Then suddenly the vehicle disintegrated, Mom told me, and she was enveloped by a swarm of tiny silver bots that encased her in a sphere. When she woke up, she was laying in grass, and Elder Night and a few others from Harmonia were waiting for her.
“But you aren’t happy, even though you keep up such a good front that the elders and even your mom believe you are. And it troubles me deeply to see you like this. When I think of the things you’ve told me that go on in Eden, it fills me with pain, too. And anger. You left people you loved behind. Will you tell me about them? I know about your brother, but there must be someone else special to make you so heartbroken and bereft.”
“There was someone back in Eden,” I admit. “Two someones, really.”
She sits down on a bench in the shape of a giant tortoise. “Tell me.”
“I’ve mentioned them before.” I’ve told her the story of my life, more or less, all the events leading to my escape from Eden. But I left out a few crucial details. They were still too painful—and frankly too confusing—to talk about. But now the combination of this peaceful garden and Mira’s friendly interest make me feel more inclined to open up.
“I’m guessing one of them must be Lachlan,” she says, and I nod. “He sounds insufferable and irresistible.”
“Yeah, that about sums him up. He’s the strongest person I’ve ever met. If there’s ever a hard thing to do, he’ll do it. He puts everyone else before himself. He would have died to save the second children. Maybe he has.” I wipe away a tear that falls down my cheek. “He’s stubborn, too, and won’t always listen to reason.”
“Sounds like a good match for you.”
“But in his tender moments, the few times he’s opened up . . . I don’t know. I see the person he could have been if he’d been born into a peaceful world. An artist. A father. Anything but a fighter. I think he hates all the things he’s had to do to survive.”
“And you love him?”
“I do,” I admit. “But then there’s Lark.”
Mira’s eyebrows go up. “The girl with the lilac hair?” Of course she’s featured prominently in my stories, too. “She definitely loves you. From what you’ve told me, she’d stop at nothing to save you.” I’ve told Mira how Lark infiltrated Oaks to reach me, but I made it sound more like she was helping the Underground than trying to help me. I guess I didn’t fool Mira.
“I feel like I’ve known her all my life. She is Ash’s best friend, and when I had to hide all my life, I lived on stories he would tell me about her. When I finally met her in person, the connection was magical, electric. She has this open heart, this . . . goodness about her. She really believes in a better world, and would do anything to achieve it.”
Mira is silent for a moment. “There’s nothing wrong with loving them both, you know.”
“It means someone has to be hurt,” I tell her, gently stroking the pale pink petal of an extravagant blossom. “And whatever I choose, I’m going to be hurt, too, because either way I’ll be losing one of them. And that would devastate me.” I look up at her suddenly. “Listen to me, talking like it matters. I’ll never see either of them again.”
She looks at me strangely. “And that’s why I brought you here today.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want you to trust me,” she says.
“I do, of course.”
“I mean with everything. And that’s why I brought you to the most special secret place I know, shared with you the one thing I haven’t told anyone else, not my mom, not the love of my life, Carnelian. Because I need you to know that I can be trusted.”
“With what?”
“Your secret.” She waits, but I just look at her, taking care to keep my expression blank. “You’re planning something, Rowan. I know it. You’re not the kind of person to feel all that pain and anger and not do anything about it.”
I don’t answer, and she presses me. “Does it involve getting back into Eden?”
I almost slide off the bench. I try to answer, but can’t make anything coherent come out.
“Come on, I have eyes, and a brain. I’ve seen other people who were set free from Eden, and none of them acted quite like you. They had survivor’s guilt, maybe. They missed their families and made a big show about wanting to go back for them, but you could see in their eyes that they were relieved to be free, once they realized they had been in a prison. After a while, people learned to forget about the loved ones they left behind. Even your mom, and she was one of the worst. Almost as bad as you at first. But logic prevailed, and she gradually realized that there was no real hope of getting you out. Oh, don’t feel mad! She told the elders she was pretty sure you were dead anyway. I mean, a teenager alone with a whole city after her? What chance did you have? Like I said, she and the others gave up. But it’s a gradual process. Not with you.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, playing for time, trying to figure out my lies.
“You were a wildcat when you first got here—screaming, crying, running away until they had to sedate you. You begged everyone in Harmonia to help you get back to get your brother and friends and the second children. And then, all of a sudden, like magic, it was like you stopped caring about the people you left inside of Eden. Like all that passion and caring just got switched off. I didn’t believe it for a second.”
“Maybe I just saw the logic about giving in, like my mom did.”
“No way. I haven’t known you very long, but I can tell what you’re like. You have two people you love in there, plus your brother, and a ton of second children you consider part of your family. I know for a fact you haven’t given up going back to Eden and getting them out. You just decided it was better to be sneaky about it.”
I study her face. “Are you going to tell anyone?”
Mira doesn’t answer my question, but says suddenly, “I wish you had known my father. The things you tell me make me think of him. He was from Eden.”
I’m completely stunned. So that’s what Zander meant when he called her dead-eye’s dughter. I had no idea. “And you never thought to tell me?”
“I couldn’t,” she says. “I mean . . . you still don’t understand about how they feel about Eden here. They just barely acknowledge that it exists. My dad would never even talk about it. I only know because . . .”
She breaks off, and I have to press her to go on.
“No one knows. Just Carnelian, and my brothers and sisters, of course. My dad brought something from Eden.”
For a second I hope it might be some kind of technology, something that can help me get back into the city and help my friends. What she tells me is even more surprising.
“He brought amazing fighting skills out of Eden. He wouldn’t talk much about it, but I get the impression that my dad was very poor in Eden. That he must have lived in what you call the outer circles. He said people had to fight to survive. His family, in particular, were professional fighters. People would bet on the victor. His fighting kept his family from starving.”
I’ve heard about such things in the outer circles, barbaric bloodsports. But poverty can make people do disgraceful things.
“He wouldn’t tell me very much about Eden, no matter how much I asked. But he did teach my siblings and me how to fight. Most of them weren’t very interested, but I took it very seriously.”
“That seems strange, in a pacifist society,” I tell her.
“I know!” she laughs. “But, maybe it was just because he would never tell me about his past, I always kind of felt that there was more to my life than just a quiet existence in Harmonia. That even in this paradise, there would be something to fight for. Now that I finally have some of the answers to my questions about Eden, things he would never tell me, I think I know why I always had that urge to fight.”
“I’ve never seen you fight,” I say.
“I know. Who is there to fight? I practice on my own. Sometimes I make Carnelian partner with me. No one else knows. You’ll keep it a sec
ret, right?”
“Oh, I’m great at keeping secrets,” I assure her.
“The things you’ve told me about life in Eden also make me think about how my father died.”
She tells me how he developed a degenerative nerve disease, so that her once-powerful father slowly diminished before her eyes. The healing herbs of Harmonia could do nothing for him. “Eventually he couldn’t walk. Then he lost his ability to speak. But his mind was as keen as ever, and it tormented me to see that brave, intelligent man trapped in his prison of a body.” She’s weeping silently now, speaking through her tears.
“There was nothing I could do for him. I felt so powerless. I would have climbed any mountain, fought any foe to save him. But there was nothing to fight. When you tell me about the people of Eden, trapped in their prison through no fault of their own, or about people whose entire personalities are taken from them, like yours was, it makes me want to fight. To do for them what I couldn’t do for my own father—to break down the prison walls that keep people from being free, their true selves. I couldn’t fight a disease. I can fight a government.”
She sniffs back her sorrow. “Rowan, I know you want to rescue them, and . . . I’m going to help you.”
“WHAT ARE YOU talking about?” I ask, astonished at what Mira just said.
“I want to help you,” she repeats. “Whatever you’re planning, let me be a part of it.”
I’m immediately suspicious . . . and I hate myself for it. Mira has been nothing but open and friendly. But I’ve spent too much time with people who aren’t what they appear. What if she’s just trying to catch me? What if she secretly thinks like Zander, that the ills of Eden have to be forever contained behind the scorching desert? She’s seemed so accepting of me, but what if it is all an act? I search her face for signs of deception, but find none.
“The elders made it clear that it is against the law for me to go back to Eden,” I remind her. “We’re not even supposed to talk about it. If Elder Night thought we were scheming to go to Eden, she’d . . .” I don’t even know what she’d do. There is no jail in this peaceful village, no law enforcement. No law at all beyond the wisdom of the elders. We might be locked in a house for a while, given calming drugged tea like I was when I was first frantic to escape. But nothing truly bad would happen to us. Would it?
“I’ve been thinking about it ever since you arrived,” Mira said. “There were other people EcoPan set free before you, of course, but none of them had stories like yours. They talked about living good lives, honoring the memory of the fertile Earth. They talked—at first—about the things they missed. The lights, the music, the excitement. And the things they didn’t miss, like the crowds, the pressure to succeed, the long workdays, the one-child limit. But it didn’t sound too terrible. Even when your mom came, I didn’t realize. She was depressed for a while after she arrived. She didn’t want to talk much about what happened.”
But I told her stories that opened her eyes. “After hearing what you went through, what the people in the Center did to you, to everyone in there, it made me sick. I couldn’t imagine someone living in my brain, monitoring me all the time. And bots everywhere, spying. I couldn’t believe that Eden actually had slums, that there were people without enough to eat, living on the streets. It started to make me discontented with my own wonderful life here. Like you said: How could I be happy when so many people are suffering not more than fifty miles away?”
“Wait, fifty miles? How do you know that?”
“I overheard the elders talking before you were picked up.”
I frown, considering this. Elder Night is strong and healthy for her age, but I can’t see her walking fifty miles. And when I first arrived, after they drugged me, they certainly didn’t carry me fifty miles back. How did we travel? I asked Mom, but she told me she didn’t remember. She was only allowed to go to meet me if she agreed to be drugged, too. The elders kept the location of Eden a closely guarded secret.
“I don’t know whose fault it all is,” Mira goes on. “Is it EcoPan’s fault for interfering? Is it the government? The one thing I’m sure of is that it isn’t the fault of the everyday citizens of Eden. They deserve better. I can’t help thinking that if they were here, out in nature, away from all that concrete and artificiality, they would be peaceful, and equal, and . . . happy!”
She sounds as enthusiastically hopeful as Lark. It makes my heart ache.
“Maybe,” I say. “I don’t know, though. EcoPan told me that every time people in Eden were left to do what they wanted, they went wrong. They started wars. They allowed social inequality. They messed Eden up, and EcoPan had to interfere to fix everything.”
“Yeah, but that’s because they’re prisoners. How can a prisoner ever behave normally? If they lived out here, there wouldn’t be competition, or social pressure. How can anyone hate out here in the wilderness?” Her face is aglow with faith. “If we managed to open up Eden and let everyone out, they could act like the real animals they’re supposed to be. Animals don’t hate each other, or control each other. If the people of Eden could only be natural, they wouldn’t mess up their society.”
I’m not sure if I agree with her. I feel a little guilty as I say, “I hadn’t really thought about getting everyone out. I was mostly thinking of the second children, and Ash, and Lark.”
“Well, first things first, I guess. Once we get past the Passage Test we can scheme and plan.” She looks absolutely inspired now. “If we can figure out how to get anyone out, it will be a miracle.”
“I had an idea that maybe when we get word that EcoPan has chosen someone else to be released to Harmonia, I can go with the elders, like Mom did.”
“That was an exception, though, because EcoPan told them you were family. They want you to forget all about Eden. They know letting you that close would just set you off again. They’d never let you go. No, with that one exception, only the elders are allowed to go to meet newcomers. No, your best bet would be to get ranked first in the Passage Test. That’s how people become elders.”
With some regret we realize it is getting late, and we have to head back to Harmonia. When Mira has locked the garden door behind us, I say, “So if I come in first in the Passage Test, I’ll be given access to information I need to get to Eden? Now that you’re on my side, our chances of getting access have doubled. One or the other of us has to get first place.”
“Er, coming in first place in your group isn’t the same as being ranked number one.”
“What do you mean?”
She goes on to explain to me that the participants are graded according to their performance in the trials, so that technically someone comes in first, second, third, and so on. But that’s not what being placed in the first rank means. “It’s like getting a perfect score, versus just getting the top score,” she says. “We aren’t graded on a curve.”
To my surprise, I find out that even if I’m the best of this year’s competitors there’s very little chance I’ll be placed in the first rank and allowed to become an elder.
“It’s theoretically possible that several of us could be put in the first rank,” she says. “But highly improbable. Most years no one gets in the first rank at all.”
“I’d wondered about that,” I say. “I just figured all you had to do to be an elder was get old! But not all old people in Harmonia are elders . . . and not all elders are that old.”
“The youngest is about forty, I think.”
“Wait, so the last person to get the first rank was more than twenty years ago?”
“I told you, it’s rare. Carnelian did extremely well on his Passage Test, and he’s only in the second rank.”
I gulp. My chances at finding out helpful information seem to have dwindled.
“Don’t worry,” she says as we walk back toward Harmonia. “We’ll come up with something. Just do as well as you can on the test, and we’ll focus on getting to Eden after that. First things first!”
* * *
I call Harmonia a village. It is more like a forest of tree houses, scattered widely through the woods. Only from the top floor can I see the bubble-like structures that surround other people’s trees. It is strange after the tight-packed Eden to live in a place where most of the time I can’t see my nearest neighbors. Yet, it is familiar, too. In my childhood spent hidden away, I didn’t see anyone but my family. It feels comfortable being just with my mom, particularly after our separation. At least now I am free to wander to the other tree houses to visit my friends, or to the more tightly clustered buildings at the center of Harmonia that surround the village green.
I walk on the softly crunching oak leaves, and even though it has been three months I still marvel. I thought I was doomed to a life of concrete beneath my feet. Actually, I thought I was just doomed, period.
Everything about this place is a revelation, a celebration. I walk around in a kind of ecstasy, in awe at the complexities of the natural world.
Here is our house, a clear, glass-like structure built on and surrounding the trunk and high canopy of a stately oak tree. The house is virtually its own biosphere. We give the tree the carbon dioxide we exhale, the nutrients it needs. It in turn bestows on us oxygen and shelter.
Rebels of Eden Page 3
