Reached

back,” I say. “Time to see how they’re all doing.”
    “This all comes naturally to you,” Lei says. “Doesn’t it?”
    “What do you mean?” I ask.
    “Taking care of people.” She’s looking in the direction of the mountains again. “Where were you living last summer?” she asks. “Had you already been assigned to Camas?”
    “No,” I say. Back then, I was home in Oria, trying to make Cassia fall in love with me. It feels like a long time ago. “Why?”
    “You remind me of a kind of fish that comes to the river during the summer,” she says.
    I laugh. “Is that a good thing?”
    She’s smiling, but she looks sad. “They come all the way back from the sea.”
    “That seems impossible,” I say.
    “It does,” she says. “But they do. And they change completely on the journey. When they live in the ocean, they’re blue with silver backs. But by the time they get here, they’re wildly colorful, bright red with green heads.”
    I’m not sure what she thinks this has to do with me.
    She tries to explain. “What I’m trying to say is that you’ve found your way home. You were born to help people, and you’ll find a way to do that, no matter where you are. Just like the redfish are born to find their way back from the ocean.”
    “Thank you,” I say.
    For a second, I think about telling her everything, including what I really did to get the blue tablets. But I don’t. “Time for me to get back to work,” I say to Lei, and I dump the last of the water in my canteen on the newroses near our bench and head for the door.

    I walk along the backs of the houses in Mapletree Borough, near the food delivery tracks. Even though it’s late and no meals are being delivered, I can hear the soft scrape-whine of the carts in my mind. When I go past Cassia’s house I want to reach out and touch one of the shutters or tap on a window, but of course I don’t.
    I come to the common area for the Borough, where the recreation areas are clumped together, and before I even have time to wonder where the Archivist is he appears beside me. “We’re right behind the pool,” he says.
    “I know,” I tell him.
This is my neighborhood and I know exactly where I am. The sharp white edge of the high dive looms in front of us. Our voices whispering in the humid night sound like locust wings grating.
    He climbs over the fence swiftly and I follow. I almost say, “The pool’s closed. We can’t be here,” but, obviously, we are.
    A group of people waits under the high dive. “All you have to do is draw their blood,” the Archivist tells me.
    “Why?” I ask, feeling cold.
    “We’re taking tissue preservation samples,” the Archivist says. “We all want control of our own. You knew this.”
    “I thought we’d be taking the samples the usual way,” I say. “With swabs, not needles. You only need a little tissue.”
    “This way is better,” the Archivist says.
    “You’re not stealing from us the way the Society does,” one of the women tells me, her voice quiet and calm. “You’re taking our blood and giving it back.” She holds out her arm. “I’m ready.”
    The Archivist hands me a case. When I open it up I see sterile tubes and syringes sealed away in plastic. “Go ahead,” he tells me. “It’s all worked out. I have the tablets to give to you when you finish. You don’t need to know any more than that.”
    He’s right. I don’t want to try to understand the complicated system of trades and balancing. And I certainly don’t want to know what these people have paid to be here. Is a trade like this even sanctioned by the other Archivists or is this man conducting transactions on the side? What have I stumbled into? I didn’t realize that black market blood would be the price of the blue tablets.
    “You’re going to get caught,” I say.
    “No,” he says. “I won’t.”
    “Please,” the woman says. “I want to get home.”
    I put on a pair of gloves and prepare a syringe. She keeps her eyes closed the whole time. I slide the needle of the syringe into the vein near the crook of her elbow. She makes a startled sound. “Almost done,” I say. “Hold on.” I pull the syringe back out and hold it up. Her blood is dark.
    “Thank you,” she says, and the Archivist hands her a square of cotton that she presses against the inside of her arm.
    When I’ve finished, the Archivist gives me the blue tablets. And then he tells the others, “We’ll be here again next week.