Origin Page 5

  It was a sad story, but it made me dream of parties. When I asked Uncle Paolo for a party with dresses and cake, he wanted me to tell him where I heard such stories. I told him that I’d read about it in the dictionary, which was a lie, but he let me have the party. Sometimes I wonder why everyone else seems so timid around him, because Uncle Paolo’s softer than he lets on.

  I catch my image in the glass wall facing the rainforest and spin slowly to see the full effect of the gown. The reflected color nearly blends in with the jungle beyond, as if I’m dressed not in fabric but in leaves.

  I walk to the window and press my hands to the glass. It is a perfect night for the perfect party. I look up, and through the gaps in the canopy of trees, I see a clear, starry night. A full moon shines above the kapoks and the palms, but the leaves and vines are so thick that its rays hardly reach the jungle floor. Yet I see one place where a column of faint silver light filters down through the canopy and tinges the lower foliage. It dances across the leaves, creating a path over the undergrowth, a road of moonlight that would be invisible by day. If I were a butterfly, I would follow that path into the heart of the jungle, perhaps even to Falk’s Glen, where the elysia grows.

  For a moment, I don’t want parties or cake or dresses. Those things seem suddenly hollow and silly. I want instead to follow that silver path until it ends and never look back. Pressing my hands against the cold glass, I stare at the jungle and wonder what secrets lie in its shadows.

  Suddenly I notice movement in the leaves, and a coatimundi emerges from the undergrowth, his long black tail pointing straight up at the sky. He sniffs the fence, and for a moment I’m horrified that he’ll touch it and shock himself. The electric pulses in the fencing are generated every 1.2 seconds, and only at enough voltage to deter intruders, but to a small animal like the coatimundi, the fence could do serious damage. But he must smell the danger, because he shakes his head and turns around.

  He disappears into the leaves, and my insanity disappears with him. I laugh out loud at my own crazy thoughts—really, running off into the jungle at night?—and hurry to find my party.

  The center of Little Cam is a garden. It includes one large plot where we grow vegetables and fruits, but the rest is made of pathways and ponds and flowerbeds. I smell the orchids before I even reach the garden. They smell sweetest at night, to attract the moths that spread their pollen through the jungle.

  I find a crowd waiting for me. They cheer when they see me, and I can’t help but laugh at how they look. Most of the men are in suits they brought when they came to Little Cam years ago, and I can tell that this is the first time they’ve worn them since arriving. They are all wrinkled or don’t fit right. Some of them have tuxedos, including my father and Uncle Paolo, which they must have had Uncle Timothy bring from the outside. My mother is wearing a silver dress, and there are orchids in her hair. She looks nothing like the serious, stern woman who normally runs around in a tank top and shorts. I’ve never realized how beautiful my mother is until now. The few wrinkles on her face seem to have vanished, and she is smiling and holding Uncle Paolo’s arm.

  When she sees me, she sighs and lets go of Uncle Paolo to take my hands.

  “Oh, Pia.” Her fingers brush the delicate sleeves of the dress. “Turn for me.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with it?” I ask as I spin slowly. Leave it to my mother to find something to criticize.

  But when I face her again, it isn’t scorn I see in her eyes—but tears. I try not to gape. Tears? My mother? Unheard of.

  “Are you…okay?” I ask uncertainly.

  She smiles. “You look so grown up. My Pia. Seventeen years old.” Suddenly—as if the moment were strange enough already—she pulls me into a hug. A hug. The last time my mother hugged me I couldn’t even walk yet. I freeze in astonishment, then slowly return the embrace. I stare at Uncle Paolo over her shoulder and the look he gives in return is just as surprised.

  When Mother pulls away, I feel warmer inside. Maybe I don’t know her as well I thought.

  “Come, Pia,” she says. “Your party’s waiting.”

  There are torches thrust into the ground all over the garden. Their flames sway sinuously, dozens of tiny orange and white dancers creating silent fire music with their bodies. I am momentarily mesmerized by them and feel the urge to dance their dance. The torches are an extravagance, a special indulgence I hadn’t asked for. When night comes in Little Cam, we leave as little light on as possible. Uncle Timothy told me once that the outside world has eyes in the sky, satellites flung so far from the earth they hang in space, watching everything below. By daylight we are hidden beneath the many palms, kapoks, and capironas that grow between the buildings. But at night, even the dense canopy cannot keep light from reaching the sky.

  “Pia, you look beautiful,” says Uncle Paolo. He hands me a glass of punch. “Seventeen years,” he says, raising his own drink. Everyone raises theirs with him. “Seventeen years of perfection, Pia. Most of us remember the day you were born, and what an unforgettable day that was. One day, your birthday will be celebrated not by a small crowd like this, but by the world.”

  His eyes burn brightly, filled with torchlight. “The day you were born marked a new era in the history of man, and an entire race of immortals will someday rise to honor you. But let’s remember that it all starts here. It all starts with us.” His eyes shift to the people of Little Cam, and he sweeps his arm wide. “All of us are a part of this. We have altered the course of history, my friends, but most important of all…” He looks back at me, takes my hand in his. “Most of all, we ourselves have been altered. By you, Pia. By the fierce, unquenchable fire of life that burns within you. Happy birthday.”

  I can’t help it; I smile, my eyes meeting his with equal light.

  “To Pia!” he says.

  “To Pia!” everyone else choruses, and then they all drink.

  “Now,” Uncle Paolo says, “come and look at your cake.”

  He leads me to a long table covered with food, and everyone gathers around and behind us. There are mostly native fruits, yumanasa berries, aguaje, and soursops. But there are also strawberries and apples and my favorite of all, watermelons, all brought by Uncle Timothy from the outside. Then there’s the cake.

  It’s enormous, three tiers of pink and white icing, and cascading with deep-purple orchids and—I can’t help but grin—multicolored Skittles. I gasp and clap my hands, too delighted for words. Everyone else starts clapping too, and Jacques the cook takes a deep bow before he starts serving it. I get the first slice and dive right in. When I taste it, I force myself to slow down and savor each bite. Lime and vanilla and cream…I swear I’ll never eat anything else after this. Nothing else could compare.

  “Happy Birthday, Pia!” someone yells from behind me, and the words spread from mouth to mouth. My parents each hug me, then Uncle Antonio and Uncle Paolo, Aunt Brigid, who runs the medical center, Aunt Nénine, Uncle Jonas the menagerie keeper, old Uncle Smithy, who accidentally stabs my foot with his cane, and dozens more. Everyone wants to hug me, even the ones I rarely speak with, like the maintenance men and the lab assistants.

  Uncle Antonio starts grumbling and pulls me away from everyone just as a beaming plumber named Mick steps up for his hug. Mick shouts indignantly at us, but Uncle Antonio ignores him and leads me to the wide tile floor that usually holds tables and chairs for people to eat lunches outside. A great Brazil nut tree rises from an opening in the center of the floor, its trunk rearing a staggering hundred feet before it bursts into a wide, umbrella-like canopy. There are several torches burning around its trunk, and at its base sits a skinny, freckled lab assistant with a CD player in his hands. He seems half-asleep, and Uncle Antonio kicks his leg.

  “This is supposed to be a party, Owens! Get that music cranked or I’ll put you in charge of mucking the menagerie for a month!”

  Owens hastily punches a button, and the music pumps through two large speakers sitting on either side of him. It’s
the kind of music called jazz, I think. We don’t listen to music much in Little Cam. Uncle Paolo says it’s extraneous and distracts from our real work. The music fills my ears and my veins, and even the flames of the torches seem to alter their swaying to match the beat.

  “May I have this dance?” asks Uncle Antonio, bowing low.

  I laugh at him. “I don’t know how to dance!”

  “Let me show you then!” He sweeps me around in a circle, and I can’t stop giggling, it’s so ridiculous. But soon other people join in, and I feel less silly. My mother dances from Uncle Paolo to my father. Aunt Brigid dances with Uncle Jonas. The cook dances with the laundress. Soon nearly everyone is dancing, but I suddenly realize someone is missing. “Where’s that Dr. Fields? She didn’t seem like one to miss a party.”

  “Right here,” someone says, and I turn to see her standing behind me. She’s wearing a very tight red dress that starts low and ends high. Her long legs are tipped with enormous red heels that would have me falling onto my face, but she navigates around me with ease.

  “May I?” she asks.

  I stare at her until Uncle Antonio interrupts. “Ahem. You may indeed.”

  He puts a hand around her waist and pulls her close. Laughing, she changes the position of his hands so that she’s leading them across the floor. When she dances, I must admit, she’s not klutzy at all. I go to the table and fill a cup up with punch, then lean against the Brazil nut tree, watching them as they dance circles around everyone else. The freckly lab assistant Owens is sitting a few feet away from me, and he stammers something that sounds like an invitation to dance, but I wrinkle my nose at him and shake my head. Dance with Owens? I’ve seen him pick his nose when he thought no one was looking, and there’s no way I’m letting those hands touch me.

  He turns red and finds something fascinating to fiddle with on the radio.

  Uncle Antonio and Dr. Klutz dance like twin fires. I’m not at all sure I like him dancing with her, but all the same, they’re enchanting to watch. I notice a few other people admiring them too. There is something between them I can’t name, a light in their eyes when they look at each other. It’s not a light I see in my mother’s eyes when she looks at my father. I think of Alex and Marian and wonder if this could be love.

  Love is not something that Uncle Paolo or the other scientists encourage, though even they can’t stop the flirting that goes on among some of the younger members of Little Cam. I remember something Uncle Paolo said to me about love: “It’s a phenomenon, Pia, but it’s dangerous. Look at Alex and Marian, for example. Love makes you weak. It distracts you from the important things. It can make you lose sight of the objective.”

  “What objective?” I asked.

  “The new race. That’s what it’s all about, Pia. That’s all it can ever be about for you and me. The others…they can play at love and romance. But you and I have work to do, and we can’t let ourselves be distracted.”

  I wondered then if that was why there were no boys my age in Little Cam. Owens is probably the youngest person here besides me, and he has to be near thirty. He came to Little Cam when he was just a toddler with his father, Jakob Owens, one of our biologists, and all I’ve ever seen him as is the skinny, freckled, nose-picking guy who spends most of his time playing poker with the guards. No danger of distraction there.

  As I watch Uncle Antonio and Dr. Klutz dance and laugh, I wonder if they might be in love. The thought makes me strangely sad…and a little envious. Strange. Love is nothing more than elevated levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, and other chemicals. But the way Uncle Antonio’s face lights up as they dance…I wonder what it would be like to feel that. To let the chemicals of romance take over for just a little while.

  Then I remember that I’m immortal and that my body doesn’t work like everyone else’s. Who knows if I even can feel love?

  As I stare at the dancing people, I wish the night could go on forever. They all seem infected with a vivaciousness that isn’t common in our compound, and there are more smiles on their faces than I’ve ever seen at once. And yet as I watch them, I feel more intensely than ever the knowledge that I’m not one of them. For these mortal humans, birthdays are a kind of countdown to the end, the ticking clock of a dwindling life. For me, birthdays are notches on an infinite timeline. Will I grow tired of parties one day? Will my birthday become meaningless? I imagine myself centuries from now, maybe at my three-hundredth birthday, looking all the way back to my seventeenth. How will I possibly be happy, remembering the light in my mother’s eyes? The swiftness of Uncle Antonio’s steps as he dances? The way my father stands on the edge of the courtyard, smiling in that vague, absent way of his?

  The scene shifts and blurs in my imagination. As if brushed away by some invisible broom, these people whom I’ve known my entire life disappear. The courtyard is empty and bare, covered in decaying leaves. I imagine Little Cam deserted, with everyone dead and gone and only me left in the shadows.

  Forever.

  No. It won’t be that way. I’ll never be alone, because I’ll have my other immortals. I’ll have someone who will look at me the way Uncle Antonio looks at Harriet Fields, only he’ll look at me that way for eternity. My abdomen tightens with longing. I want to run to Uncle Paolo and demand that he tell me the secret to Immortis, beg him to start the process of creating my Mr. Perfect. I think of the five generations it will take before he’s born, and I want to scream. I want someone now. I want someone who will look into my eyes and understand everything behind them.

  To distract myself, I go hunting for more punch. No one is at the food table; they are all on the dance floor. I find an empty cup and fill it up and then hang back. I consider trying to join the dancing again, but my earlier excitement has vanished, replaced by a melancholy that I cannot seem to shake.

  No one seems to notice I’m not dancing. I abruptly set down my cup and slip away. I make my way through the gardens to the menagerie. My long dress catches on the flowers I pass, so I scoop up the fabric around my knees.

  The menagerie is dark, and I don’t want to wake up the Grouch and start him howling, so I fumble around until I find the small electric lantern Uncle Jonas keeps on top of the barrel of macaw feed.

  Following the circle of light cast by the lantern, I pass the cages silently. A few birds twitter at me, and the pregnant ocelot Jinx peeps down from the high branch where she likes to sleep, her eyes two yellow lanterns of their own.

  Alai is awake, as if he was expecting me. I open the door of his cage and slip in, leaving it open behind me. After hanging the lantern on a hook on the wall, I sink down beside the jaguar and wrap an arm around his neck. He rubs his head against me, enjoying the smoothness of the silk.

  “There you are,” says a voice from the darkness.

  SIX

  It’s Dr. Klutz. She walks right into the cage and plops down across from me. She groans as she yanks off her heels and then crosses her ankles. “I don’t know what idiot decided we had to choose between beauty and comfort, but I’d like to drive this heel through his eye.”

  I say nothing, but watch her as warily as a mouse eyes an ocelot.

  “Then again, I guess not all of us have to make that choice. You’d look great in a couple of palm fronds held together with duct tape, I imagine.” She makes a pouty face. “Not fair at all. Most of us have to work for our looks.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  She raises her brows. “Hey. Easy. I just wanted to give you your present.”

  I notice then the small package she’s holding. “Oh, yeah. Presents.”

  “If there’s one thing you should never, ever forget about, it’s the presents.” She tosses it to me. Anyone else might have missed, but my hands leap up automatically and snatch it from the air.

  “I didn’t forget,” I tell her as I turn the package over in my hands. “What is it?”

  “It’s not a viper or a poison dart frog, if that’s what you’re asking. Good lord, child, ju
st open it, will you? Before someone finds us.”

  “Why? Is it a secret?”

  She bites her lip before answering. “Yes…of sorts. That is, you probably wouldn’t want your Uncle Paolo finding you with it.”

  That catches my interest. The package is wrapped with plain white paper and tied with string, and it only takes a few seconds to unwrap. Inside is a large piece of paper that’s been folded many times over. “What is it?” I ask again.

  “Better not unfold it here; it takes hours to get it back down to that size. And whatever you do, don’t open it in front of everyone. I’ll lose my contract, my career, and my pretty salary if that gets traced back to me. So my life is pretty much in your hands, missy. I’ll thank you not to throw it into the nearest trash bin.”

  “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “For starters, don’t go brandishing it around in public.” I look around, then hide it in the straw where Alai sleeps. “Good,” she says. “Now, you going to skip out on your own party or what? From the grumbling I heard, this whole place bent over backward putting this thing together for you. It’d be a crying shame for you to throw it all back in their faces. A downright tragedy.”

  Something in her tone makes me ask, “What would you do, if you were me?”

  She shrugs and tweaks Alai’s tail, which he thrashes irritably at her. “Me? I’d leave the whole lot of ’em to their terrible dancing and worse small talk—honestly, that plumber thought I wanted to hear about the alarming increase in blocked toilets around here—and I’d find myself a quiet, secluded corner in which to study my totally wicked birthday present from an equally awesome redheaded biomedical engineer.” Then she sighs and shakes her head. “But yes, you should probably go back to your party and open the rest of your presents.”