“Daniel doesn’t care for me, though, not in that way.”
“One never knows. Plain Friends take their time.” Peace Hope added, “I’ll need broader horizons to find the kind of boy for me.”
Isabel looked at her, suspicious of the implication that her own tastes were provincial. “What kind of person do you like?”
“What I’d really like is someone like…” Peace Hope eyed a book on the shelf. “Stephen Hawking.”
Stephen Hawking, the brilliant twentieth-century physicist who wrote A Brief History of Time. Isabel had unearthed the book from her mother’s attic and given it to Peace Hope for Christmas. It stood out prominently on her shelf, its author pictured on the jacket in his wheelchair against a backdrop of stars.
“You’re right: you won’t find a Stephen Hawking in Gwynwood.” Isabel lay back on the mattress and stared at the ceiling where cobwebs nested in the corner. “That’s all the more reason for us to get out of here. To civilization—to Sydney. To the Uni…” Her eyelids fluttered and her head fell forward.
“My dad says that Sydney is more wicked than Babylon…Isabel, thee looks tired. Would thee care to spend the night?”
She shook herself awake. “Better not; I have to milk the sheep. I’ll borrow this, if you don’t mind.” She tucked the book into her overalls.
“Sure. Thanks for getting that fan done so fast. Take the lantern; there’s little moonlight tonight.”
“You’re coming, tomorrow morning, to see Teacher Becca?”
“I’ll come. Don’t forget the vigil at the Pylon afterward.”
That she would hardly forget. Isabel lit the candle between the glass panes of the lantern. She felt her way down the stairs and out the door, where she glared her defiance at the sky and at the angelbees that came out in greatest numbers at night. She swung the lantern as she walked, and an old rhyme came into her head:
How many miles to Babylon?
Three score miles and ten.
Can you get there by candlelight?
Yes, and back again.
V
BY MORNING THE air had cooled some. Puffs of cloud lined the upper ceiling of the Wall far above Gwynwood, shading the town. Outside, though, the sun still shone mercilessly upon the deadland.
At the Weisses’ house, Isabel tied the horse’s reins to the weatherworn picket fence, then she helped Peace Hope step down on her crutches. One of the older homes in Gwynwood, the main house had a solid stone foundation and gabled windows above. Becca lived in an attached apartment that had been built for her grandmother; she had preferred this partial independence, rather than share the main house with her brother’s family. The construction of the apartment was simpler than the rest of the house, with aluminum siding and minimal trim. Isabel noted immediately the window Becca must have meant to be fixed, to the right of the door: its screen mesh bulged apart from the frame, and the old spline hung out, disintegrating.
“No problem,” Isabel told Peace Hope. “We’ll just stuff it back in the groove and replace the spline.” She knocked on the apartment door.
“Come in,” came a voice from inside.
Isabel opened the door and helped Peace Hope up the step. The room was darker than she had expected; of course, Becca would not need light. The curtains of the picture window were drawn to keep out the heat. Becca sat at an old rolltop desk, reading, her hand brushing across the rows of Braille. There was a shelf full of books which Becca had used to teach the children math and spelling. Isabel still winced to recall, years ago, one day that she had missed seven times eight.
Peace Hope said, “Good morning, Teacher Becca—oh!”
An angelbee appeared in the corner, glittering faintly as it circled, right in Becca’s apartment. Isabel’s mouth fell open, and she felt cold all over.
“Yes,” said Becca, “we have an extra guest.”
Isabel said wonderingly, “How can you tell?”
“I can hear it hum and feel the air as it rustles by. Angelbees seem to come very near me, as if they know I cannot see. It doesn’t occur to them that I might have other senses. What do you make of that, Isabel?”
Isabel thought hard. Before she could answer, Becca added, as if to herself, “At least they do not chatter, which is better than I can say of some of us. Some who think I need company all day. This is such a small town.”
Isabel was taken aback.
“We won’t say another word, if thee’d rather,” Peace Hope promised.
At that, Isabel made a frantic face, but Peace Hope ignored her. The angelbee loomed closer, reflecting shafts of light from between the curtains. Its eyespot was a black rounded disk with a hexagonal facet cut across the surface. In the center of the hexagon was a pupil wide enough to stick a finger in. Isabel had noticed before that not all angelbees looked exactly alike; in particular, some would have a perfectly rounded eyespot without the hexagonal facet. The smaller ones, and the ones just budding off from a parent, always had rounded eyespots.
The darkness of the room unnerved her. She pulled the curtain aside—
There were three more angelbees hovering just outside the window screen.
Isabel’s hand froze, and her scalp prickled. Those angelbees hovered so close, almost as if they were…concerned. Concerned for the one inside?
“You need more light.” Becca rose from the table. “I will fetch a candle for you.”
“Oh no; please don’t go to any trouble.”
Becca moved slowly and deliberately to the sideboard. She took a candle from the drawer and stuck it in a crystal holder. Then she took out a kitchen match.
“Please let me—” Isabel bit her tongue, cursing herself inwardly.
Becca expertly lit the match. Her face with its hooded empty eyes sprung into focus.
The angelbee retreated to the far corner, rotating so its eyespot turned away, out of sight.
Isabel gasped, and Peace Hope stared.
“Our guest has taken flight?” asked Becca.
“The ones at the window left, too,” noted Peace Hope.
“As if they thought you’d burn the house down,” said Isabel.
“Curious.” With the match Becca lit the candle and set it on the sideboard. “It seems that our…friends can’t take the heat. Now why would that be, I wonder.”
Isabel thought quickly. “They float in air; they’re filled with hydrogen gas. Heat would cause the gas to expand, even burst into flame!”
“Excellent, Friend Isabel. I always knew you had a good head on your shoulders.”
Isabel glowed at this praise. “How did you ever capture it?”
Shadows lined Becca’s face in the candlelight. “As I told you, the angelbee was inspecting me, rather closely. It followed me inside, and I closed the door.”
Peace Hope shook her blond hair out of her face. “What else does thee know about angelbees?”
Becca sat in silence for a bit. “Why do you ask?”
Isabel’s pulse quickened. “We want to break through the Wall. We want to overthrow the angelbees and set Earth free of them.”
“Freedom. A noble task. I commend your ambition.”
“But thee must help us,” said Peace Hope. “Thee knows things about the angelbees.”
“And about the Underground,” Isabel added hopefully. “How do we join?”
“As to that, you’re already members.”
“I mean the real Underground.”
“What do you think ‘underground resistance’ means? Ordinary people taking things into their own hands, as you are doing.”
“But there’s an organized Underground.”
“Organized for what? Setting explosives?” Becca shook her head. “There is much to be done first. Much to be learned.”
“What else?” Peace Hope persisted.
“Everything else. We know the eyes of our masters, but where are their limbs? Where are their mouths? What do they want of us?”
“I saw a limb,” said Isabel. “A sticklik
e mechanical limb, jutting out of the cloud around the Pylon. It looked something like a leg of the lunar module, remember?” That was back in tenth grade.
“How curious. Now, they must have arms as well as legs.”
“Maybe that’s what they want us for,” said Peace Hope. “For our arms. Like we keep horses, for their legs.”
Isabel frowned. “Come on, Scatterbrain.”
Becca asked, “Would you care to stay for some tea?”
“No thanks.” There was cleaning to be done at the hospital, and planning for the Pylon that evening. Fire—might the Pylon be scared of fire, too? “I’ll be back with fresh spline for the window.” She opened the apartment door and held it for Peace Hope.
Peace Hope gasped. “Shut the door, silly!”
Isabel hesitated, perplexed. In that instant, the angelbee darted across the room and slipped out the door. It passed her head, so close that she heard the humming of the tiny wing flaps that vibrated beneath the sphere.
“Darn. I’m sorry, Teacher Becca.” What an idiot thing to do; she felt worse than Grace Feltman. “I’ll try and get it back here for you—”
Becca tensed suddenly. “Let it go, Isabel. These are the ‘masters of the Earth,’ remember? Indulgent though they may seem. You’re a grown woman, now, but I still have to answer to your mother.” Then she relaxed and leaned back in her chair. “Take care,” she said in her quiet, ironic tone. “Take care, lest the catcher be caught.”
At a quarter of five, Isabel had the horse hitched again, ready to pick up Peace Hope for their shift at the Pylon. She wondered briefly whether Daniel would have got any response from the Pylon. Probably not, no more than Liza had. She checked her supplies once more: the ladder, the tool kit, the shovel, and a stack of firewood. All she needed for her “experiments” on the Pylon.
Andrés came out with a covered basket. “I’ve brought you some dinner…” He stopped and stared at the ladder poking out of the carriage. “Belita, what is this? You are going to build a house, perhaps?”
“Never mind. Thanks for dinner, Dad.”
“You can’t scale an airwall with a ladder.”
“Dad! Don’t be silly, you’ll just upset Mother.” It was too late; already she saw her mother hurrying out to see her off.
Marguerite’s glance took in the ladder, the shovel, the tool kit. She took a deep breath and spoke slowly. “Isabel, this is supposed to be a prayer vigil.”
“Sure, we’ll pray. Peace Hope is bringing the Bible.” Isabel put a leg up to the driver’s seat.
Marguerite caught her arm and looked full in her face. “For God’s sake, Isabel, what are you up to?”
“Mother, don’t be bearish. I’m late already.”
“Do you want to get transported? You’re not going anywhere with that shovel.”
Isabel turned to her father. Andrés shook his head. “Your mother’s right.”
“You’re the one who said we ought to shoot them,” she retorted.
“I told you,” her mother accused him. “Putting ideas in her head.”
Andrés lost his temper. “Can I help it if the girl’s verrückt?” At bad moments he fell into German, from his immigrant grandmother. This moment being especially bad, he stomped off without another word.
“You won’t go with that shovel,” Marguerite repeated.
“I won’t go, then—and I’ll never set foot in that church again, either.”
“You have to go to Meeting, and you know why, too. We promised those—those outside the Wall.” Suddenly her mother was close to tears. It shook Isabel to see that. “Outside the Wall,” the skeletons were always there, though the elders never spoke of them.
“We’ve done our best by you, Isabel, the best we could. We’ve given you a good education; we’ve kept off talk of marriage. Please.”
“What education? How can I go to college and become a doctor like you did?”
“You can take college classes right here. Why not? The basic subjects, at least.”
“Really? How?”
“How do you think? We’re all college-educated. I’ll see to it,” her mother promised.
Isabel considered this. College now, here in Gwynwood. It seemed too good to be true. She could attack the Pylon later on—after she had learned some more physics.
“All right.” She tossed the shovel out of the carriage, then drove off.
Anna Tran’s house was coming up on the right, then the road opened into the clearing, and the Pylon appeared up ahead. Isabel tugged at the reins. Jezebel snorted and tossed her head as she came to a halt. In back, Peace Hope pulled her bag of books up over her shoulder. She wore her usual gray Quaker dress, the Red Queen tucked discreetly in her pocket for good luck.
Across the grass came Daniel and Matthew to greet them. From the looks of it, they had been sitting around ten meters back from the airwall, an overly respectful distance, Isabel thought. As Daniel’s eyes met hers, she thought suddenly of the pirate in the book and wondered whether Daniel could ever act that way. Startled at the idea, she shook her head and pulled herself up straight.
“Well?” she asked. “Any response?”
“Several angelbees hovered over us,” Daniel replied. “Perhaps they were moved by our prayers.” He seemed well pleased with the day he had spent.
“What about the return shipment to Sydney?” The medicines had to be paid for.
“It was gone, last night,” Matthew said. Isabel smiled, thinking perhaps Matthew could teach them college physics. She looked at Matthew curiously, tempted to ask why he had spoken in Worship as he had, but she did not.
When the two men had left on their bikes, Isabel jumped back up to the driver’s seat and urged the horse on toward the Pylon.
“Isabel?” Peace Hope called as the Pylon loomed close ahead. “Is this wise?”
“We want to get noticed, right?”
The horse whinnied and thrust up her head as she met the resistance of the airwall. Isabel stopped at last, got down and went to soothe the horse, stroking her mane. Then she helped Peace Hope down with her books, shaking her head slightly. “Scatterbrain, what good will all those old books do?”
“You’ll see, silly. You’re not the first person that ever wanted to break through walls.”
The first thing Isabel intended was simply to observe. Scientists always started with observation, then worked from there. So Isabel leaned into the airwall and observed the Pylon.
The Pylon seemed shorter and wider at its base than it had from a distance. It sat upon a smooth gray platform of unknown substance, level with the earth surrounding it; at the edge of airwall, an odd visual effect blurred the demarcation between platform and grass. The Pylon’s six sides, which by night appeared smooth white, by day showed a surface pattern of very pale colors, swirls of palest pink merging into orange and green. Isabel squinted and stared hard, trying to make out any symmetry in the pattern.
From behind she heard the flapping of pages. “The Book of Joshua,” Peace Hope announced, and read:
“And it came to pass, when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.
“And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.”
An uplifting tale, as usual. Even the poor sheep. How did good Quakers put up with that stuff, even if it was in the Bible?
“Scatterbrain, come here a minute and tell me if I’m crazy. What do you see, along the edge?” An oval path of pale green seemed to be shrinking, very slowly, until it pulled away from the edge between two surfaces, surrounded by the spreading of orange tint.
Peace Hope got up on her crutches and came to the airwall. “It’s all shifting,” she said at last. “Like when my colors get too thin and they dribble into the white.” With her gripper-hand she took
out a notepad and popped a pencil in her mouth. She deftly sketched the edge of the Pylon, copying the pattern on its face.
“Whatever could it be? I wonder if Teacher Matthew noticed.” Isabel was getting a headache and she had to look away.
Peace Hope was reading now from Jeremiah: “‘The wall of Babylon shall fall…’”
“So the Bible had it in for cities. We want to save cities, not wreck them. Listen—what do you think the ‘Tree of Life’ means?”
“The Tree of Life?”
“Teacher Matthew says it stands for power over death. My dad says it stands for Christ on the Cross.”
“Christ lives within each of us, every creature that breathes.”
“Really? Even the mice behind the walls, the ones we set traps for?”
“Even so.”
“Even the angelbees?”
Peace Hope closed the Bible with a thud. “Perhaps Shakespeare would please thee better.”
“I’m going to measure the Pylon: its height and width, its precise dimensions.” Isabel returned to the carriage, where Jezebel was contentedly nibbling the grass, presumably at peace with the Christ within her. Isabel picked up the tape measure from her kit and dragged out the ladder. Behind her, Peace Hope read:
“O Wall, full often hast thou heard my moans
For parting my fair Pyramus and me.
My cherry lips have often kissed thy stones,
Thy stones with lime and hair knit up in thee.”
“Scatterbrain! That stuff’s even worse than the Bible. It’s as bad as your Pirate book.” Actually, Isabel thought the Pirate book was rather good. She stood the ladder just outside the airwall and peered across the top of the Pylon, trying to sight it in line with a tree across the field. A couple of angelbees came sailing over, apparently to see what she was up to. Never mind—the fire would come later.
With much pacing and measuring from this tree and that, figuring and refiguring the geometry, she came up with a height of just under three meters, and a width, from edge to far edge, of one point eight. “That’s a ratio of about one point six. What do you make of that?”
The Wall Around Eden Page 5