Harmony Read Free Page A

found an old blade inside me, rusty from seawater, and given it a bit of a sharpening. Incidentally, when I asked Cian about how she met Miach sometime later, she said she’d met her in the park too.
    “So,” Miach said, without turning around. “Q: if a person goes their whole life without falling from anything, how will they know what it means to fall?” I could only see the back of her head, but I was sure she was smiling.
    “You’re talking about the jungle gym.”
    “Not only that, but good enough.”
    “Isn’t it instinct to be afraid of falling?”
    It seemed to me pretty unlikely that someone could really go their entire lives without ever falling once, but even if someone managed it, I felt that somehow they would still have a fear of falling in their head.
    Miach sighed, a sort of noncommittal sigh neither affirming nor denying my theory.
    “So that’s your answer? It’s human nature to be afraid of falling—we’re just made that way?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Have you ever fallen off something?”
    In fact, I had. It was when I was still pretty young. We’d gone camping, and I slipped off a boulder and fell into a stream. I could remember the instant it happened. You hear people talk about how time slows down during an accident, but for me it seemed like as soon as I realized my feet were slipping I was on my knees in the water.
    I had scraped my leg on my way down, and when I looked at it, I saw a thin line of color emerging from my right calf, curling off into the slightly cloudy water like a red ribbon. A little trout had gone swimming through it, and I thought he might get tangled in the thread, but of course he didn’t. A moment later my father was helping me out of the stream. He used his portable med kit to fix my scrape, but I still remember what it looked like, that red thread of blood, drifting almost sensually in the water. The medicule paste—the same stuff that Miach claimed could kill fifty thousand people—quickly sealed the cut while the same medcare tank made antibodies to kill any infectious bacteria I might have picked up. My father attached the unit to the medcare port beneath my shoulder blade.
    “What did it feel like, the moment you fell?”
    Miach stopped and turned toward me. I answered honestly that it had been over so quick I didn’t remember feeling anything. One moment I was on the boulder, the next I was in the water.
    “Oh.”
    Miach shrugged and began walking again. I followed along behind.
    “So you think someone who’s never taken a fall in their life wouldn’t be afraid of falling?”
    “I didn’t say that. But they could forget their fear. Just like we’re forgetting what disease means.”
    “Disease is when you get older more quickly and your muscles stiffen up.”
    Miach looked over her shoulder, a smile on her lips. “That’s what it means now, true, but that refers to only one condition that affects a few unlucky people with some unlucky genes. I didn’t mean that kind of disease. I mean just getting sick . Like catching a cold or having a headache. Ever heard of those?”
    I shook my head.
    “In the past, there were lots of diseases in us, thousands. Everyone got sick, and this is only half a century ago I’m talking about. When the nuclear warheads fell during the Maelstrom, everyone got cancer from the radiation. The whole world was one big disease.”
    “Oh, I learned about that.”
    
    
    Many people developed cancer from the radiation. At the same time, the radiation caused mutations in China and the depths of Africa, spawning a flood of unknown viruses. With such a clear and present threat to its health, the world transformed overnight from a capitalist society monitored by governmental units to a medical welfare society organized by admedistrative bodies.
    
    
    “Right? I’m not sure why I have that memorized. Impressed?”
    “Yes, but they never tell you