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generator rooms late one night—a tardy paper, a missed meal, an impertinent reply to a teacher. Yet there we were, once again, Harriet and I, making the long, noisy rounds between the generators. The upperclassmen had been at work there earlier in the day, I could tell, for the Arkady Core Converter had been partially shut down and its protective covers were pried off so the students could study some of the interior mechanisms.
    â€œThis is odd,” Harriet said, peering into its open cavity. “Look at the light lancing through here. It looks—alive, almost. It’s writhing, twisting on and around itself like the craziest kind of snake.”
    I glanced up from the clipboard where I was recording measurements. “Well, you shouldn’t be able to see that at all,” I said. “The shield should be up.”
    She put a hand out as if to stroke the spout of sapphire flame. “Is it safe to reattach the shield while the generator’s still running?”
    I nodded. “This one, anyway. Do you want to put it in place?”
    â€œIn a minute. I want to watch it for a while.”
    I smiled. “You will even yet be seduced by science,” I said, and moved down the great aisle.
    The fission generators had been toyed with, too, as I saw immediately, and the water in their tanks glowed with an eerie blue light. Ahead of me I could see the cold fusion tanks sparkling with their own incessant output of power.
    â€œIs it even safe for us to be here?” I wondered aloud, turning to look for Harriet. But she was no longer behind me. She had skipped ahead to the early-model Delta Five reactor and was bending over some open cover that I could not see. “Harriet?” I called, a thread of alarm in my voice. “That one’s not safe to touch. Harriet!”
    Who knows what combination of colors and magic drew her in? Always before this she had been too frightened of the great tanks to need supervision; always before this they had been properly shielded, and no one would have needed to be afraid. I heard my voice calling her name what seemed like a hundred times in the few seconds it took me to run to her, but I knew before I arrived that I was too late. She pulled her head back from whatever sight had entranced her, and she gave me her usual luminous smile; and perhaps I imagined it, but her skin was already dangerously radiant, her cheekbones and her outstretched hands incandescent with absorbed fire. I felt my words choke down, I felt my heart coalesce.
    â€œJenna,” she said, happily enough, “I feel so strange.”
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    I t took her four days to die, and they would not let me see her. Although Lora Tech was not an institution celebrated for its compassion, I know they did what they could for her, because I was two doors down from her, being treated for a lesser exposure to ionizing radiation. I saw the parade of doctors, nurses, and specialists who clustered around her and attempted to salvage the burned skin, the altered cells. But there was nothing to do. The dosage had been too strong. She suffered, she slept, and she died.
    Her body was cremated, but memorial services were to be held two days later. This was because I was not the only one shocked by Harriet’s sudden terrible death; I was not the only student who had missed classes on those four days while Harriet lingered, idling along as if enraptured by the scenery on the bleak, dark road to death. She had had many friends. Not one of them could bear to believe she was gone from us.
    I returned to my classes for those two days. What else was there for me to do? Those two nights I worked in my room, trying to catch up on the assignments I had missed and unwilling to ask any of the other students for help. I could not bear either their sympathy or their silence. I would rather fail every class than attempt to speak aloud.
    But as the night grew later and the silence unbearable, I began to shake and