Free A Fierce Radiance by Lauren Belfer Page B

mold grew best on flat, covered surfaces. Bedpans and milk bottles were the most practical containers Tia and David could find.In the corner was the big counter-current machine, rows of turning, glimmering tubes that purified the fluid before it could be used.
    Eleven-year-old Sally Reese said, “Look at these cute little mice.” Sally was broad faced and resolute, her thick curly hair overwhelming the barrettes at her temples, the tie of her school uniform askew. Her pleated skirt was too short for her, showing how much she’d grown since the start of the school year. She peered into the two cages on the table. Each cage held about a dozen white mice. Sally pressed her fingers against the bars of the cage, and a few mice hopped over to sniff, their investigation duly photographed by Claire.
    “Be careful, the mice could bite you,” Tia said.
    “I love baby mice. They would never bite me ,” Sally insisted, trying to push her fingertips into the cage.
    Tia wondered, Had she been so willful when she was young? Probably.
    “You’re not going to kill them, are you?” Sally asked.
    The mice would be dead within a day or two, as Tia and David tested the questions they’d discussed with her brother yesterday. If you wanted to help humans, you couldn’t let yourself worry about mice. Tia treated them as humanely as possible, even as she recognized the contradiction of the term humane in a world in which humans were slaughtering fellow humans in the war every day.
    “Let me show you something,” Tia said, ignoring Sally’s question.
    “Come over here and watch.” Her tone was harsh, an order rather than an invitation. But every minute away from work had to be chosen wisely. The mold was unreliable. Finicky in every way. The slightest change in temperature, the slightest jarring movement, could destroy the fluid’s usefulness. Yes, her patience was frayed. Often she lost hope and wanted to give up. Yet she’d force herself to keep going just as she always had. But she hated that her anxieties made her snap at these children. Luckily they seemed quite capable of fighting back.
    Removing the cotton wool from one of the milk bottles, Tia put apipette to her lips and drew out the yellowish fluid from the bottom of the bottle. She closed off the tube with her fingertip, then released the fluid into a test tube, which she stoppered.
    “This is the medicine that’s helping your dad. I have to clean it up a little after I harvest it, but basically, this is it. The mold likes to grow on flat surfaces, the reason for the bedpans and milk bottles. As the mold grows, it produces the fluid as a kind of waste product.” She decided to explain all this whether they cared or not. It was their father, after all, whose life was being saved. Or not saved. If they were too young to understand now, maybe someday they’d look back and be grateful. “We siphon off the fluid, purify it, and eventually end up with penicillin powder. Some strains of Penicillium produce more fluid than others. Sometimes I think I’m doing everything right, but the fluid turns out to be useless, with no antibacterial effect at all. Temperature affects the mold, and movement, and the type of food I give it.”
    “Food?” Ned said with sudden interest. “What kind of food? Cauliflower? Lima beans?”
    Tia laughed. Ned was funny, he really was. If she could approach this visit as enjoyable, it would become a relaxing break instead of a draining distraction. “Basically the mold likes to eat sugar. Molasses, chocolate, Bosco, Ovaltine.” She tried to meet the kids on their own level: “So you see, the mold has candy for every meal. What would your mom say, if you wanted candy for every meal?”
    “I do want candy for every meal,” Ned said.
    “But you don’t get it!” Sally said.
    Tia didn’t think that she and her brother had ever bickered this way. Ned strode off, unmistakably looking for mischief. “Did you really eat all this jam?” he