The beam slipped through a gap in the slats and plunged fifty feet to a branch below, where it split in half, narrowly avoiding a small child who was playing nearby.
Robert gave me a look.
“Maybe that’s enough work for one day,” he said.
My head was suddenly filled with thoughts of being kicked out of the community. I started to apologise but Robert stopped me.
“It’s alright, Chris,” he said, his tone understanding, “you’ve been through a lot. Maybe it’s my fault for putting you to work so soon. Let’s do something else, something fun, what do you say?”
“Okay,” I said, relieved to be forgiven so easily.
“We have a museum here in the community, would you like to see it?”
“Sure.”
~
The museum was a modest affair, more of a big room really, that told the story of how the colony was founded. The main attraction was a long log that had been carved into a kind of tapestry celebrating the colony’s founders.
Robert himself was depicted in an early scene like Moses bringing down the Ten Commandments, except he was finding canisters of super seeds.
"It was no big deal, anyone could have found them," he said.
There was a large section dedicated to the woman who had designed the systems used to transport people and supplies around The Orchard.
The carving was so good that I felt like she was there in the room with us. She was a striking woman, with a mane of long dark hair and dark eyes. The carver had depicted her with one artificial leg resting on a rock while she shielded her eyes from the sun.
"She was a great woman,” Robert said, smiling sadly.
I read the name below the carving: Maria Gonzalez. She looked familiar, like I had seen her somewhere before. Then I remembered. She was the dark-haired woman from my dreams.
“Robert, I think that’s my mother.”
6.
Robert's wife Jill was a gorgeous Irish American redhead a few years his junior. She welcomed me into her home like I was family, her wonderful accent turning my name into "Cristafah."
She fixed us both hot pear ciders while I scanned Robert's bookshelf. Apart from books on carpentry there were many from the "Self-Help" field. Titles like: Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers and The Road Less Travelled by Scott Peck.
"Can I borrow some of these?" I asked.
"Of course, as long as you bring them back."
"Cool."
"So, you're Maria's boy,” he said. “I had a feeling but I wanted to be sure."
Jill brought us our ciders. She warned me it was too hot to drink so I just held it. She gave me a blanket to put over me. It wasn’t cold but I left it on anyway, such a nice feeling to be looked after. She left us alone to talk.
"You look like your Mom, you know, a little bit," he said.
"Really?"
"Not the way you look exactly but the mannerisms. You kind of cock your head a little bit when you're listening. She did that."
I greedily stored that away with the other scant information I had about her.
"I suppose you want to know what happened?"
I nodded.
"As you probably gathered your Mother was brilliant. She made those legs herself, you know, out of scrap metal. Wouldn't let anyone else help her. But that's the way she was, difficult, stubborn. That's what proved to be the problem."
He went on.
"We had this rule back then. It was based off a principle called Dunbar's number. It's this idea that a community is stable and functional at about 150 people. Anything above that and it starts to break down.
I sipped the cider. It gave me a warm feeling down to my toes.
"We were determined not to repeat the mistakes of the past. There's one thing Americans love and that's the Fresh Start, the Do-over. But of course we just made new mistakes. We're human. We have great ideals, but rarely do we live up to them.
Your Mother got pregnant and that was 151. One too many. We told her she would have to wait until she was older. Until someone else had died. For balance. She told us to go fuck ourselves."
I laughed.
"You didn't mess with her when her mind was made up. She was going to have her baby and that was that. So, we held on to our precious rule but lost one of our best people. Sorry, two of our best."
I wiped away tears with the edge of my blanket.
"I can't believe this whole place wanted to have me aborted,” I said, laughing, “that's harsh!"
Robert was serious.
"I know. I'm truly sorry, Chris. I could have stood up for your Mom that day but I didn't."
I guess I should have been pissed at him, maybe even hated him, but it was clear he really did regret what had happened.
"What about the rest of story?" he asked. "After she left here, only you can tell us that."
I shook my head. I simply wasn't ready.
"That's alright,” he said, reaching out and shaking my leg, “in your own time. That's enough talk for today. There's something I'd like to show you. Do you feel up for another little trip?"
~
The something was “downstairs”, on the forest floor. Since we would be exposed to more danger Robert insisted we arm ourselves. He equipped us both with a homemade crossbow, two spare bolts and a short carpenter's knife.
He gave me a crash course in the use of the crossbow. It had devastating power but since it took a while to reload it was important to make each shot count. The carpenter's knife was small but had a pleasing heft, not unlike a shank.
He warned me to always be on the alert. Although many of the released military experiments were gone, some of the weird ones were still out there, and would be drawn to heat signatures and other signs of life.
"I was with the colony from the beginning,” he said, “we lost a lot of people to the Tremors back then."
“Tremors?”
“A military invention. Like living chainsaws, they hide underground, then leap up and cut you to pieces.”
“Holy shit.”
“Just watch your step,” he said, worryingly.
The lowest branches of the trees had been cut, meaning the closest to the ground was still a long way up. Rope ladders could be lowered to allow access but it was getting dark and the Lookout on duty didn’t want to let us down.
Robert placated him by telling him we’d be back within the hour. His celebrity status helped and when he mentioned I was Maria Gonzalez’s son the guy couldn’t obey fast enough.
~
We reached ground level and Robert led me to an area about a hundred metres away where a group of old buildings sat overgrown with weeds.
"What is it?" I asked.
"This was our first home,” he said, “that's where we holed up before we had the trees. Not very defendable, but it got us through the first few winters at least."
He brought me to a dilapidated red brick, the front door warped by water and time.
"Most of us," he added bitterly.
Between the two of us we were able to shove the door far enough that we could squeeze in. Inside the smell of damp assaulted my nostrils.
"What was this place?" I asked.
"It was a get well centre for drug addicts, they'd come, talk about their problems, ride horses, that kind of thing."
I read the sayings on the wall, faded by time but still legible: "One day at a time." “Let go and Let God.”
"Did it work?"
"I dunno. Couldn't have hurt I guess."
Down one of the corridors, he opened the door to a room barely lit by its one dirty window. Stacks of shelves had fallen over like dominos and there were piles of half-rotten cardboard boxes reaching all the way to the ceiling. I opened the nearest one. It was filled with books.
“Yeah, as far as we can tell there was a guy who lived here before us. Every time he went out he came back with a few Pre-War books. There must be thousands. We keep meaning to transfer them upstairs and make
a real library but no one has time. They could be your responsibility, Christopher, would you be interested?"
"I could do that for you," I said.
7.
As soon as it was lights out I went downstairs and started working on the library. The air in that little room gave me a runny nose but I didn't care. Some of the books had sadly succumbed to damp and were little more than wet bricks. Of those that remained there were a lot of chaff, crappy romance novels etc. A few of the most interesting were:
Amatka by Karin Tidbeck (set on a world where everything has to be named out loud constantly or it will melt into sludge) and The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold (about a man who goes back in time and has sex with himself) If the rest of my life was spent "quality checking” these books, I could live with that.
I saw by the light through the window that I had spent way longer than I had intended in the library. I took what books I could carry and headed back "upstairs".
I met Robert upstairs. He told me he was going to a council meeting later and urged me to go along. I wasn’t sure how they would receive me, but since it would be a good way to meet everyone at once I decided to go along.
~
The meeting was held on the same platform where we had weaved our net but with space cleared to make a speaker’s area. Mats had been laid out and people took their time finding their seat, huddling together under blankets with their friends. The items on the meeting’s agenda were written on a placard. First on the agenda, in bold letters, was "The Future of Orchard."
I met Chokole again and assiduously avoided pronouncing her name. While we were talking she revealed that she was part of the expedition that had found me.
“You looked so cute,” she said, “all curled up on the road.”
She was with Sequoia and I gave his head a playful rub.
"Looking forward to the meeting?" I asked.
"No they're boring!" he said grumpily.
We all laughed. She went and sat with her partner, a shy looking man with short black hair, while I joined Robert.
I was nervous to think that after tonight everyone would know who I was. I didn't know who I was myself. I was Maria Gonzalez's son but I had never met her. I looked around me at the women braiding each other’s hair, Chokole stroking her son's belly before bedtime. I had grown up so far from all this goodness. I asked Robert if an outsider like me would be allowed to speak.
"You're one of us, Chris," was his heartfelt response.
The woman in the speaker's area coughed loudly to let us know the meeting was starting. She was middle-aged with red-flushed cheeks. She had on an impressive array of scarves and sarongs, all of which were some shade of blue. She had tattoos on both hands, it took some squinting before I worked out one said "Love" and the other "Light."
"Is she in charge?" I asked Robert.
"She wishes. No, she's just the chair for tonight."
"I am Sapphire,” the woman said, “spreading her arms wide, I welcome you my friends, on this most blessed night!"
The crowd politely applauded. I didn't like her. Stephen King wrote a novel about a town that becomes shrouded in a strange mist. One woman, who's a religious nut, takes advantage of the situation and starts preaching that it's God's judgement. She even convinces people to perform a human sacrifice. Sapphire reminded me of her.
"We are here to discuss the future of our great settlement. There are some who say we must leave our beautiful home. That disaster will befall us all if we stay."
Something about her tone suggested she found the whole idea laughable.
"Tonight, we will hear both sides of the argument and make our final decision on what will be done. May love and light prevail."
A woman stood up from the crowd, she had a mass of curly brown hair and wore so many rings made from precious stones that it looks like she was wearing gauntlets.
“Why should we leave our home? I see no disaster. I see only life and abundance. I see no reason to abandon everything we have because of unfounded fears. Mother Nature provides."
Sapphire bowed deeply to the woman, who gave a small curtsy to the trees swaying around us. There was a round of applause from their followers and stony silence from the rest. It was the first time I had picked up on any division within the community.
"Now we will hear someone from the opposition," Sapphire said, and sat down.
She started to talk to her followers, in a not so subtle show of disrespect for the next speaker. A young woman wearing round spectacles stepped up from the crowd. She was about 20 and painfully shy. She spoke softly:
"Hi, Rebecca here. We have strong reason to believe that there is very real cause for concern. From what we’ve been able to ascertain from our research, it was quite common before the War for companies to create "terminator seeds," seeds that would self-terminate after they reached a built-in expiration date. Since the government would have contracted the design of the trees out to a biotech company, it's reasonable to assume that was the case."
"But how do you know?" said a man in the crowd.
"Let her finish," Sapphire said with mock concern, “go on, Honey."
"I think it's a reasonable claim,” she said. “Large redwood varieties like these would last a long time. But when we pass the expiration date things could decay very rapidly. The trees would lose their integrity in a matter of days. They wouldn't be able to support us after that."
I felt the crowd turn on her, but to her credit, she stood her ground. I looked to Robert who seemed to be emanating silent support for her.
"Why didn't you tell me about this?" I whispered.
"I wanted you to make up your own mind."
She raised her voice to be heard over disquieted murmurs from the crowd.
"I believe we need to start taking action to offset this risk. To protect our future and the future of our children we need to look at returning to the ground. Then if and when the day comes, we'll be ready. Thank you."
It had taken a lot for her to speak and when she sat back down she let out a long sigh.
There was modest applause and a few hands on shoulders from her supporters. Sapphire took the floor once again.
"That was all very...interesting. It reminded me of the story of Chicken Little. The sky is falling the sky is falling!" That got a few derisory laughs from the audience. "But I just have one question?"
The young scientist stood up again. "Yes?"
"What kind of proof do you have of this?"
"So far most of our evidence has been anecdotal..."
That was blood in the water and like a good shark she wasn't going to let it go.
"Anecdotal? What about something real?"
"Well, we all know what happened to the Adams boy..."
This caused excitement in the crowd.
"That was brought up and discussed at last month's meeting,” Sapphire said. “It was decided, by consensus, that it did not fit your theory...I think what we all want to know is..." she said, moving in for the kill, "can you show us any proof of what you're saying?"
Rebecca looked like she would say more, then realising it would just be giving her hangwoman more rope, she restricted herself to:
"No." She sat down again, looking defeated.
"There are always doom-mongers, naysayers. In any society. They teach us to be afraid. To give themselves power. It’s not their fault, they're just giving in to a lower vibration. But as we all know, everything happens for a reason...We were meant to find the seeds. We were meant to survive. It's all part of a higher plan. Why would they destroy us now? No, my friends, Gaia will protect us, as she always has. All we have to do,” she added in a patronising aside to Rebecca, “is trust Her."
She sat down to thunderous applause. It looked like if no one said anything else, they would move on to item 2. Robert stood up. He was barely containing his anger.
"Respectfully, through the chair,” he said, “what a load of horseshit."
There was laug
hter and groans of dismay from the crowd.
"Sapphire, I've known you since the beginning, you weren't always this full of crap. The good life has corrupted you."
She gave Robert a too-wide smile, underneath it maggots were writhing.
"We were meant to survive?! We were meant to survive?! Are you high? We got lucky and everyone else got dead. That's all. And as for the Adams Boy..."
"That has been taken off the agenda," Sapphire said smugly.
"I know, I know, I'm not supposed to talk about it. But I didn't have my say then and I'm having it now. I was there that day. One day the bough was perfectly healthy, I put up the swing myself, the next day the boy was playing on it and it snapped like dry wood. Now, that's not supposed to happen..."
He kept talking before Sapphire could cut him off.
"Rebecca's smart. She’s done her research. If she says there's something wrong with the trees we should at least listen. Shouldn't we?"
The words of the founder of the seeds carried weight and Sapphire's victory was suddenly tarnished. Robert wasn’t finished.
"Anyway! I don't want to talk about that anymore. We've been arguing for months and we're still no closer to an answer. We'll be arguing until we're all dead. I've got something much more important to announce."
I would have preferred a more low-key introduction but it would have to do.
"Maria Gonzalez's kid has returned to us. I have Christopher Gonzalez here."
"Anderson," I whispered.
"Christopher Anderson, sorry, stand up, Chris."
I did, feeling stupidly self-conscious. I was sure no one would care about me, given all that was being discussed. But a strange thing happened. The rancour and division in the room vanished. The whole crowd swam around and embraced me. What I heard over and over was "we loved your Mom, you're so welcome, you're so welcome."
Sapphire even joined in the hugging, it felt genuine enough, but when the meeting had returned to order she had a question for me.
"Chris, it seems only fair to ask you, before we move on, what do you think we should do?"
The Earth is My Prison Page 14