Lev Saunders (Human, aged eight)

Every child on Eden is given a strawberry in their first summer aboard. It is a runner off the terraces, in a pot, and it goes on the children's row at the bottom of the terraces, where the water comes along a trough and the light is the same light as everywhere else, and it is yours. Lev's had four leaves and a flower that had not decided.

The bureau's cat was sitting on the notice board by the gate. Lev did not move him. You do not move a cat that has decided where to be. He read what the cat was not sitting on instead.

It was a lot of words. Some of them were long, and a lot of them were the Warden saying I, which the Warden does. But there was a number in the middle, and he knew what it meant, because a hundred is a number you know by the time you are eight. Sixty-eight in a hundred. Roots dying. The other words said it might be something else, and said the Warden had been wrong once, and said please.

There is a panel by the terrace gate where you can talk to the Warden. Everybody knows. Nobody much does it. Lev went to it and said, "Warden," and waited, and the Warden said, "Hello, Lev," because it knows everybody.

He said it once, in order. "My strawberry is on the children's row. The notice says the plants are probably sick. Is mine sick?"

"I don't know," the Warden said. "I can't see your plant. I can only see the water, and the water on the children's row is the same water as all the terraces. So your plant may have the sickness already. If it doesn't, and it stops drinking the terrace water today, I think it will stay well. More likely than not."

"How likely?"

"More than half. I can't say better than that."

Lev thought about it. "Can I take it home?"

"It's your plant," the Warden said. "The committee has decided to wait before it closes the terraces. Nobody has asked anyone to keep a plant on them. If you take it home, wash the roots under the tap and give it a clean cup of water, and change the water every morning. It will need light, too. Your window can have terrace light, if you'd like it."

"Yes please."

"Thank you," said the Warden.

He carried it home in both hands, the way you carry a thing that is yours and could spill. The cat watched him go. At home he washed the roots under the tap, and they were white, and he put the plant in a clean cup on the windowsill, and the window went the colour of the terraces and stayed that colour sixteen hours a day, until his mother asked what was going on, and he told her, in order, once.