Teresa looked at the frogs. They both had pale bellies and darker skin, though the one she recognized was considerably darker. The rear legs folded differently, and one had two forelimbs to the other’s four. From where she was standing, the thing they had most in common was that they were dead. She took a scalpel between her fingers, considering the blade, and wondered whether she’d be able to cut the bodies open without vomiting. The upside was she didn’t have much in her belly to puke up. So that was fine.
“Hey,” Connor said. She hadn’t seen him come up, but here he was. Sandy hair and soft eyes. She remembered caring what his opinion was. She remembered wanting to kiss him like it was in a film she’d watched, and not something she’d felt herself.
She pinched the flat of the blade between her fingers and held the handle out to him. “Want to cut?” she asked. He took it and looked away, uncomfortable. That was fine. Shan Ellison made up the third of their group. When all the rest had formed up, Elvi Okoye opened a volumetric display with an image of two idealized frogs to match the ones on their trays.
“Okay,” Elvi said. “So one of the things that we see in both Laconia and Earth biomes is water. And there are animals that have found an advantage to living part of their lives in the water and part out. We call them amphibians. Both of your frogs are amphibians. And because water is chemically identical in both worlds, and the adult forms that we have here need to breathe air, there are some problems they both faced as they evolved. Some solutions look very similar, and some of their strategies could not have been more different. So let’s start with looking at the Earth frog’s lungs. Each team should make the first incision right here—”
Slowly, step by step, they began unmaking the frogs. Despite herself, Teresa found the process interesting. The way the Laconian frog cycled water in and out of its chest cavity to do the work that the Earth frog did with a diaphragm. The way the feeding mechanisms—mouth and esophagus for the Earth frog, chambered mouth and gut for the Laconian—served the same functions in different ways. She felt like it was all telling her something deeper than just biology. Something about herself and the people around her. Something about whether she could ever belong.
She realized she had been drifting off when Connor spoke to her again. His voice was quiet and tentative. “My mom.”
Teresa glanced up at Elvi. She was across the room, talking to one of the other groups.
“What about her,” Teresa asked.
“I was just saying that my mom, she’s … You know. She watches the newsfeeds. With everything that’s going on.”
He glanced at her, and then away like he was shy. Like he was saying something shameful. Shan Ellison didn’t speak, but watched with the intensity of someone expecting violence. It felt illicit and strange, like he’d said the first part of some password, and she didn’t know the rest.
Then, a heartbeat later, she did. He was asking her to tell him something reassuring. His parents were scared. He was scared. And because they were in peer class together, and she was her father’s daughter, he wanted her to tell him that everything was going to be all right. That she, knowing what she knew, wasn’t afraid and that he shouldn’t be either.
She licked her lips and waited to see what would come out of them.
“She shouldn’t spend too much time on them,” Teresa said. “I know everything looks really scary, but it’s not that big a problem. Dad has the best minds in the empire working for him, and they’re learning more every day. Everyone always knew there’d be setbacks.”
“Yeah,” Connor said. “Everyone knew.”
So she’d lied. That was interesting. She’d told him what he wanted to hear, and it wasn’t even because she wanted to protect him or keep him safe. It was just easier. She understood now why adults lied to children. It wasn’t love. It was exhaustion. And she was like them now. They’d eaten her.
“Are you okay?” Shan asked, and it seemed like her voice was closer than she was. Like the girl wasn’t talking from across the table, but whispering into Teresa’s ear. It sounded soft and weirdly intimate. I’m fine, Teresa said. Only the words didn’t come out.
She had the sense that she needed to leave now. That if she could get a drink of water and lie down for a minute, her breath wouldn’t seem so loud in her ears. She felt herself walking. At the door, someone’s arm appeared beside her, startling her. It was her own. She moved the hand, fascinated by her control of it married with the absolute emotional certainty that it wasn’t her arm.
Elvi Okoye was there too, like something from a dream. She said something, asked something, but before Teresa could answer, she’d forgotten what it was.
I wonder if I’m dying, Teresa thought, and the idea wasn’t unpleasant.
For a while, Teresa lost herself. A flurry of sensory impressions—voices, movement. Someone was touching her hands and her neck. A bright light shone in her eyes. When she came back, she was lying down. The room was familiar, but until she heard voices she knew, she couldn’t quite place it.
“I’m not drawing any conclusions,” the doctor said. It wasn’t Dr. Cortázar. It was her old pediatrician, Dr. Klein. And he was talking to Elvi Okoye. “What I’m saying is she’s dehydrated and malnourished. Maybe she got that way because there’s some kind of uptake problem. Maybe she’s had an allergic reaction to something. Or her stress levels are so high, she’s somaticizing. Or—and I’m just saying maybe here—she’s been starving herself.”
She was in the State Building’s medical wing, on a gurney. There was a line connecting an autodoc to a vein at the back of her hand. When she shifted, she could feel the needle under her skin and the coolness in her arm where it was feeding fluid into her.
“I skipped breakfast,” Teresa yelled, and her voice sounded normal again. “It’s my fault. It was stupid. I just lost track of time.”
They were at her side before she’d finished speaking. Dr. Klein was a youngish man with wavy brown hair and green eyes that reminded her of Trejo. She liked him because he’d given her sweets after her checkups when she was young and because he’d never condescended to her. Now he was looking at the system readout from the autodoc and trying not to meet her eyes. Elvi, leaning on her cane, was ashen. She looked directly into Teresa’s eyes, and Teresa stared back.
“It was the frogs,” Teresa lied. It came easily. “Between not eating first and cutting them up, I got light-headed.”
“Maybe,” Klein said. “But if there is an underlying gastrointestinal issue, we should get on it quickly. There’s some microbial life on Laconia that we’re seeing fungal-model infections with. It’s not something to take lightly.”
“It’s not what’s going on. I promise,” Teresa said. And then, “Could I talk to Dr. Okoye for a minute?”
There was a moment’s hesitation that she couldn’t quite read, like Klein might refuse. But then …
“Of course.” He nodded to Elvi. “Major,” he said, and walked away.
When he was out of earshot, Teresa whispered, her voice harsh, “What are you doing bringing him into this? We’re not supposed to be around other people. Dr. Cortázar is my doctor.”
“He’s not a physician,” Elvi said. “His doctorate’s in nanoinformatics. He shouldn’t be practicing medicine any more than I should.”