I, Cassandra

68 | CASSANDRA VALLIS

'You going to take that with you?' I ask Amadi as he turns to leave.

He glances back at the metal sphere. 'Why not,' he says. 'I've carried it around this long.' He picks it up but has nowhere to put it, so he just holds it in his hand.

'Maybe it will wake up at some point.'

Amadi scoffs. 'Not knowing my luck.'

'I can help carry it,' I say. I nod at his hand. 'That doesn't look comfortable.'

'The box was better,' Amadi admits. 'But you never know, it might come in handy someday for something.'

He sets out. I follow him as he ploughs through the vines, swatting half-assed at the swarms of insects in his path. It's broiling hot. Before long I'm sweating in the muggy heat. Above, the midday sun simmers, a globe of liquid white against a sky a deeper blue than any I remember from my childhood.

'It might be faster to cut straight through the city than to circle round,' he says as we reach the lean shade of a stand of trees and stop to catch our breath.

I don't care either way and tell him. All I know is I hate the heat.

'Does it get any cooler at night?' I ask, thinking of the season of darkness and its cold nights.

'A little,' he says. 'You want to wait until later to go on?'

I nod and sink down onto the vines, thinner here than out there in the heat. Amadi joins me and pulls a few of the vine leaves free. A dense, clear liquid coalesces on their stems.

'Here,' he says, handing two of the large, flat leaves to me. 'Their sap is good. It quenches your thirst.'

The sap tastes of nothing, but it's viscous and in a strange way hydrates me. Within minutes I feel better.

'I wonder what else is in it,' I say. 'I feel like I have had a vitamin shot.'

He shrugs. 'Who knows. Nutrients for sure, probably at a high level, and inorganic salts probably, but that's all I can remember from my biology class. Whatever it is, it's kept me alive until I figured out how to get protein.'

I eye the sea of vines, 'And there's no shortage of it.'

'Hell, no.' He laughs and rolls the sphere along his thigh. 'What I wouldn't do for a steak, though.'

'I'd kill for a roast chicken, and a slice of chocolate cake.'

'Steak with béarnaise sauce,' he sighs. 'And a glass of red wine.'

'An apple. That first bite, how it would crunch, remember that?'

He closes his eyes and nods, a faint smile on his lips as he relives a life I know nothing about.

We fall silent. I twist the leaves by their stems until they twirl round, like a fan, and wander through my memories, thinking how much I miss Ryan. How he carried me to the pod and looked at me as if he were memorising me as he settled me in place, a machine clothed in flesh—a machine capable of love. And now, he's gone. The ache in my heart grows until I can't bear it anymore. I toss the leaves aside and rub the tears from my eyes.

'Actually,' I say, getting to my feet. 'Is it ok if we walk?'

Amadi nods. 'I was just about to ask you the same thing.'

We step back out into the heat and clamber through the vines, only this time I don't mind sweating my ass off. It's better this way, because it means I don't think.

Out of nowhere, we come across it, somewhere near the centre of the city's ruins—a pod half-covered in vines. Cold even in the heat of the day. Amadi isn't happy about it.

'I've been through this before,' he says as he clears the rest of the vines away and peers into its frosted window.

'I already looked,' I say, 'you can't see anything.'

Amadi doesn't say anything to that, but under his matted beard, I can tell he's pissed off. I'm not sure if he's pissed off at me or the pod, or if he's just like this, a moody fuck. I decide to leave him to it and take a seat in the shade of a nearby cluster of trees. I'm tired, and ready to stop for the night, or whatever night is now. The going has been slow, and my jumpsuit is sticking to me in a gross way that makes me want to take it off, but not with him here. Instead, I pluck a couple of fat vine leaves free and drink their sap which continues to taste of absolutely nothing.

Amadi is still at the pod, fists on his hips, deep in thought. He's left the metal sphere on top of the pod.

'Maybe you shouldn't put that on the cold,' I say.

'What?' he snaps, without looking back.

'The sphere thing. Might be bad to put it on something cold out here in all this heat.'

He swipes it onto the ground as if he couldn't give a fuck either way, or maybe to shut me up. I decide to do just that until whatever's eating him passes. I hate moody men. Zee was moody, too. A total bastard. I learned fast how to deal with that. Stay out of the fucking way. Ryan was never moody, though. Not once. Or if he was he never showed it. I loved that about him. His steadiness. His solidity, inside and out. I felt safe with him.

And now—I glance at Amadi glaring at the pod as if it has insulted him. Now, I'm stuck with this. Some spoiled, rich fuck from Alpha VII who's smart but also kind of a dick. Great. I eye the pod and find myself hoping there's another man in there, a better man. I don't think me and Amadi are going to make it for the long haul.

'Fuck!' Amadi says, out of nowhere. 'I can't deal with this again.'

He stomps back to me, his eyes dark as thunder. 'We have to stay,' he says in a tone that sounds as if he's blaming me for the pod being there.

'OK,' I say, deciding now is not the time to explore his reasons. 'So . . . we're not going south to find islands and shit?'

'No.'

'Ever?'

He looks back at the pod with something close to hate. 'Who fucking knows.'

He lets out a long, thin exhalation. 'You remember what it was like to wake up, here, alone?'

I look down at the wilting leaves whose lifeblood I have stolen. I nod.

'It's the right thing to do,' he says and sinks down into a crouch beside me, his eyes on the pod, tension radiating from him.

'We don't have to stay,' I say. 'I mean, we made it, so they probably will too.'

He gives me a look that's utterly indecipherable.

'Or we can wait,' I say and toss the leaves aside. 'It's not like there's somewhere we need to be.'

He says nothing but I can tell he's pissed off. He keeps his gaze on the pod. I wonder who's in it. Maybe another one like him, rich and privileged enough to have been put under before the event.

'What did you mean when you said you can't deal with this again?'

He glances at me. I nod at the pod. 'You find one of those before?'

'I've found quite a few of them before,' he says.

'I mean one that's still active.'

Silence.