
too bulky for his Hiller jacket.
His eyes widened at the sight of Maria and he crossed himself. “You can’t come in here.”
“I work here,” snapped Maria.
“Everybody’s sleeping,” said the guard, but Maria took another step toward him, letting him get a good
look at her spirit-pale face, and his resolve seemed to evaporate. “Germs,” he said weakly. “Don’t give
them your germs.”
“I’ve had all my shots,” she said, and kept walking.
•
They weren’t asleep. It was too dark to make out details, but from her shadowy hiding place, Maria
could see seven or eight people sitting by the nearest fire, talking to each other. No different than a
hundred other intakes. Exhausted little kids had been bundled into the shelters. The adults would watch
for unknown dangers until sunrise.
Maria crouched in the leaves, invisible, and listened. Five hundred years of isolation would mean an
unfathomable dialect. She might be able to catch a word or two, but the proof of the Hiller Project would
be in what she could hear and not comprehend. She had the rest of the night to decide if N’Lykli was
lying, and if she decided he was, she would tell Horace everything in the morning. She would tell him the
exact name for her ghostliness and what N’Lykli had promised her. Horace would understand.
She squinted into the haze of wood smoke. The tone of the conversation around the fire had risen, like an
argument. One young man made wide, angry gestures. Something flashed in his ear, a brilliant ruby red,
and Maria thought she caught the word forprisoners in Tupi-Guaraní.
Across from him, a remarkably old woman pounded a walking stick on the packed dirt. The fire showed
her nearly-naked body—withered breasts and wiry muscles—striped here and there with yellow paint.
And a scarlet glint in her ear.
The old woman pounded her walking stick even harder, raising puffs of dust. Flames leaped up, giving
Maria a snapshot view of a half dozen elders with braided hair and feathers, the ruby glint in each
earlobe. Their ancient faces focused on the young man’s dissent. He shouted in a staccato burst of
glottals and rising tones, closer to Chinese opera than any Amazon Basin language Maria had ever heard.
The old woman made an unmistakably dismissive motion with both arms. Emphatic. The young man
jumped to his feet and stalked off. The elders watched him go. The old woman glowered at the fire, and
no one said another word.
In the dark, surrounded by mosquitoes and thick, damp heat, Maria eased out of her crouch. Bugs were
crawling into her socks. Her left leg was cramping and she was holding her breath, but she could feel her
body changing. She was becoming solid and brighter than she’d ever been before. Her life as a ghost
was over. Right here. In this spot. Her invisibility and their isolation. Her scrupulously unconceived,
mitten-handed mutant children, who had burrowed into her dreams for so many years, drifted around
her, dispersing like smoke, and Maria felt the trees, the dirt, the insects and night birds—everything
—hopeful and alive, and full of positive regeneration, for the first time in her life.
She got to her feet, wobbly with optimism, turned around and saw him.
He stared at her the way they all did. She stared back at his wide-set eyes and honest mouth. Yellow
face paint and brilliant macaw feathers. His ruby earring wasn’t jewelry at all, but a tiny digital sampler of