“Lachlan just barely survived,” I say. “What are the odds any of us would survive a round trip?”
Then I have a thought. “The camphor tree! It must have made seeds, right?”
“We thought of that,” Flame says. “We managed to get a team into the wreckage, but there was absolutely nothing organic left.”
“None of the second children who lived in the Underground preserved a seed?”
“We tracked down everyone we could. No one has one.”
“It was considered disrespectful to keep a seed,” Lachlan explained. “We didn’t have the resources to propagate another tree, so any seeds it made were destroyed.”
“Then it’s hopeless,” Mom says.
We’re all silent for a moment, envisioning the likely future. In time, the Center will send its forces against the holdouts in the outermost circle. The rebels will put up a brave fight, but the Center has the numbers, the firepower. They might try to preserve life at first, but when that becomes too costly they’ll simply bomb or gas the outermost circle and rebuild later. Or they’ll find a way to shut down Flame’s dead zones, so anyone who hasn’t gotten surgery to remove the lenses will revert to being a placid, indifferent zombie.
It’s a grim future, but I don’t see any realistic alternative.
WE BRAINSTORM ABOUT plausible solutions, but come up with nothing.
“I feel so powerless,” I murmur to Lachlan. So stupid, you mean, Yarrow interjects. “I rushed in here without really thinking, just charging forward, and somehow I thought that if I just acted decisively everything would somehow fall into place. That once I made the choice to do this, to be brave instead of safe and comfortable, I’d find an opportunity to help everyone here.”
Like I said, stupid. And you dragged everyone else into your stupidity. So you better get on the ball and start doing a better job. Why don’t you stop feeling sorry for yourself and think for a minute. I could tell you . . .
I shut her up as well as I can, focusing on Lachlan instead of the other me in my head.
“You found your brother,” Lachlan points out.
I look lovingly at Ash across the room, where he’s leaning close to Angel, arguing quietly about something. “I know, and that’s amazing. But there’s always something more to do. I have to find out what happened to Lark.” I see a fleeting look of discomfort cross his face. “And even if she is alive, even if I save her, how can I say I’ve done enough? The second children are still in danger. All of Eden is virtually under a spell. I’m just one person, but there has to be something more I can do!”
“Until we can find a seed, there’s not much we can do,” Lachlan says.
“Except hold our territory, and be ready to fight,” my dad says as he walks over to us. “Young man,” he says to Lachlan, clapping a hand on his shoulder with this weird paternalism I’ve never seen before. “If you can spare my lovely daughter for a while, I’d like to take her on a tour of our rebel circle.”
I stare at him. He’s acting just like a real dad, which is a completely new thing to me. It’s kind of embarrassing. What’s next, is he going to ask Lachlan whether his intentions toward his daughter are honorable?
“Of course . . . sir,” Lachlan says, and I giggle when his voice squeaks a little on the sir. He and I exchange amused looks to suddenly be in these conventional roles of protective father, pursued daughter, and suitor.
“We’ll meet for dinner tonight,” Flame says as we leave. “Before sundown. We eat before dark to conserve power.”
“Yeah,” Ash says. “If there’s a choice between a night-light, and having enough power to keep Flame’s disruptors going so we can all think straight, I know which one I’m choosing!”
“Are you coming with us, Ash?” I ask eagerly. Now that I’ve found him, I don’t want to let him out of my sight.
To my surprise, though, he declines. “I have some . . . things . . . I need to talk about with Angel. Er, provisioning matters. Anyway, I’m sure you and Dad have a lot to talk about.”
A little hurt, I say, “Okay, I’ll see you at dinner then,” and set off into the outermost circle with my dad, to see the rebel stronghold. Mom gives me an encouraging thumbs-up as I leave. Does she really think we can have a normal family?
I can tell Dad is uncomfortable as he walks by my side through the streets. He keeps up a steady stream of descriptive, one-sided conversation, telling me about the rebels.
“The outermost circle always did its own thing more than the rest of Eden,” he says, “and it only made sense to be as far as possible from the Center if we were fighting its policies. So as the rebellion grew, everyone who was sympathetic wound up here. First, they came from other circles to meet and organize. But later, when it became an open rebellion, many relocated permanently here. We have a mix of people from all circles. When the fighting started, we evacuated even more people out here, noncombatants and children. Even when the fighting was heaviest, we managed to keep the Greenshirts out of this circle. We kept our people safe.”
“Sounds like you’ve done a good job,” I say, reluctant to praise him.
“I had a lot of help. Flint—you know him, of course, leader of the Underground—was the liaison of the second children, and since I’d had more contact with the inner circles, I represented the rebels who originated there. After Flint was killed in the fighting, I took over some of his roles, too.”
“Flint died?” I ask, with truly mixed emotions. He tortured me, tortured Lark. But it was all in the name of protecting the second children he loved so loyally. I disagreed with his methods, but is intentions were good. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I say sincerely.
“We didn’t always see eye to eye, but he was a good man, in his way,” my father says. “In the early days of conflict, we fought among ourselves as much as we fought the Center. But since we moved out here, we’ve gotten along pretty well.” He chuckles. “I never would have dreamed that a rebellion is as much about diplomacy as it is about fighting.”
“And now the fighting has stopped?” I ask him as he takes me to one of the armories scattered around this circle. It is filled with weapons so that in case of attack, every citizen can arm themselves quickly.
“For now. As soon as Chief Ellena mastered the widespread enhanced mind control, there was no need. We lost a lot of our best fighters then. But strangely the people who came from the outer circles proved to be more resilient to the mind control than the inner circle elites. No one quite knows why.”
“Maybe it is because out here, in a circle of poverty and crime, they always have to be on guard. Someone is always trying to cheat them, or take something from them, or hurt them. So when the attack came from their own heads, they were more braced for it. They wouldn’t fall for things as easily as the soft inner-circle people.”
“We were soft,” Dad says. “Soft, and blind, and selfish. I knew, in theory, that there had been poverty out here. It was shameful in a society like ours, and it could have been corrected so easily. But like every other elite, I had my own concerns, and didn’t really care. Same with Chief Ellena getting increasingly out of control. We all saw it, but it didn’t really affect us, so we ignored it. I’m ashamed, Rowan.”
He gulps, and stops walking. “I’m so ashamed of everything I did. I’m going to spend my life trying to make up for it all. I know I never will. But I’d give my life if it helped make amends for the person I used to be. It’s just—and I don’t mean this as an excuse, just an analysis of human nature—it’s so easy to do the easy thing, you know what I mean? To go along, to let your money and power count for everything, and not really care about anyone but yourself. I fell into that trap. Now I know better.”
He takes me by the hands. “I’m not going to ask you to forgive me, Rowan. I just want you to know that I’m trying to make things better.”
“You got the second children out of the Center,” I say, letting my hands stay in his, but limply. Part of me wants to cry, to forgive him and hug him and be ha
ppy that I finally have the kind of dad I always wished I had. Another part, though, thinks it is too late for that. “That goes a long way.”
“I couldn’t get everyone out, though. Your friend . . . Ash’s friend. The girl with the pale purple hair. She was in one of the cells. When I got the doors open, everyone else streamed out, and I directed them where to go. I didn’t notice she wasn’t with the others until we were almost out of the Center. I tried to get back, but I was carrying two kids who were too weak to run, and by the time I got someone else to take them for me, the guards had been alerted and there was no way to get back inside. I’m sorry, Rowan. I think she’d been drugged. I think that’s why she didn’t run out with the others.”
That matches with what I saw the last time I saw Lark—sitting in her cell with an utterly blank expression on her face. What if they wiped away her old memories? What if she has no idea who I am?
What if she’s dead? Because I know that Lark would have resisted the Chief’s attempts at control with her last breath.
“Do you know what happened to her?” I ask.
He shakes his head sadly. “My first task had to be getting all of the second children to safety. And I was hunted myself. I only survived by hiding in the outer circle. They don’t like outsiders, but the second children told them how I’d helped them, and they decided to trust me, and gradually, the other few elites who have joined our cause. Once the fighting started, communication between the circles was difficult. We would smuggle out Flame’s disruptors, but had no idea who was getting them. Evidently, it was your boyfr—um, friend Lachlan. I’ve heard all about him, you know, and I have to say I approve.”
Not that I need your approval, and I don’t even know exactly what Lachlan and I are in the first place to be approved of, but . . . “How did you hear about him?”
“From Flame, and the girl who wants to marry him.”
My eyebrows shoot up.
“I mean Rainbow!” my dad says with a laugh. “Don’t worry, it’s good to have a little competition. And of course his brother told me all about him. He sounds like an incredibly brave, resourceful, dedicated young man.”
“Wait, Rook is here?” I ask excitedly. “Where is he? Can I see him?” I love that big lug of a guy who joined the Greenshirts just so he could get inside the system and protect his second-child brother. It’s nice to have a man who is so big and strong and well armed on your side. He must be a real asset to the rebels. I’m guessing he’s probably stationed on the border between circles, with a giant gun, ready to fight off any attackers.
Dad leads me to a big building painted in pale spring-green, decorated with multicolored flowers made from little handprints dipped in paint. When he opens the door, I see Rook on all fours, a bunch of yellow yarn on his head, roaring and batting at giggling children with his “paws.”
“Rook fit in immediately as Iris’s second in command in the nursery,” Dad says with a wry grin.
“I can see where Lachlan gets it,” I mutter as I walk in, remembering the way the children of the Underground used to swarm over Lachlan.
Rook breaks off mid-roar when he sees me. He stands up, his woolly mane ridiculously skewed, and gapes at me before bellowing “You’re alive!” and sweeping me off my feet to whirl me around in a dizzying hug. “I can’t believe it! Does Lachlan know?”
“Ow, easy on the ribs!” I say breathlessly. He puts me down with an embarrassed grin, and the kids who are gathering around us start to giggle. “He knows—and he’s here! He made it across the desert.”
Rook looks amazed. “And he came back? Did he find a way to get other people out? We’ve lost many people in the attempt, but if he managed it . . .”
I shake my head. “He just barely made it, and almost died when he reached the other side. I don’t think anyone else could have done it, but you know him. When I saw him there he was so dehydrated . . .”
“Wait, you were there, too? In the outside?”
I tell him a quick version of everything that happened. I’m not sure if the children should be listening. Some are second children I remember from the Underground, some are strangers, but all are too young to shoulder adult worries. But then I think, even if we fail, maybe my story will plant a seed in them. Maybe it will be the next generation that breaks free.
Rainbow has come in from her chores, and lords our friendship over the other children like a little queen. She commandeers my hand, then my lap, and as more children come in and demand to hear the story from the beginning, she takes over the narration.
After a while, Iris comes over to chase them away. “Enough chitchat, it’s time for play. Life can’t be all serious, even out here.” They obey her instantly, and I see that her matronly role hasn’t changed much from the Underground, just expanded. She cares for more kids, and feeds more people.
“They’ve been playing what Rainbow calls ‘Fire and Boom.’ They reenact the attack on the Underground. At first she made all of the inner circle refugee kids be the Greenshirts, but I eventually convinced her that wasn’t fair. And they play ‘Escape,’ which is like tag, but they call the person who is it the Chief, and if she tags them they have to do what she says, and help her hunt the others. But look at that!”
It takes me a while to figure out what the children are playing now. After a moment, though, I realize that they are playing out my story. Rainbow is me, of course. She pantomimes waking up in the outside, living world. Her look of amazement is heartrendingly realistic. Then the kids jump to Lachlan’s desert crossing, with all of the boys vying to be Lachlan. Rainbow wants to play this part, too, but then realizes that another little girl will then take over as me, so she grudgingly consents to let a gangly red-haired boy take the role of Lachlan. The boy staggers dramatically, and when he gets across the make-believe desert, there’s a scene of romantic reunion such as only a nine-year-old can create.
I laugh at their antics, but make sure they don’t hear. They are taking it very seriously, and I don’t want Rainbow to be offended.
“I’m glad you gave them another story,” Iris tells me. Meanwhile, Rook has gone in to play the part of the nanosand. He grabs them by their ankles and slides them backward across the slippery floor, while they squeal in mock terror. “I know reenactment is a way that kids deal with trauma, but frankly it was getting a little rough on me to have to see the attack over and over again in miniature form. This is at least hopeful.”
I watch them until late afternoon, then I’m shown to a small private room where I can wash up and relax a bit before the communal dinner.
I splash cold water on my face, marveling that even the water here is different. Water is water, some might say, but in the wilderness it is more complex, flowing from deep underground, bubbling up in clear springs. This Eden water has the same molecules, but it tastes different somehow. Too pure—artificial and flat just like everything else here.
There’s no bed, but a cushion on the floor provides a comfortable resting spot as I look through my backpack. I cuddle my childhood toy, Benjamin Bananas, a chimpanzee rubbed almost bare with years of love. There are a few articles of clothing, a hairclip, and some, but not all of my art supplies. There’s paper, ink, erasers . . . but my sketch pencils, charcoals, and chalk are gone. I imagine Ash might have given them to the children. It must be hard to keep them occupied in a rebel zone. I’m glad if my art supplies can keep their minds off the troubles for a while.
Then, in the few moments of respite before I rejoin the others, I flip through the slim, small notebook my mother once found hidden in the walls of our unique stone house—the house that had once belonged to Aaron Al-Baz. I read through his confession. He makes no apology for his actions. Despising and distrusting humanity, despairing of its ability to stop its headlong rush to self-destruction, he decided the best course of action was to wipe out most of it and start anew. He created EcoPan to run things after his death, to control mankind and continue the work of restoring and protecting the environment.
He saved the Earth from humanity, but at what terrible cost.
I come to the end, which is actually halfway through what had once been the original notebook. I can tell that the last pages had been torn out. Aaron affixed his signature to the last remaining page. I wonder what those missing pages might have said. He confessed to mass murder without shame—what else could he have written that was so bad he couldn’t risk letting future generations read it.
Looking closer, I notice for the first time that there are faint etchings in the back cover. This manuscript was hand-written. Turning the inside back cover at different angles to the light, I realize that these barely perceptible indentations must be the marks of whatever he wrote on the last page. The lines are too faint to read, but what if . . .
I dig through my art supplies, in case I missed something. But no, every pencil, chalk, and charcoal that might have helped is gone. I want to dust the last page to bring the etchings into sharper relief. But all I can find is a miniscule crumb of red chalk dust, neglected by whoever took my things.
Curious, I crumble that bit over a tiny section of the back cover, pat it lightly down, and then blow it away. I still have to angle the page, and squint to make anything out, but when I do I’m no less curious.
The Heart of EcoPan, it reads.
Then someone knocks at my door, calling me to dinner, and I decide this is a mystery to solve later. Tonight or in the morning I’ll ask Rainbow if she has any chalks. Then maybe I’ll find out if EcoPan is less heartless than I believe.
“They’re having a little party in your honor,” Iris tells me as we walk in together. “Nothing fancy—we don’t have much. But there will be some musicians, and an acrobat, and . . .”
Yawn!
Be quiet, Yarrow, I tell her in no uncertain terms.
Oh wow, an acrobat. Now that’s what I call a party.
I won’t have you disparage my friends, I tell her.
Oh, I love your friends. I just hate their parties. I miss the good old days.
Rebels of Eden Page 20
