After dinner everybody except Elizabeth went to the garden, their favorite spot. Lillie was surprised when Mike dropped beside her on the grass. “Lillie, I want to ask you something.”
She felt herself color. “Yeah?”
He said, “Remember yesterday? We left Quantico in the middle of the night, and everybody was too excited to sleep, so we got a tour of the Flyer and we see our rooms and everything. Then all of a sudden we’re being taken to eat dinner, see the garden, and lights out for night. What happened to all the hours of that night and day in between arriving and dinner?”
Lillie was confused. “I don’t know. I guess we slept. Yes, we did… I woke up in my bed just before we ate dinner.”
“But do you remember going to sleep in your bed?”
“Well, I… no. I don’t. But I must have.”
“Or we were put to sleep.”
Slowly Lillie nodded.
“Well,” Mike said, getting up awkwardly, “I just thought I’d ask.” He strolled off toward the basketball court.
Despite herself, Lillie watched him go. He had a nice body. Not as tall as Jason or Jon, a little pudgy in the middle maybe, but nice.
Madison and Rebecca came over. Lillie bent over, pretending to look for four-leaf clovers in the grass so they wouldn’t see her blushing.
CHAPTER 9
The next day, everyone was in class right after breakfast, including Jessica, Sophie, and Elizabeth. And the day after that, and the day after that. It took Lillie by surprise to realize that weeks were sliding by.
Three weeks. Four. Seven. Ten. How could it have been ten weeks already? Lillie meant to ask Pam or Pete when they were going back down to Earth. She needed to see… who? Oh, Uncle Keith! Of course! She would ask tomorrow.
Tomorrow came, and somehow she forgot.
Twelve weeks. Fourteen. She forgot to keep track.
Each day was exactly the same as the others. Shower, breakfast, class all day, dinner. Evenings in the garden having fun. Pam was teaching three girls plus Rafe to genetically engineer flowers. Games had materialized, after being requested and described: Chess. Cards. Chinese checkers. Hannah had brought a music-cube with her, programmed with hit songs. Her favorite was “Don’t Matter None to Me,” by Printer Scream, and she played it over and over in the “cafe.” Basketball remained popular. It was hard to say what they all did, exactly, in the garden every evening, but the time passed and it was all fun. There were arguments but no fights. Even Sam, the bully, and Jessica, the bitch, didn’t cause too much trouble.
Lillie hung around mostly with Madison and Sajelle. Sajelle’s older sister, fifteen, had already had a baby.
“Last year,” she told them matter-of-facfly. “My mother really mad. She wanted Dee to finish high school, get herself a decent job. But Dee and Ty… you know. And the baby so darling! You should see her.”
“What’s her name?” Madison asked, not quite able to hide her disapproval.
“Kezia.” Sajelle frowned. “You know… I miss her, but I…” She searched for words, didn’t find them, let her hands fall helplessly into her lap.
You miss her but you don’t miss her, Lillie said silently. She knew. She still couldn’t remember Jenny’s face.
But she remembered all the genetics from class.
She knew the location on the human genome of a hundred and sixty genes, what proteins they could express, and how to alter many of them to express something else. She could turn genes on or off by manipulating their promoters, and could then use the results to turn off or on other genes, creating dozens of combinations of different effects. She had custom-built a bacteria capable of learning where she would put out its “food.” She had learned to splice in extra copies of genes, cut out copies of genes, locate and replace damaged genes. She understood none of the equipment she used, but she could manipulate it expertly. So could all of them.
Only once did she question what she was doing. Rafe and she happened to be sitting at a table in the garden, drinking glasses of cold water flavored with some delicious plant that Pete had taught Sophie to grow. The others had left. Rafe said abruptly, “It’s not new, you know.”
“What’s not new?” Lillie said, not really interested. Rafe’s frenetic energy and hyperintellectualism put her off.
“The genetics we’re learning. The Human Genome Project decoded a lot of this stuff over ten years ago, and the Protein Effort found out the rest of it. Well, maybe not how to get proteins to do alternate expression, but everything else. This isn’t new genetics they’re teaching us.”
“It’s new to me.”
“You don’t care, do you, any more than anyone else does. You’re the eighth person I’ve tried to have this conversation with, and nobody cares except Emily that we’ve been carted up to a spaceship to learn genetics that our scientists on the ground already know.”
That got Lillie’s attention. “Are you sure, Rafe?”
“Of course I’m sure. I didn’t win the Fanshaw National Science Prize without knowing what I’m talking about.”
“I thought you were only a state winner, not the national winner.”
“Even so. Lillie, why did they bring us here?”
“To learn the right way.” She didn’t even have to think about the answer; it rose to her lips from the deep well of certainty.
“Well, yes… but even so…” Rafe seemed to lose his thought. He frowned. “Lillie…”
Caught by his uncharacteristic foundering, she looked at him. Really looked. Of course, they were sitting down, but his shoulder seemed to be on a level with hers. “Rafe, stand up.”
He did.
“You’re taller than you were when we came.”
“Yes. Boys get their growth later than girls, my mother always said so. But Lillie…”
“No, it’s not that.” She tried to concentrate. “Look at Rebecca. Over there, with Julie.”
“What about her?”
“Her skin is all cleared up. And it was really bad when we came here… wasn’t it?”
“I don’t notice girls’ skin. I have better things to think about.”
Lillie ignored him. Getting up, she started a slow tour of the garden, looking at everyone. Really looking.
Julie was laughing with Rebecca, a free open laugh. When was the last time Lillie had seen Julie cry? A long time. Julie used to cry at everything.
Susan was no longer overweight. She was still curvy, but a good curvy.
Alex, who used to be so skinny that Sam said you could use him for a fishing pole, had bulked up.
Sam’s hair didn’t hang lankly over his ears anymore. It was thick and shiny.
And then Lillie came to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was sitting by the garden pond, braiding rushes together and sticking flowers in them to make a crown. She looked up suspiciously as Lillie approached. “What do you want?”
Still Elizabeth. But definitely not Elizabeth. She was slimmer, too, but the big change was her face. Her features were somehow more… what? Regular. Prettier. Her skin was clear. And she wasn’t…
“Elizabeth, what happened to your glasses?”
She looked briefly puzzled. “I don’t need them.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know why not. I just don’t.” She held up the garland she was weaving. “For the feast of Christ the Holy King. It’s tomorrow, November 26.”
November 26? They had been here for three months?
“How do you know today is November 25?” Lillie demanded.
“I asked Pam,” Elizabeth said triumphantly. “She understands that I need to keep the holy days of obligation.”
Lillie just stared. Pam understood? But Elizabeth had once told Lillie that Pam and Pete represented the forces of the devil… hadn’t she? Was Lillie remembering right?