you can see them,” he said to Aisha Rose. “See what they see. I know that happens. But how did you make them spin?”
She made him wait while she yawned. Then she said, her voice a little thick, “Well, I told them to.”
“But how did you get them to obey?”
He glanced back at Shapiro for help, but her expression didn’t make him feel any smarter.
Nor did her words. “It’s obvious,” she said, reaching over and tapping him on the side of his head. “Aisha Rose’s brain is louder.”
Jason was quiet.
“Just because you can’t see or hear her broadcasting doesn’t mean she isn’t,” Shapiro went on. “Any more than the fact that we can’t see in the infrared spectrum or hear radio waves in the air means they’re imaginary.”
He began to say something, but she didn’t let him.
“Whether we can detect it or not, every bit of information sent back and forth between thieves is energy transmitted and received,” she said. “Bigger brain means more energy transmitted and greater impact. It means that no one thief can control the others—they’re all the same size—but Aisha Rose can.”
She gave the decisive nod of someone who’s solved a knotty problem. “She’s so loud they have no choice but to obey.”
Jason thought about this, retrieving a long-buried memory. “Right before the end,” he said finally, “I remember reading about a guy who could find his car in a lot—make it beep—at a much greater distance if he held the remote next to his head when he pushed the button. Something about the ions in his brain fluid amplifying the signal.”
Shapiro again gave her decisive nod. “There you go.”
“But still,” he said. “Big enough—loud enough—to kill?”
“I don’t see why not.” Shapiro shrugged. “There’s no receiver, or receptor, that would be invulnerable to a powerful enough signal.”
Jason saw her gaze turn inward. “I had an aunt who lived in Oklahoma,” she said. “She hated spiders, which was too bad, because there sure were a lot of them around there. Once when I was visiting, a tarantula came into her kitchen, this big hairy thing scuttling across the floor.”
She smiled at the memory. “Aunt Ida just screamed and screamed—and nobody could scream like her. And that spider stood up on the tips of its toes and . . . died. Just died. Went still and stiff and never moved again.”
She looked at him. “That sound blew out its brain—whatever spiders have for a brain.”
“I’ve never tried that,” Aisha Rose said. “On spiders.”
Shapiro looked at her. “Yes, only on thieves,” she said.
Aisha Rose considered that idea.
“We already saw at the fort that you can stun them,” Shapiro explained. “And if they can be stunned, they can be killed. That’s how nature works. Anything can be killed.”
Shapiro paused for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet, almost as if she were speaking to herself.
“But how is it, exactly,” she said, “that you do it?”
Jason looked at Aisha Rose. He hadn’t been sure she was listening, but at that instant she put both hands to her head in an almost violent gesture. Jason saw that the white bandage over her infected hand was stained a reddish yellow.
“I say fear me,” she said. “And they do. But not as much as they fear him.”
Right then something new entered her expression. Something strong, even ferocious. A kind of predatory joy.
“He and I, we are the parasites,” Aisha Rose Atkinson said. “The parasites that prey on the hive mind.”
* * *
IT WAS JASON who asked the questions. The only questions that mattered, he thought.
“What you did to the thieves,” he said. “Would you be able to do it again?”
She looked directly into his face, and before she even spoke, he knew what her answer would be. Then she sighed, and said, “I don’t know.”
“Then no matter what happens, you’ll stay here,” he said, “and be safe.”
She didn’t speak, just smiled at him and shook her head.
THIRTY-THREE
FINALLY, THEY REMEMBERED to bring some food. It was about time: Aisha Rose couldn’t recall when she’d last eaten, and from the expression on Jason’s face, he was as hungry as she was.
There was fish soup—two portions for her, four for him—and hard biscuit
s, which hurt her mouth, and pickled vegetables, which she stayed away from. Jason ate everything, sometimes looking at the food like he couldn’t believe he wasn’t imagining it.
But the two of them still weren’t allowed out of the mess. Shapiro said she wanted them to rest. That didn’t make much sense to Aisha Rose, so she wondered if there was actually another reason. She thought that maybe everyone was still a little afraid of them, especially of her.
In any case, she was happy to eat with Jason, with one or the other of those two, the boy and girl who looked alike, guarding the door.
Dessert was dried fruit, mango. Aisha Rose liked it more than the coconut she’d opened, though nowhere near as much as the fresh mangos that had grown outside the Naro Moru house.
Before they took the plate away, Aisha Rose put some of the dried mango in the pocket of her new dress. You never knew when—or if—you’d find something else to eat.
* * *
WHEN THEY WERE finished, Shapiro came back with a few others, including a man, not that much older than Aisha Rose herself, who seemed to think he was in charge, too. Not as in charge as Shapiro, though, of course.
Aisha Rose didn’t listen to his name. There were too many names.
“Okay if we ask you some more questions?” Shapiro said. Aisha Rose saw that this itself wasn’t really a question, so all she did was shrug. Sitting beside her, Jason shrugged, too.
Now he was looking as tired as she felt. She was also a little dizzy and hot, with aching muscles like she’d been climbing.
But that didn’t seem to matter to Shapiro and the others. For the first hour or so, they talked to Jason. Aisha Rose listened to some of it. The rest of the time she dozed or thought about what she’d say to Kait when she finally saw her again.
So even though Aisha Rose didn’t always hear the words, she loved the sound of Jason’s voice, the deep rumble so different from Mama’s. Even more she loved the feel of his strong hand, which she kept captured in her own whenever she could.
Not that she needed to pay attention. Everything he told them about the slave camp she either already knew, had guessed at, or didn’t care about.
The rest, the way the camp worked, how many people were there, how it had started, what the ovens were for (though she and, she imagined, everyone else had guessed that), all of it didn’t matter much to her. All her life she’d seen the stain and witnessed its spread, and that was all she’d needed to know.
When they asked Jason why he hadn’t been enslaved, though, she started to focus. She’d been wondering that, as well. She could see him only with her eyes, not inside, so she knew that he was untouched.
“First of all,” Jason said, “I was a slave. But if you’re asking why they didn’t pump me full of toxins? Because I was useful.”
“Useful?” someone asked.
He nodded. “The ones they drug, the ridden ones, they’re slow. Stupid. Useless for anything but menial jobs.”
“And battle,” someone said. “Like the last-stage ones.”
Jason nodded. “Yeah. And the young ones,” he went on. “The ones born . . . since? You saw them.”
Shapiro nodded.
“They’re born to it. Slavery. It’s all they know.”
“Are they educated?” she asked.
Jason’s sudden, hard-edged laugh surprised everyone, including—it seemed to Aisha Rose—Jason himself. “Educated?” he said. “You think we had schools in the camp? An apple for the teacher every day?”
No one spoke.
So Jason said, “They’re educated in tending the fields and taking care of the host animals. They’re educated in feeding themselves and following simple directions. Is that what you meant?”
Aisha Rose knew that wasn’t really a question, either.
When he was done speaking, Shapiro said, “Do they have language?”
“Sure, but it’s minimal.” He shrugged. “One more generation, and I doubt there will be any.”
“Because it won’t be necessary to talk to communicate.”
Jason looked into Shapiro’s eyes, and Aisha Rose thought they understood each other just fine though she couldn’t tell exactly what they were communicating.
* * *
“THE FORT,” SHAPIRO said a little later. “The camp. Do you think it’s the only one? The only one on earth?”
Aisha Rose heard Jason make a sound in his throat. When he spoke, his voice was like wire. He was angry, but she didn’t know why.
“Well, I really couldn’t say,” he said. “We didn’t have telephones. Or Wi-Fi. We weren’t exactly hooked into the World Wide Web.”
But then the anger seemed to drain out of him, leaving only exhaustion and, Aisha Rose thought, sadness.
“Are there other camps?” he asked. “I’d guess there are, but I don’t know for sure.”
“I do,” Aisha Rose said.
* * *
THIRTY-ONE.
There were thirty-one other slave camps. Aisha Rose counted them on her fingers. All looking in her mind the same as the one at Lamu Fort. The same kind of light. The same stain.
When she told them this, she saw them all sag, like plants when the rains were late. They hadn’t known. They hadn’t even guessed.
After that, it was such a challenge to follow what they were talking about. Especially Shapiro. She talked so fast, so much faster than Mama ever had, like she didn’t care whether anyone could understand her or not. If you couldn’t keep up, that was your fault.
But Aisha Rose knew she had to try. She had to try to understand because she knew things that they needed to know.
“Can you tell where they are, these other camps?” Shapiro said to her. “Where they’re located?”
Aisha Rose shook her head.
“Not at all?”
Aisha Rose just looked at her. She wasn’t sure what she was being asked.
But Jason understood. “You’re asking,” he said, “if there might be a slave camp near where your colony is located. What did you call it?”
“Refugia,” Shapiro said.
“Yes. Refugia.” He shook his head. “And the answer is, of course there might be. In fact, I’d say it’s likely. Wouldn’t you? They’d establish one nearby, far enough away to avoid being seen. Bide their time, build their strength, till they were strong enough to attack.”
No one in the room spoke until Aisha Rose said, “Like those big red ants do before they attack the black ones. I’ve seen that.”
“Not just ants, all slavemakers,” Jason said. “Ants. Parasites. Fungi. Why should thieves be any different? They’re still just bugs.”
Shapiro’s scary eyes flashed. “Yeah, just bugs. So how are we going to stomp on them?”
Everyone else looked at each other, and Aisha Rose kept her mouth shut.
* * *
AT THE VERY end, Shapiro asked Jason something else, something that Aisha Rose thought she’d been holding on to the whole night.
The most important question. The one Aisha Rose had been waiting for her to ask.
“Malcolm,” she said. “Our friend who was taken.”
Jason said, “Yeah?”
“Back onshore, you said he would likely be dead by now.”
Aisha Rose saw Jason open his mouth to reply. But she saved him the effort.
“Dead?” she said. “Of course he’s not dead.”
After that, things got noisy, just the way she’d expected it to.
Still, to Aisha Rose it all sounded like the honking of geese or hornbills. Even though she knew they were asking her questions, she responded the same way she would have if they really were birds. She stayed silent and waited for them, in Mama’s words, to pipe down.
She didn’t need to say anything, not yet. The fact that they were being so noisy meant that things were going as she w
anted them to.
* * *
EVENTUALLY, THEY DID pipe down, and Shapiro took a long look at Aisha Rose and asked, more quietly, “How do you know this?”
Aisha Rose shrugged. How could she describe what she saw to people who couldn’t even begin to understand it?
But Shapiro surprised her. “Somehow you can see those who have been infected,” she said. “Right?”
Aisha Rose nodded.
“For example, you can’t see the people of Refugia—our colony. Or at least we hope you can’t.”
None of that had been a question, not quite. Aisha Rose stayed quiet.
“So then . . . how can you see our friend? How can you see Malcolm?”
Aisha Rose did not answer.
After a moment, Shapiro’s hand went to her mouth. “The same reason you could see Kait. Because he’s been infected. Because . . . he’s being used as a host.”
Aisha Rose gave a little nod. Shapiro’s cobra eyes were coming back, but at least right now they weren’t aimed directly at her.
“But he wouldn’t infect himself, like idiot Kait did. And I know he was protected.” Shapiro’s face had turned very pale. “Which most likely means the vaccine stopped working.”
Jason said, “No. It was working. We all saw it.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “Yes, but all it takes is one thief that’s immune, and you know there will be more. That’s how it goes.”
Aisha Rose, drifting away from the talk again, found herself thinking about white ants. If you knocked a hole in their mound, they came flooding out at you. Every time.
Yes, that was how it went.
Beside her, Jason leaned his back against the wall. “Without your force field,” he said, “you’ll be dead in what, thirty seconds?”
He spread out his palms. “So . . . get out of here. Go home. Maybe there it will still be safe.”
Aisha Rose saw him take a deep breath. “Just take me ashore before you go.”
Shapiro’s eyes on his face were like a cobra’s. “Why?”
“Because I won’t leave Chloe behind.”
“Even if,” Shapiro said.
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