State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy

by Ryan Winfield

  “Oh, good,” she says. “We were hoping you’d be up.”

  “Look what I shot,” Jimmy says.

  The creature he holds up looks like some half-aborted monster in the making, and I can only imagine by the thin flaps for arms and the bumpy pink skin that it must be a bird he’s plucked of its feathers. Then I notice the bow and arrows slung over his shoulder. He must be right at home here.

  “I need to talk to you,” I say, addressing my mother.

  “Okay, sure,” she replies. “You look like you could use a little cleaning up. Here, carry these.” She hands me two towels. “Jimmy, would you mind putting things away by yourself while Aubrey and I go out for a bit?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Jimmy says, over his shoulder. “Dun’ hurry back. I might need to rest some anyhow.”

  There’s only a slight wind outside, and the sun hangs in perfect blue china skies, reflecting brightly off the stone and the drifts of snow. Despite the ache it causes my lungs, the winter air is invigorating. She leads me down a mountain path, away from the hut and the wall. I want to talk with her, but the path is only wide enough to accommodate us single file, so I follow along behind, carrying the towels, cautious of my steps, and look out over the wild world folding away beneath us.

  The path hugs the slope and eventually turns a bend and switchbacks down toward a mountain cove, a hollow cupped between surrounding peaks. In the center of this hollow, an oasis of trees and plants, some still green, stand out brightly against the surrounding gray. A gentle steam rises up. Birds chirp and flit between the spindly and leafless maples.

  I see as we approach that the steam comes from a set of pools—springs heated by some geothermal workings deep in the mountains. My mother peels off her coat and her shirt and lays them out on a flat rock beside the pool. Then she steps out of her pants and wades into the water in her underclothes, lifting her thick hair and tying it up on her head.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” she asks, smiling at me.

  I don’t know whether I’m more uneasy about seeing my mother half naked or having my mother see me. But the water looks relaxing, and after our hike across the Yucatan and the long flight here, I sure could use a bath. I set the towels down and undress as quickly as possible. When I step down into the pool, the water is silky against my skin, and the heat soothes away pains I didn’t even know I had.

  My mother leans her head back and sighs. She says, “This is one thing I sure would miss about this place.”

  I spin slow circles in the pool, enjoying the view of the trees set against the gray cliffs rising sharply behind them.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask.

  “Oh, about nine or ten months now.”

  “That’s all?”

  She nods. “You were supposed to come here with me.”

  I stop my spinning and look at her. “I was?”

  “Yes, you were. At least that was my plan.” Then she looks at my bare chest and asks, “How did you get that scar?”

  I lower in the water until only my head and neck are exposed. “I think maybe I should be asking the questions.”

  “Fair enough,” she says. “I didn’t get to finish telling you everything last night. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to now.”

  “Go ahead then,” I say.

  “I know this is hard, Aubrey. But you need to understand why things happened the way that they did.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Okay, then. I told you last night how I had arrived at the Foundation. Now let me tell you about how you arrived. When Robert—that’s Dr. Radcliffe—and his wife had Hannah with their surrogate, he was disappointed that she wasn’t a boy. He had funny ideas about the differences between women and men. Anyway, they had made several attempts, and it was Katherine’s last egg, so he immediately began looking at the fifteens below to see if anyone might be a suitable mate for her. If he couldn’t have a son, maybe he could at least have a grandson. I see how you’re looking at me, and I know how it sounds. It’s crazy. But you have to understand that to him it wasn’t. And when you’re around someone like that all the time, it begins to stop sounding crazy to you anymore too.”

  “So how do I come in? I mean, if he is my father.”

  “I think he had just assumed that I was no longer fertile. None of the others had been when they had reached my age on the serum. But then, most of them had taken it when they were already quite old, and I had only been twenty. Anyway, he was cataloging our manufacturing database for sintering machines when he discovered—let’s see, how do I say this to a boy?—well, he discovered an applicator system that I had designed for the tampons I was having sent up from Holocene II. I made it for me, but I also thought it might help the girls down below. Anyway, Robert cornered me about it, and once he realized that I truly was fertile, his relentless pursuit began.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “Love him? Of course not.”

  “So you just slept with him, then?”

  “Lord, no, boy,” she says. “Wherever do you get your crazy ideas? I didn’t sleep with him.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No way. He didn’t have anything going on anymore that way anyway. But he did have sperm left in the freezer. And he wanted to be a father more than he wanted anything. He made a convincing case about it too. He said I was a perfect genetic match. It was quite flattering in a way. He told me I could help save the planet with my egg. And I’m ashamed to admit that I was swept up in it. You have to understand, Aubrey, he had shown me videos of the destruction. Of what humankind did to one another before, during, and after the war.”

  “I know. He showed some of the same images to me.”

  “It’s still no excuse,” she says, “but I went along with it. And then as soon as I was pregnant, he sprung this whole thing on me about having to go down to Holocene II to have the baby. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “But why?” I ask. “Why not have me at the Foundation?”

  “Because of his wife, Katherine.”

  “You mean she didn’t know?”

  “She had no idea. And I think he was scared to death to tell her. You see, Hannah was around fifteen by then and just coming into being a sexually mature young woman herself. But he immediately placed her on hormone blockers and whatever other cocktail he and his buddies cooked up to keep her young. His plan was to wait until you turned fifteen, and then he’d call you up and have her perfect mate. That way he gets his son and his grandson, and his wife and daughter never know.”

  “Hannah doesn’t know?”

  “I don’t think he ever told her.”

  I suddenly have a sour taste in my mouth and I turn to spit on the edge of the pool. “Ugh.”

  “Did you swallow a bug?”

  “No,” I say. “But I kissed Hannah and she’s my sister.”

  “Half-sister,” she corrects.

  “Yeah, but still. And what was Radcliffe thinking? I mean, I don’t know much about it, but aren’t we given genetic tests down in Holocene II, just to make sure we’re not too closely related to someone we intend to take as a mate?”

  “Yes. And I said the same thing to Robert. But you have to understand what an egoist he was. He thought the risk of defective grandchildren was far outweighed by the chance that they’d be of—let me remember exactly what he called it—oh, yes, ‘superior intelligence’ he had said.” She pauses to stare off into empty space, as if seeing Radcliffe’s image there above the pool. Then she says, “You know, for someone who claimed to hate humankind, he sure did love himself.”

  “So how do we get to where we are now?”

  She leans her head back and sighs, then continues:

  “Everything changed when I had you. Actually, before I had you. As soon as I was down in Holocene II and away from Robert, I began to question all the things he had taught me. It really was a brainwashing. Then, as you began to grow inside me, it became impossible to maintain the belief that human bein
gs are some kind of virus that needs to be stamped out. I just couldn’t accept that you, this perfect person who wasn’t even born yet, that you were evil.”

  “You loved me?”

  She smiles. “I love you still.”

  “So what did you do then?”

  “That’s when I began recruiting.”

  “Recruiting?”

  “Yes, the others that you’ve already met—Roger and Bill and Beth and Jillian. You met Seth too, but not his wife, Nicole. They were students of mine. And they were all smart in their own ways. Seth and Nicole were older. They were up from Level 5 temporarily, learning how to teach so they themselves could educate tunnelrats. It began with them. Then I included the others. I’d keep them after for special classes, preparing for a plan that was taking shape already in my mind. You see, I knew then that I had very little time. That the minute I had you, I would be heading back up to the Foundation. And I knew that Radcliffe would call you up in fifteen years. I knew he’d brainwash you and make you into a monster just like him. And I couldn’t allow it. I wouldn’t.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “After I went back up, I secretly stayed in touch with the others down below. Beth and Bill stayed on your level, so they gave me frequent reports on how you were doing. I watched you grow up through them. I also befriended a few tunnelrats with Seth and Nicole’s help. Then we began to have them bore farther south and closer to the surface, hoping to one day be able to break out. But fifteen years passes fast, and before I knew it you were all grown up, and we weren’t ready yet to make an opening. That’s when we cooked up the last minute plan to break you out of the train. The tunnelrats helped me get explosives and showed me how to use them. I found a spot I could land in a glade not too far from the trestle where the train comes out of the mountain.”

  “The place where I wrecked?”

  “Yes,” she says, suddenly looking sad. “I planted those explosives myself and set them to detonate when the lower tunnel doors opened. It was just supposed to block the tracks and stop the train. I didn’t think it would do what it did.”

  “I nearly died when that rockslide came down.”

  “I know,” she says. “And Nicole did die.”

  “Nicole?”

  “Seth’s wife. She had agreed to help me rescue you, and she was in the car of retirees ahead of yours. I had sent her down a key, and when the train derailed, she was supposed to let you out and take you to me. I was waiting to fly you here.”

  Then I remember boarding that train for the Foundation and the retirees getting into the car in front of me. I remember a woman had looked back and made eye contact with me.

  “So what happened?” I ask.

  “Nicole and you never arrived where I was waiting, so I eventually left the drone and hiked to the trestle. It was getting dark, and the tunnelrats were already there working. When I saw the train ... well, I’ll just say that it was the worst moment of my life. I thought for sure that I had killed you. I didn’t know what to do. I knew Robert would figure out what I had done. I couldn’t go back, so I came here alone.”

  “Why this place, then?”

  “I had been here before. It was an old workstation of ours that we had abandoned after the two scientists assigned here committed suicide together. And I have to tell you that I nearly followed in their footsteps that first several months here alone. I thought I had killed you, Aubrey. My own son.” She chokes up and looks away. Then she takes a deep breath, appearing determined to keep it together, and continues. “Then I heard that you weren’t dead, that you were back. I can’t tell you how happy the news made me. I remember I went out on the wall there and looked up at the stars and I cried until there weren’t any tears left. I only hoped that Radcliffe wouldn’t completely brainwash you before I could get to you. But he hadn’t, and, of course, you know the rest, because here you are.”

  “This is a lot to digest,” I say.

  “Yes, I know it is. And you should take all the time you need and ask all the questions you want.”

  I lean back against the edge of the pool and look at her. She’s beautiful in an unconventional kind of way, and I can see how my father would have fallen for her. I’m torn between wanting to love her because she’ my mother and hating her for what she did to my father. The father who raised me, anyway. The thought of him walking into Eden to be with her when she was here the whole time sends a shiver up my spine, and despite the warm water, I’m suddenly cold. It’s horrific what he went through, and I’m not sure if I can forgive her.

  A loud screech turns my head skyward. An eagle cruises in wide circles high above our heads. My mother sees it too.

  “It’s time to go,” she says, wading over, stepping out of the pool, and grabbing a towel.

  She seems in a hurry to get back, so I get out and dry off as quickly as I can. As I pull my shoes on, I look at her where she stands, already dressed and waiting on me.

  “He was my father, just so you know.”

  She tilts her head and looks down at me. “Radcliffe?”

  “No”—I shake my head—“Jonathan VanHouten. He might not have donated his sperm, but he was my father, and I don’t ever want to hear anything different.”

  She nods. “Fair enough.”

  She leads me quickly up the return path—so quickly that I struggle to keep up, despite my legs being longer than hers. When we turn the corner, I see the eagle again. I follow its flight with my eyes and see it land on the outstretched arm of a man sitting a horse. There are several of them there on top of a distant ridge, mounted on horseback and watching us. Because they’re bundled up in brown furs, they have the appearance of being continuations of the horses themselves, as if they’re really strange, star-gazing centaurs from a reading slate fantasy book.

  “Who are those strange men?” I ask.

  “Just look ahead and keep walking,” she says.

  CHAPTER 18

  Stories and Wild People

  “I thought I seen ’em too,” Jimmy says.

  “You boys keep clear of those people,” my mother replies.

  Jimmy and I have decided to ditch our zipsuits. We’re sewing kilts from alpine deer skins my mother had in her chest.

  “If you want us to stay away from them, Mom, you need to tell us who they are. Otherwise, we’ll find out for ourselves.”

  I’m testing this idea I have that if I call her Mom, she can’t refuse me anything. She looks over from her computer desk, where she’s been diligently typing for hours, and sighs.

  “I don’t know much about them except that they’re wild,” she says. “They’re wild and they saved my life.”

  Jimmy and I both stop our sewing and sit with our half-finished kilts in our laps.

  “They saved your life?” I ask.

  “Now you gotta tell us the story,” Jimmy says.

  She smiles and turns her chair around to face us.

  “Okay, since you enjoy stories, I’ll tell you what happened. As soon as I arrived here, I knew that Robert would be sending drones to all of our old places to look for me—maybe to report back, maybe just to bomb them out. So I took the launch tubes off of my drone and converted them to fire by hand.”

  “You can do that?” I ask.

  “Oh, it’s quite easy,” she says. “You have to understand that down in Holocene II they think they’re building them for unmanned exploration. The drones are weaponized later at the Foundation. I had to hack their onboard programming, of course, to make them seek the metallic signature of a drone instead of the heat signature of a human.”

  “So what did you do with them?” Jimmy asks.

  “I sat up in that watchtower and waited. Day and night. I pretty much came in here only to eat and use the privy. It became an obsession of mine to shoot down a drone. I don’t know why. I guess I was angry at the way everything had turned out—about having thought that I lost you in that train wreck. But I also had a more practical reason to do it. I knew with reso
urces stretched as thin as they had been at the Foundation, if I was able to shoot down a drone, Robert would think twice before sending another. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it would buy me some time.”

  “Did you get one?” Jimmy asks.

  “It’s my story,” she says, “you either listen to how I tell it, or I go back to my work and you can go back to your sewing.”

  I slug Jimmy in the shoulder. “Never mind him. Tell us.”

  “Okay, then,” she says. “But don’t hit Jimmy, Son, even if you’re only playing. It’s bad manners. So, getting back to my story. I was using the radar on my drone to send up an alarm if anything approached, and every day I sat in that tower and waited. And every morning I’d see these riders on horseback, the ones you’ve seen now. They’d come to the ridge look at me. And every day they got a little closer. I was sure that they were sizing me up and making plans to kill me. They’re wild, I tell you, wild. Once, one of them sent his eagle down to the tower. It perched on the sill, filling the entire window, and looked in on me with eyes so intelligent that I half believed one of the men had turned himself into the bird. Then off it flew, directly back to its owner, as if to report what it had seen. I swear I saw that bird whisper in the man’s ear. But then I hadn’t slept in a while either by then.”

  “Do they all have eagles?” Jimmy asks. “And how do they catch them? How do they train them?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, “but let me finish, will you? One morning, a few days later, they dismounted their horses and came down to the wall and stood not a hundred meters away, taking counsel. They all had bows and one had a spear. I knew my time had come, and I made my peace with it. But just then my alarm went off. I grabbed my rocket and rushed to the window. Sure enough, I saw the silhouette of a drone coming in from the east, marked out against the sun like a bird. Of course, I forgot all about the men on the wall. I raised my rocket and waited. And I kept waiting. I wanted to be sure. Then, when the drone was sweeping in low, so close now that I could see the Park Service emblem on its nose, I fired.”