The Enclave

by Karen Hancock

  He approached the hole and the tree, dropped onto his knees and started through it, his friends following on his heels. He pushed out into the branches, pressed a couple of branches back, and realized it was nighttime. The only light they had was from the stars. . . .

  Excitement flooded him, and he started to press on through the tree, then recalled something else and turned back to his friends. “It might feel strange when you get out there. There’s so much space. Standing in it makes you feel like you’re going to fly apart. But you’re not.”

  “Come on, Zowan,” Parthos said. “Stop talking and let us see for ourselves.”

  So they fought through the tree and stepped out onto the hillside beyond. It was much easier emerging without having to contend with the blast of the midday sun, first and foremost because he was able to see. The air was warm and moist, and a slight breeze occasionally rustled the sparse foliage about him. The sensation of the space pulling at him was still unnerving but no longer overwhelming.

  He gazed upward, awed by the hugeness of it all, the starry heavens expanding above him, filled with uncountable points of light. Some were tiny, others large and bright. Some flickered as if they were alive. And there were so very many. The Star Garden hadn’t even come close to reproducing this.

  After a while he sat down on a rock and the others joined him, the quickness of their actions indicating that, while they weren’t as traumatized as Zowan had been, they weren’t entirely comfortable either. Terra boldly pressed herself against him and slid her hand into his.

  He reveled in the tang of the air, in the fresh, bracing power of it.The way it cleared his mind and energized his flesh. He couldn’t take enough of it in. They sat for some time, watching the stars overhead, frozen in mind and body by the magnitude with which their world had shifted. Gradually the stars began to fade, and a rosy glow seeped into the fabric of the night sky above the crest of the long hill that paralleled the one on which they sat.

  With the growing light, Zowan saw that trees and small shrubs did indeed scatter the slope on which he sat, the growth thicker in the bottom drainage, all alive, even the tree that covered the opening. Now birds began to call, a sweet succession of coos. Under one of the nearer bushes he spied a rabbit nibbling leaves.

  There was plant life. There was animal life. It was not a poisoned wasteland. But it was also devoid of any sign of water or people or real shelter. In a few hours they would be found missing and the search would begin. How long before the Enforcers arrived?

  He was contemplating that question when Terra hissed, “Someone’s coming.” She pointed down the draw, to where a man had rounded a fold in the land on the opposite slope and was running up the drainage in their direction. He wore something on his head, and at his waist. An Enforcer’s protective suit?

  “Both of you! Back into the hole, now!” Zowan commanded. “Quietly!”

  “What are you going to do?” Terra asked.

  “I’ll come when you’re in. I want a closer look at him, and we can’t all stand outside the opening, showing him exactly where it is.” He feared she’ d keep on arguing with him, but apparently she realized the need for stealth.

  He crouched down by a nearby bush, watching the approaching figure, who no longer looked like an Enforcer in protective gear. In fact, he looked like no one Zowan had ever seen. He wore scandalously short trousers, a big sleeveless tunic, and a strange red cap with a stiff flap pointing off the front of it. A black belt bulging with mysterious implements hung at his waist, and long white wires flapped from his ears.

  Hoping the man might know where to find food and water, Zowan stood his ground, fear battling curiosity, need, and something more: the sense that he was meant to meet this man, that in him he would find the answers to his most important questions.

  It helped that the stranger did not appear to be pursuing anyone— his pace was easy and relaxed—and that he seemed to be following a path along the opposite slope. One which, not too far upstream, turned to cross the drainage and ascend the side of the very slope on which Zowan crouched. If the man continued to follow it, he would loop around to head back in the direction from which he’ d come— and in so doing, would pass below Zowan’s position by no more than twenty feet.

  Fear urged Zowan to retreat to the hole with his friends. How did he know the man was not an Enforcer? Maybe when Enforcers went to the surface they didn’t dress as they did in the Enclave. . . .

  Still, he felt the inner nudge to stand his ground, a promise not unlike the one he’ d received in yesterday’s morning Affirmation, when I Am told him to come out of the darkness.

  When the man disappeared into the foliage in the drainage’s heart, Zowan picked his way down to the trail’s edge and took cover behind a large shrub. As the runner emerged from the thick vegetation and started up the trail, Zowan trembled at what he was about to do. Finally, the fellow mere strides away, Zowan stepped around the bush into his path.

  The man pulled up, his mouth dropping open, the whites of his eyes showing in the astonishment of his stare. A moment later he plucked the wires from his ears and glanced up the hillside behind Zowan and then around him, before stepping forward, slowly. Warily Zowan held his position until they were face-to-face. The stranger, he saw now, was sweating slightly, and the wires were attached to a small white box on his belt. He had a freckled face and honest, friendly gray eyes.

  “Who are you?” Zowan blurted. “Where have you come from?”

  The stranger arched a brow. “I’m Cameron Reinhardt. And I work over at the zig.” He gestured toward the crest of the hill at Zowan’s back. “Who are you?”

  Zig? Zowan had no idea what that was, though he looked over his shoulder to see if something was there he’ d not noticed earlier. Would there be food and water there?

  “You can’t see it from here,” the man said. He stared at Zowan intently, brows drawn together in puzzlement. His gray eyes traveled over Zowan’s form, fixing finally on his felt slippers, which were in striking contrast to the thick-soled shoes he wore himself. “Who are you?” the man repeated.

  “I’m Zowan,” Zowan said. “How long have you been outside?”

  Again this Cameron Reinhardt seemed bemused. “Outside.” He glanced down at a strap on his wrist. “About forty minutes.” He looked at Zowan again. “You aren’t the fellow who’s been breaking into the zig, are you?”

  It was more of a statement than a question, so Zowan did not answer. “Are you an Elder?”

  “An Elder?” The other’s puzzled expression deepened, and he shook his head.

  “Do you serve Father?”

  Zowan had expected some sort of reaction to that. Either affirmation that he did, or a firm declaration that he did not. Instead Cameron Reinhardt’s puzzlement continued. “Who is Father?”

  A sudden rattling of brush at Zowan’s back drew the man’s eyes up to where Terra and Parthos were now emerging from the hole. Again, Cameron Reinhardt’s mouth dropped open as he watched them descend the hill to stand at Zowan’s flank. And still he stared at them, his eyes roving over the three of them in wonderment. Finally he stepped back, wiped his palms on his white shirt, and murmured, “By all that’s holy! He actually did it.”

  “You are not an Enforcer?” Parthos asked.

  Which was obvious, Zowan thought, since he had no oculus.

  “What is this zig place where you work?” Terra asked.

  The man’s gaze flicked to her. “You even sound the same!”

  They stared back at him, and Zowan wondered if he might be suffering from the same instability of mind that Neos did. But then Cameron Reinhardt shook off his wonder and gestured ahead. “If you’ll let me by, I’ll show you.”

  Zowan let the man pass, and the three of them followed him up the side of the grassy slope. Just below the crest he bade them crouch and ease their way up until they could see, to avoid drawing the attention of those on the other side.

  Zowan’s heart began to pound. Ot
hers? Was this a trap, after all?

  He eased forward and up through the prickly grass, and gradually a huge terraced structure made of glass came into view, top first, getting larger and larger the more he saw of it. On the far side what looked like a huge pool of water gleamed in the growing light. And there were people! Dressed in trousers and tunics, moving about on foot or in small self-moving carts.

  Overhead a bird floated high in the sky, wings not moving as it dipped and soared against the mauve background, and Zowan’s wonder knew no bounds.

  Everything Neos had said was true.

  Everything!

  PART THREE

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  “That big stairstepping building is where I work,” said Cam. “We call it the ziggurat because that’s what it looks like—an ancient ziggurat.” He wondered if these three strange people had any idea what an ancient ziggurat was. “Zig, for short.”

  All three stared at the campus and the zig with an open astonishment that probably resembled Cam’s own when he’ d seen the three of them for the first time. Having missed his run yesterday, he decided to make up for it today. And while he didn’t often come out on Sunday morning, the last thing he expected to see was three young people dressed like medieval peasants robed in gray or black, emerging from a hole in the ground, two of them with skin so white and unblemished, it looked as if today was the first time sunlight had ever touched them. Even now they squinted in the dawning light as if it hurt their eyes, and though they spoke English, they seemed like people out of time.

  Then there was the fact that Zowan not only looked exactly like Swain, he sounded and moved like him, too. There was no question he was the director’s clone. Nor had Cam missed the significance of his name: Zoan was Latin for a creature developed from a fertilized egg. . . . An odd thing to name one’s son. Unless one was a geneticist interested in reproductive cloning.

  The girl was an exact—though younger—replica of Gen Viascola. It was eerie seeing them and talking to them, youngsters who looked exactly like people Cam knew and yet were not at all the same persons. What were they doing here in the predawn hours of this day, in the middle of the desert, unaware of the ziggurat just over the hill?

  Might they be more escapees from Swain’s secret lab?

  “Let’s go back now,” Cam said. “It wouldn’t be good if you were seen up here.” And with the telescope in Swain’s office, there was every chance of that happening.

  He withdrew down the slope on his belly a bit before he stood and descended to the juniper from which the girl and the black youth had emerged. Approaching it now, he saw the hole in the ground at its base, and the scuff tracks the clones had made passing through it.

  “Why were you hiding in that hole?” he asked as they came up around him.

  “Because you came,” said Zowan, who couldn’t be twenty years old but already stood at least as tall as Cam. “You don’t look like anyone we’ve ever seen before.”

  “But how did you find the hole in the first place?” Cam pressed, for it did not look at all a likely hiding spot.

  Again they looked at one another. “It is where we came out of New Eden,” said Zowan. “We have run away to the surface, and we feared you were one of the Enforcers come to bring us back.”

  “New Eden?!” The situation grew more bizarre by the moment. “What is that?”

  “You have never heard of New Eden?” the girl asked in astonishment. “It is the first and largest of all the enclaves.”

  “There are more than one?” Cam asked, aghast.

  “Twelve altogether. All over the world.”

  “Or so we’ve been told,” Zowan interjected bitterly. “For all we know, New Eden’s the only one there is.”

  Casually, Cam drew his phone from the holster at his waist and held it up toward them. As he suspected, not one of the three seemed to have any idea what it was. He took several pictures. “Do the rest of you have names, too?” he asked.

  “I’m Terra,” said the girl. “He’s Parthos.” She pointed to the third youth.

  Terra was obvious in its reference to the earth. Parthos he wasn’t so sure about, his knowledge of ancient mythologies sketchy at best. No doubt it had some sort of meaning, though. All of it smacked of Parker Swain. . . .

  “Nice to meet you,” Cam said. “You say you’re runaways?”

  The story came out helter-skelter from Zowan and the girl—how Zowan’s renegade brother, Neos, had claimed the surface wasn’t poisoned as they’d been taught and had taken Zowan up to show him, but the Elders had found out because Zowan had just been reassigned to New Babel. Only, they feared he was really going to be taken to the special lab where the Elders did terrible things to people, and so they had all three fled together.

  Cam listened with growing horror, not only because of their predicament but because it was becoming clear that Swain had created an entire community that for at least twenty years had been completely cut off from the rest of the world. A community as restrictive and repressive as any communist or religious regime he could name.

  His first thought was that he had to move them before the Enforcers they feared showed up. Or worse, campus security. With the fleet of SUVs K-J had, plus the dogs and choppers, these clone children stood little chance of eluding the kind of dedicated search operation Swain’s people could mount. Given their pale skin, flimsy clothing, and useless shoes, a cross-country trek would be out of the question. With the Jeep wrecked, Cam had no means of transporting them, yet with every moment of delay the temperature rose, the sun’s intensity increased, and the likelihood of their discovery mounted.

  “Was that supposed to be the Tower of Babel?” Zowan’s voice broke into Cam’s musings.

  He stared at the young man blankly. “What?”

  “That building you showed us. Where you work. Is it supposed to commemorate the tower in the story where all the men on the Earth came together at Babel and the Lord confused their languages?”

  “You have access to the Bible?” Cam exclaimed. He could not believe that Swain, for all his pilfering of biblical names for his sick experiment, would actually allow his subjects to read the Bible. And maybe he hadn’t, for Zowan’s fellow clones regarded him with puzzled looks.

  “What story are you talking about?” Terra asked. “I’ve never heard of a Tower of Babel.”

  Zowan kept his focus on Cam. “I don’t know about any ‘Bible.’ My book is called the Key Study. Or maybe Gen-ee-sis. I only have a portion of it. It flew out of the furnace one day when I was working there and landed at my feet, and the pages opened to a place where the words caught my eye: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ ”

  Cam stared at him. “ ‘And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. . . . ’ ”

  Now it was Zowan’s turn to stare. “You do know it!”

  “We pronounce it Genesis,” Cam said. “It’s the first book of the Bible, which is the Word of God.”

  “Only the first book?” Zowan’s blue eyes widened.

  Cam sensed Zowan would have gone on to ask him more questions, and Cam had a number he wished to ask, as well, but Terra was growing impatient.

  “We can’t stand here all day,” she said. “It won’t be much longer before somebody realizes we’re gone.” She turned to Cam. “Do you think you could take us over to your ziggurat?”

  “I could, but . . . This Father of yours—does he look a lot like Zowan here?”

  “Oh yes. Zowan is one of his sons.”

  “Well, your Father also happens to run everything that goes on in the ziggurat and on the campus surrounding it. He is not my father, but he is my employer. His name is Parker Swain, and what he has done here with you is profoundly illegal, morally reprehensible, and . . . Well, let me just say, if the authorities found out what he was doing, they would put a stop to it at once and haul him off to jail.

  “Which means it’s very important to him that t
hey not find out, and thus he’ll be searching for you three with every resource he has.I’m afraid the best thing for you to do is go back down, cover that hole, and make like you know nothing about Zowan’s disappearance.”

  “I’m not going back,” Terra said.

  “You are as much at risk as Zowan,” Cam told her. “Because your . . . because Swain’s second-in-command up here looks just like you. Everyone in the Institute knows her. One look at you and they’ll know exactly who you are.”

  “Then let’s just leave this place.” She gestured northward down the draw.

  “You wouldn’t last an hour out there.”

  “Why not? And don’t tell us because the air is toxic.”

  If the girl wasn’t so young, Cam would’ve sworn it was Gen herself, she was so feisty. He frowned. “How about we all go back into the hole while you work all this out? Someone could come over that hill at any moment.”

  His observation startled Terra out of her assertiveness, and without another word the three of them scurried beneath the tree, disappearing one by one into the hole. Cam followed Zowan in and discovered it to be the collapsed mouth of an abandoned mine.

  “The air’s not toxic,” he said, taking up the conversation where he’ d interrupted it. “But the sun is very hot in midsummer. It can make you very sick, especially if you’re not used to it. That’s why I’m out here running now instead of later. Besides that, your shoes wouldn’t last to the end of the draw, and you have no water. No, the safest place for you right now is down below.”

  They turned to one another and began to argue. Zowan had apparently already advanced the plan Cam was putting forth, but Terra had rejected it. She continued to reject it and wondered why they should trust Cam at all.

  “If Father does rule up here like he says, how do we know he wasn’t sent out here to get us back?”

  “Why would he have told us he worked for Father if he was sent to get us back?” Zowan asked. “I think Cameron is telling the truth.”

  “You don’t know a thing about him.”