Coral, Val and Hugo stood around the kitchen table, like misplaced trees. Benny made coffee while Chango slumped in the doorway. No one said anything. There was only the hiss of the coffee maker and the faint, soft sound of weeping from the other room, like the lapping of waves on a distant shore. They were out of reach of that ocean, there in the grim golden glow of the little kitchen, bound and barricaded by a single, overriding thought. “It didn’t happen to me.” That was the silent conversation they had before the final gurgle of the coffee maker.

Benny brought mugs to the table with wooden solemnity, his long face still and quiet, his eyes blank as if he was not really there, as if he was thinking very hard of something else.

“How long did she soak?” asked Chango.

Val and Coral shrugged. Benny continued to stare at his hands. “About five minutes,” said Hugo.

“Five minutes?” Chango put her mug down. “How is that possible?”

Hugo and Coral and Val exchanged uncomfortable glances. “Apparently she wasn’t immediately aware of the leakage,” said Coral guardedly.

“Not aware? How could she not be aware.”

“Because she was blasted,” said Benny, finally looking up to fix her with a cold hard stare.

“Blasted? At work?”

“I know,” Coral said, “I can’t believe it either. They must have made a mistake.”

“I saw the blood tests. She must have gassed just before her shift,” said Benny Chango shook her head. “No way.”

“Chango, I saw the lab results. I also saw her last night with Orielle.” Benny leaned over the table, his hands clenched in fists in front of him. “I hate to say it, but she’s been using a lot lately.”

“She got blasted the other night at Josa’s,” said Val, “Thursday.”

“Oh and you don’t get blasted there every weekend and most week nights,” said Chango. Val shrugged. He didn’t say anything, but Chango could see him thinking it. “At least I don’t take it on the job.”

oOo

“This completely discredits our movement.” said April. “GeneSys will just chalk it up as another example of diver recklessness, another excuse not to take our complaints seriously. If Ada didn’t care about her life, why should they? She was supposed to be an example to counter the vatdiver stereotype. She was the spearhead of our movement, and now she’s sabotaged us.”

Chango shifted on her cushion in the living room of Vonda’s apartment and looked at the faces around her, expecting someone to defend her sister, but they were all silent either in complicity or secretiveness, and no one would return her gaze.

Mavi wasn’t there. Mavi was at home taking care of Ada, who they spoke of as if she were already dead. Somebody here had to speak for her, and Chango was the only one who would. “How can you say that, after all she’s done? If it weren’t for Ada, there wouldn’t be a movement. And you wouldn’t have the improvements in safety standards that the movement has won.”

“She made a mockery of those, didn’t she?” said Vonda, to a round of grim snickering. Chango glared at her. “She got you the job of technical analyst, Vonda. So the divers would have one of their own to administer tests and analyze their results. She paid for you to take the classes from her own pocket, have you forgotten?” Vonda didn’t answer her. She wouldn’t even look at her.

“Chango’s right,” said Benny, “Whatever she’s done now, we can’t turn our back on everything she —

we accomplished. We have to preserve what credibility we can.”

“How are we going to do that?” asked Jewel.

“By proving that her accident was a company plot,” said Chango.

“Oh come on,” said April. “Six of us in this room saw her buying blast from Orielle the night before.”

“So? That doesn’t mean she used it before her dive.”

“The medical reports say she did,” said Jewell.

“Maybe they were doctored.”

“By who? Me?” said Vonda, her fists pounding the couch. “I prepared it, I took her blood and her skin samples and I carried them to the lab and I did the analysis. There was no one else. If her report was doctored, then I’m the one who did it. Is that what you believe?”

Chango looked away, her eyes burning. She didn’t believe that, not really. But to say otherwise would be to admit that Ada was dying of her own negligence, and she couldn’t do that. Not when she had to go back to the house tonight and see her, or what was left of her, and the rest, transformed into something else. No, whether it was true or not, she would not accept that Ada had brought this on herself. There was an awkward silence while everyone waited for her to say no, and preserve the fragile cohesion of the group. But Chango didn’t say anything.

“I think the best way to move forward is to alter our strategy,” said Leo, finally, “make a clean break with the past. Let GeneSys know who the leadership of this movement is and what we stand for.”

“And who is the leadership, now?” asked Chango.

“Benny, obviously,” said April, “He was Ada’s right hand.”

“Maybe we should have a leadership committee, instead of a president.” said Leo. “Genesys might take us more seriously if we don’t appear to be an, um, charismatic movement.”

“Or we could have anyone who’s interested write an anonymous proposal for why they should be president, and then we could vote on them,” said Jewell.

“We could form a committee to evaluate the president’s performance.”

“Why don’t you just form a committee to decide how to vote for the members of the committee that decides which fingers the leadership committee should stick up their asses?” said Chango, and she got up and left. No one noticed her go; they were all offering suggestions and agreeing with one another. Except for Vonda, who watched her go with baleful, injured eyes.

oOo

So amid shame and scandal, Mavi and Chango nursed Ada to her death. She was bedridden from the start. Ada, who’d always been the strong one, the pure one, untainted by the waters of the vats, suddenly needed her sister’s help to get to the bathroom. It was as if some secret contract between her and the universe was suddenly withdrawn, she no longer received its protection, and the sun stopped shining on her. She became sallow and gaunt, her body wasting away under the unsustainable demands of her renegade cells.

Her skin became dry and papery, crumbling at the base of tumors which thrust from the deep tissues of her arms and legs, reshaping her with their shiny pink masses, like mountains erupting to transfigure the face of the earth.

Ada always had a spare sort of beauty, the kind that let you fill in the spaces, but now every plane, every angle, every jut of bone and curve of flesh was being reworked with blotches and moles and cysts, transforming her from Bauhaus beauty to medieval gargoyle.

Of course the worst of the changes were on the inside, twisting her intestinal and respiratory tracts so they could barely function, and her heart - she said her heart was thickening, and they believed her. All she consumed now was water and morphine.

Sitting by her side in the pink bedroom, Chango realized that for the first time in her life she didn’t envy her sister. She’d always been jealous of Ada, she was beautiful, strong, and a normal person. People liked her. She won them over effortlessly.

Everything with Ada seemed effortless, except for this; dying, losing herself to cells driven mad by growth, alone except for Chango and Mavi. Alone because all those people she’d won over, those vatdivers, people she risked her life for — they never came. Except for Benny. Benny came, standing in the doorway of the room as if coming any closer might put him at risk of catching it. Chango knew why they stayed away. It wasn’t because of the scandal. They didn’t want to see her. They were afraid of seeing themselves, five or ten or fifteen years from now. She was in the kitchen when the changes came. She heard Mavi’s call from the bedroom and nearly dropped the dish she was washing. She let it slide into the warm, murky water and turned, her hands still dripping as she walked down the hall with a feeling of dread and expectancy knotted in her heart like a fist.