Origin (12 page)

I feel strangely numb as Uncle Paolo picks up a syringe filled with a clear liquid that must be elysia extract. I don’t ask if it’s pure or diluted; I don’t really want to know. I wish I’d never asked to join them. I wish I was back in Uncle Will’s lab, feeding pencils to Babó.

Uncle Paolo nods to Mother, and she holds up Roosevelt. The plump rodent is so used to human touch by now, he doesn’t even squirm. He looks about as happy as a rat can be; his eyes are bright and alert, his nose is quivering as it picks up the scents in the room.

Uncle Paolo hesitates only the briefest of moments before he squirts one drop into Roosevelt’s mouth. The rat’s tiny jaws work rapidly as he tastes the elysia, and I watch with fascination. What must it taste like? If Roosevelt has an opinion on the matter, he doesn’t share it.

Mother sets the rat down on the same exam table I usually sit on. Roosevelt sniffs her fingers, then the table, then starts trundling around like he usually does in his cage. He seems completely unaffected by the elysia.

Inside me, several knots of tension begin to relax. I almost feel my muscles giving individual sighs of relief.
Truly immortal
.

An uncharacteristic grin bursts onto Uncle Paolo’s face. “Would you look at that! The mortal rats, dozens and dozens of them, all died immediately! Not so much as a squeak. They just
went
, like a breeze through a window. But look at our
Roosevelt! So much life. We’ve done it, Pia, my angel, my darling, my exquisitely perfect girl!” He grabs me by the hands and we spin in a circle.

I can’t help but laugh with him. I’ve never seen him—or anyone—so excited. I didn’t even know Uncle Paolo had it in him to twirl. His joy is catching; my pace quickens with a thrill of heady exhilaration.

“We did it! We did it! We did it!” we chant in unison, though of course it was really Dr. Heinrich Falk who did it and not us at all, but we don’t care. “We did it!”

Finally Uncle Paolo lets go of my hands and stops to catch his breath, still with a smile the size of one of the watermelon slices we’d had at my party. “We did it,” he repeats softly. “Life, Pia. Life without death.
Immortality
. Thousands of years in human history, thousands of theories, attempts, myths, dreams…but
we
, we have done it. Cheated death. Pia, I have lied to you. I told you there were no gods. But there
are
, oh yes, there are.
We
are gods, Pia, you and I and Roosevelt. Yes, ha! Roosevelt, the rat god! We have created life! And so we have become gods in our own right.” He closes his eyes for a long minute, basking. Then he opens them again and smiles at me. “Now, what was your question for me?”

I draw a deep breath and remember my conviction.
Can’t afford to be distracted
. The success of this experiment is just further proof that Little Cam is where I need to be, with all my attention focused on the Immortis project. “Last night, after the party, I went to my room to…just be alone.” No point in getting Dr. Klutz in trouble too. “Anyway, I was sitting and staring outside when I saw a—”

“Paolo?” Mother’s voice is so soft I almost don’t hear it.

“Yes, Sylvia, what is it?”

“Roosevelt.”

We turn as one to the rat.

Roosevelt is lying on his side, his tiny body heaving as he gasps for air. His tongue hangs out, startlingly pink against his dark brown fur. His eyes are glassy.

Uncle Paolo turns white. He rushes to the exam table and scoops the rat into his hands. “No. No, no, no, no, no, no,
no
.…Roosevelt!
Roosevelt
!”

It’s useless. Roosevelt keeps gasping, his breaths coming too quickly, too sharply. Uncle Paolo turns him over, holds him upright, lays him down again, but nothing helps.

“Stop it, Roosevelt! Stop it, you stupid,
stupid
rat!”

“Uncle Paolo!” I run to him and grab his arm. “Stop yelling at him! It’s not his fault!”

“Get off of me, girl!” He shakes me away and turns back to Roosevelt. I stare at him in shock, bewildered and blindsided by his sudden rage.

“Come on, buddy,” Uncle Paolo coos to the rat. “Come on, old friend! You and I have been through too much together.…Come back to us, little god-rat. Come back now.…”

Roosevelt’s breaths start to slow again, but they don’t return to their normal, healthy pace. They keep slowing until they become
too
slow. Soon his sides are barely moving, and his eyes grow even glassier.

Uncle Paolo, his eyes bright and wild, whirls on Mother. “
Do
something!”

Mother gapes at him and steps back. “I…I…” She trails off, her hands spread helplessly. Uncle Paolo slams his
fist onto the counter, making the syringes and vials rattle, and curses low beneath his breath. His eyes catch mine, and I’m chilled by what I see in them. I’ve never seen him this angry, this…dangerous. Not even during Wickham tests. Stunned, I drop my eyes and swallow hard.

“Well,” he says softly. “Now we know.”

He sets Roosevelt on the exam table, then wipes his hands on his coat. His face has gone cold and distant. My mother hovers behind him, her concerned eyes on Uncle Paolo and not the rat. All three of us stand very still as Roosevelt weakens before our eyes. My gaze flickers to Uncle Paolo uneasily, wondering if he’ll explode again. It’s extremely unnerving, seeing him so undone. The Paolo Alvez I know is always cool, always calm, always self-controlled.

“Enough,” Uncle Paolo says at last. “Pia, clean up this mess and ice the body. We’ll examine it later. Sylvia, I’ll need your help with the paperwork.”

I gently pick up Roosevelt. He doesn’t even have the strength to twitch his whiskers as he usually does. Around his nose and on his paws, numerous hairs have turned white.
That’s odd
. I didn’t know elysia did that to its victims.

I wrap him in a small towel, but there’s little more I can do. He shudders once in my hands, then falls still.

Roosevelt, the immortal rat, is dead.

For some reason, I expect all of Little Cam to go into an uproar. But it doesn’t.

No shouting or wailing haunts the compound. No one tears at their hair or clothes in hysterics. After all, he was only a rat.

I sit in one of the rockers by the goldfish pond, just rocking, my knees pulled up to my chin. Of everyone in Little Cam, I am the quietest right now. But inside, I
want
to tear my clothes and run screaming through the compound. I want everyone to hear the turmoil raging in my thoughts.

Roosevelt is dead. Elysia, the very substance that immortalized him, killed him.

It could kill me.

Uncle Paolo is locked in his private office. He won’t talk to anyone. At first no one could understand what was going on, and they kept asking what was wrong, what happened, why was Dr. Alvez so upset? But Mother must have talked—it certainly wasn’t me—because now, instead of asking me questions I won’t answer, everyone tiptoes past and tries not to disturb me. I can’t blame them. I wonder if they suspect the hurricane of emotions roaring in my head and if that’s why they’re so careful to avoid me, not wanting to set it loose. They must think I’m completely terrified that what happened to Roosevelt will happen to me. Even
I
think I ought to be terrified. After all, my whole life I’ve been under the impression that I couldn’t die. And here I am, finding out that I can after all.

But when I shut my eyes, it’s not Roosevelt dying on the exam table that I see. It’s not the syringe filled with the deadly poison that could take my life far more quickly than it gave it to me. I don’t even see myself writhing and gasping to death, which would make sense after what I witnessed.

What I see instead is Uncle Paolo and the look in his eyes when he realized that Roosevelt was dying. I hear his
triumphant shouts just before it happened.
We are gods, Pia. We cheated death
.

But we didn’t.
He
didn’t. Does he think his entire life’s work is a waste now? Surely there is still much to be proud of. After all, I am still immortal. So long as I never do something as stupid as drink elysia, I’ll still live forever. I’ll create a race of immortals, my own race, and Dr. Falk’s and Uncle Paolo’s and my dream will come true. Once the immortal race is self-sufficient, we can destroy all the elysia, and we will truly be completely invulnerable to death. We’ll live on and on, reproducing and growing our eternal numbers, until the world is full, and then we’ll stop. And live. And live. And live.

I try to focus on that thought, on the image of my immortal race with me at its head. An immortal boy to love. Immortal friends my own age. But my mind keeps blurring back to Uncle Paolo’s face and the wild desperation in his eyes as he fought to bring Roosevelt back from death’s door.

Uncle Paolo was supposed to make things clearer, not muddle them up even worse. My earlier convictions crumble in light of this new fear, a fear I’ve never felt before. Fear of the man who created me, named me, raised me.…

I decide I
will
go back into the jungle.

And I’ll go again. And again. And again.

I’ll go into the rainforest until the memory of Uncle Paolo’s eyes in that moment of Roosevelt’s death is gone, washed away by the cleansing rain of the jungle.

An hour after night falls, I am on the other side of the fence.

E
io steps out from behind a kapok, startling me. I’ve never met anyone who could sneak up on me like that, and it makes me nervous.

“You came,” he says, looking me up and down and giving Alai a long stare, which the jaguar returns coolly. “And no dress this time.”

I’m wearing a black tank and camouflage cargo pants. Over my arm is a dark raincoat, just in case. There are only a few clouds in the sky, but it takes only minutes for that to change.

“Of course I did. I made a promise.” I don’t mention that only a few hours ago I fully intended to break that promise.

“I thought you were afraid.”

“I’m not.”

He sizes me up dubiously, and I do the same to him. He’s wearing exactly what he wore last night. Maybe those are the only clothes he has. The only difference is that today he wears
face paint: three red lines on his forehead, two white dots on each cheek, and a blue line down his chin.

“What does your face paint mean?”

He touches a finger to the three red lines. “The mark of the Jaguar claw.” His finger moves to the white dots. “The spots of the Jaguar.” Finally he points at his chin. “The Sighting.”

“Sighting?”

His fingers brush the streaks on his face, and he nods at Alai. “It is good luck to see a jaguar.”

I stare at Alai and wonder what everyone in Little Cam would say if I painted my face too.
Going native, Pia?

“I will show you Ai’oa,” Eio announces, “if you are not too afraid, little scientist.”

“I’m not a scientist yet,” I reply mildly. “And I’m not afraid. Will they be asleep?”

“No. They wait for you.”

Waiting for me? I feel a nervous flutter in my stomach. “You told them about me?”

“There are no secrets in Ai’oa.”

I let him lead the way, since my path the night before took me in a wild zigzag through the jungle. Eio takes me straight to his village, or as straight as you can go in the rainforest. We have to circle giant trees and nearly slide on our backs down steep, leafy hillsides. Even so, it only takes about half an hour to reach Ai’oa.

The village looks much different tonight. The fires are bigger, and I see that Ai’oa is larger than it seemed the night before. Open-walled, thatched huts stretch in two long lines. They are barely taller than I am. Each hut contains anywhere from five to twenty hammocks, all of which are empty now.
Colorful strips of fabric flutter from the poles supporting the roofs, and brightly painted pottery hangs from vines strung between the hammocks.

The fires march in a perfect row down the aisle between the huts, and I am struck by how perfectly parallel everything is. The more I look, the more I see it. The structure and placement of the huts, the way the hammocks are hung, even the cloths tied to the poles—they are all placed with meticulous care, maintaining aesthetic balance as much as possible.

I must take all of this into account in mere seconds, because the Ai’oans demand the major part of my attention. They emerge from the huts and the trees, gathering around the fires and waiting, I assume, for Eio and me.

I’m amazed at how slight the Ai’oans are. None of them is as tall as me. They wear a strange assortment of traditional and modern clothes. Some of the Ai’oans wear the same shorts and tees that are common in Little Cam, while the rest wear next to nothing. One woman wears a shirt with the words
I LOVE NYC
on it (I wonder who NYC is), and beneath that she wears a skirt made of long grass.

Eio leads me down the row between the huts, and soon I am surrounded by Ai’oans. I stare, and they stare back. There are murmurs and whispers all around, but whenever I turn to see who is talking, I see only still faces, and the voices slip behind me again. They seem more fascinated by Alai than by me.

It takes me several minutes to sort the men from women. I finally discern that women wear their hair to the waist and flecked with parrot feathers, while the men wear theirs to the back of the neck. They all have the same flat bangs down to their eyebrows. Except Eio.

My guide is an anomaly. I look at him once, and he seems to blend right into the crowd, with his face paint and bare chest. But when I look again, he seems as out of place as I am. His hair, unlike the rest of the tribe’s, is too curly to stay in the neat bowl cut they favor. The Ai’oans have flat noses, and their eyes slant slightly at the outer corners, but Eio’s features don’t match. He has a face that could easily appear in Little Cam, due, no doubt, to his mixed parentage. He is also head and shoulders above his people, and even when the Ai’oans press around me and separate us, I can easily spot him by simply looking over their heads. He is watching me closely, an amused smile on his lips, and I ask him what’s so funny.