by Meg Buchanan
It’s quite cool in this room. I tuck our hands inside the sleeves of my Swanndri. We go over to the first lot of shelving and look inside one of the plastic containers about halfway along. None of the containers have lids. They are filled with packets of seeds sealed in more plastic. On the front of the container a label says: ‘Carrots 10/13, 2037’.
The next container has a label with ‘Carrots 10/14, 2037’, and so on.
“It’s just seeds.” Ela sounds disappointed.
“It’s a seed bank. It has to be where Jacob gets the seed he grows. They all come in bags like this.” I pick up a bag of broccoli seed and shake it. The little brown seeds slide around inside. I put the bag back into the container.
We wander around the room reading all the labels. There is every type of vegetable seed you can imagine. The different vegetables are organised alphabetically, and there are lots of each type.
At the end of the room, there’s a small desk with two books sitting on it. I flick through the pages of one of the books.
“The log books. The last entry was two weeks ago in Jacob’s handwriting.” I go backwards through the book, and every month there’s an entry for temperature, humidity and a record of seeds taken out of the seed bank or put back in.
I keep flicking back and then the handwriting changes. I stop at that page. “It’s Dad’s handwriting, and it looks like Jacob took over from him when he left. See? He’s recording the same things.”
The other book sets out the desired temperature and humidity range for the room and lists each type of seed, its number, and whether it needs to be grown on and new seed collected. I keep going through the book. Near the end is a summary of what the seed bank is supposed to achieve.
“It says there are more than 10,000 seed samples of more than 2,000 cultivars of 300 different species in the vault.” Ela starts reading from the book. “Most of the seeds are packaged in special four-ply packets and heat sealed to exclude moisture. The storage rooms for those seeds are kept really cold. They designed the vault, so it could preserve the seeds from most major food crops for hundreds of years. Some of the seeds might survive a thousand years. Should we check all this for Jacob, the way he has been doing it?” Ela asks.
“Let’s just look.” I walk ahead, put the code into the keypad at the next door. “We’ll talk to Jacob and see what he wants us to do.”
“I wonder why your dad built it?” asks Ela.
“He must have thought it was important.”
We go into the next room and then the next and the next. All the rooms are set up the same way with the metal shelving, the containers and a desk at the end near the door. In each room the seed is stored differently. The temperature keeps changing. In some rooms there are cuttings not seeds. Those rooms are freezing cold.
Right at the end there is a small living area. It is just a kitchen, two chairs and a bedroom with two beds and a desk. On the desk there’s a photo of me when I was twelve. I guess that convinces me this is Dad’s work.
We wander through the rooms, back to the entrance.
I put the code into the keypad beside the entrance. The slab of stone tilts down again to let us out.
“It’s got to be on a fulcrum. It’s clever.” I start putting all the branches and ferns back in place, so the entrance is hidden again.
Chapter 19
WE FIND JACOB in the hospital grounds near a picnic table. He’s sitting in a wheelchair: pyjamas, dressing gown, slippers, his glasses on his nose.
Ela plonks herself down on a seat. “We went to the waterfall today.”
I sit beside her. We’re planning on leading up to the seed bank slowly to see if Jacob tells us about it, or if he’ll wait until he thinks we’ve got this puzzle he’s set figured out.
Jacob just nods then starts with his usual question. “Have you got through the documents?” he asks peering at us over the glasses.
“Yeah, but they didn’t make a lot of sense at first,” I say.
Jacob looks like he’d expected that. “Did you have a good look at the drawings?”
Ela nods. “Jack recognised them. He said his father did them.”
“Yes, Mike drew them. They’re for a seed vault.” Looks like Jacob is planning on telling us. Trees can’t have ears.
“We found it. The entrance was all covered over with branches, wasn’t it?” Ela turns to me and puts her hand on my arm as she asks the question.
I see Jacob’s eyes follow the gesture. He frowns but doesn’t comment. “Did you get in?”
I lean on the bench, rest my chin on my fists. “Yeah, Dad used my birth date for the code.”
“That’s where that number came from,” says Jacob. “I sometimes wondered.”
“And I guess that’s where the seeds we’ve been growing come from,” I say.
“Yes.” Jacob nods again. “We plant the seeds from the vault. We have to grow some of them out every couple of years so they stay viable. Some seeds will stay viable for hundreds of years if they are kept in the right environment, but some have to be grown then the seed saved again.”
“Why a seed bank?” Ela sounds puzzled.
Jacob leans back in the wheelchair, sort of easing his back, flaps his dressing gown over his legs. “Thomas worked out the problems with Genus 6 and decided to take out some insurance.”
“So, my dad was involved with building the seed bank too?” Ela leans forward, folds her arms on the table, rests her chin on her wrists. Sounds excited like she wants it to be something her dad was part of.
I watch a guy stroll past near us. He’s in the same dressing gown and slippers as Jacob is. Must be standard hospital issue. Jacob lets him go past before he says anything else.
“Both your fathers were.” He’s still watching the hobbling dressing gown guy a few trees further along. “It was Thomas’s idea and Mike’s design: a temperature-controlled vault with automatic ventilation and cooling.”
“Why?” Building a vault for the seeds isn’t the first thing I’d have thought of doing. The dressing gown guy turns around to start another pass near us. “Vector work pretty hard at keeping Genus 6 out of the country,” I say before the guy gets close enough to hear.
“Mistakes happen.” The guy in the dressing gown is just a retreating back again. “Your dads wanted to make certain that when we took over again there would be some seeds left that didn’t have the gene. Thomas knew he couldn’t trust the Administration or Eugenics Corp. It looked like they’d do anything to keep it a secret that Genus 6 was suppressing the fertility of the world’s population. He was worried that maybe they’d even release the Trojan Gene here to confuse things. Tom and Mike decided they needed to keep the seeds they were sure were free of the Trojan Gene safe, so they built the vault.”
“How could they afford it? It’s huge.”
“People helped,” says Jacob. “It was when Leblanc was redeveloping the City and the Outposts. Some truckloads of building materials went the wrong way.”
Must’ve been a lot of truckloads, like I said, the vault’s huge. “That means it can’t be a complete secret.”
Jacob nods. “Vector was just starting to build the Outpost, and Mike and Thomas knew the guy, Jules Willis, with the contract to move the building materials from the City to the building site.” He trails off as a couple of burly nurses in blue cotton shirts and pants come towards us looking like they want to check up on Jacob.
“Here come Bill and Ben.” Jacob turns to Ela. “Have you heard from your mother?” he asks. Bill and Ben must have ears.
Ela’s played the game before. She sits up, smiles at him across the table, like they’re just chatting. “I called this morning. She’s enjoying her holiday.”
Bill and Ben arrive at the picnic table. “Everything all right here, Mr Hennessey?” asks Bill.
Jacob introduces me and Ela, all friendly towards the two guys. Definitely part nurse part jailer. Bill and Ben wander off and there’s a bit of a pause before Jacob starts talkin
g again.
“They convinced Jules to falsify the records and divert some of the building materials to the vault.” Jacob’s still watching Bill and Ben. “At the very least Jules and his drivers knew about it.”
“Is Jules Willis Henry and Charlie’s dad?” asks Ela.
Jacob nods.
“Could they know about the vault?” I ask.
“I’m not sure,” says Jacob. “Everyone involved kept it quiet, but there might be rumours around still.” We sit there quietly. I watch a car go by slowly, vaguely wonder about electronic surveillance, decide Jacob must know it’s safe to talk, or he wouldn’t have told us this much.
“Did something go wrong?” I ask finally. Ela’s father got killed, Dad turned up badly injured only days before he left.
Jacob nods, then watches another car go by. The exhaust pops and bangs like a gunshot, Jacob flinches. “When the vault was finished…” Jacob hauls on the wheels of the chair and moves it about like he’s restless, the way some people will walk around the room when they are talking about something difficult. He stops a bit away from us and keeps watching the road without talking, then wheels himself back to the table.
“We decided they needed to blow up the Outpost to make sure all the records were destroyed. It went bad and Jules was killed. Evidence pointed to Thomas and Mike. Suddenly they were wanted for murder and terrorism. We got Mike out, but Vector got to Thomas before we could get him away too.”
Ela looks down at her hands, and I put my arm around her. She rests her head on my shoulder. We all knew her dad was killed by Vector, but hearing Jacob say it straight out like that makes it more real suddenly.
He watches us a moment then goes back to watching the road. “The night they tried to blow up the Outpost everything went wrong. They had you two with them. It was a cover – just two dads camping with their kids. We knew about the explosion. We knew someone had been killed but didn’t know what had happened to you or your dads. All we could do was wait. It was the worst forty-eight hours of my life.”
So, that was what happened that time my dad and Ela’s didn’t get back to us for a couple of days. I’m pretty shaken by Jacob’s story, and Ela’s quiet. What if they had never come back?
I guess eventually they didn’t. “Why build the seed bank by the waterfall?” I ask, just to get Jacob to talk about something else. He’s upset and so is Ela.
“They needed the thermal energy from the water to power the system your father designed, to control the atmosphere in the vault,” says Jacob.
About what I figured. Jacob looks like he’s relieved I didn’t ask anything more about his son dying, and considering he’d said, ‘we decided the Outpost needed blown up,’ he could be blaming himself.
“Do we need to do anything with it while you’re in here?” I ask.
“Someone should go and check things.”
“We could go back tomorrow, do anything that needs done.”
Jacob nods. Then we get a load of advice. He starts to go through a routine that involves keypads and security numbers in detail. He explains what we need to check.
“There are books inside each cell with all the protocols for that cell,” he says.
“Yeah, we saw them.”
“Check each area. Follow the instructions. See if anything needs adjusted.” And so on and so forth. It’s like he’s turned a switch and gone back to his normal self.
Then we talk a bit about the Willises and the helicopter.
“Hmmm.” Jacob looks worried.
*
I get home just as Mike drops off the Land Rover. It’s still dented, but at least it’s got glass.
“I’ll fix the dents and give it a new coat of paint in a few days,” says Mike. “I’ll let you know when to bring it in.”
“Thanks,” I say. Ela and I go inside.
*
We’re having dinner with Mum again.
“What are you doing tonight?” she asks.
“There’s a party in Waihi.”
“Whose party?” Mum spears a carrot, keeps her eyes on it, lifts it to her mouth.
“Scott’s. It’s at his flat.”
“What’s Ela doing?”
“She’s coming with me.” I’m answering her questions, but I know she isn’t going to like the plan.
“Is that a good idea?” Mum asks. She turns to Ela. “What would your mother think?”
“She won’t mind.” Ela smiles, all sweet and Elite. “Everyone goes to parties.”
I can almost see Mum thinking, ‘Ela is staying with me. She’s my responsibility, and Jack and parties aren’t always a good mix.’
Mum stands up, takes her plate into the kitchen. She rinses it and then comes back to the dining room. “If Ela’s going with you,” she says, “you have to stay out of trouble, and don’t drink.”
I roll my eyes. A couple of incidents and she is going to hold them against me for the rest of my life. I expect the drink driving lecture again. How if I get caught I’ll lose my licence again, but she restrains herself. I push my chair back and start clearing the table. “Don’t worry. I won’t drink.” I take Ela’s plate and stack it on mine. Mum always acts like a few drinks are a crime. She owns a pub, for fuck’s sake.
“Are you sure you want to go?” asks Mum.
“It sounds fun,” says Ela.
Yeah, lots of fun when the choice is come with me or stay here with Mum.
*
We arrive at the old cottage where Scott and some mates live. The doors are open. Kids spill outside, and music meets us across the road. I park the Land Rover down the street, a bit away from the streetlights. I open the back and get out the dozen beer I got at the bottle store.
“You told Patsy you weren’t going to drink.” Ela slams her door shut.
“Can’t turn up with nothing, and Mum wasn’t going to give me a crate.” I stick the box on the bonnet and go around and shut the back.
“It’s cold tonight.” Ela goes to open her door again. “I might take my cloak.” But the cloak is a bad idea. What she’s wearing isn’t exactly the way the other girls will be dressed. Her skirt is short and a bit floaty, a tiny singlet thing, shiny red boots, but at least it’s not that bloody cloak.
“No, leave it here. This isn’t a good place to advertise you’re Elite.”
Ela pauses, and lets her hand slip off the door handle. She sighs, nods, and leaves the cloak where it is. We cross the road and walk along the path. I see Nick leaning on the veranda railing cradling a bottle of beer. He watches us come up the old steps.
I open a couple of bottles and give one to Ela. We lean against the railing too, just the three of us. We watch the dark as more people drift into the house. Everyone is wearing a wrist shield. Nick drinks some more of his beer. His sleeve slides down his arm.
“Aren’t we meant to be here either?” Ela asks, nodding at his wrist.
“We’re not allowed in big groups. When the trackers see a group, the surveillance Hovers turn up.”
“Another rule,” says Ela.
“Don’t the Elite have that problem?” Nick asks without even turning to look at her. He just keeps watching the dark. I put my empty bottle beside the veranda post. Open another one, offer it to Ela. She shows me hers is still half full.
Nick turns around, leans his elbows on the veranda rail, and looks at the front window for a while.
“Fitzgerald came to see Joe again this afternoon.” Nick takes another swallow from the bottle.
“Have they found Lucinda?”
“Nah.” He keeps examining the window. “He told Joe to accept she’s gone.” After a while, he turns around again so he’s leaning against the veranda rail. Now he’s looking out at the dark the same as me and Ela.
“How did Joe take it?”
“Not too good,” says Nick. “He went nuts again. He was going to take on the whole of Vector on his own. It took me, Dad and Fitzgerald to hold him, to stop him getting in his ute to go try and find her
. In the end Fitzgerald said if Joe didn’t calm down he’d shoot him himself and save Vector the trouble.”
“That’s terrible,” says Ela quietly. I bet she’s pleased she’s not in that bloody cloak. I figure other people here know about Lucinda too. Nick has another swallow from his bottle.
“Joe and Lucinda were supposed to leave the night she was taken. Jacob and Fitzgerald had arranged for them to hide way up North somewhere until the baby was born, and then they’d get them out of the country. But Jacob thinks someone got wind of it and informed on them. It was probably the Willises. They go to the dairy all the time. They would have seen her. Joe should have told Dad when they first knew, not waited until you could tell.”
“How come you and Curley didn’t hear about the raid?” I ask.
“There was no warning; it just happened.”
“Do you know where they’ve taken her?”
“We think she’s in the infirmary at the Outpost.”
“The Outpost?” asks Ela. “The same one Jacob was talking about?”
“Yeah, the Headquarters for the Administration around here. Nick works for DoE. That’s where he’s based,” I tell her. “Have you seen Lucinda?” I ask Nick.
“Nah. Curley heard something accidentally. We’re not hearing much though. Jacob thinks Vector are getting suspicious about the Locals they’ve got working for them and have made a few changes. He doesn’t think me and Curley are going to be much use from now on.” Nick sounds angry again.
“Can you help Lucinda?” Ela asks Nick, like she expects him to fight back.
“Have you seen the Outpost?” Nick’s real abrupt.
“No,” says Ela. “But Jack just said you work there. I thought you would know what to do.”
“Yeah, I work there, so I know it’s got plenty of security. You’d need your own army to get in. And Locals get shot if they are found anywhere they aren’t meant to be.” Then Nick just walks away leaving me and Ela standing there. Maybe he just wants to forget about his brother’s problems for a while. Maybe he doesn’t like feeling powerless.
