After Eden

by Helen Douglas

  “I love your hair,” he said, taking a strand and bringing it up to his face. “It smells like apples. Whenever I see apples, I think of you.”

  “With you it’s lemons,” I said, squinting up through the sun at him. “Lemons and metal.”

  Ryan crinkled his nose. “Metal?”

  I shrugged. “I like the smell. No one else smells anything like you.”

  He smiled and lay back on the blanket next to me. I could feel the warmth of his skin radiating across the small divide between us.

  “Tell me about your life in the twenty-second century,” I said. “I bet it’s loads different from life here. What is it like? How did you grow up?”

  “We had two homes. One in New Hampshire on Earth and one in Zion on Eden.”

  “What is Zion like? Is it a big city?”

  In my head I pictured cities I’d seen in futuristic films: large polluted cities with hover cars and neon signs everywhere.

  “Not really. Zion is in a valley. It’s almost completely enclosed by mountains, so it can’t grow very big. The only way in or out of the city is by river. The city itself is built from pink stone, but the surrounding mountains are covered in green jungle, so it’s pink and green.”

  I remembered the photograph in Connor’s book.

  “I was conceived on Earth, but my parents moved to Zion just before I was born. I spent most of my childhood there. Then Dad decided we needed to be on Earth, to monitor the political mood. So just after I turned twelve, we moved back.”

  “Did you have a best friend?”

  “I hope I still do. His name is Peg. We were in school together.”

  “A boy called Peg? Peg’s a girl’s name. Peggy. Short for Margaret.”

  “How is Peggy short for Margaret?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  “Peg’s a boy’s name,” he said. “Short for Pegasus.”

  “Pegasus!” I couldn’t help but giggle.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you my real name then.”

  I rolled onto my side so I could look at him. “Ryan’s not your real name?”

  He tilted his head in a half-nod, half-shake. “Yes and no. My full name is Orion, after the constellation.”

  “Orion,” I said, staring at him. “I like it.”

  “No one calls me Orion, except my mother when she’s mad at me. It’s usually Ry. In the second half of the twenty-first century naming children after stars and constellations is very popular.”

  “Orion and Pegasus,” I said, smiling. “What about Cassie?”

  “Cassiopeia.”

  I sat up and reached for my glass of water. “And Ben?”

  He laughed. “Short for Benjamin. Not everyone is named after a constellation or a star.”

  Ryan sat up. He reached out a hand and touched my cheekbone, his warm fingers running slowly down the side of my face. My skin burned beneath his touch.

  “But you’re unique,” he said. “You’re not named after a star or a constellation. You have a planet named after you.”

  He looked into my eyes. His brown eyes were dark; I could see my reflection in his pupils. His hand cupped my chin. I held my breath.

  “Orion,” I said. It felt strange calling him by his real name.

  I could feel his warm breath on my face. Then, abruptly, he turned away. Something dawned on me. “Is there a girl back in the twenty-second century?”

  He shook his head. “There’s no girl.”

  “So …”

  “I’m not going to make this harder than it already is.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m not going to kiss you. How much harder will it be for me to leave tomorrow night if …?”

  “I understand,” I said softly. And I did understand, but it was still hard not to feel rejected. Surely if he really liked me—if he wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss him—he would kiss me anyway and to hell with the consequences. In fact, I knew that if I was the one who had to leave, I wouldn’t be able to do it. I couldn’t leave him behind. And the only thing stopping me from begging him to kiss me and then begging him to stay was knowing that he would say no.

  “You know, when I signed up for this mission,” he said quietly, “I thought it would be the biggest thrill-ride. I thought I could be a hero, save the planet, meet some cool people, and then go home. I thought it would be easy. I never expected to develop feelings for the people I met. It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t want to go back.”

  “Is there no way?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  I remembered, miserably, what he had said about cleanup agents ensuring that the laws of time travel were followed.

  Ryan jumped quickly to his feet and took out a small silver box from the pocket of his jeans.

  “It’s time for your gift,” he said.

  I took the box from him and lifted off the lid, wondering what on earth he would give me. Lying on a bed of white cotton was a key.

  “Um, thanks?” I said, confused.

  “It’s the key to my car,” he said. “Or perhaps I should say, your car.”

  “Oh my God!” I yelled. “Thank you!”

  He shrugged. “I can’t take it with me.”

  “I’m not seventeen for three months.”

  “Let’s be honest, it hasn’t stopped me!”

  “Are you suggesting …”

  “Look, you’ve often said how isolated you are out here at Penpol Cove. One of the first times I spoke to you, you were walking home alone on a dark and windy night. I figure, if I teach you to drive now, you can get a bit of practice in here, and then by the time of your birthday, you’ll be ready to get your license.”

  I tried not to run like an excited little girl as we headed over toward Ryan’s silver car. I unlocked the door and slid into the driver’s seat. Ryan sat in the passenger seat.

  “Let’s belt up,” he said. “This could be a bumpy ride.”

  “I don’t want to hear any crap about female drivers,” I said.

  Ryan laughed and showed me how to check that the gearshift was in neutral before turning the ignition. The car purred to life.

  He rested his hand on my left knee. “This is your clutch foot,” he explained.

  If he kept his hand on my knee, there was no way I would be able to focus on learning to drive.

  “The only thing you do with it is press and release the clutch pedal. Your other foot controls the gas and brake.”

  He held my left hand and placed it on the gearshift. “I want you to press down on the clutch and I’ll help you find first gear.”

  I pushed down on the clutch, the way he’d described, and he moved my hand into first gear.

  “Gently release,” he told me, “and step down lightly on the gas.”

  I did as he said. The car lurched forward and stalled.

  “It’s getting hot in here,” I said, feeling my face flush with embarrassment. I rolled down my window.

  “Cassie, Ben, and I all had to teach ourselves,” he said, laughing. “We had the cars delivered here to the house. We kept stalling too. In fact, we nearly sent them back to the manufacturer because we thought they were faulty.”

  “What am I doing wrong?”

  “Nothing. It takes a while to get a feel for how to release the clutch. Just keep trying.”

  By the third attempt, I managed to get the car moving. Within seconds the engine was screaming.

  “Take your right foot off the gas pedal, press the clutch, and we’ll move up into second,” Ryan shouted above the noise of the engine.

  I lurched forward again.

  By the time I had driven to the end of the driveway and reversed back ten times, I was feeling pretty confident.

  “I think it’s time for you to take us out on the road,” said Ryan.

  “What if someone sees me?” I said.

  “I’ve been driving along the coast road for months without anyone noticing,” said Ry
an. “I’ve never seen a cop car. Miranda and Travis will both be at work.”

  “Okay,” I said shakily.

  I drove up the lane from the farmhouse to the village in second gear, leaning forward over the steering wheel, terrified that I would meet a car coming in the opposite direction and have to brake suddenly, or worse, reverse. Once in the village, Ryan directed me around the roundabout. Several roads radiated off the roundabout like the spokes of a wheel. I took the last exit, the coast road. The road my parents had driven along the night they died.

  “Maybe it’s time to try third,” Ryan suggested, when the engine started roaring again.

  He helped me ease the car up through the gears until we were cruising along the coast road in fifth gear, at a leisurely thirty miles per hour. He was right. It was empty. Most people used the bypass these days, unless they were visiting one of the few farms or cottages along the road.

  My internal organs rearranged themselves and my knuckles whitened as we approached the cliff top above Lucky Cove. The road turned back on itself in a sharp hairpin bend. I downshifted to third and took the corner slowly.

  “You’re doing great,” said Ryan. “You’re really good at this.”

  I could feel him looking at me, but I was concentrating too hard on the road ahead to meet his eyes. The road snaked wildly, following the curve of every hill, rising and dipping with the contours of the land. It wasn’t difficult to imagine a driver losing control. I couldn’t fail to notice the cheery yellow gorse flowers lining the road, or the glimmering blue sky above us.

  As we approached Perran, I began to panic. I hadn’t passed a single vehicle on the coast road, but Perran would be busy.

  “I can’t drive through town,” I said.

  “Yes, you can. Don’t lose control. Just drive. I’ll talk you through it.”

  “What if Miranda sees me? Or Travis?”

  “They won’t expect to see you driving a car. Just relax and keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

  I slowed down to twenty miles an hour and tried to avoid hitting the brake every time a car approached me.

  “Shift down to second,” said Ryan, as we came close to the harbor parking lot.

  He talked me through the gear changes, indicating, and pulling into a parking space. It wasn’t until I switched off the engine that I realized my hands were shaking.

  “That was fun!” I said, secretly pleased with myself.

  “You deserve an ice cream. You did great.”

  Ryan reached for my hand. I wanted to squeeze his tight, but I knew that mine was sweaty with nerves and I didn’t want to gross him out.

  “It doesn’t look like there are any clouds coming our way,” I said, as we sat on the edge of the wall with our soft-serve.

  “It will cloud over,” he said. “Tomorrow night will be the only clear night during the transit of Eden.”

  “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Check out our apple tree and our time capsule?”

  “And then what?”

  “See my family. Find out what has changed. Things could be very different when I get back. Our time here in the past will have changed the future. Who knows what I’ll find when I get home.” He smiled at me. “A healthy planet with lots of trees, I hope.”

  “I wish I could come with you. I would love to meet your family and friends.”

  “I wish you could too.” He squinted out to sea. “I’ll tell them all about you.” He sighed. “Not everything of course. In the old timeline they’d be fascinated to hear about the girl who Eden was named for. But they can’t know that now.”

  “What will you tell them? Won’t they wonder why you traveled to the past? Won’t they wonder what your mission was?”

  “We have a cover story. About preventing the extinction of the chicken.”

  I giggled. “You’re kidding?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Why chickens?”

  “If we went back and told them the real reason for our mission, it would defeat the whole purpose of the mission! Most time missions have to have cover stories. I’m not sure you can understand the value of a chicken’s egg in my time. You have more than enough protein and farm-raised animals are plentiful. When I come from, chicken eggs are considered the ultimate luxury protein food.” He shrugged. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “I can’t imagine you living your life in the future.”

  Ryan looked at me. “I can’t either. Being so distant from you. One of the first things I’m going to do when I get home is find out how you’ve lived your life. I’ll be checking into everything. I want to find out you’ve led a brilliant, exciting life. Learned to drive, gone to college, traveled the world. Gotten out of Penpol Cove.”

  “What’s wrong with Penpol Cove?”

  “Nothing. It’s wonderful. But you need to experience the rest of the world as well. Get out there and explore the possibilities.”

  “I have to consider Miranda. I’m all she’s got.”

  “But you still have your own lives to live. Maybe when you leave home she’ll go back to college and train as a lawyer. You can’t hold each other back. You’re made for more than Penpol Cove.”

  I bit my lip. He was right. “How will you find out about my life?”

  “We all leave a trail behind us,” he said. “Marriage certificate, children, social-networking pages, newspaper articles. Maybe I’ll visit your descendants.”

  “That thought makes me feel so sad,” I said.

  Out on the horizon, a thick band of sea fog was rolling slowly toward the shore.

  * * *

  As soon as I pulled into the driveway, I knew that Ben and Cassie were home. Their cars were parked side by side on the brick paving by the house.

  “Did they give you a hard time last night?” I asked.

  Ryan shrugged and unclicked his seat belt. “They freaked out a bit. Reminded me of my mission objectives. Lectured me on the Temporal Laws. The most frustrating thing is they don’t believe that we’re just friends. The number of times Cass went on about too much testosterone and me having poor self-control.”

  “I wish you’d exercised a little less self-control,” I said, because time was running out for us and anything that was to be said needed to be said now.

  “So do I. Sometimes,” he said. He reached out and cupped my face in his hand. “Maybe I’ll fall in love with your great-granddaughter.”

  I knew he was trying to make a joke, but his words just left me with a gaping emptiness. To be born in the wrong time, always wondering if one of my descendants would be the girl who finally felt those arms wrapped around her, those lips on hers, was too tragic to laugh at.

  “What a lucky great-granddaughter,” I said, attempting a lighthearted tone.

  We went inside. Cassie and Ben were sitting at the dining room table, frowning at a large sheet of paper. Cassie covered the paper as soon as I entered the room.

  “How was your driving lesson?” she asked.

  “Good,” I nodded.

  “She’s a natural driver,” said Ryan.

  “Eden, I would like you to stay for dinner again tonight,” said Ben. “We’ll be going over the final preparations for the ball.”

  “I’d love that,” I said. I wanted as much time with Ryan as possible, even if that meant enduring Cassie’s sarcasm.

  “Ben wants to go over the flight plans with you, Ryan,” said Cassie. “Eden, come with me.”

  Cassie took me shopping. I looked at her sideways as she put the car into reverse and backed out of the driveway. Her shiny, tightly coiled blond ringlets snaked down her back. Her skin was clear and, although it seemed she never cracked a smile, she was undeniably beautiful. She caught my eye as she slipped the car into first and I looked away, embarrassed to have been caught staring.

  “What are you going to do when Ryan leaves?” she asked expressionlessly.

&nb
sp; She moved up through the gears rapidly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re in love with him, aren’t you?”

  I felt my face flush pink. This was not a conversation I wanted to be having with Cassie.

  “Yes,” I said quietly. “But I’ve known for a while that we only have a short time together.”

  “So you’re not going to try and persuade him to stay here?”

  “No.”

  “And you’re not going to try and come with us when we leave?”

  “No.”

  She glanced at me, the slightest smile crossing her lips. “Ryan is right. You’re practical. Strong. You’re coping with some weird stuff very well.” She hesitated. “It will be difficult when you’re left behind. You might want to tell someone about what you’ve been through.”

  “I won’t say anything.”

  “Good.”

  We were on the main road now, heading toward Tesco. She drove in silence until we reached the turnoff.

  “Just remember that you must never speak of this. The Guardians of Time will eliminate you if they ever get wind of the fact that you know.”

  “Guardians of Time? I thought it was cleaners I had to worry about.”

  “They are the organization set up to ensure the integrity of the timeline. A bit like the United Nations, I suppose, but with considerably more power. They monitor energy signatures that time travel leaves behind, approve and decline missions, and organize cleanup agents.”

  I shuddered. “They sound scary.”

  “They’re powerful. They do what needs to be done to protect the future. Which is as it should be.”

  We pulled into the parking lot and parked close to the store. Cassie locked the car and walked toward the shopping carts. I followed.

  “What’s Connor really like?” she asked, as she pushed the cart into the store. “I’ve read the books and I know the official story and the gossip, but what is he like as a friend?”

  “He’s a good friend. Kind, funny, thoughtful.”

  “That’s generic,” she said impatiently. She picked up some chicken wings and dropped them in the cart. “I think we’ll have a barbecue.”

  “Don’t you mind about the meat?” I asked.