Origin (3 page)

As I wave to her and head for the front door, I feel a sudden coldness in the bridge of my nose, right between my eyes. Of everyone in Little Cam, my mother is the only one who never smiles when she says that.

Later, after my lessons and MRI—which showed nothing new—I am sitting in the menagerie, brushing Alai, when the alarms go off. Alai is a two-hundred-pound jaguar that Uncle Paolo gave me for my ninth birthday, when Alai was just a cub. He hates everyone in Little Cam except me, Uncle Antonio, and the cook, Jacques, who brings Alai cookies every morning. Alai is mad about cookies.

The alarms blare in two short bursts. Behind me, the monkeys start screaming in response. They like to think they run the menagerie, but I won’t have any of it.

“Oh, shut up, you dummies,” I say, rising from the ground and turning to shake Alai’s brush at them. The Grouch, a huge orange howler monkey, stares straight at me and lets out an obnoxious roar. The howlers used to scare me when I was little, but now I just roll my eyes at them.

“Come on, Alai!” I say, heading for the door. The menagerie is a long, low cement building with dirt floors and wide picture windows in every cage. Most of the animals are there for experimentation—which means we have several immortal residents—but Alai is not allowed to be used for any tests. He is completely mine.

After pulling the heavy metal door shut behind me, I start running. Alai lopes at my heels, his huge paws all but silent on the path. I have to circle most of Little Cam before I finally reach the gate. My heart is racing, not because of the run, but from excitement. Two alarms means the supply truck is here.

We only get a delivery every few months, so it’s always a special occasion when one arrives. Uncle Timothy, a huge, muscular man with skin as dark as obsidian, is in charge of
making the trek through the jungle to the Little Mississip, the nearest river to Little Cam. I don’t know what comes after the Little Mississip, but it must be a long journey since every supply run takes him nearly two months. Once I asked Uncle Paolo to show me a map of Uncle Timothy’s route, but he told me to never ask him or anyone else that question again.

The gate is the only entrance or exit from our compound, and now it is swinging open on mechanical tracks to admit the trucks. There are three of them, huge, growling, angry things with canvas tops and wheels drenched with mud. Belching and rattling, they pull into the wide dirt drive in front of the dining hall and shudder to a stop. Uncle Timothy jumps out of the lead truck, his bald head glistening with sweat. He has a handkerchief tied around his mouth and nose, and as I come running up, he pulls it down and smiles. He has the whitest teeth of anyone I know.

“Hey, little miss! Come give your Uncle T a hug, yeah?” He spreads his arms, but I wrinkle my nose and dodge aside. He smells like the Grouch.

“You’re disgusting! What did you bring? Where did you go?” I race around to the back of his truck and climb onto the high bumper so I can peer inside. “Did you trade with some natives?” Ever since I first heard of the jungle dwellers whom Uncle Timothy calls the “natives,” I’ve been fascinated by the possibility of seeing one. I’ve not had the chance yet, since he usually goes to their villages whenever he needs to trade for fresh fruit. Often the scientists go with him to ask the natives how they use certain plants for medicine.

“Get down from there, Pia!” calls my mother. She and a crowd of people are gathering around the trucks, and everyone
looks excited, since delivery days are our only contact with the outside world.

I eye the boxes and crates eagerly, wondering what they hold. I start to reach for something with the word
Skittles
across it, with a picture of a rainbow and what look like pieces of candy, when suddenly someone pops up from behind the crate. Startled, I jump backward and land on the ground beside Alai.

It’s a woman. She’s squinting and yawning as if she just woke up, and her rumpled clothes suggest that she just did.

“Oh, hi,” she says with a sleepy smile. “Is this Little Cam, then?” Her accent is clipped in a way I’ve never heard before. Her hair is as shockingly orange as a howler monkey’s, and it frizzes out in every direction.

“This is Little Cam,” I reply warily. “Who are you?”

“Dr. Fields!” says a voice, and I turn to see Uncle Paolo striding toward us. “Welcome! So good to meet you!” He helps her down. She’s very tall and thin, and her white shirt is stained with brown spots.

She must have seen me staring, because she laughs and pulls at her shirt. “Coffee,” she explains. “I must have drunk a gallon of it in Manaus and another pint on the Little Mississip. What a name for a river! Who’s the Yank responsible for that one?”

Suddenly everyone grows silent.

“Where’s Manaus?” I ask.

She stares at me with a funny smile. “What do you mean, ‘Where’s Manaus?’ You
have
to go through Manaus if you want to get anywhere in this jungle—”

“Dr. Fields,” interrupts Uncle Paolo. “I’m sure you must
be exhausted. Come inside, we’ll get you something to eat and show you to your room.”

“Sounds brilliant. Whoop! Wait just a tick—” She clambers onto the truck and bends over the tailgate, rooting around for something inside. I notice Uncle Paolo, Uncle Antonio, and a few other uncles observing how her rear bobs up and down while she searches. I scowl, not too sure about this
Dr. Fields
woman. No one told
me
she was coming.

“Ah! Got it!” She holds up a large metal canteen as if it were a cure for cancer she’d just discovered. “My coffee!”

“Excellent, excellent,” says Uncle Paolo. He offers her a hand down, but she ignores it and jumps clumsily, nearly breaking her ankle when she lands.

“Whoop!” she hollers. “I’m such a klutz! Ha! Oh, great Scott, a jaguar! Hello, beautiful!” She bends down and makes a kissy noise at Alai. I wait for him to growl and snap like he does with everyone else, but instead he pads right up to her and starts purring as she scratches his ears. Finally she declares she’s ready for dinner and some hot coffee, and, chattering all the way, she leads a cluster of men into the dining hall. Each of them is shoving the others to extend a handshake and their names. They disappear inside, leaving the crowd around the trucks much smaller in number. Alai rubs against my leg, still purring.

“Traitor,” I hiss. With a yawn, he flops onto the ground and starts licking his paws.

“What a dope,” I say to Uncle Antonio. “Who invited her, anyway?”

“What’s your problem, Chipmunk? She seems nice.” He
stares at the dining hall wistfully, and I sigh. At least he hadn’t joined the welcoming committee.

As if in direct response to my relief, he adds, “I better see if she needs help with her luggage.” And off he goes.

“What about the supplies?” I yell. “Who’s gonna unload those? Me?” I point at the trucks, but he ignores me. Uncle Timothy comes over and slaps me on the shoulder, laughing.

“Looks like our new ginger’s got plenty of help, eh, Pia? She’s a nutter, that one, and she talks enough to make a sloth want to run the other way.”

“Who is she?”

“Dr. Harriet Fields, a biomedical engineer. Come to replace Smithers, I think.”

“Uncle Smithy’s leaving?” The ancient, white-haired scientist has been in Little Cam longer than anyone else. Some say he was here when the Accident happened, thirty years ago. Besides being a biomedical engineer, he’s a painter, and he always keeps a brush close at hand.

“It’s what I heard.” Uncle Timothy shrugs. “So, did I hear you volunteering to unload everything? Sounds great, I’m bushed.”

I don’t rise to the bait. I’m too disturbed by this new biomedical engineer. It’s been years since someone new has come to Little Cam. The last new arrival was Clarence, the janitor, when I was eight.

Deciding that I am tired of talking about Dr. Harriet Fields, or, as I’m already calling her in my head,
Dr. Klutz
, I ask Uncle Timothy if he’s brought my dress.

“Dress? What dress?”

I slap his massive arm. It’s as solid as steel, but he makes a show of pouting and rubbing the spot. “Oh, that
dress
.”

I have to wait until a crew unloads the trucks, hauls everything to a warehouse, and starts opening boxes before we find it. It’s teal blue, and the bodice is studded with tiny crystals. “Oh,” I breathe when I see it. Mother comes over and takes it. She holds it up to me, her face uncharacteristically cheerful.

“Lovely,” she says. “Chiffon and silk…and it even matches your eyes. I’m surprised at you, Timothy! I thought surely with
you
doing the shopping, you’d come back with a jaguar-print toga or something hideous like that.”

“Mother!” I gasp, and I reach down to cover Alai’s ears. “You’ve offended him.”

“I didn’t pick it,” Uncle Timothy protests. “I had that Fields woman find it. Send a man like me to shop for a party dress…
pah
!”

“Go try it on,” Mother urges.

“No, it’s for my party. I won’t wear it until my birthday.” Two more weeks. I can barely stand the wait. Ever since I found out about parties, I begged for months for a real one. Finally everyone agreed, though most of them were grudging about it. Tuxedos are scarce in the middle of the rainforest. Luckily Uncle Timothy already had a supply run planned, so one of the boxes scattered around the warehouse has to be stuffed with party clothes. Uncle Paolo still grumbles at me about the cost and the inconvenience of it all, but only half-heartedly, or he’d never have agreed to it in the first place.

“Here,” says Uncle Timothy, handing me a little package. It’s the one called Skittles, and he’s already ripped it open and started munching on a handful. “Try those.”

I expect chocolate, since they look like M&Ms (which Uncle Timothy brought me last time), but instead I taste a burst of fruit. “They’re good!” I dump half the bag into my mouth and decide I want Skittles instead of birthday cake at the party. Mother wanders off to help inventory a box of syringes and other medical supplies, and I trail after Uncle Timothy as he oversees the unpacking.

“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.

U
ncle 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—”