Read an Excerpt

Father steadies me while I step into the white protective suit. It's so big for me it's like I'm being swallowed in a gulp by one of those huge gigantiums that are on our Cosmology game. I roll up the sleeves and the trouser cuffs so that I won't be engulfed altogether, then zip myself up. The hood sritch-scratches the side of my face as I tuck my hair in around each side of it before tightening the toggles. That's enough to get the wobblies doing somersaults in my belly. Father calls them butterflies, but I've never seen an insect of any kind, let alone know what it feels like to have them inside me. Esper would call me a dizzard if I told him. The Sagittars have warned us not to waste energy on feelings, so I keep very quiet.

Before I know it, my brother is zipped up too and we're ready to go.

'These are my sons, Starn and Esper,' Father says to the workers who are filing into the pollination station, pulling on their suits, just like us. I'm happy that Father introduces me first. My brother isn't. He scowls at me. Twins are like that. One always wanting to be first in the line: to get the food, to get the smile, to be praised. I watch the workers scan their Sigma-cards before there is the srinch of the big metal gates opening. One by one, they trundle through to the three interlocking domes of the triome.

Father still calls it a coaxiorum day, just like he did when we were smaller. That's what he always calls something real nice, something that doesn't happen very often. Sometimes it's a piece of malt stick that he has been able to barter from the Stores or an outing to Biblion, even a game of gazillony. The pollination station is another big event. Because the pollination season is nearly at its end, he wants to show us how it's done. He would really like us to graduate as pollinators when we leave Academy. 'It's the most important job you can do,'he says. It's the only way we can survive.'

I don't want to be a pollinator. But I can't tell him that.