The diodes in the ceiling dim and Father presses a palm to her forehead and in a great dizzy uprush comes the sensation of standing inside the Atlas atop the Theodosian walls, all that white limestone crumbling under the sun. For as long as we have been a species, Mrs. Flowers said, we humans have tried to defeat death. None of us ever has.
* * *
The following morning Konstance stands in the Library at the second-tier railing with Jessi Ko and Omicron and Ramón waiting for Dr. Pori to arrive and commence the morning’s lesson in precalculus. Jessi says, “Tayvon’s late too,” and Omicron says, “I don’t see Mrs. Lee either, and she was the one with Zeke’s chunder all over her,” and the four children fall quiet.
Eventually Jessi Ko says she’s heard that if you feel sick you’re supposed to say, “Sybil, I’m not feeling well,” and if Sybil detects something wrong with you, she sends Dr. Cha and Engineer Goldberg to your compartment wearing full biohazard containment suits, and Sybil will unlock the door so they can isolate you in the Infirmary. Ramón says, “That sounds awful,” and Omicron whispers, “Look,” because down on the main floor Mrs. Chen is leading all six members of the crew who have not yet turned ten across the atrium.
The children look tiny beneath the towering shelves. A few grown-ups send perfunctory IT’S YOUR LIBRARY DAY balloons up into the barrel vault and Ramón says, “They didn’t even get pancakes.”
Jessi Ko says, “What do you think it feels like, to be sick?” and Omicron says, “I hate polynomials, but I do wish Dr. Pori would show up,” and below them the young children hold virtual hands and their bright voices fill the atrium,
We move as one
In everything we do.
It takes everyone together,
Everyone together,
to get to—
and Sybil announces, All non-medical personnel to their compartments, no exceptions, initiating Quarantine Level Two.
Zeno
As the weather warms, Rex takes to gazing at the hills around Camp Five and chewing his lower lip as though contemplating some vision in the distance that Zeno cannot see. And one afternoon Rex waves him closer and, though there is not a soul for fifty feet in any direction, whispers, “What have you noticed, on Fridays, about the petrol drums?”
“They drive the empty ones to Pyongyang.”
“And who loads them?”
“Bristol and Fortier.”
Rex looks at him a moment longer, as though waiting to see how much can be transmitted between them without language.
“Have you ever noticed the two drums behind the kitchen sheds?”
After roll call Zeno examines them as he walks past, dread percolating through his gut. These drums, at one point used to store cooking oil, look identical to the gasoline drums, except that their lids can be removed. Each appears large enough for a man to crawl inside. But even if he and Rex managed to fold their bodies into them, as Rex seems to be suggesting, even if they convinced Bristol and Fortier to seal them inside, hoist them onto the fuel truck, and tuck them among the empty fuel barrels, they’d need to stay inside for who-knows-how-long while the truck drove the notoriously dangerous road to Pyongyang, without headlights, dodging overhead patrols of American bombers. Then—somehow—the two of them, night blind from vitamin deficiency, would need to climb out of the drums undetected and cross miles of mountains and villages in their disgusting clothes and ruined boots with their unshaven faces and nothing to eat.
Later, after dark, a new anxiety comes sliding into place: What if by some miracle they actually succeeded? What if they weren’t killed by guards or villagers or a friendly B-26? If they made it all the way to the American lines? Then Rex would go back to London, to his students and friends, perhaps to another man, someone who has been waiting for him all these months, someone Rex has been too kind to mention, someone infinitely more sophisticated than Zeno, and more deserving of Rex’s affection. Ν?στο?, nostos: the journey home, the safe return; the song sung around the feast table for the shipwrecked steersman who finally found his way back.
And where would Zeno go? Lakeport. Back to Mrs. Boydstun.
Escapes, he tries to tell Rex, are stories from movies, from some older, more courteous war. Besides, their ordeal is bound to end soon, isn’t it? But seemingly every day, Rex spins up more and more detailed plans, stretching to make his joints more flexible, analyzing guard shift patterns, polishing a tin to make what he calls a “signaling mirror,” speculating about how they might sew bits of food into the linings of their hats, where they might hide during the nightly count, how they might urinate while inside the drum without soaking themselves, whether they should approach Bristol and Fortier now or just hours before they do it. They’ll use code names from Aristophanes’s The Birds; Rex will be Peisetairos, which means Trustyfriend; Zeno will be Euelpides, Goodhope; they’ll shout, Herakles! when the coast is clear. As though it will all be an amusing escapade, a first-class caper.