The Host(80)

I nodded slightly; the movement was absentminded. I was still reeling, trying to get my bearings. This room looked innocent enough, as if it were only used for healing, but it made my stomach twist and contract.

“What do you know about alien medicine?” the doctor asked suddenly, his head cocked to the side. He watched my face with expectant curiosity.

I stared at him wordlessly.

“Oh, you can talk to Doc,” Jeb encouraged me. “He’s a pretty decent guy, all things considered.”

I shook my head once. I meant to answer the doctor’s question, to tell them that I knew nothing, but they misunderstood.

“She’s not giving away any trade secrets,” Ian said sourly. “Are you, sweetheart?”

“Manners, Ian,” Jeb barked.

“Is it a secret?” Jamie asked, guarded but clearly curious.

I shook my head again. They all stared at me in confusion. Doc shook his head, too, slowly, baffled.

I took a deep breath, then whispered, “I’m not a Healer. I don’t know how they—the medications—work. Only that they do work— they heal, rather than merely treating symptoms. No trial and error. Of course the human medicines were discarded.”

All four of them stared with blank expressions. First they were surprised when I didn’t answer, and now they were surprised when I did. Humans were impossible to please.

“Your kind didn’t change too much of what we left behind,” Jeb said thoughtfully after a moment. “Just the medical stuff, and the spaceships instead of planes. Other than that, life seems to go on just the same as ever… on the surface.”

“We come to experience, not to change,” I whispered. “Health takes priority over that philosophy, though.”

I shut my mouth with an audible snap. I had to be more careful. The humans hardly wanted a lecture on soul philosophy. Who knew what would anger them? Or what would snap their fragile patience?

Jeb nodded, still thoughtful, and then ushered us onward. He wasn’t as enthusiastic as he continued my tour through the few connecting caves here in the medical wing, not as involved in the presentation. When we turned around and headed back into the black corridor, he lapsed into silence. It was a long, quiet walk. I thought through what I’d said, looking for something that might have offended. Jeb was too strange for me to guess if that was the case. The other humans, hostile and suspicious as they were, at least made sense. How could I hope to make sense of Jeb?

The tour ended abruptly when we reentered the huge garden cavern where the carrot sprouts made a bright green carpet across the dark floor.

“Show’s over,” Jeb said gruffly, looking at Ian and the doctor. “Go do something useful.”

Ian rolled his eyes at the doctor, but they both turned good-naturedly enough and made their way toward the biggest exit—the one that led to the kitchen, I remembered. Jamie hesitated, looking after them but not moving.

“You come with me,” Jeb told him, slightly less gruff this time. “I’ve got a job for you.”

“Okay,” Jamie said. I could see that he was pleased to have been chosen.

Jamie walked beside me again as we headed back toward the sleeping-quarters section of the caves. I was surprised, as we chose the third passageway from the left, that Jamie seemed to know exactly where we were going. Jeb was slightly behind us, but Jamie stopped at once when we reached the green screen that covered the seventh apartment. He moved the screen aside for me but stayed in the hall.

“You okay to sit tight for a while?” Jeb asked me.

I nodded, grateful at the thought of hiding again. I ducked through the opening and then stood a few feet in, not sure what to do with myself. Melanie remembered that there were books here, but I reminded her of my vow to not touch anything.

“I got things to do, kid,” Jeb said to Jamie. “Food ain’t gonna fix itself, you know. You up to guard duty?”

“Sure,” Jamie said with a bright smile. His thin chest swelled with a deep breath.

My eyes widened in disbelief as I watched Jeb place the rifle in Jamie’s eager hands.

“Are you crazy?” I shouted. My voice was so loud that I didn’t recognize it at first. It felt like I’d been whispering forever.

Jeb and Jamie looked up at me, shocked. I was out in the hallway with them in a second.

I almost reached for the hard metal of the barrel, almost ripped it from the boy’s hands. What stopped me wasn’t the knowledge that a move like that would surely get me killed. What stopped me was the fact that I was weaker than the humans in this way; even to save the boy, I could not make myself touch the weapon.

I turned on Jeb instead.