“Righto, up on top. Do you see, the temperature differences in the air make the winds, and the winds make the waves and surf you saw when we were walking along the shore. When the waves break they throw up these little drops, and if you watch you’ll see that even when it’s clear they go up a long way sometimes. Then if the gravity is less they can get away altogether, and if we were on the outside they’d fly off into space, but we aren’t, we’re inside, so all they can do is go across the center, more or less, until they hit the water again, or Dr. Island.”
“Dr. Island said they had storms sometimes, when people got mad.”
“Yes. Lots of wind, and so there’s lots of rain too. Only the rain then is because the wind tears the tops off the waves, and you don’t get light like you do in a normal rain.”
“What makes so much wind?”
“I don’t know. It happens somehow.”
They sat in silence, Nicholas listening to the dripping of the leaves. He remembered then that they had spun the hospital module, finally, to get the little spheres of clotting blood out of the air; Maya’s blood was building up on the grilles of the purification intake ducts, spotting them black, and someone had been afraid they would decay there and smell. Nicholas had not been there when they did it, but he could imagine the droplets settling, like this, in the slow spin. The old psychodrama group had already been broken up, and when he saw Maureen or any of the others in the rec room they talked about Good Old Days. It had not seemed like Good Old Days then except that Maya had been there.
Diane said, “It’s going to stop.”
“It looks just as bad to me.”
“No, it’s going to stop—see, they’re falling a little faster now, and I feel heavier.”
Nicholas stood up. “You rested enough yet? You want to go on?” “We’ll get wet.”
He shrugged.
“I don’t want to get my hair wet, Nicholas. It’ll be over in a minute.”
He sat down again. “How long have you been here?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Don’t you count the days?”
“I lose track a lot.”
“Longer than a week?”
“Nicholas, don’t ask me, all right?”
“Isn’t there anybody on this piece of Dr. Island except you and me and Ignacio?”
“I don’t think there was anyone but Ignacio before you came.”
“Who is he?”
She looked at him.
“Well, who is he? You know me—us—Nicholas Kenneth de Vore; and you’re Diane who?”
“Phillips.”
“And you’re from the Trojan Planets, and I was from the Outer Belt, I guess, to start with. What about Ignacio? You talk to him sometimes, don’t you? Who is he?”
“I don’t know. He’s important.”
For an instant, Nicholas froze. “What does that mean?”
“Important.” The girl was feeling her knees, running her hands back and forth across them.
“Maybe everybody’s important.”
“I know you’re just a tot, Nicholas, but don’t be so stupid. Come on, you wanted to go; let’s go now. It’s pretty well stopped.” She stood, stretching her thin body, her arms over her head. “My knees are rough—you made me think of that. When I came here they were still so smooth, I think. I used to put a certain lotion on them. Because my dad would feel them, and my hands and elbows too, and he’d say if they weren’t smooth nobody’d ever want me; Mum wouldn’t say anything, but she’d be cross after, and they used to come and visit, and so I kept a bottle in my room and I used to put it on. Once I drank some.”
Nicholas was silent.
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I died?” She stepped ahead of him, pulling aside the dripping branches. “See here, I’m sorry I said you were stupid.”
“I’m just thinking,” Nicholas said. “I’m not mad at you. Do you really know anything about him?”
“No, but look at it.” She gestured. “Look around you; someone built all this.”
“You mean it cost a lot.”
“It’s automated, of course, but still . . . well, the other places where you were before—how much space was there for each patient? Take the total volume and divide it by the number of people there.”
“Okay, this is a whole lot bigger, but maybe they think we’re worth it.”
“Nicholas . . .” She paused. “Nicholas, Ignacio is homicidal. Didn’t Dr. Island tell you?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re fourteen and not very big for it, and I’m a girl. Who are they worried about?”
The look on Nicholas’s face startled her.
After an hour or more of walking they came to it. It was a band of withered vegetation, brown and black and tumbling, and as straight as if it had been drawn with a ruler. “I was afraid it wasn’t going to be here,” Diane said. “It moves around whenever there’s a storm. It might not have been in our sector anymore at all.”
Nicholas asked, “What is it?”
“The Focus. It’s been all over, but mostly the plants grow back quickly when it’s gone.”
“It smells funny—like the kitchen in a place where they wanted me to work in the kitchen once.”
“Vegetables rotting, that’s what that is. What did you do?”
“Nothing—put detergent in the stuff they were cooking. What makes this?”
“The Bright Spot. See, when it’s just about overhead the curve of the sky and the water up there make a lens. It isn’t a very good lens—a lot of the light scatters. But enough is focused to do this. It wouldn’t fry us if it came past right now, if that’s what you’re wondering, because it’s not that hot. I’ve stood right in it, but you want to get out in a minute.”
“I thought it was going to be about seeing ourselves down the beach.”
Diane seated herself on the trunk of a fallen tree. “It was, really. The last time I was here it was further from the water, and I suppose it had been there a long time, because it had cleared out a lot of the dead stuff. The sides of the sector are nearer here, you see; the whole sector narrows down like a piece of pie. So you could look down the Focus either way and see yourself nearer than you could on the beach. It was almost as if you were in a big, big room, with a looking glass on each wall, or as if you could stand behind yourself. I thought you might like it.”
“I’m going to try it here,” Nicholas announced, and he clambered up one of the dead trees while the girl waited below, but the dry limbs creaked and snapped beneath his feet, and he could not get high enough to see himself in either direction. When he dropped to the ground beside her again, he said, “There’s nothing to eat here either, is there?”
“I haven’t found anything.”
“They—I mean, Dr. Island wouldn’t just let us starve, would he?”
“I don’t think he could do anything; that’s the way this place is built. Sometimes you find things, and I’ve tried to catch fish, but I never could. A couple of times Ignacio gave me part of what he had, though; he’s good at it. I bet you think I’m skinny, don’t you? But I was a lot fatter when I came here.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Keep walking, I suppose, Nicholas. Maybe go back to the water.”
“Do you think we’ll find anything?”
From a decaying log, insect stridulations called, “Wait.”
Nicholas asked, “Do you know where anything is?”
“Something for you to eat? Not at present. But I can show you something much more interesting, not far from here, than this clutter of dying trees. Would you like to see it?”
Diane said, “Don’t go, Nicholas.”
“What is it?”
“Diane, who calls this ‘the Focus,’ calls what I wish to show you ‘the Point.’ ”
Nicholas asked Diane, “Why shouldn’t I go?”
“I’m not going. I went there once anyway.”
“I took her,” Dr. Island said. “And I’ll take you. I wouldn’t take you if I didn’t think it might help you.”