Then she sits on the floor and waits and watches Sybil gleam inside her tower. She can almost feel Father bundling her in her blanket, sitting with her against the wall of Farm 4, the space around them crammed with racks of lettuce and watercress and parsley, the seeds sleeping in their drawers.
Will you tell some more of the story, Father?
When NoLight comes, she takes the bioplastic suit her father sewed for her twelve months before and pulls it on. Leaving her arms free, she zips it to her chest, the fit more snug now that she has grown, and tucks her handmade book deep inside her worksuit. Then she balances one end of the legless cot, its mattress still inflated, on the food printer and the other on the toilet to form a kind of canopy.
Konstance, says Sybil, what are you doing to your bed?
She crawls beneath the elevated cot. From the back of the printer she unplugs the low-voltage power connection, strips away the thermoplastic sheath, and attaches the wires inside the cable to the two remaining cot legs. Positive to one, negative to the other. These she sticks into the water in her food bowl.
She holds her drinking cup, her hair wadded inside, upside down over the positive electrode and waits as oxygen rises from the water and collects in the inverted cup.
Konstance, what are you up to under there?
She counts to ten, takes the wires off the cot legs, and rubs their ends together. The ensuing spark, rising into the pure oxygen, ignites the hair.
I insist that you reply. What are you doing beneath your bed?
As she turns over the cup, smoke rises, and with it the odor of burning hair. Konstance sets a crumpled square of dry-wipe on it, then another. According to the schematics, extinguishers are embedded into the ceiling of every room on the Argos. If this is not true in Vault One—if the schematics were wrong, and there are extinguishers in the walls, or in the floor, this will never work. But if they are only in the ceiling, it might.
Konstance, I sense heat. Please answer me, what are you doing under there?
Little nozzles extend from the ceiling and begin to spray a chemical mist onto the cot above her head; she can feel it pattering onto the legs of her suit as she feeds the flames beneath the cot.
The fire fades as she nearly smothers it with more dry-wipes, then surges back to life. Threads of black curl around the edges of the upside-down cot, and into the mist raining down from the ceiling. She blows on the flames, layers on more wipes, then feeds it scoops of Nourish powder. If this does not work, she will not have enough material to burn a second time.
Soon the underside of her mattress catches fire and she has to crawl out from beneath the cot. She pitches in the last of the dry-wipes. Green flames rise from the mattress’s edge and an acrid, burnt-chemical smell fills the vault. Konstance slides across the room beneath the spray of the extinguishers, puts her hands into the suit’s sleeves, pulls on the oxygen hood, and seals it to the suit’s collar.
She feels it catch, feels the suit inflate.
Oxygen at ten percent, says the hood.
Konstance, this is outrageously irresponsible behavior. You are jeopardizing everything.
The underside of the cot glows brighter as the mattress burns. The beam of the headlamp flickers through the smoke.
“Sybil, your prime directive is to protect the crew, isn’t it? Above all else?”
Sybil raises the lights in the ceiling to full brightness and Konstance squints into the glare. Her hands are lost in sleeves; her feet slide on the floor.
“It’s mutualism, right?” Konstance says. “The crew needs you and you need a crew.”
Please remove the cot frame so the fire beneath it can be extinguished.
“But without a crew—without me—you have no purpose, Sybil. This room is already so full of smoke that it is not possible for me to breathe. In a few minutes the hood I’m wearing will run out of oxygen. Then I will asphyxiate.”
Sybil’s voice deepens. Remove the cot immediately.
The falling droplets cloud the lens of her hood, and each time she tries to wipe it clean, she only smudges it further. Konstance shifts the book zipped inside her worksuit and picks up her hatchet.
Oxygen at nine percent, says the hood.
Green and orange flames are licking around the top of the cot now, and Sybil is mostly obscured behind smoke.
Please, Konstance. Her voice changes, softens, becomes a mimicry of Mother’s. You must not do this.
Konstance backs against the wall. The voice changes again, flows to a new gender. Listen, Zucchini, can you flip over the cot?
Hairs rise on the back of Konstance’s neck.
We must put out the fire immediately. Everything is in danger.