Reached (27 page)

CHAPTER 37

XANDER

O
ker,” Leyna says, “the sorters have made a new list for you.”

“Another one?” Oker asks. “Put it over there.” He gestures to one end of the long table.

In theory, Oker needs the lists from the sorters because their input is valuable. The sorters try to discover which factors are most likely to contribute to the immunity. Oker has to figure out what that means in the real world. If eating some kind of plant seems to be a factor, what component of the plant is it that’s important? How do you put that into a cure? In what concentration? The collaboration is supposed to save everyone time and increase the chances that we’ll find an effective cure quickly.

But Oker never seems inclined to drop what he’s doing and read through the list right away. I know how hard Cassia has been working on sifting through the information. It’s valuable. I clear my throat to say something but Leyna speaks first.

“You need to look at it,” Leyna tells him. “The sorters have been through all the data again with the latest information from the infirmary and from your own observations. They’ve modeled the likelihood that each of these ingredients could effectively treat the disease.”

“Right,” Oker says. “You’ve said all this before.” He starts for his office, holding his datapod.

“Oker,”
Leyna says. “As the cure administrator, I need to insist that you look at this list. Or I will remove you from your duties.”

“Ha,” Oker says. “There’s not another fully trained pharmic in this place.”

“Your assistants are perfectly competent,” Leyna says.

Oker mutters something and comes over. He picks up the datapod. “They’re always sending lists,” he says. “What’s so urgent about this one?”

“We have another sorter now,” Leyna reminds him. “And you can be sure that those back in the Provinces are using sorters to help decide on the next cure.”

“Of course that’s what they’re doing,” Oker says. “They used to be Society. They’re not capable of any originality of thought. They can’t act without numbers.”

Leyna tries again. “The new sorter, Cassia—”

Oker waves his hand. “I don’t need to know about the sorters. I’ll go look at it now.” He walks back to his office, taking the datapod and the list, and shuts the door hard behind him.

After only a few moments, I hear the door to Oker’s office open. I expect him to say something caustic about it being time for Leyna to leave, but instead he stands there as if frozen, his eyes narrowed in thought. “Camassia,” he says.

“It’s Cassia,” I begin, thinking that he’s trying to remember the names of the sorters for some reason, but then he cuts me off.

“No,” he says. “
Camassia.
It’s a plant. We haven’t done much with that one yet.” Now he’s muttering, as if he doesn’t remember that we can hear him. “It’s edible. Nutritious, even. It tastes like potatoes, only sweeter. The flower is purple. It’s where Camas Province gets its name.” His eyes snap back into focus and he looks right at me. “I’ll go dig some.”

“Camassia is not ranked very high on the sorters’ list,” Leyna says.

“This isn’t the Society,”
Oker growls. “We don’t have to go by the numbers. We have room for intuition and intelligence in this village, don’t we? We can find a cure faster than the people in the Provinces, but only if we stop thinking the way they would.”

Leyna shakes her head. I know she must be trying to decide on the best way to deal with this, and she’s asking herself the same questions she’s had to ask before: Is Oker a valuable enough asset that she can let him do what he wants, even when it’s in direct opposition to what she thinks is best?

“How about this,” Oker says. “You gather the other ingredients and I’ll make the cures you want, too.” He looks at Noah and Tess. “You stay and keep the bags going.”

“We have extra,” Noah points out.

“We’re going to need a lot more,” Oker says impatiently. “Do
not
let any of the patients run out, especially that newest one.” Then he turns to me. “Come on. You can help me dig.”

“We only have seven patients available for trial now,” Leyna says as Oker points out things he wants me to put in a bag—clean burlap straps, canteens, and two small shovels. “The other patients still need time to get the most recent cure trial out of their systems.”

“Then we’ll only use seven patients,” Oker says, barely able to control his frustration.

“The Pilot will need more evidence than a few cured patients—” Leyna begins.

“Then give them all
my
cure,” Oker says. He pushes open the door. “We’re talking in circles. I’ll make the cures. You decide who gets them. Just make sure someone takes mine. And that I get the one most recently still to try my cure.” Then he glances over his shoulder at Leyna. “You should ask the sorters to calculate the odds that we’re going to figure this out before the people back in the Provinces do. We’re not the Pilot’s best hope. He’s throwing everything he can into the air on the chance that something might take flight. And we’re the smallest, weakest bird.”

“Your medications made a difference,” Leyna says firmly. “The Pilot knows that.”

“I didn’t say we couldn’t still be the ones to figure it out,” Oker says. “But only if you let me do what I need to do.”

“We have camassia in our stores,” Leyna says, one final protest. “You don’t need to walk all the way to the camassia fields.”

“I want it fresh from the ground,” Oker tells her.

“Then I’ll send someone out to glean the field,” Leyna says. “That will be faster than you going yourself.”

“No,”
Oker says. “No.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t want anything to compromise this cure. I’ll see it through from start to finish.”

Now that sounds like something a real Pilot would say. I follow Oker out the door.

I don’t trick myself that Oker’s picked me to come with him because he trusts me the most. He can count on Noah and Tess to prepare the medicated nutrient bags for the patients, but he can’t trust me to manage that yet without supervision. He just needs someone to dig for him.

And he likes to talk to me about the mutation because I’m the most recent person to work firsthand with the still. I’ve seen the mutation up close. Of course this would all be intriguing to him. He’s the one who came up with the first cure. He knew about the Plague before almost anyone else.

“How far are we going?” I ask.

“A few miles,” he says. “The field I want isn’t near here. It’s closer to the other stone villages, toward Camas.”

I follow him. It all looks like grass and rock to me. Nothing stands out as a pathway. “People must not go to the other villages often anymore,” I say to Oker.

“Not after this last gathering to Endstone,” Oker says. “We’ve sent people out to harvest different wild crops since then, but it doesn’t take long for the mountain to reclaim the path.”

Every now and then we pass a round stone pressed flat into the ground. Oker says the stones indicate we are on the right track. “I walked all the way out here,” Oker says. His voice sounds peaceful, contemplative, but he moves as fast as he can. “Back then, the pilots often flew you as far as the first stone village and then it was up to you where you went after that. I decided on Endstone since it was the farthest away. Thought I might not make it, since according to the Society I was old enough to be dead, but I kept going.” He laughs. “I walked through the day of my own Final Banquet.”

“That’s what my friend tried to do,” I say to Oker. “He tried to keep walking through the mutation. He was convinced that if he kept moving, he wouldn’t go still.”

“Where’d he get an idea like that?” Oker asks.

“I think it’s because Cassia walked through a blue tablet once. She took one and kept on going.”

I expect him to say that’s impossible, but instead he says, “Maybe your friends are right. Stranger things have happened.” Then he smiles. “Cassia is an unusual name. It’s botanical. The bark is used as a spice.”

“Is it any relation to the plant we’re looking for now?” I ask. “The names sound so similar.”

“No,” Oker says. “Not to my knowledge.”

“She helped with that list,” I say. “You should look at it again after we’re done with the camassia.” I don’t bring up the fact—yet—that she, not Oker, should be the one who decides which cure Ky gets.

Oker stops to get his bearings. I could go faster than this, but he’s in excellent shape for someone so old. “The camassia should be near here,” he says. “This is where the villagers come to harvest. But they won’t have taken it all. Always have to leave some to grow for next year, even if you hope you won’t be here.” He leaves the path and starts down through a stand of trees.

I follow him. The trees on the mountainside are pines and some others I don’t know. They have white bark and thin green leaves. I like the sound when we walk under them.

Oker points down. “See it?”

It takes me a moment, but I do. The flowers are a little dead and dry, but they’re purple like he said.

“You can dig here,” he says. “Don’t take them all. Dig up every other plant. We don’t need the flowers, just the roots. Wrap the roots in burlap and wet them at the stream.” He points to a tiny rivulet of water winding through the grass, turning it marshy. “Be as fast as you can about it.”

I kneel down and start digging around the plant. When I pull up the bulb, it’s brown and dirty, with tangles of roots coming out. It reminds me of Cassia, and how the two of us planted those flowers the day we kissed in the Borough. That kiss has kept me going for months.

At the stream, I wet the strips of burlap and wrap up the bulbs one after the other. I keep digging, and the sun shines down on me, and I decide that I like the smell of the dirt. My back aches a little, so I stand up to stretch it out. I’m almost out of space in the bag.

Oker’s impatient for me to finish. He crouches down next to me and starts sawing at a plant, his motions clumsy. The flowers bob back and forth, back and forth. He pulls up the roots, fumbling with his twisted hands, and then gives the plants to me. “Can’t wrap it,” he says. “You’ll have to do it for me.”

I wrap up Oker’s harvest and finish filling our bags. When I start to sling his bag over my shoulder with mine—I should carry it for him now that it’s full—Oker shakes his head. “I can carry my own.”

I nod and hand it over. “Do you think this camassia is really the cure?”

“I think there’s a very good chance,” Oker says. “Let’s go.”

Oker has to stop and rest on the way back to the village. “Forgot to eat this morning,” he says. It’s the first time I’ve seen him worn out. He leans up against a rock, his face twisted into a scowl of impatience as he waits for his heart to stop racing.

“I’ve been wondering something,” I say. Oker grunts but doesn’t tell me I can’t ask, so I go ahead. “How did the villagers know that they were immune to the Plague in the first place, before the mutation?”

“They’ve known about their immunity to the original Plague for years,” Oker says. “When the Society first sent it out to the Enemy, one of the pilots who dropped the virus ran away from his Army base and came to the first stone village, the one nearest Camas.”