Thomas would have eaten it up. But thinking of his little brother made Ben’s head pound with guilt. Thomas, somewhere behind Ben as they raced up the stairwell in the parkade. Ben’s little weasel brother, now lost to Milagro. Ben had taken him for granted their entire lives. So many times he had secretly wished Thomas would just go away and leave him alone. Now he had.
They managed to roll the Moses into a cavernous hollow in the roots of a large tree. By scattering leaves and branches all over it, the glittering golden skin almost disappeared. Sean wiped the sweat from his face and looked over the jungle before them. He pulled a crumpled scrap of paper out of his pocket and walked about the forest floor looking closely at each of the identical trees. After a few minutes, he stopped and squinted at the paper. He turned it upside down for a second and then resumed his walk. The three kids looked at each other with a worried dismay.
“What exactly are we looking for then?” Hannah called to Sean in a loud but polite voice.
“Oh, I’ll know it when I see it, don’t worry, Hannah,” said Sean as he weaved around in giant circles. “It’s just a matter of finding the right . . . spot, that’s all.” He seemed totally unconcerned about getting lost. The jungle was so dense and homogenous that Ben felt like they could lose their way in the space of a hundred feet.
“And how long exactly has it been since you were last here?” asked Ben.
“About nine or ten years, I suppose.”
“I see,” said Ben. The jungle looked like it could swallow up an entire civilization in a matter of days.
“I thought you said you knew where you were taking us,” said Alison.
“Oh, I do, I do. Just hang on, Alison. Be patient.” Sean smiled and winked at her. “We’re in the right area . . . it’s around here somewhere. Give me a few seconds, that’s all. It’ll . . . uh . . . come back to me . . . just need to, uh, see it properly.” A minute later they stumbled upon the mound of dirt the Moses had made when it surfaced. Sean sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
“Maybe we should just have a seat,” suggested Ben. The three kids plopped themselves down in the dirt (after inspecting it closely for ants, spiders, snakes and whatever else might be crawling, creeping, or slithering through the leaves and mulch).
Looking up into the mess of branches, Ben tried to lose himself in the swaying of the trees. They moved like great, brooding whales. By imagining that he was at the bottom of the ocean looking up, he managed to forget everything for a few minutes. The genetic code to the plant that somehow lay entangled in his body. The fact that they were all somehow the same age. Thomas lost to Milagro. Their mother abandoning them again. The earth-slicing Moses. With his head in his hands, Ben drove his fingernails into his scalp until the focused, sharp pain replaced the dull, monstrous ones.
Ben sat up and watched Sean tripping and stumbling his way through the jungle. Ben couldn’t help but feel that the man who was supposedly charged with protecting their lives (well, Ben’s life, to be precise) was a little under-equipped for his job. His clothes were old and dirty, his disheveled brown hair was tinged with an ashen fluff, and his face was creased leather. Not to mention that he didn’t seem to be very educated in genetics or atomic transportation technology. This man had been sent to save Ben? He was in charge of protecting one of the most valuable pieces of information in the world? It was slightly embarrassing, and Ben couldn’t help but feel sorry for Sean. It all seemed so futile against the opulence and power of Milagro.
“Sean,” called Ben.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. About your arm.”
Sean stared at Ben for a second. “That’s okay, Ben. Actually, I don’t think it’s broken. I don’t blame you. But that gorilla who shot me, though . . . good thing the bullet just grazed me.” He paused and poked at his arm. “Gotta say, I was kind of impressed when you chucked that brick at me.”
“Yeah, well, I--”
“It’s okay, Ben. I understand. And, hey, we both got bloody noses today. That was fun, wasn’t it?”
Ben looked up and managed a half-smile. “You’ve got a weird version of fun.”
“Thanks, Ben. And thanks for everything else.”
“What do you mean?”
“For saving me back there.”
“With the truck? I had no choice.”
“You could have driven away. But you didn’t.”
“I guess.”
“Was it because you knew you couldn’t run away from all of this?”
Ben thought about what had gone through his brain as he gripped the steering wheel. “No. I saved you because you were getting beat up.” It was instinctual. Even if it had been Milagro getting beat up, Ben probably would have helped. He wasn’t entirely proud of this realization.
“Works for me,” said Sean. He smiled at Ben for a second and then resumed his search.
Ben held up his arm and stared at it. Other than the vacuum of an empty stomach, the ache of a smushed nose, and the nausea from traveling underground at who knows what speed, he felt the same as always. But somewhere in there, in every part of his body, was something that apparently could save millions of lives. Something that both Milagro and the Sibuaji claimed as their own. All his life, Ben had presumed himself to be the protagonist in his own life, the center of everything. But in reality, he--or what he thought was Ben--was just an accessory to the code. It was disgusting, like someone else’s blood was coursing through his veins.
Ben thought about Basho, the giant man dying of cancer from the inside out. To somehow separate the cure from Ben’s genes so that the disease could be separated from Basho’s. Then Ben remembered that Basho had probably been killed by Milagro’s guards. Everything Ben saw felt so inextricably completed and complex, never to be undone, fixed, or rendered simple again. He imagined a cake being unbaked, its ingredients flying apart into their boxes, jars, and containers. Cupboards welcoming back their residents. Eggs reassembling into perfect ovals. Where did he end and the code begin? His arm started shaking so he let it rest on the ground beside him.
Ben lay back against a tree and looked up into the branches. A trail of ants wound its way up the trunk in a thin red thread. Every few seconds a miniscule bird would dart by and pick off one of the ants. The red thread would continue its way upwards, unfazed by the bird’s attacks. The ants probably had no idea where the bird was coming from and could only march forever upwards on faith, never knowing who would be the next to be picked off. He squinted and tried to follow the line of ants up the tree a far as he could see.
Why Ben? Why was he the chosen one? How come the chosen have no choice in the matter? There were probably lots of other people who would want to be some sacred courier of the cure for cancer, but not him. But, strangely, he wasn’t mad at their mother anymore. He almost pitied her. As smart as she supposedly was, she never saw how much of a mess her agreement with the Sibuaji would become. And besides, how can you be mad at someone for bringing you into this world? She loved the four of them, Ben was sure of it. Granted she had placed an enormous burden on Ben’s entire life, but maybe she had the same need to help others that had driven Ben to save Sean. Maybe those sorts of things are uncontrollable.
As Sean continued to weave in and out of the trees, Hannah and Alison sat slumped against a log. Ben watched Alison pick at the bits of skin around her fingernails. Of the four of them, Alison had trusted and admired their mother the most, and though she didn’t speak it, her eyes reflected a sad betrayal at having been abandoned once more. Thomas was obviously gone, but in a way Alison had also lost Hannah, who was no longer the squeaky-voiced little girl Alison used to look after.
But there was a longing in Alison that was more than just being separated from their mother and Thomas, more than Hannah becoming too old to be taken care of. The sadness had begun in the Strand, after she had seen the stark, sterile Children’s Facility. A helplessness had taken hold of her in the underground base. But maybe she had also found something t
here to solve it. Twice Ben had stumbled upon her talking to Lorenz. And the second time, when Ben had come to tell Alison that Cabra was going to help them escape, Alison and Lorenz had been hiding behind Ming’s House of Proof. Ben had startled her, and there had been a glassy, euphoric sheen in her eyes. Ben tried not to think about it at the time, but it was clear now: Alison liked Lorenz. She loved the guy who had held them hostage. The disquieting thought made Ben look for a distraction. A few feet away, Sean was poking his finger into a crack in a tree.
“Sean, what’s going to happen now?” Ben asked.
“Hmm—what?” asked Sean. “What do you mean?”
“Our mother. And Thomas.”
“Oh, Ben, don’t worry. I betcha your mom has already got Thomas back. You have no idea how smart she is.”
As if Sean knew. But what would happen to Thomas now? Would he be held as a hostage until Milagro captured Ben? Or, since he was of no use to him, would Milagro just put Thomas in one of the Children’s Facilities? At least Thomas would make a good worker. Ben tried to laugh in an effort to stop the tears.
Hannah was looking up into the trees, a kind and patient smile on her face. She was now almost as tall as her “elder” sister (whatever that meant), and her hair tumbled in brown waves down to her shoulders. If there was one way to describe the change Hannah had undergone since leaving the apartment, it was that she had acquired some sort of quiet wisdom. She now understood everything she saw. Gone was the bratty whining for cookies and the pleading for fantasy stories. (And besides, they were living in one more bizarre than any of their mother’s dragon and toad tales.) Hannah accepted everything that was happening to them, as if it was all unfolding according to plan.
An orange rush of feathers flew in through the trees and perched on a branch above Hannah. As the bird looked over the area, its plumage changed to red, and then to pink, blue, green, yellow, and then back to its original orange. Something caught its attention. It cast about the forest floor with a curious, cocked head until it honed in on Hannah, whose lips Ben now noticed were pursed in a whistle. The bird fluttered down into Hannah’s hands. She giggled in delight. For just an instant, she became a little girl again. She whistled something more and the bird mimicked the call right back. Just before the bird took off back into the trees, it looked at Hannah with something like disbelief, as if to consider how it was that a strange girl from the city knew how to communicate with a jungle bird. Hannah caught Ben and Alison watching this and broke into a huge, beaming grin. Her fantasy world had come alive, just as she was growing out of it.
Ben struggled to understand this: all along, Hannah’s whistling had been actual birdcalls, but how had this happened? How had she managed to learn the songs of jungle birds when she had lived her entire life in smog-enveloped apartment buildings? Like so many other things, it made no sense.
Ben lay down and looked up into the canopy. From below, the tree branches formed an intricate pattern, like a collection of stars that had been arranged with their points touching. It was sort of similar to the photograph that used to hang on the wall back in their apartment. So many times Ben had tried to lose himself in that picture. He remembered once thinking that if he concentrated really hard he might be able to somehow escape the musty boredom of the apartment. The tiny rooms jammed with junk. The place they could never return to.
And then something truly bizarre happened. Ben’s face screwed up in wrinkles of confusion. Their mother had always said that she took that picture when she was traveling in South America, years before they were born. But obviously those years of “traveling” had really been trying to find the plant for Milagro, and then working with the Sibuaji to hide the code. She had once been under a similar tree and had taken a picture of the same view, looking up through the branches, just as Ben was now doing. Ben blinked to be sure. It was. It was the exact same pattern of branches. Directly above him was the same design of geometric shapes. Like a giant spider’s web, it was a bizarre arrangement of branches that became more and more man-made the more Ben stared.
“Sean!” Ben jumped up. “Sean, I found it.” Sean came running over with Alison and Hannah right behind him.
“What?” asked Sean. “What are you talking about?”
“Here, this tree. When I looked up, its branches looked just like a picture that we used to have hanging on a wall back home. It must be a sign or something, right?” Their mother had planted this clue in Ben’s head without him ever knowing. By staring at it over the years, Ben had unconsciously learned how to find the very tree he was now seated beneath. Had their mother suspected that one day they would have to find the hidden stairwell, that Sean couldn’t be trusted to remember it? Maybe she did have a plan, something invisible to them that had shaped their lives.
“What?” said Alison. “I don’t believe it. That picture that used to hang on the wall in the living room? I think your special little brain is a bit overworked, Ben.” Ben blinked at his sister and tried to figure out if she was being spiteful.
Sean’s mouth hung open. He looked at the tree for a second and then reached around its trunk with both arms as if trying to give it a big hug. His fingers settled on something. There were two small clicks and a four-foot section of the trunk creaked open. Sean nodded slowly and made a low whistle. “You’re . . . um . . . right, Ben,” he said. “Okay. Well, here we go then. After you, Ben.”
Ben stared into the tree trunk but he couldn’t see anything. “What’s going to happen now, Sean?”
“Oh, I suspect there’ll be a bit of a celebration when we arrive. Remember, you’re their chosen one.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Look, just try to be polite.”
They all crammed in. Hannah closed the door behind them. There was a rush of air around them and they were suspended in blackness.
Chapter Twenty-nine: Fires Burning, Fires Burning
After walking through endless, faceless streets and into the night, Nora found a place to sleep beneath a highway overpass, where twelve lanes of traffic floated over a drainage viaduct. At one point, maybe ten years ago, she used to take a bus over the river each day. Then, the viaduct had nursed a mossy trickle of water. Now, in the storm, it was a churning mess of rapids carrying piles of garbage down to the ocean. She picked her way down the muddy path and into another world.
There were maybe fifty others, some in shelters cobbled together from cardboard, branches, and blankets, and some who carried their entire worlds in rusted shopping carts. They clustered in small groups around fires that flattened with each gust of wind. Nora wandered carefully through the clumps of people and tip-toed around the sputtering flames. She stole quick glances at their faces, but it was hard to tell the dangerous from the meek. A woman’s kind smile quickly sharpened into a vicious stare when Nora apparently got too close. An old man’s scarred leather face stared through everyone. His lips moved in silent babble, lost in some horror beyond words. The traffic was a distant hum overhead.
The desirable real estate was directly under the center of the overpass, where the ground remained the driest, and where the glare from the pink and blue flashing billboards on either side of the highway faded into darkness. Nora found some damp newspapers and a discarded torn sweater and curled herself into a ball about twenty feet away from one of the fires where a man and a woman huddled together with their child. Behind them were two shopping carts filled with the contents of an entire household. Blackened pots and pans, cracked plates and cups, cans of food, sodden clumps of clothes. The carts had been tied together with two broomsticks and some rope to form a two-car train. A ripped blue tarp was supported by a collection of twisted branches to form a shelter from the weather. The arm of a doll dangled through a hole in the side of one of the carts.
The three of them sat together under one blanket, even though there were enough blankets in their carts for each body to have its own proper bedding. Nora watched them, but was careful not to stare. She wanted to be close
to them, to the extra warmth they gave off, but not so close that they’d worry about what she wanted. But the father somehow sensed Nora’s glance. A father’s radar, perhaps. He spun around, surveyed the dirt, and quickly caught Nora trying to look as if she hadn’t been watching. The man turned back and whispered something to his wife.
It was hard to say if the child was a boy or a girl. But as she timidly walked away from the safety of her parents, her hair fell down in manicured curls that covered her face. Her clothes, although dirty and worn, had been expertly mended. Behind her, the father smiled, and the fire twinkled in his eyes. He was proud of his daughter, but also shy and embarrassed at the situation, at what had led them to this. He wore a faded navy blue suit jacket and brown dress shoes.
The girl looked down with wide eyes at Nora and offered her half a cheese sandwich. Nora immediately started crying, and the girl’s face scrunched up in sadness and confusion. Nora made herself stop, and thanked the girl profusely. Nora would be able to find food tomorrow; she could find people who would help her. The girl needed the sandwich more than she did, but to decline such a gesture would be idiotic. The girl was Hannah’s age. Or the age that Hannah had looked as she stood there sobbing in the parking lot. The age she wouldn’t be for very long. Everything would change now.
The girl looked up at her parents as she returned to them, and Nora waved a thank-you towards the family. She turned away from them, ate the sandwich, and tried not to cry. The gesture filled her heart more than her stomach. But it was her heart that needed it the most.
Don’t worry--everything will be fine. She said this under her breath, like an incantation or a prayer to keep her going. They were the same words she had used to console the kids, wailing as Sean took them away from her. Did she believe in those words? It was all she could say then to stop them from crying. It was all she could say now to stop herself from doing the same.
She laid her head down on the sweater and tried to find sleep, tried to ignore the smells in the sweater, tried not to think about the lives it had held. She knew where she’d have to go tomorrow, and by remaining focused on the first step, she’d be able to avoid thinking about everything else.
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