Orleans (22 page)

“But I have questions . . .”

I shake my head. He ain’t gonna come with me ’til he ask. “Go ahead. But then we leaving.”

Daniel face the glass, so close I think he about to hit his nose on the pane. “Dr. James, my name is Daniel Weaver. I’m a military research scientist from over the Wall. We’re making progress on a cure for Delta Fever, but we still have questions. Where is your research kept?”

The screen stay blank for a long time. I shift Baby Girl to my other hip and wait.

THERE IS NO CURE.

“Not yet, but we’re working on one . . . I’m working on one. And I’m very close. But I don’t have access to samples in the States, the way you do here. Finding a cure was one of your objectives. Any work you’ve done on the subject might hold the key for me.”

THERE IS NO CURE. PRISCILLA? ARE YOU THERE?

Daniel sigh and look at me. “Doesn’t he understand?”

“Sure. You the one not understanding. Why you think my parents left? They ain’t working on a cure here, Daniel. Orleans just a lab to them. We ain’t people, we rats.”

“If they weren’t looking for a cure, what is all this for?”

“You from the other side of the Wall. Don’t you know?” I ask. He stare at me. “Dr. Warren’s pet project,” I prompt him. “He ain’t interested in the Fever. He studying tribes.”

Daniel frown. “Ending racism,” he say. “For the most part, the rules of blood make race irrelevant. Blood types cross all ethnicities.”

I nod. “If folks stop hating each other ’cause of skin color, the only difference be blood type.”

“A new form of racism,” Daniel say. His face go pale. “It’s like Tuskegee all over again. They never wanted a cure.”

I don’t know nothing about Tuskegee, but if it mean folks with power always gonna abuse it, then I got to agree. “How else they gonna study tribes?” I say.

Daniel look back into the infirmary at them dried-up husks. His fist clench and unclench, and he drop his head against the window. Then he turn to me.

“What do we do now? Just leave them here?” He point at they IV bags, more than half empty. I shrug.

“Why not? They ain’t tribe.”

“That’s insane,” Daniel say.

“That the world they made,” I say. “Now, I got a baby to take care of. You coming?”

Daniel hesitate. He maybe thinking how he saved me and Baby Girl out there just last night. And he be realizing I wouldn’t have done it for him. It ain’t wrong, but I don’t like the way it make me feel, so I look away.

“All right, Baby Girl, we going,” I whisper to Lydia’s little girl. This time, when we leave, I make sure Daniel and his virus come with us. No more “every man for himself.” If Orleans gonna have a better future, we in this together now.

27

“WE’RE GOING TO MR. GO’S?” DANIEL ASKED.
He was moving slowly, weighed down by the visit to the Professors. Fen swept away the fallen leaves and flowers with her boot and shut the door firmly.

“Yeah, but I got to do something first,” she said.

“What?” Daniel asked, adjusting the rags around his neck. The day was growing warmer, the sky so blue it was almost purple.

Fen tucked her thumbs into her pack straps and took off for the back road to avoid the avenue they’d come in on, and any lingering ABs.

“I had some people on the outside. I need to get a message to them.”

“You can do that?” Daniel asked, hopping over the broken pavement. “Get a message over the Wall?”

“Don’t always work, but it worth a shot.”

Daniel hurried to catch up. “How do you do it? I mean, if I could do that, I could get help or something. I could—”

She gave him a hard look. “You could what? Don’t take a genius to see you ain’t supposed to be here. You got no idea what Orleans about. You here alone, not a single person got your back. So who you gonna contact, Daniel? Who gonna help you that didn’t before?”

Daniel didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything he could say. He’d made one mistake after another. Now it was up to Fen. Maybe it always had been. “I’ll wait for your Mr. Go.”

“All right,” she said.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” Daniel said. “Where are we going?”

Fen skipped ahead and gave him an easy smile. “The library. Then, maybe church.”

Daniel shook his head. “Oh. Of course.”

• • • 

The library was a beautiful building on the leafy avenue they had run down last night. Fen led him down a backstreet before risking the main road. This far into AB territory, there were no torches strung between the old live oaks, and sunlight sifted through the canopy overhead. They moved as quietly as possible. After last night’s wild chase, Fen told him the ABs would sleep in. Daniel knew from his research that AB was the most Fever-susceptible blood type. Without constant transfusions, the Fever made ABs sluggish and weak.

Like his brother, Charlie. His sterile death in a hospital was cruel, but life in Orleans didn’t seem much better.

They reached a place in the stream where chunks of concrete had been laid out like stepping stones. Fen jumped lightly across them to the green lawn on the opposite side, where the library squatted, an implacable building of red stone. Fen mounted the steps swiftly. Daniel followed her in, swinging the heavy steel doors shut behind him.

Inside, the library was a throwback to another age. Heavy wooden furniture, walls lined with thick dark bookshelves, stained oak floors. But it reeked of mildew and the bookcases themselves were empty.

“Used to be a librarian here when I been real little,” Fen pointed out, breezing past the reception desk. The light leaching in through the windows was watery and thin, the old glass deep set into the walls of the building to protect them from storms. “An AB, since this be they turf. But she gone now. The computer be in the back.”

“Working?” Daniel asked.

“Sometimes. That why I said maybe we could do it, maybe not. We not far from the Professors. My guess be one of them got this thing running. Someone did. Old car batteries and sometimes a generator. I don’t know who been keeping it up. Here.”

An ancient PC sat on a long oak table at the back of the ground floor, its casing filthy with age and use. The power cord snaked down to a box on the floor covered in black electrical tape.

“Don’t be touching that,” Fen snapped. She shifted the baby onto her lap so she could type. With one booted foot, she pumped a lever beneath the table, somehow attached to the box. Daniel recognized it as an antique sewing machine foot pedal.

“This is incredible,” he said. “And it’s communal? For everyone?”

Fen shrugged. “ABs had it to theyselves for a while and posted guards ’round the building. But they ain’t knowing how to keep it running, and it died. So they abandon it ’til somebody come ’round and fix it.” She peered at the blank screen. “That how it be. Share it, and it work. Mess with it and it don’t. “

A few more pumps and the computer sprang to life.

“There we go,” Fen said to herself. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, opened a browser, and started to type.

“You have an e-mail account?” Daniel asked her.

“Every tribe do. Least the ones around before things got bad. They been set up by the missionaries. Supposed to keep folks in touch with they relatives on the other side. Only our chief ever used it, but I know the password. If they ain’t changed it on me.”

“What did your chief use it for?” It wasn’t like they could go shopping online.

“Smugglers. Medicine and stuff too hard to get in Orleans. Beyond that be her business. I didn’t ask.”

• • • 

HE BE ASKING TOO MANY QUESTIONS NOW,
and I be letting my mouth run. I got business to take care of. I open the program and type in my e-mail. It be a hard thing to write, but I been thinking about it on the walk here:

Aunt Cee and Uncle Garrett, It’s me, your little Fen. I am sorry it has been so long since you have heard from me. I hate to ask, but I need your help. You were always good sponsor parents to me. You would make good real parents too. If you would like to be please write me back. There is a child that needs your help. No Fever. DELTA-FREE. Love, Fen de la Guerre.

I feel silly writing it, using my best English how the Ursulines taught us, but I got to make sure they understand me. I hit send and wait to see that it go. My leg be getting tired from pumping the generator, but I keep it up.

“How does it get transmitted?” Daniel ask.

When it go through, I erase my password, clear the history, and log off.

“Maybe it don’t,” I say. “But I got to try. Now we wait and see.”

Daniel be staring at me like I be crazy, but that ain’t the first time. I stare right back. Then he say, “Can I send a message, too?”

Before I can answer, I hear the door open at the front of the building.

Hide,
I mouth to Daniel. I put my hand over Baby Girl’s mouth in case she start to cry and scurry away from the desk through a side door that be broken, into another room. Full of old furniture, it be all rotten sofas and flood-damaged stuff, covered with mold. I worry about Baby Girl breathing it in, so I cover her face with the sling. Daniel be right by my side, so I know he scared. I lead him around a mound of cushions and we stand behind an arch in the wall. My knife still in my boot, but I ain’t starting nothing with this baby in my arms ’less I have to.

“Who?” Daniel whisper. I put my finger to his lips and mouth the letters
AB
and shrug. He nod. Then I lean forward and try to listen. Two men be talking.

“This thing don’t even be working no more,” First Man say. His voice be deep like his chest broad. He sound big.

“It work good enough to get what we want,” Second Man say. He got a voice like a reed flute, the kind they sell at the Market for little kids. “Can’t stop now, man,” Second Man continue. “That raid on the Os, that a bold move, but you know what they say—you got to back it up with some serious action.”

“You right, you right,” First Man say in his deep voice.

My mind be spinning. These be the bastards attacked us at the powwow. Lydia be dead because of them.

That explain why there weren’t no dogs after Lydia and me that night. It weren’t just a blood raid. Tribes be attacking each other all the time, looking for fresh blood. But blood ain’t enough for these bastards. They been looking to start a war.

Before I know it, I be bending down and my knife be in my hand. I grip it hard. My life be over because of them. Theirs ’bout to be over, too.

I wrap an arm around Baby Girl and edge toward the door, knife at the ready. They want a war, they got one.

I feel a hand touch my shoulder. “Fen?” Daniel whisper. I hesitate, shake my head. I got to do this. He grip my shoulder. I should shake him off, do what I gotta do, but if the baby cry from shaking, I ain’t got no chance at all.

I look back at Daniel. His eyes be wide, scared. He shake his head no. Every muscle in my body screaming for me to go through that door.

In the next room, I hear somebody typing on the keyboard. They sending a message to someone, too. “A’ight, that done,” Second Man say. “We can tell LB we sent it, let him worry if it gone work in time for tomorrow.”