A New Eden

by Quent Cordair

  At the back of the ledge, beneath the lip of the cliff face rising above, lay the shallow cave, its entrance partially hidden by dwarf willows. The hollow was just deep enough to provide protection from the elements for a larger mammal or two. It was a comfortable fit for one. Over his first few visits, he had fashioned a pallet of pine boughs inside. Upon returning, he had learned to poke thoroughly through the branches before settling in. The confrontation with the Ochotona princeps nevadensis, as he had later identified the diminutive rabbit-like creature, was not an experience he cared ever to have repeated. Popping out from beneath the sleeping bag, the ball of fur with eyes had backed him against the cave wall and scolded him mightily before venturing off to nest elsewhere. The professor’s glasses had fallen off and broken in the encounter. As he had failed to pack a reserve pair for the trip, the volume of Gibbon he had brought along went unopened, and with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire thus suspended for the weekend, he was resigned to amusing himself by the fire with reciting as much as he could recall of Beowulf, in the original Old English.

  So far, the current trip had been a relative success. His glasses were still intact. He had brought along an extra pair. There had been no confrontations with aggrieved members of the native fauna. For this evening, he had gathered enough greasewood and pinion to feed a larger-than-usual blaze, stacking the fuel well back from the cliff’s edge, closer to the cave opening: once lit, the flames wouldn’t be visible from the valley floor, but they could be seen by anyone at a higher elevation, from many miles away – certainly from the summit of the Hill.

  For tonight’s dinner, he had packed a can of his favorite chili, which he would attempt to gouge and pry open later with a sharp rock, as he had done the night before with the can of pork-and-beans, with partial success. He had forgotten to bring his can opener. He had remembered his cooking pan this time, at least, so as not to burn his fingers again retrieving hot cans from the fire.

  On his hunt for firewood that afternoon, it had been necessary to cross the icy creek several times. He had forgotten to pack an extra pair of dry socks. His bare feet were cold on the stone, but better cold than both cold and wet. He would dry his things by the fire as soon as the fire was lit.

  But the fire was not yet lit, though the sun had set some twenty minutes prior.

  The professor glanced north to the summit of the Hill, waiting. The day’s heat had climbed the face of the Garnets in a steady breeze, escaping the valley floor, the night chill already close on its heels. Sitting on the ledge’s edge, he let his legs dangle over the side and flicked his cigarette lighter impatiently. He had discarded what remained of the cigarettes purchased in New York. He had brought what was left of the bourbon. Tonight it would be just the professor and the stars again. And Aquinas. Setting the lighter aside, he picked up the worn volume and let his thumb follow the edge of the softened leather binding.

  Thoughts of Aquinas led, naturally, to thoughts of Aristotle. Thoughts of Aristotle led to thoughts of Alexander, the philosopher’s star student, the young man who had used what he had been taught to conquer most of the known world. As Alexander was away on his martial campaigns, extending the boundaries of the Macedonian empire from Greece to Egypt to India, there had been the occasional letters between teacher and student. Harris mused as to what Aristotle might have thought upon hearing that Alexander, after defeating the Tyrians, had crucified two thousand of his enemies on the beach and sold thirty thousand into slavery. Of course it was the way of the times. He wondered what the teacher must have thought of the student adopting the Persian title of ShahanShah – King of Kings. Alexander’s Macedonians, proud men that they were, had balked at kneeling and kissing their leader’s hand. King of Kings . . . A young man pushing so far, so high. Too far, too high. His men had rebelled when they’d finally had enough of conquering the world and they wanted to go home. Alexander was an Icarus plummeting from flight, dying too young. Aristotle had lived only a year or two beyond that himself – fortunately perhaps, in that he didn’t have to witness the dissolution of all that his student had amassed, the rending of Alexander’s great empire by those who followed.

  Was there no end to the cycles of civilization? The long, slow climb to peace, wealth, and prosperity, the brief and fleeting apex, the tumbling slide back down into savage brutality, the countless millions murdered or left to die from hunger and disease, the unspeakable horrors, screaming and silent, the torture, the rape, the beheadings, the stonings, the gassings, the burning in the ovens, the fields and mounded rows of the unburied, the worms, the flies. . . . The professor knew too much of history.

  The trip to New York had haunted him over the week since he’d returned. Despite the pleasures of visiting home, there was no ignoring that Manhattan had become more worn and haggard, no ignoring the expressions on the pedestrians’ faces, anxious and glazed. The country’s infrastructures were fraying, the economic cycles tightening. He kept up with the news. Crime was rising. There were race riots, labor riots, political riots – protests against seemingly everything under the sun. Terrorism, bombings, mass shootings. The bloodshed was increasing at an alarming rate.

  For someone of the professor’s learning and knowledge, there was no escaping the reality that civilization was collapsing yet again. There was no evading it, no wishing it away. Any educated person with any intelligence could identify the trends if they followed the news – if they chose to see. War would come again, more horrifically and on a grander scale than ever before, given the arsenals of terrible weaponry invented, produced, and cached since the last world war. Remorseless men would claw their way to the top to take the place of those who hesitated. The fists of power would clench and smash down. The world’s accumulated knowledge, wisdom, and beauty would leak away through the rotting bottom of civilization’s carefully cultivated beds, leaving only the choking weeds of superstition, the hardening clay of collectivism, and the arid, scouring sands of retribution.

  All of humanity was reforming into packs, each pack for protection against the others, with the barking and baying growing louder as the collectives circled, sizing each other up. Disassociated individuals were viewed warily, with suspicion, branded as a danger. If you aren’t for us, you must be against us. Choose! In the press and on social media, behind the slanted headlines and sniping innuendo, the snapping and snarling were intensifying, the pretense of civility crumbling as the packs grew and merged, the smaller groups absorbed into the larger. The collectives were circling and coalescing, testing and reaffirming loyalties, choosing leaders, sharpening claws, baring teeth. Self-loathing and fear were turned and projected outward. Homo sapiens was becoming increasingly less sapiens, devolving, seemingly doomed to another round of sub-civilized, tribalistic brutality. How dark would the next darkness be? How long would it last? How red would run the streets? How unexpected the particular details, the extent of the carnage?

  No one ever expected the worst. No one expected the worst to become worse still – as inevitably the worst always seemed to do. Death, decay and destruction come to all, to be sure, but how few could really accept that a terrible end might befall them personally – others certainly, but not themselves – and on the brink of death they find themselves wide-eyed, in blinking wonder and shock in the moments before the last breath is taken.

  The valley below seemed so peaceful, so placid, so far removed from the population centers where the violence and seething were escalating. Yet the essential ingredients were here too, were they not? Aurelia had once burned to the ground, had it not? He tried to envision the valley in flames, end to end.

  But one’s own existence could be abbreviated, by one’s own choice and at any time. One didn’t have to live to witness and endure what would come. Sitting high on the ledge over the valley, legs dangling over the edge, it was only eight hundred feet to the exit, should one wish to go. Just a slight scooch forward, a casual leaning out, a short flight down –

  He glanced again to the Hill, it
s flat peak purpling in the twilight. There was still no movement there, no sign of life.

  He tossed a pebble into the empty air and watched the stone’s short rise to its weightless apex, then the fall, the acceleration, the plummeting. He lost sight of it a hundred feet down.

  If a person were to leave his vehicle at home and hike all the way up, his whereabouts might not be known, his body might not be found before the animals and elements and time scoured and cleaned it away from the rocks below. To simply disappear without fanfare or mourning – it wouldn’t be the worst way to go. No fuss. Had he heard the faint ping of the pebble hitting the boulders below? Perhaps not. Eight hundred feet was a long way. He recalled the formula and calculated: with the acceleration, the distance would take about eight seconds. Eight seconds of free fall, eight seconds of falling free, of falling to freedom . . . But no, not to freedom – to nothingness. Where there is no choice there is no freedom, he reminded himself, and where there is no consciousness there can be no choice.

  Of course he had no real intention of making that flight. The notion had been merely a mental exercise, simply another possibility out of the multitude of possibilities considered as his mind churned on, as it always did, processing. Merely another academic musing of an academic mind, a mind that refused to be still – for better and for worse, in sickness and in health. . . .

  He looked out over the valley. One might fit all of Manhattan between the Hill and the south end of the reservoir, but how primitive and quiet the valley was by comparison, how sparse and uncultured relative to the thriving, pulsing metropolis that once had been his home. Now that he had finished tutoring Aaron, what could be left here for a professor of his credentials and capabilities? Could there be another student in the valley, in the entire state, who might equal Aaron Hale? He had seen no evidence of it. Was there another student anywhere in the country who might be worth his time and effort? Surely, yes, but where would one go to find him? He had placed a few ads, tried a few placement services. There had been some promising leads. He had followed up on none of them. Why on earth was he, Harris Grant, PhD, still here in Aurum Valley?

  Aaron Hale was still here. Why his star student hadn’t already moved on to New York or Singapore or Paris or London was a mystery to Harris. It was a subject Aaron wouldn’t discuss when invited to do so. The young man surely could compete with any of the ambitious minds in the faster, more competitive, more lucrative business world beyond this quiet backwater. Regardless of Aaron’s reason for staying, the student had outgrown his teacher. He was on his own now. Their tour through the Met together, all in all, had been more frustrating for Harris than not – a bittersweet reminder of what the relationship had once been but could never be again. Children grow up and move along.

  Harris had so much knowledge to share. Teaching junior-high-level subjects at the junior college hardly counted. Almost anyone could do that. He supposed he could publish papers or write a book about one of his many interests. He knew more than most about the history of theories of induction, about the odyssey of Aristotle’s writings from Antiquity through the Enlightenment, about the roots of political thinking leading to the American Revolution and Constitution. He spoke six languages fluently and could read five more, including Latin. Yet the subject of greatest interest to him, he couldn’t teach, he couldn’t write about. The subject – if it even could be called a subject, so narrow and fine was the point – confounded him as much as an astrophysicist would be confounded by a strange stellar phenomenon that appeared to break all the rules of physics. It still kept him awake at night. It was the thing at the heart of the battle lost – the loss that still haunted him, the thrust he had been unable to parry that night in the Socrates’ Cat.

  At the height of his popularity with the student body and faculty, he had been rendered speechless, defenseless. He had hesitated just long enough to have lost the debate – at least as evidenced by the derision and applause of those supporting his nemesis, and by the disappointed silence of his own supporters and fans. The memory, the aching frustration, the helplessness in those long moments of silence as that single, cutting, snarling question had gone unanswered – he caught himself leaning forward into the beckoning space. To what end, Professor – to what end?

  Professor – the title had practically been spit at him – to what end? He tossed another pebble into the darkening chill before he glanced once more to the summit of the Hill.

  But now perhaps there was some movement there. He couldn’t be sure.

  The valley floor was peaceful now, with the street lights and store lights and home lights coming up. How long before the cracks of the culture’s disintegration would extend here? How long before the warring ideologies would have even these provincials at each other’s throats? What catalyst might spark the conflagration of Aurum Valley this time around? Could his mind and soul survive another year in this godforsaken place? Could he survive anywhere? Did he want to?

  Come on, Aaron – he urged, as the shadows over the valley deepened and lengthened, as the darkness enveloped the earth, rising to consume even the summit of the Hill itself. Don’t fail me now, dear student of mine –

  Light the fire.

  * * *

  Maximillan Zarandona, Chief Engineer and Vice President of Operations of the Vasari Mining & Ranching Company – or more simply, Eileen Vasari’s right-hand man – waited alone next to the flagpole in the plaza, watching a Flock mother push a stroller along, a toddler helping, another child riding a tricycle alongside, a fourth tugging her hand and leaning with all his might towards the ice-cream shop. Max tipped his beret to her, nodding with a sympathetic smile. She smiled back wearily. If there was one thing the Obadites were good at it, he mused, it was making babies. In that respect, they were in a class with the Mormons and Catholics.

  Max himself had never had children. Having a wife would have helped, of course. There had been times when it mattered to him that he was missing fatherhood – at times it had mattered very much – but those times had faded into sepia. He had been content enough over the last few decades. The Old Country was still there for him if he ever wanted to return. He could finish out his days there, with nephews and nieces who would dote on him, and grandnephews and grandnieces he would dote on in turn. But he couldn’t leave Aurum Valley, not as long as there was Eileen, not as long as there was still the mission to which he had sworn body, heart, and soul over a half century ago. . . .

  He glanced up and studied the flagpole, waiting, as he waited on the evening of this date every year. Before anyone alive in the valley had been born, the town’s leaders had voted to install a gas line in the pole for this one night of the year – for Rising Eve. Opening the valve at the pole’s base and pushing the igniter button had been enough to light the torch-shaped nozzle at the pole’s top, but the lighter had failed years ago, and the gas line had long been subject to corrosion. Max had come down to the plaza several weeks ago to check the line, a yearly precaution. Getting the city to keep up with the necessary maintenance was like pulling teeth. The pretty gal at the Public Works desk had, as usual, been kind and forbearing with the persistent octogenarian, but no one really cared or wanted to deal with the torch anymore – any more than they wanted to deal with the only old man in the valley who still cared about the torch. He knew that once he was gone the town would let the gas line fall into permanent disrepair. Eventually it would be removed altogether, or sealed and forgotten.

  Retesting the valve this evening resulted in a soft, steady hiss. The twenty dollars Max had slipped to the maintenance supervisor had gotten the job done. The rusted click-lighter remained dysfunctional, but it had become habit to bring the barbeque lighter from the ranch for the occasion. Max glanced to the summit of the Hill and checked his watch. It was a half-hour past sunset. Still there was no flame.

  Two of his old Basque friends, from his shepherding days as a teen, were planted in their usual place, on the bench outside the coffee shop, hunched in their wo
ol sweaters and berets, canes resting between them. He waved, but due to their failing eyesight or, as likely, their failing morals, they didn’t see him. It would be in character for them to pretend not to see him, to avoid any guilt for not joining him for the lighting.

  He tested the barbeque lighter. In the valley’s early years, Rising Eve had been observed with as much fanfare as any holiday anywhere in America. Even when Max was a child, the plaza was always full for the lighting – families picnicking, children climbing trees and chasing each other with sparklers, the Basque bands with their accordions and drums playing old-country tunes for the dancers in their colorful traditional costumes, the American bands with their fiddles and banjos playing for the square dancing, the obligatory speeches by the dignitaries and politicians, largely ignored. Businesses and government offices closed for the day. Come sundown, everyone held a candle or a lantern or a lamp, waiting, watching the summit.

  A few years after the gas-line had been installed, the town council renamed the holiday “Founder’s Day” over the objections of many old timers. The Hales had refrained from engaging in the debate. Today, only a few of the older generation still bothered to pencil in Founder’s Day on their calendars. Fewer still remembered the holiday’s original name or the reason for it.

  Though the crowds, ceremony, and celebration had dwindled away over the years, Eileen had always come. Over the past week, however, she had responded to his reminders of the date only tersely. Since her hospitalization, she seemed preoccupied. Max knew better than to pry – she would come out with whatever was on her mind if and when she was ready. Of course he had never learned half of what went on in that pretty head of hers – never more than she cared to share – but in the meantime, the worrying was costing him sleep. As always when she seemed low or out of sorts, he projected extra cheeriness around her, trying to buoy her spirits. As always she rolled her eyes and shook her head at his little jokes and jests, expressing weary gratitude without needing to say a word. So little needed to be said between them. So little had ever been said. Perhaps too little, he thought again, for the ten-thousandth time, with the familiar pang. But things were as they had become between them, and after fifty years – closer to sixty now – they knew each other more than well, in essence if not always in detail. Too well sometimes.