Reached

considerable amount for my escape here,” Oker says. “The current Pilot is the one who brought me out.” Oker walks over to look for something else in the cupboard. “That was before he was the Rising’s Pilot,” he says, his voice muffled. “When the Rising asked him to lead, I told him not to believe them. They’re no rebellion. They’re Society, with a different name, and they just want you and your followers, I said. But he was so sure it would work.” Oker comes back to the table. “Maybe he wasn’t
that
sure,” he says. “He kept note of where I was here in Endstone.”
    So Oker was part of the vanishings that Lei told me about. “Did that bother you?” I ask. “Him keeping track of you like that?”
    “No,” Oker says. “I wanted to be out of the Society, and I was. I don’t mind feeling useful now and then. Here.” He hands me the datapod. “Scroll through this list for me.”
    As I do, he grumbles. “Can’t they narrow it down any more? We all assume that it’s something environmental. Well, we eat anything we can find or grow. It’s a long list. We’ll find something to help them. But it might not be in time.”
    “Why didn’t the Pilot bring you into Camas or Central?” I ask. “That would be a better place to work on the cure. They could bring you supplies and plants from the mountain. In the Provinces, you’d have access to all the data, the equipment . . .”
    Oker’s face is rigid. “Because I agreed to work with him on one condition only,” he says. “That I stay right here.”
    I nod.
    “Once you get out,” Oker says, “you don’t go back.”
    His hands look so old, like paper covering bone, but the veins stand out, fat with life and blood. “I can tell you have another question,” he says, his voice annoyed and interested at the same time. “Ask it.”
    “The Pilot told us that someone contaminated the water supplies,” I say. “Do you think they also created the mutation? They both happened so fast. It seems like the mutation could have been manipulated, just like the outbreak was.”
    “That’s a good question,” Oker says, “but I’d bet that the mutation occurred naturally. Small genetic changes take place regularly in nature, but unless there is an advantage conferred by a mutation, it is simply lost because other nonmutated versions predominate.” He points to another jar, and I take it down for him and unstop the lid. “But if some kind of selective pressure is present and confers an advantage to a mutation, that mutation ends up outgrowing and surviving the nonmutated forms.”
    “That’s what a virologist back in Camas told me,” I say.
    “He’s right,” Oker says. “At least to my thinking.”
    “He also told me that it was likely the cure itself that applied the selective pressure and caused the mutation.”
    “It’s likely,” Oker says, “but even so, I don’t think anyone planned that part. It was, as we who live outside of the Society sometimes say, bad luck. One of the mutations was immune to the cure, and so it flourished and caught on.”
    Oker’s confirmed it. The cure caused the real pandemic.
    “I’ve gotten ahead of myself,” Oker says. “I haven’t yet told you the way a virus works. You’ve figured some of it out for yourself. But the best way to explain it,” and his tone is dry, “is to refer to a story. One of the Hundred, in fact. Number Three. Do you remember it?”
    “Yes,” I say, and I actually do. I’ve always remembered it because the girl’s name—Xanthe—sounds a little like my own.
    “Tell it to me,” Oker says.
    The last time I tried to tell a story was to Lei and it didn’t go well at all. I wish I’d done better for her. But I’ll try again now, because Oker asked me to do it and I think he’s going to be the one to figure out the cure. I have to try to keep from smiling.
It’s going to happen. We’re going to do it.
    “The story is about a girl named Xanthe,” I say. “One day she decided she didn’t want to eat her own food. When the meal delivery came she snatched her father’s oatmeal and ate it instead. But it was too hot, and all day long Xanthe felt sick and feverish. The next day she stole her mother’s oatmeal, but it was too cold, and Xanthe shook with chills. On the third day she ate her own meal and it was just right. She felt fine.” I stop. It’s a pretty stupid story, meant to remind Society kids to do what they’re told. “It goes on and on