The Nest Read Online Free Page B

“Yes.”
    â€œWe talk about fixing cars or a dishwasher. Thisis a human being! The most glorious and complicated creature on the planet! You don’t just go in there and repair him like an engine. It’s incredibly difficult at the best of times.”
    â€œI’m sure it is.”
    â€œAnd in this case, quite impossible.”
    â€œOh,” I said, surprised. For the first time I realized I was standing on some kind of fibrous ledge, and if I peered straight down, I saw that the cave went much deeper and began to contract into a circle of bright light. There was a lot of fluttering activity down there, but the light was almost blinding. I preferred the softly filtered light through the walls higher up.
    â€œI don’t understand,” I said. “You said you could fix the baby.”
    â€œâ€˜Fix.’ ‘Repair.’ These are just words, really. Let’s not get hung up on them. What matters isyour baby will be perfectly healthy and well.”
    I nodded. “Okay.”
    â€œIt’s just not something you can patch up with a bit of string and sticky tape. No, no, no, we have to do this properly. Go right back to the beginning of things. Go deep. That’s the proper way to do things. No half measures around here!”
    â€œYou mean going right inside the DNA?” I said, still not sure I was following her but wanting to sound knowledgeable, maybe even impress her.
    â€œDNA—aren’t you the clever one! Yes, good, you’re on the right track. And we’ll go deeper back still. That’s where it will make the most amazing difference.”
    â€œSo you can make him better,” I said, relieved.
    â€œOf course we can. Be careful, though.” Her voice was softer, confiding. “There might be some people who try to get in our way.”
    I shook my head. “Who would do that?”
    â€œYou don’t even usually see them, but you know they’re there.”
    Immediately I thought of my nightmare somebody, darkly standing at the foot of my bed, and how just a few nights ago in my dream, the angels had come and burned him away like mist.
    When I woke up, it was morning and I felt really happy. And then, waking up a bit more, I realized it was just a dream and no angels were going to fix the baby.
    In the afternoon Vanessa brought a big plastic bag with some hunks of an old wasps’ nest in it. She showed them to us on the kitchen table. Nicole got in there right away, touching everything. I held back. Looking at it made me feel like washing my hands.
    â€œIs this supposed to make me less scared of wasps?” I asked.
    She shrugged. “I just borrowed it from the lab. I thought you guys might be interested.”
    Inside were rows and rows of empty little hexagonal cells.
    â€œIt’s like honeycomb!” Nicole said.
    â€œRight,” said Vanessa. “And it all starts with the queen wasp. She begins the nest. Sometimes it’s underground, sometimes it’s in a tree, or hanging from a branch, or under the eaves like yours.”
    â€œHow does she make it?” Nicole wanted to know.
    â€œIt starts with just a little bit of wood fiber and saliva that the queen spits up, and she makes a little stalk from the roof, then a sort of umbrella, and on the underside, a few little paper rooms like these ones here. The queen lays one egg in each cell.”
    â€œAnd it hatches into a baby wasp,” Nicole said.
    â€œWell, yes, it hatches, but it’s not a wasp right away.”
    She was just like a teacher, the slow calm way she talked. It irritated me, but what she was saying was actually interesting. “The egg hatches into something called a larva.”
    Nicole narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “What’s that?”
    â€œIt’s sort of white and wormy, and it doesn’t look like much. It’s just got a mouth and black dots for eyes, and all it does is eat and eat.”
    â€œWhat