Bill leads us to the elevator platform and swipes his card to open the door. We step inside and ascend to the transfer station on Level 2. When the elevator stops we all three suck in the disinfectant gas like pros and wait for the door to open.
The transfer station is empty, the dim lights casting the waiting train in shadow, but Bill doesn’t lead us to the train like I expect him to. Instead, he steps into the waiting elevator right next to the one we just got off.
“Doesn’t this elevator go to Level 4?” I ask.
Bill glares at me and draws his hand across his neck, telling me to be quiet. I look at Jimmy, but he just shrugs.
The ride down to Level 4 takes longer than the ride up from Level 3 did, and by the time the elevator finally stops, I’ve almost forgotten about the gas. It eventually clears and the door opens. Bill pops his head out, looks left and right, and then motions for us to follow as he exits the elevator.
Nothing I thought I knew about Level 4 prepared me for what it actually looks like. The platform is elevated enough to provide me with a sweeping view of the enormous cavern, although not quite as large as Level 3, illuminated by countless LED light strips hanging from the high, curved ceiling. There are so many lights that even though they’re turned down for rest hours, it’s almost as bright as being in the daylight, above. Every inch of polished floor is organized into manufacturing assembly lines, and enormous 3-D printers are unattended and working on their own. I see the nose cone for a flying drone taking shape in one, giant fan blades for our cooling systems being printed in another, and other various indistinguishable parts and pieces being honed and polished and packaged. But what strikes me as the most strange about the setup are the living quarters. They are all windowless and entered by porthole doors off of catwalks that circle the entire perimeter and rise to the ceiling. They are built into the walls, I’m assuming, in order to maximize available workspace below.
I lag behind Jimmy and Bill and take all of this in as we descend an open flight of stairs to the production floor. It’s an eerie feeling, being surrounded by autonomous machines as we hurry across the facility in the strange, shadowless light that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
At the far side of the cavern, Bill leads us up steel stairs to a wall of duct vents where giant turbine fans blast cool air into the level. Bill stops in front of one of the fans. The circular opening is twice as tall as he is, and the spinning fan is protected by a cage. I momentarily forget that I’m not supposed to talk, but it doesn’t matter because the blast of cool wind is so strong here that when I open my mouth, it fills with air and my cheeks flutter and flap. I feel like some kind of flatulent idiot.
Bill presses his palm to a glass plate in the wall next to the fan, and a door in the steel grate slides open. The fan blades whirl just on the other side, spinning so fast that I can clearly glimpse the dim tunnel beyond. Bill turns and gathers Jimmy and me into his arms in a kind of huddle.
“Listen up,” he says, his voice just barely audible above the wind. “When the fan stops, you’ve got to pass through quickly. No hesitating, understand?”
We nod that we do.
With no further instruction, he steps inside the steel cage and we follow. The door closes behind us, and we stand in a narrow breezeway, being blasted with cold air. The fan blades are spinning so close that if I reached out my hand, it would surely be hacked off instantly and blown back into my face.
The fan comes to an immediate halt. Bill ducks between the blades without a word and disappears on the other side. Jimmy follows. I don’t know why, but I’m gripped with fear. I inch toward the crack between the two blades where the others passed, leaning down to look, but hesitating. Strong hands reach up, wrap around my throat, and jerk me through. The blades take off again full speed, catching my foot and sending my amputated shoe hurling back the way we came. I hear it thud against the steel cage. Jimmy releases his hands from my neck, and we both look back with horror to see if my foot is gone with my shoe. But it’s still there, thankfully. Bill just shakes his head. I kick off my other shoe and carry it in my hand as I follow them barefoot down the windy tunnel.
The tunnel terminates at a large, vertical shaft into which Bill seems to disappear without a trace. Jimmy and I lean out over the edge and see him clinging to a ladder. There is no light in the shaft itself, but other intersecting ducts cut descending beams of light across its never-ending void. It seems to plunge to the center of the Earth itself.
“No way am I getting on that ladder,” I shout.
“You had better,” Bill shouts back, “because there isn’t any going back, unless you want to join what’s left of your shoe by being sucked through the fan.”
That said he starts climbing down.
“We’ve climbed tougher stuff,” Jimmy says, swinging out into the void and grabbing onto the ladder.
I stuff my remaining shoe as far as it will fit in my zipsuit pocket and follow after him. We climb down, one rung at a time, into almost absolute blackness, with only the distant wands of light crossing from ducts above. My hands grow tired; my legs grow shaky. I’m certain that only the cool air rushing past us keeps my fingers from sweating and sliding off the rungs. We climb in silence, the wind whistling through the ducts all around us, only my wild thoughts of falling to mark the passage of time.
“Hey! Where you going?”
Bill calls to us from a ledge that we were about to pass. Jimmy takes Bill’s offered hand and steps off the ladder onto the ledge. Then Jimmy turns and offers me his hand, and I do the same. Bill leads us deeper into the dark recesses of the ledge, my bare feet stepping in something wet. I smell some kind of metallic element, maybe iron, maybe rust, and then I hear the screech of metal on metal, and a door opens. We’re washed in yellow light.
A small gathering of people greets us with nervous stares as we enter the room. They’re sitting at a worktable surrounded by tools. There’s an old, vinyl, blueprint map of ducts and tunnels plastered to the wall behind them, its corners worn and peeling past the concrete nails that hold it in place. The only face I recognize is Mrs. Hightower, so I’m guessing the three others are from different levels.
Bill motions Jimmy and me to overturned metal drums that wait unoccupied, and we join the others at the table.
“No problems at all getting down here, I’m assuming,” Mrs. Hightower says.
Bill glances at the shoe sticking out of my pocket and chuckles. “No, not really,” he says. Then he turns his attention to a man sitting next to Mrs. Hightower and asks, “Are our friends ready for us, just in case?”
The man nods. He must work in Agriculture on Level 5, or maybe Sewage Treatment on Level 6, because his calloused hands are resting on the table, and he’s wearing a trimmed beard. All the men on Level 3 are clean shaven. A small man sits next to him, twirling his thumbs nervously. On the other side of Mrs. Hightower sits a woman wearing glasses, which is also strange because everyone on Level 3 has perfect eyesight—at least until 35 when we retire.
“What are the odds they’ll make it?” Mrs. Hightower asks the bearded man.
He shrugs. “Fifty, fifty. Maybe more. Who knows? Better than the odds of letting them go back up, I think.”
“I disagree,” the little man says, twirling his thumbs faster, as if it were some kind of nervous tic. “It’s all too risky.”
“What about you, Jillian?” Mrs. Hightower asks.
Jillian removes her glasses, closes her eyes, and pinches the bridge of her nose, as if puzzling over an impossible problem. Then she opens her eyes and addresses the table. “I think we have to go for it while we have the chance. It’s just too risky to let Aubrey go back up now.”
“What do you say, Bill?” Mrs. Hightower asks.
“Hey, now!” I jump in before Bill can respond. “Wait just a minute. What are we voting on here? And why are you talking about me as if I weren’t sitting right in front of you?”
Mrs. Hightower looks from me to Bil
l. “You want to tell him, Bill, or should I?”
“You go ahead,” Bill replies.
Mrs. Hightower sighs loudly, as if what she’s about to say is a chore. “Aubrey, when you go back up to the Foundation, Hannah intends to kill you.”
Jimmy looks at me and raises an eyebrow, his expression mixed with worry and I-told-you-so.
“How do you know about Hannah?” I ask.
“We know all kinds of things,” Mrs. Hightower says.
“So you know about the ...” I stop myself, not sure yet that I can really trust them.
“The serum?” Mrs. Hightower asks.
“Yes, the serum. You know about it?”
“Of course, we do. And no. None of us has it. Do you?”
I look at Jimmy, but he doesn’t move to answer or give me any clue what he’s thinking.
“No, we don’t have it,” I say, lying.
“But Hannah has taken it, hasn’t she?” Jillian asks, leaning forward and looking suddenly interested.
“Yes,” I reply, “she has.”
“Does she have any serum left?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Let’s keep this on topic,” Mrs. Hightower says, casting a glance at Jillian. “If you want to talk about the serum, you’ll have to talk to the Chief.”
“Fine,” Jillian says, crossing her arms unhappily.
“Let’s assume you’re right,” I say, “and Hannah intends to kill me. What I want to know is how you know about Hannah and about Eden being a sham and why it is that you pulled me off that stage before I could tell the people the truth.”
“You were going to tell them what you think is the truth,” Mrs. Hightower says, “but thinking it doesn’t make it so.”
“If that’s the case,” I say, “then you tell me the truth.”
“That’s not always so easy,” she replies. “I’m not so sure how much of it you’re ready for. Sometimes the truth has to be fed to people in small doses.”
“Ain’t that jus’ the same as lyin’?” Jimmy chimes in.
“He makes a good point,” Bill says.
“Who’s he. anyway?” the nervous man asks. “I wasn’t told anyone was coming besides Aubrey.”
“Relax, Roger,” Mrs. Hightower tells him. “They’re both in this together.”
“Please!” I shout, slamming my fist on the table. “For the love of Eden, tell me what it is you’re all talking about.”
“Just tell him already,” Bill says.
“Fine,” Mrs. Hightower replies. “I’ll tell you what I can. First, Hannah isn’t exactly who you think she is.”
“Well, who is she then?” I ask, when she pauses.
“She’s twice your age, for starters.”
“Twice my age?”
“Almost, yes. She’s my age. She’s thirty.”
What she says doesn’t make any sense. Hannah, twice my age? No way. I’m beginning to believe that maybe these people aren’t altogether with it; that perhaps they’ve been infected with something themselves and are going a bit batty. In fact, the way the nervous man keeps twiddling his thumbs I’m sure of it.
“What do you mean she’s thirty?” I ask, once I’m over the shock. “That’s impossible.”
“No it isn’t,” Mrs. Hightower says. “I’m sure she told you she was sixteen, but she’s thirty.”
“She doesn’t look thirty.”
“Neither would any of us if Dr. Radcliffe had slowed our development with hormone blockers.”
“Okay, fine,” I say, “but I met Gloria, the surrogate who gave birth to her. So did Jimmy here. Didn’t you, Jimmy?”
Jimmy nods.
“And how old is she?” Mrs. Hightower asks.
“She’s dead now,” I say.
“Well, how old was she?”
“I don’t know,” I reply. “I hadn’t seen anyone older than thirty-five before I went up top. I know she was older than any of you. Maybe she was fifty.”
Mrs. Hightower raises her eyebrows. “And she would have given birth to Hannah when she was nineteen, so add Hannah’s thirty years and you’ve got Gloria’s age, don’t you see?”
What’s she’s saying is crazy. She has to be wrong.
“Why would they lie?” I ask. “Tell me that. Why would Hannah say she was sixteen if she’s thirty?”
“Because Radcliffe kept her young and waiting for you, and she had no choice but to go along with it. At least she didn’t have a choice until now.”
“Jimmy, does this make any sense to you?”
Jimmy shakes his head. “Ain’t none of this ever made no sense to me, though.”
“She’s telling you the truth,” Bill says. “The Radcliffes had Hannah thirty years ago, but Dr. Radcliffe wanted a boy to turn the Park Service over to.”
As soon as he says it, I remember Dr. Radcliffe telling me that he couldn’t trust a mother to make the logical choice when it came to his doomsday mass suicide. Maybe they’re not lying.
“Radcliffe was a male chauvinist and a murderer,” Jillian says. “Makes me sick just to hear his name.”
“What’s a chauvinist?” Jimmy asks.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mrs. Hightower says. “What matters is that he made her wait for you, and she resented it. Then, when you came and overthrew him instead of going along, Hannah saw her chance to take control, and now she’s taken it.”
“Even if you’re telling us the truth,” I say, deciding to at least play along, “where do all of you fit in?”
“We’ve dedicated our lives to the cause.”
“Okay, great. But what cause?”
“Protecting you first,” she says. “Overthrowing the Park Service second.”
“But why? How? I just don’t understand any of this. If you all are against the Park Service, if you know what the hell’s happening up there, then why did you stop me from telling the people in the square today the truth about Eden? And why are you telling them to go back to business as usual? Why are you sending retirees up to be slaughtered?”
“Because it isn’t time to tell them otherwise just yet,” Mrs. Hightower says. “They’re not ready. We’re not ready.”
“No, it’s much too soon,” Roger adds, nervously.
“Why aren’t you ready?” I ask.
“Because things aren’t yet in place,” Bill offers. “Hannah could flood us all out with the flip of a switch. And she would if she thought we were attempting to break free.”
“So what’s your plan then?”
I look from face to face, waiting for an answer, but they all avoid my eyes and look to Mrs. Hightower.
“Our plan is to tunnel out,” she says. “And we’ve been working on it for years. We knew Radcliffe and the others were getting sick, and we knew he was putting his hope in you. So our primary mission was to help the Chief rescue you, to keep you from Radcliffe, but that didn’t work quite the way we had planned, as you well know.”
“No,” I say, “I don’t know. Rescue me when?”
“The train crash,” Mrs. Hightower says, as if it should be obvious. “We planned that derailment. The Chief set explosives to drop the boulders and block the train from going through. You were supposed to be rescued and taken away that day. But not everything went as planned.” She pauses to look at the bearded man and he bows his head. “Anyway,” she continues, “after the crash the Chief assumed you must have been killed.”
“Who is this Chief?”
“It doesn’t matter right now,” she says.
“You just told me he planned the train crash that almost killed me,” I say. “It matters to me.”
“We didn’t have any better option.”
I look at Jimmy and shake my head. “I’m so confused.”
“Me too,” he says.
“So you have tunnelrats on your side?” I ask.
“A few, yes,” she replies.
“So they spy for you then? Is that how you know wh
at Hannah’s up to at the Foundation?”
“Yes. We had another scientist on the inside, but we lost all communication with him. We found out later that that was because of the flood you triggered that killed Radcliffe.”
“I didn’t trigger it,” I say.
“Then who did?”
“Mrs. Radcliffe.”
“Well, why am I not surprised?” Jillian says, as if I’ve just validated some belief she had long held.
“Whoever triggered it,” Mrs. Hightower goes on, “we were in the dark after until Hannah called the tunnelrats up to help her repair Eden. Then we got word from our spies. That’s why we used Red’s mistaken message to his girlfriend and the delayed retirements to orchestrate the strike.”
“Wait. You orchestrated the strike?”
“Of course, we did.”
“Then why did you lie to the people to stop it?”
“Because it had served its purpose,” Mrs. Hightower says.
“Okay, call me stupid,” I say, “but exactly what purpose would that be?”
“To get Hannah to send you down to us.”
“To get me here? In Holocene II? This was your plan?”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Hightower says.
“But why then?” I ask. “Please. Someone. Anyone. Tell me why. Why me? Why all of this over me? The train crash—the botched escape—Dr. Radcliffe—Hannah—this fake strike—this sneaking away in the night—why? All because I scored well on some stupid test?”
Mrs. Hightower shakes her head.
“Why are you shaking your head no?” I ask.
“Because none of this has anything to do with that test.”
“But you said it yourself when the results were announced, before I left Level 3 for the Foundation. And Radcliffe said the same thing when I finally arrived. A perfect score. Isn’t that what everyone said? I was the first perfect score.”
Mrs. Hightower laughs a little.
“It’s not funny,” I say. “Tell me.”
“That test was rigged,” she says. “I’m not even sure how well you really did, and it doesn’t matter.”
State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy Page 7