“I know what you mean,” I say.
“Well,” he continues, “then one day I heard my name being called. I thought I’d lost my mind for real. But it was Jillian. Gridboy had brought her and few others in a subterrene. They were out in the jungle searching for me.”
“How’d she know to go looking?”
“Your mother had been in contact with Jillian up until that failed attempt on the Foundation. Beth got caught, of course, but she never did give up Jillian. So when the Foundation just disappeared from the grid sometime later, Jillian guessed that you all had managed something, but she wasn’t sure what. She brought a few others into her confidence and led a small group to come south to look for me and some answers.”
“What did you do once they found you?”
“I hugged Jillian and then ate everything in her pack. Then we went back to Holocene II. Engineering was working on a few drones for the Foundation, and Jillian had them modified to carry passengers. Then she had the tunnelrats deliver one to the jungle. They laid us out a runway with the subterrene, and we went to China looking for you.”
“But I wasn’t there.”
“No, but Jimmy was. And he told us what you and your mother had gone to do. He told us about the bomb. Then we knew for sure what had happened to the Foundation. You did it, Aubrey. You and your mother set us all free.”
“Maybe,” I say, “but my mother left me in the end.”
“I knew she would,” he says. “That’s why we’ve all been out looking for you.”
“How did you know she’d leave me behind?”
“Because of the E-M-P.”
“The what?”
“Electromagnetic pulse. Nuclear explosions like that send out powerful magnetic fields that destroy, or at least interrupt, electrical systems. That drone would have fallen out of the sky as soon as the blast occurred. There was no way to outrun it. Your mother knew that, so I knew she’d leave you behind to deliver it herself. And I was right, because here you are.”
Any lingering anger I had for my mother abandoning me that morning vanishes. My heart opens and my eyes well up with tears. I try to hold them back, but it’s no use. They just come and come and come. Bill pretends to be interested in something out his window, looking away to let me cry.
When I can speak again, I ask, “How did you find me?”
“I decided to look farther north today. And I’m glad I did. I noticed smoke from your fire. You can probably imagine my surprise when I touched down and found you half buried. I thought the worst at first. But other than looking thin enough to be a cadaver, you don’t seem at all dead to me.”
“Well, I feel dead,” I say. “I think I’ll rest for a bit now.”
Bill just smiles and looks ahead.
I pull the blanket tight around me, lean back in my seat, and close my eyes. A lot has happened. I’m sure it will be a long time before I’m really able to process it all. I only know a few things for sure. My father and my mother might be gone, but they loved me. I know this because they each told me. But more importantly, I know this because they each showed me. And that’s a pretty lucky place for a boy to be.
“Will Jimmy be there when we land?”
“I thought you were sleeping,” Bill says. “He’ll be along a little later. Don’t worry. We’ve each been out searching sunup to sundown and sometimes after, flying back just to refuel and rest. But he’ll be there. And, boy, will he be happy to see you.”
“Probably not half as happy as I’ll be to see him.”
It’s dark outside when the drone’s landing wakes me. I rub my eyes and look out the viewing bubble, past the runway to the camp. It’s not like one of our camps, or even the Motars’, because the tents are all perfectly symmetrical and made from synthetic fabric that glistens in the dim wash of LED lights. It’s clear they’re making these things down in Holocene II. Farther out, I see the glowing nosecones of several subterrenes working on some kind highway through the black jungle.
“How come they’re working out there in the dark?” I ask.
“Tunnelrats,” Bill says. “They refuse to be above ground any other time. Come on, wrap that blanket around yourself, and let’s go. I’ve got a nice bed for you to rest in.”
I nearly collapse when I step down from the drone, but Bill grabs my arm, holds me up, and leads me to the tents.
“Is Jimmy here yet?” I ask.
“Not yet. I’ll tell him you’re here as soon as he arrives.”
“I need a bath,” I say.
“How about some sleep first?”
“No, I want to look clean when Jimmy gets back.”
“Okay, then,” he says, veering me toward a different tent. “But I have to warn you, we don’t have hot water yet.”
The cold shower actually feels energizing. I scrub myself with several pumps of soap while Bill stands outside the shower tent, whistling a tune that I had been whistling myself when I was lost in the woods. I wonder if he had done the same thing.
After I’m done and dried, Bill leads me to a tent and gives me one of his clean zipsuits to put on. Then he takes me to a bed, pulls back the covers, and tucks me in. It makes me feel like a child, but I don’t complain. He sets my reading slate and my strike-a-light on the small table. Then he leaves, returning a minute later with a bottle of soymilk and some meal bars. He sets them beside the bed and tells me to eat if I’m hungry and rest as much as I can. He turns down the LED lamp, stops at the tent entrance, and looks back.
“We’re all very proud of you, Aubrey.”
“You shouldn’t be proud,” I say, shaking my head on the pillow. “Not if you knew how afraid I was all the time, or even half of the stupid and selfish things I’ve thought about.”
“Oh, yes, we should,” he replies. “We should probably be even prouder. You see, the world doesn’t judge people on their thoughts and fears, kid. It judges them on their actions. And yours will go down in history as having saved humankind. Now get rest. The sooner you sleep, the sooner you see Jimmy.”
That’s all he has to say, and my eyes are closed.
I wake sometime later when I hear voices outside the tent, but they drift off. The only sound remaining is my growling stomach. I reach in the dark for the soymilk, prop myself on an elbow, and drain it. Then I lie back and fall asleep again.
Rain pummels the tent roof, pulling me out of a dream. I look around in the dim gray light that penetrates the tent’s skin and slowly piece together the events of the day before and where it is that I am. I’m debating whether or not to try and get up when I see a flash of brighter gray as the tent flap opens. Then Jimmy steps inside. He stands there with his face cast in shadow and his furs dripping on the floor. He looks at me for a long time. When he moves, he brings over a folding chair from the small table and sits sideways alongside the bed. He looks at me with his right eye, and I see that he’s crying.
“I knew you were alive,” he says. “I jus’ knew it.”
I reach to wipe away a tear from his cheek but he grabs my hand, brings it to his lips, and kisses my fingers. Then he clasps my hand in both of his and smiles sidelong at me, his tears coming even faster. When I realize that his tears are tears of joy, I’m suddenly crying them too.
“I found it,” I finally say.
“What did you find?” he asks.
“Your valley. The one you dreamed about.”
“Was it beautiful?”
“It was more than beautiful.”
“Well, you’ll have plenty of time to show it to me when you’re better.”
“Jimmy, why won’t you look at me?”
“I am looking at you,” he says.
“I mean straight on. Why won’t you face me all the way?”
He pinches his lips together, closes his eyes, and sighs. Then he turns in his chair to face me. I’m too late to stop myself from flinching. I know he notices me do it because he frowns. His burns have mostly healed, but the whole left side of his face and neck is d
isfigured, as if the skin had turned to wax and dripped before solidifying again. His left eye seems okay, but the lid droops and only half closes when he blinks. His hair has grown back, as has mine, but he’s pulled his bangs forward and swooped them to cover the worst of his forehead. It’s strange, because the right side of his face is the same Jimmy, but I’d never recognize him by just his left side now.
“I’ve scared myself already with my reflection, Aubrey, so dun’ even try and tell me it ain’t no big deal.”
“Does it hurt still?” I ask.
“Sometimes,” he says. “Mostly when I’m tryin’ to sleep.”
“Will it hurt if I touch it?”
“I dunno why you’d wanna, but go ahead.”
I reach up and caress his scarred cheek with the back of my hand. It occurs to me that he got his scars doing something very selfless and very brave. When I remind myself that it is that bravery that they represent, the scars become beautiful in a way. I sit up, wrap my arms around his neck, and hug him.
“I missed you, Jimmy. I missed you so much.”
He rests his head on my neck.
“I missed you too,” he says.
CHAPTER 34
All I Ever Wanted
Three days after my arrival, Bill brings me to see Jillian.
Her tent is set up like a general’s forward command post, with maps spread out on makeshift tables and couriers rushing in and out, carrying messages.
“Have a seat, Aubrey,” Jillian says, indicating a stool.
After I’m seated, she and Bill take stools across from me, looking at me and smiling until I feel uncomfortable.
“How are you feeling?” Jillian finally asks.
“I feel fine,” I reply. “I’ve gained some weight.”
“Good,” she says. “You look much better already.”
Another courier rushes in with a note. Jillian takes her glasses from her zipsuit pocket, puts them on, and reads it. The courier stands at attention with his arms stiff at his sides and steals shy glances at me. He’s about my age, but he must be from another level because I don’t recognize him. Jillian hands the note back, nods, and he runs out. Then she takes her glasses off, tucks them away, and looks back to me.
“The reason I wanted to meet with you today, Aubrey, is we need your help. You’ve probably noticed that there’s a lot going on around here. What you don’t see is that there’s even more going on below in Holocene II. A large percentage of people don’t want to come up. None of the tunnelrats do, of course, but many of the others, especially the older ones, seem perfectly content staying below. And that’s just fine since all of our manufacturing capabilities are down there right now.”
“So let them stay,” I say. “Just give them the choice.”
“Exactly my thoughts,” she replies. “I’m glad to see we’re on the same screen here.”
“Was that all you wanted to talk with me about, then?”
“Not exactly,” she says.
“Well, how else can I help?”
She pauses and looks at Bill.
“It’s about the longevity serum,” Bill says.
“Okay. What about the serum?”
“The thing is,” Jillian says, “rumors have spread about it, and some of the residents are beginning to demand answers.”
“Yes,” Bill adds. “Without Eden to look forward to now, people are considering death for the first time.”
“That’s understandable,” I say, not liking at all where this is going, “but I don’t get what it has to do with me.”
Jillian clasps her hands together and leans forward on her stool. In a quiet, conspiratorial tone she asks, “Are you sure the last of the serum was at the Foundation when the bomb went off? Could there be any left somewhere else?”
“Hannah had the last of it in her lab, as far as I know.”
“And you don’t have it, right?” she asks. “In you. I mean you weren’t injected?”
“Would it matter if I had been?”
She shrugs. “Maybe. There might be some way to reverse engineer it by looking at your blood. It could be worth a try.”
The hungry look in her eyes reminds me of our first time meeting in Holocene II and how eager she was to learn about the serum even then. It reminds me a little of Hannah too.
“No,” I say, deciding some lies might be okay. “I never had it. None of us did. Only Hannah. And she’s gone.”
Bill looks relieved to hear it. Jillian looks disappointed, but she appears to believe me.
“Would you be willing to go down and tell people that for us?” she asks. “It would really help.”
“Go down to Holocene II?”
“Yes. You’ve become a sort of hero, in case you haven’t noticed. I think they’d listen to you.”
“No way,” I say, “I’m never going back down there again.”
“That seems awfully selfish, doesn’t it?” she says.
“Selfish?” I ask. “Really? How dare you even say that.”
Jillian narrows her eyes at me, but Bill jumps in before she can say anything else.
“He doesn’t need to go,” he says. “I’ll tell them myself what he said. That will have to be good enough. Come on, Aubrey, you look like you could use some more rest.” He gets up from his stool and waves me to the door.
Before we exit the tent, Jillian says, “Make sure he’s ready for the matchmaking. He needs to lead by example now.”
I look back, but her head is already bent over her maps.
Once we’re outside the tent, I turn to Bill and ask, “What did she mean by matchmaking?”
“Oh, it’s tomorrow,” he says. “Most of the Holocene II residents adventurous enough to make their new home here on the surface are young, so we’re pairing up the single ones with mates. You’ll be fine. Everyone wants to be with the hero.”
That night I sit in bed with the lamp on and my mother’s reading slate in my lap. It takes me nearly an hour to build up the courage to even turn it on. Then I scroll though the library and click on the title she told me about.
State of Nature
By
Aubrey Bradford
A treatise on humankind’s failure to find a long term, sustainable means of peaceful existence on the planet; and a proposal for a new state of nature that will allow our species to remain extant and do just that.
The screen goes blank when I turn the reading slate off. I’m not sure why, but I just can’t read it. Maybe because I remember sitting with my mother on the crater edge when she told me about having written it, and I remember something she said that bothered me. She said that Dr. Radcliffe wasn’t all wrong. I guess I’m worried that this new state of nature she’s proposing might include things that will change the way I feel about her. And maybe I don’t want to read it because I also remember her saying that I was ready now to lead. I don’t want to lead—not this new state of nature, not anything.
Bur what do I want?
I set the slate aside and reach for the lamp.
Before I switch it off, I look across the tent at Jimmy, sound asleep with a peaceful look on his face.
The matchmaking ceremony takes place the next morning in front of the temple. It’s the first time I’ve seen everyone in one place. All these people milling about a two thousand year old temple wearing Holocene II zipsuits makes for a strange sight. It looks like some invasion by an alien race. It’s obvious that some of them have just arrived as new recruits—brought up on the subterrenes that cruise the highway through the jungle, ferrying supplies and people between the opening and the camp—because they’re still looking around with wide-eyed wonder at the blue sky and green jungle that surrounds them.
Jimmy stands next to me with a scarf around his neck and his hair combed over his forehead. He’s wearing a zipsuit too. He looks about as nervous as I feel.
“I dun’ really understand what we’re doin’,” he says.
“I’m not entirely sure either,” I reply
, “but I think they want us to find partners so we can start a new society up here.”
“I dun’ remember anyone askin’ if that’s what I wanted.”
“Well, let’s just see what happens.”
When Bill and Jillian arrive, they have those of us who are single and participating form into lines in front of the temple—boys on one side, facing the girls; and girls on the other side, facing the boys. There are about thirty of each of us. Genetic tests have been run from the databases in Holocene II, and all the boys get either a blue or a red ribbon pinned on their chest. I’m red. Jimmy gets one of each, since he’s compatible with anyone. The girls are each given three ribbons, either red or blue, depending on the results of their genetic tests.
Jillian paces between the lines and explains all of this to us as we look past her, girls looking up and down the line of boys, boys looking up and down the line of girls. The older couples watch from the temple steps with great interest, as if some kind of sporting event were about to take place.
“Now,” Jillian says. “Here’s how this works. The girls get to choose first. As I call your name, ladies, step forward and give a ribbon to your first choice partner. Red for red, blue for blue. Boys, if she gives you a ribbon and you accept her as your mate, take her hand and leave the line. If not, keep the ribbon, and the girl will move on to her second choice, and so on. When a girl is out of ribbons, and if no boy has accepted, she returns to her line alone. The boys who end up without mates will pick from them later, going in order of who has the most ribbons. We’ll do this until everyone is paired. Here we go”—she pauses to look at her clipboard—“the first to choose, based on her tests scores, of course, is Laylani.”
Laylani steps forward with her three red ribbons, walks straight to me, and hands me one. I look at the ribbon in my hand and then at her. I shake my head. She frowns and moves down the line to another young man. He smiles, takes her hand, and they leave the line together. Then Jillian calls another girl, this one with a blue ribbon, and she brings it to a young man she had been making mutual eyes with all morning. He immediately accepts, and they too leave hand in hand. This goes on for some time. Every girl called out with red ribbons offers her first one to me. It quickly becomes obvious that they all think of me as some kind of hero, just like Jillian had said. But I turn each of them down with a silent shake of my head.
State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy Page 28