When I finish, the crowd oohs and aahs. But I notice that Jimmy just looks sad. I’m guessing that’s because he knows that I’m not talking some imagined reality in Eden, but our life.
“Now,” I say, feeling the time is right to go for the close, “if we can just get back to business as usual and get the supplies sent up, we’ll be able to restart retirements in almost no time.”
The crowd parts, and a young girl about my own age steps to the front and looks up at me.
“But what about Red?”
This must be BethAnn, Red’s girlfriend.
“He’s fine,” I tell her. “But he can’t come back.”
“Why not?” she asks.
“Well, because he sneaked around and was exposed to some unsterilized areas. I’m afraid he’s contagious.”
I see the crowd collectively cringe at the word contagious, many shaking their heads and others waving the word away as if waving Red away with it. We’ve lived long enough in these close quarters to know the danger of a foreign agent infecting us; even if that foreign agent is the truth.
But BethAnn doesn’t wave Red away.
Instead, she looks up at me with dewy eyes and says, “Maybe Red and I could go to Eden early then. That way we could be together forever.”
Her willingness to go render her brain into Eden early just to be with Red rips my heart out. There she is, true as they come. I look over at Jimmy, and he’s shaking his head. I look out at the crowd, the trusting faces colored with hope that they too will someday be reunited with their loved ones in Eden. Then I see Mrs. Hightower and her unforgiving face and I’m reminded of the video of Dr. Radcliffe that she showed us on the big test day, the one where he lied to us all about Eden and about him being the first one to enter it.
Suddenly, I’m back in that classroom, taking my test. I’m looking again at the question: would I kill an entire level to save humankind? I answered blindly then. But I’m not blind now. I’m standing here with my eyes wide open, lying to these people and sending them to be slaughtered when they turn 35. I’m no better than Radcliffe was. But I can be. I can still change the course of my destiny. I can still redeem myself. I can still make my father proud, wherever he is.
I turn back to the microphone.
“I owe you all an apology because I’ve been standing up here lying to you this whole time. Eden is a sham ...”
Just as I realize that the microphone has been killed and that none of my last statement was broadcast, a strong hand grabs my arm and yanks me off the platform. Then I’m being pulled through the crowd by Mrs. Hightower. Hands reach to pat me on the back, faces smile at me, voices cheer my name, and all of it slides by so fast, I can’t get a word out to anyone.
When the noise of the crowd fades away behind us, I look back and see Jimmy following along with his hands stuffed in his pockets and his head down.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Home,” Mrs. Hightower says, without turning back.
We arrive at the door and she throws it open and pushes me inside. Then she lets Jimmy enter before stepping inside herself and pulling the door closed.
“What was that about?” she asks.
“What was what about?”
“You know damn well what I mean,” she insists. “What were you thinking, saying what you said?”
“You heard me?”
“Of course, I did.”
“Then why aren’t you shocked?”
She sighs. “There’s a lot you don’t yet understand.”
“Well, why don’t you fill me in?”
“I can’t,” she says. “Not here.”
“Where then? When?”
She glances at Jimmy. “How does he fit in?”
“He’s with me,” I say. “He’s my best friend.”
“So, he knows?”
“Yes, he knows everything.”
“Fine,” she replies. “You two stay here. Keep low profiles. Don’t talk to anyone. We’ll come and collect you at midnight.”
“Who’s we?”
“You’ll see,” she says. “You’ll see.”
Then she steps to the door, pulls it open, and looks back.
“Not a word to anyone. Got it?”
I nod that I do.
“You too,” she says, glancing at Jimmy.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replies.
She looks at us one last time, as if to be sure, and then she stoops through the door and pulls it shut behind her.
CHAPTER 8
BethAnn, the Beach, and the Vote
“What the hell?” Jimmy asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, shaking my head. “I tried to tell the truth at the last minute, but the microphone cut off, and then Mrs. Hightower dragged me from the stage.”
“I dun’ trust her.”
“Neither do I. But what can we do except wait for her or whoever to come back?”
Jimmy flops on the couch and pulls the ball that Finn gave him from his pocket, tosses it into the air, and catches it.
“What do you think woulda happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he says, “If you’d got off the truth.”
“I don’t know,” I admit, taking the only other chair in the small living room. “Maybe Hannah was tuned in somehow and would have flooded us on the spot. Maybe we’d be drowned by now. Or maybe the people would have been angry enough to do something for once. The only thing I know for sure is that I was wrong to lie to them. Eden is a slaughterhouse.”
“But why does this high-legged lady seem to know?”
“Mrs. Hightower? That I don’t understand. It’s a mystery. And what else has me curious is why is she down here if she knows? Do you think she’s working for Hannah?”
“I wouldn’t put nothin’ past her,” he says.
We each fall quiet with our own thoughts. I sit and watch the ball rise and fall as Jimmy lies on his back playing catch with himself. It’s hypnotic to watch, and I begin to sort through all these mysterious pieces of information. Hannah betrayed us, blowing up the Isle of Man. Red accidentally betrayed Hannah to Holocene II with a note to his girlfriend. Hannah sent us down here to fix it. I try to tell them the truth and am stopped from doing it by Mrs. Hightower, who already knows. It’s puzzle enough to make me dizzy.
“That was sad about Red’s girl,” Jimmy says.
“I know,” I reply, happy to free my mind from the maze of questions there. “And I promised Red that I’d tell her he was okay. That he was thinking about her. And I kind of did, but not really. I should go find her and reassure her that he’ll be fine. You want to come with me?”
“But that lady said to stay here.”
“Yeah, but midnight’s a long time from now. And besides, maybe they’re just coming to kill us anyway, whoever they are.”
Jimmy tosses me the ball and I catch it.
“I’m in for whatever,” he says. “Jus’ lead the way.”
We stick to the edges of the valley and the mostly empty living quarters, since everyone would have gone back to work after my speech. But the problem is, I only have a general idea where BethAnn lives from having seen Red sneak out his window and head to her block of buildings in the middle of the night. Turns out, we don’t need to know much more than that, though, because as we approach a row of apartments, I can hear weeping coming from an open window.
“BethAnn,” I call up.
When she doesn’t respond, Jimmy whistles. The sobbing ceases and a pale face appears in the window.
“What do you want?” she calls down.
“Let us up. I need to talk with you.”
“You can talk with me from there,” she says.
I look around, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone about.
“Fine,” I half whisper, half shout. “I have a message from Red. He said to tell you that he’s thinking about you, and that he misses you, and that everything will work out just fine.”
“What’s that mean?”
she asks.
“What’s what mean?”
“That everything will work out?”
“I don’t know. That’s just what he said. So don’t cry.”
She leans out the window a little farther and looks around. Then she looks back down at me with a question on her face.
“How come you can talk to him?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“If he’s contagious like you say, why can you talk to him?”
It’s a good question, and I should have considered it before coming to find her. Maybe this was a mistake. I stumble to find an answer, but Jimmy jumps in and saves me.
“He wrote the message and Aubrey read it,” he says, which is brilliant because it’s kind of the truth.
“Is that it?” she asks.
“What do you mean is that it?”
“Is that all he wrote?”
“He said he was sorry.”
“Well,” she says, “you told me. Now go away.”
Then she pulls the window closed. We turn to walk away, but we don’t get far when I hear the window slide open again.
She calls after us, “Will you give him a message for me?” When I turn and nod yes, she says, “Tell him that I love him. Just tell him that for me, will you?”
Before I can promise her that I will, she pulls the window closed again and disappears into the shadows of the room.
“That could have gone better,” Jimmy says.
“Tell me about it. And it didn’t kill much time either.”
“How much longer till midnight?”
“Too long,” I say. “But, hey, I know what might help pass the time. How about a trip to the beach?”
“The beach?” he asks. “Here? Underground?”
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
We take the lift up to the recreation tunnels and walk the corridor to the locker room door. Inside, we grab clean shorts from the rack and change into them, leaving our zipsuits and our belongings in lockers. I’m disappointed to see that the sign on the beach access door reads: LIFEGUARD NOT ON DUTY
I was hoping Bill would be here so I could show him how much taller and heavier I am. I think he’d be surprised.
But at least Jimmy is surprised, because when we step through the door, his jaw drops and he stands transfixed by the scene in front of him. It’s as if the cavern has disappeared and been replaced by blue skies and sandy beaches. The gulls call, the waves tumble up the sand, the perfect clouds float in their windless skies, and although the illusion is not as convincing as it was to me before, it’s still a remarkable likeness.
“I dunno whether to trust my eyes,” Jimmy says.
“Why not?”
“Because it looks like a beach, but it ain’t.”
“How do you know it isn’t?”
“Well, the air smells funny for starters. And those gulls in the sky is flappin’ but they ain’t goin’ nowhere. And there ain’t no shells or no rocks in the sand. It’s too perfect. Look at those clouds. They seem to be at the same height, but they’s goin’ in different directions. That jus’ ain’t possible. Plus, you can look right at the sun there without your eyes burnin’ up.”
“Well, we can at least enjoy the UV lights awhile,” I say, just a little bummed that he wasn’t more convinced.
We walk toward the water’s edge and sit on the sand.
“Are we goin’ swimmin’?” he asks.
“I guess we could,” I say, “but the water’s only about a meter deep.”
“How deep’s a meter?” he asks.
“About up to your waist.”
“No wonder I had to teach ya to swim,” he says, laughing as he flops onto his back in the sand and closes his eyes.
I lie down next to him and close my eyes too. I remember coming here to get away from the gray depression of the cavern and to dream about one day discovering a world without walls. Now I’ve found it, and hiked it, and swum in its oceans, and climbed its mountains, and sailed its seas, and here I am back again, right where it all began. Only this time, I have real worries and fears, not the silly boyhood problems I had then.
I feel a cold sprinkle of water hit my naked chest, and I’m momentarily frozen, with my eyes glued shut. I have to remind myself that Red is no longer a bully and that I’m no longer a victim. I open my eyes and sit up and see Bill, the lifeguard, crouched in front of me, scooping another handful of water from a retreating wave. He sees me and grins, letting the water drip between his open fingers.
“Thought I was going to have to chase for my bucket to wake you up,” he says. “You always did sleep like a stone.”
“I wasn’t sleeping,” I reply.
“Well, that’d be a first,” he says. “Didn’t they used to bury you to your neck in sand while you slept? Who’s your friend?”
“This is Jimmy.”
Bill reaches out and shakes Jimmy’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Jimmy. What’s that thing on your ankle there?”
“Oh, that?” Jimmy asks. “It’s jus’ a thing, you know.”
“It’s something people wear up at the foundation,” I say. “Like a monitor that warns you when the air is too thin.”
“Oh,” Bill says, nodding, “I see. And why do you have the Foundation’s emblem carved onto your chest? Is that just something they do up there too?”
I look down and realize that my scars are bright red in the UV lights. There’s a perfect upside down valknut there, carved in my flesh halfway around the globe by a five-hundred-year-old descendant of Dr. Radcliffe. This descendant had since been vaporized, along with the entire island and our fox. Maybe I should just tell Bill the truth—but he’d never believe it.
“That’s just ... well; it’s from an accident with a thing I was doing. A misunderstanding, really. It’s still healing.”
Bill shakes his head. “Looks painful, whatever it is. Listen, I heard your speech today in the square.”
“You did? What did you think?”
He scoops up a handful of sand and lets it fall between his fingers, thinking over his answer. The pause makes me nervous.
“I thought it was convincing,” he finally says.
Convincing? What does that mean? I want to ask him, but before I can say anything, he stands and says:
“Anyway, I came over to let you know that we’re shutting down rec time so that everyone can meet back in the square.”
“What meeting?” I ask, standing up and brushing the sand off my shorts. “Are we invited?”
“I don’t see why not,” he says. Then he looks me over and adds, “Man, they must have you lifting the drones off the trains by hand up there. You sure are bigger than when you left.”
I feel my chest swell a little with pride.
Then he says, “Nice to meet you, Jimmy,” nods goodbye, and jogs off to shut down the illusionary beach.
As Jimmy and I walk toward the locker rooms, the sun clicks off, the waves disappear, and the blue sky goes gray. We enter the shower together and shut the door. Jimmy follows my lead and strips off his shorts and stuffs them with mine in the hamper. Then we raise our arms and wait for the blast of hot water, looking like a couple of naked and surrendering refugees being washed down before being admitted into civilization.
Dry and clean, we don our zipsuits again and head for the lift to the valley. There’s a crowd gathering again in the square, so we duck behind buildings and work our way up to where we can watch from the safety of a breezeway. After several minutes waiting, Mrs. Hightower steps to the microphone.
“Welcome, Level 3 residents and those watching below.”
I nudge Jimmy and whisper, “They must be streaming this to the other levels as well.”
“After Aubrey’s speech today,” Mrs. Hightower continues, “I confirmed with the Foundation everything he said. Eden will be back online within the week if we begin sending up supplies again. You’ve been called here to vote, since it was a vote that put us all on strike in the first place. I�
��d encourage you to think about your fellows who are already overdue for retirement, and of yourselves, and the implications more delays might have on your own retirement plans.”
“Why is she lying?” I ask.
“I dunno,” Jimmy says. “I told you I dun’ trust her.”
“You can bet I’m going to ask her tonight,” I reply.
“So,” Mrs. Hightower says, “all those in favor of ending this silly strike and returning to business as usual, please raise your hands now.”
She steps back from the microphone and is the first to raise her hand high. Another hand goes up in the crowd. Then another. And another. Then, almost all at once, every hand in the place rises until the crowd assembled there in the square looks like some underground army returning the salute of their giant queen standing tall before them.
“I’ll be damned,” I mumble. “They bought my lies.”
CHAPTER 9
A Midnight Meeting
The knock comes softly on the door at exactly midnight.
I toss the ball to Jimmy one final time, concluding our long game of catch, and rise to answer it.
When I open the door, a hooded stranger stands with his or her back to the door, looking nervously left and right. When this visitor turns to face me, I’m shocked to see that it’s Bill.
“What are you doing here, Bill?”
“There’s no time for that now,” he says. “You have to follow me. Fast and quiet. No talking, no questions. Got that?”
I nod that I do.
“Do you have something to cover your face with?”
“I have an old hoody upstairs.”
“Grab it,” he says.
“What about Jimmy?”
“He’s fine; nobody will recognize him.”
Leaving him at the open door, I race upstairs and grab my gray hoody and pull it on. Then I check to make sure I have my father’s pipe in my pocket before heading back down.
“You ready for this, Jimmy?” I ask.
“As ready as I’m gonna get,” he says.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
We leave the apartment and follow Bill across the dark valley. I have a strange feeling that this may be it for me, that I may never be coming back here again. I pull my hood lower over my face and walk beside Jimmy, my steps rhyming his. Wherever we’re going, at least we’re going there together.
State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy Page 6