They’ll do the same to us if they get the chance. They’d never take our word that we’re trying to stop Isaac just like they are. If they find us and we resist being taken, they won’t hesitate to slash us out of the equation.
Only when Freya finally says, “I think they’re getting farther away,” do we slow to a walk. The thin materials of my shirt and Freya’s halter top have been drenched through to our skin. The rain isn’t torrential but we’ve been wandering around in it for at least forty minutes. Our other clothes are back in the car and we can’t go back for them or it. Police will be on the scene.
Even the maps I was holding when Elizabeth was shot are slightly damp in my back pocket. Those maps and several hundred dollars are all we have left now. No car, no Elizabeth, no identification. There’s nothing left for us to start over with. We’re worse off than we’ve ever been, but we can’t stop now. We have to find Isaac and end this.
“I don’t understand these people,” Freya says sadly, her chin tucked towards her chest. “Elizabeth was on their side. She spent years trying to achieve what they wanted and they killed her like it meant nothing.”
Because she helped us. That made her a traitor and threw everything else about her into question.
I grunt in disgust. “They only think about the larger picture.” Just like Minnow. The warren and the U.N.A. government both have their own ideas about what’s best for the world, and no faith or trust in anyone who doesn’t share their ideology. A cold war of a different kind.
With Freya’s hair matted to her skull and droplets of rain slipping down her cheeks and the slope of her nose, she looks desolate. I don’t need to hear her admit it out loud; I know she believes me now. Seeing Elizabeth shot and having to run for our lives has transformed the things I’ve told her from a possibility to reality.
“I think Isaac’s getting wet too,” she says. “I can’t see him the way I did before. It’s hazy. Water dripping onto his face like he’s barely aware of it, coming in and out of sleep.”
Completely vulnerable: asleep, alone, and out in the open. We couldn’t have a more perfect opportunity. “We need to find him before he gets moving again,” I say.
Freya and I venture cautiously out to one of the main roads to find a cab, huddling together under a bus shelter until a yellow taxi rolls gingerly towards us, veering around a giant puddle that couldn’t have made us any wetter—only muddier. Inside, we question the driver about nearby forests. The closer to the Surrey hospital the better, since that’s probably where Isaac was taken.
“Somewhere natural looking,” Freya specifies. “Somewhere you can’t see the roads.”
The driver has one of those hula dancers stuck to his dashboard and he fixates on her hips, fondling his clean-shaven chin as he ponders our criteria. “Sounds like you’re looking for Green Timbers. It has lots of nature trails, wetlands, fishing, that kind of thing.”
“Take us there,” I tell him, fumbling in my pocket for the maps. Unfolding the moist Surrey map, I zero in on the square green space between One Hundredth and Ninety-Second Avenue. The Fraser Highway cuts right through Green Timbers but judging by the park’s size, the majority of it could be shielded from the sight of roadways if it’s densely wooded enough.
“Are you sure you two aren’t wet enough already?” the driver jokes.
Neither Freya nor I laugh; our minds are everywhere but here. I stuff the map into my pocket and lean back in my seat, automatically draping my arm around Freya’s shoulders. It doesn’t feel anything like summer today and her top is intended for tanning temperatures—she must be freezing. I’m the one who flinches when I remember my mistake. Although I’ve explained about our relationship, the only thing Freya can remember from our shared past before yesterday is a single conversation on the Thomas Jefferson grounds.
Self-consciously, I begin to reclaim my arm. I open my mouth to tell her I’m sorry, and Freya’s voice is equally quiet as she says, “It’s okay.” She leans into me a little, news radio covering our silence. Walgreen drugstores in the U.S. have ordered Anacin 3 pulled from its shelves after a man died from taking a capsule that may have been contaminated with cyanide. Two cosmonauts spent four hours outside their orbiting station conducting construction experiments yesterday. Three thousand tourists are stranded in Darjeeling, India, by protesters campaigning for autonomy in eastern India.
So it goes. Good news running into bad. The world never pausing to catch its breath.
Freya and I don’t separate ourselves until we reach the park’s main entrance off One Hundredth Avenue. Counting out taxi fare, I hear the radio newscaster announce that newly sworn-in President Nelson is establishing a national emergency task force on global warming. “The president cited a 1979 landmark report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences that linked the greenhouse effect to global warming,” he continues. “That report warned ‘a wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late.’ The new emergency task force will be headed by Senator Al Gore, who held the first congressional hearings on climate change in 1976. According to President Nelson, the National Climate Program Act of 1978 had ‘utterly failed in its aims and America’s environmental concerns must be tackled with vigor and determination.’” The radio station plays a clip of Mitchell Nelson declaring, “We are all stewards of this planet and must demonstrate that Americans take that duty seriously. Our home is this earth. There is no duty more fundamental than protecting our home.”
Before I was sent through the chute my knowledge of 1980s politics was patchy, but I don’t remember any 1986 emergency task force on global warming. Later, Al Gore penned a book on conservation, became vice president of the United States, and raised awareness of climate change through a documentary about his global warming campaign. By then regular citizens had lost control of the country and corporations ruled from the shadows, most of them not thinking twice about the future of the planet.
Maybe this time awareness among common people will reach critical mass before it’s too late. With U.N.A. power and money behind the environmental cause, maybe oil companies and other wealthy multinationals will be forced to consider something other than their own greed. It’s possible. Real change within reach. Despite the virus threat, I feel light-headed as I step out of the taxi, Freya trailing behind me.
My chest swells with hope. I reach back for Freya’s hand, the two of us running headlong into the rain—grassland meadows, hardy green forest, and a clear blue lake spread out ahead of us like a tapestry. Nature in all its glory.
Twenty: 1986
We veer off the trails, searching for Isaac in the hidden places most walkers and bikers wouldn’t spot easily from the paths. Weaving between trees, wet mulch squishing underneath our soles and knotted roots threatening to trip our tired feet, Freya and I hardly speak. We don’t want to give Isaac any advance warning. He must think we’re either miles away or locked up under U.N.A. guard with our memories being shredded. If he had help within easy grasp, he wouldn’t be lying passed out in the dirt. What is he waiting for?
Because of the rain, even the trails are mostly deserted. Aside from a few Douglas squirrels, two women in hooded jackets who lecture us about being underdressed for the weather, and a guy with a hefty backpack, we don’t see anyone. We’re thirsty, hungry, wet, and cold, and wondering if it’s time to cross Green Timbers off our list and try another park when Freya points out the crest of a khaki pup tent in the distance. With all the surrounding foliage I would’ve missed it.
We creep towards it, the weather-beaten tent looking ever eerier as we draw near, like it could’ve been erected in the park decades ago. A forgotten relic. I whip open the tent’s front flap, ducking to look inside. Near the back of the tent, three or more plastic bags are piled neatly on top of each other, the transparent top bag containing a wool sweater, bar of soap, hair brush, and can opener.
“These aren’t his,” Freya says, disappointed.
There was no tent in her visions, which made any
connection between it and Isaac unlikely, but I’m disappointed too. Isaac is vulnerable in his sleep but unless he wakes up and offers us additional clues, finding him could be virtually impossible. There’s no shortage of trees in British Columbia; he could be anywhere.
“Can we sit inside for just a few minutes?” Freya asks. “It’s so cold.” Her jeans cling to her legs like a scuba wetsuit. Neither of us has complained out loud up till now and I nod readily, scrambling into the tent behind her.
From inside, the rhythmic sound of the raindrops is soothing but the tent is so small, there’s barely enough room for the two of us. When we sit down across from each other, hunched over our knees, our shoes touch. We’ll need something to drink soon—we can’t keep running on empty—but for the moment it feels good just to be sitting someplace dry. If only we could start a fire and really get warm.
The tent smells like forest and spilt whisky. The latter is so familiar from Greasy Ryan’s it makes me feel oddly at home. “I keep thinking about the way they murdered Elizabeth,” Freya says, a chill in her voice that has nothing to do with the weather. “And how we had to leave her body in the parking lot like she was a stranger. Do you think she has people here who will miss her?”
I tell Freya what Elizabeth said about choosing a secret life. “But maybe she had some U.N.A. friends.” I only say it to soften the truth.
“If they were the only people she had it would’ve made breaking away from them even harder,” Freya says. “Maybe if I could remember the wipe I would hate her for trying to make me into a blank slate. But I don’t. She wanted to help us in the end. She could’ve been safely in Europe by now.”
Some decisions you only get to make once. But I don’t think Elizabeth would’ve taken hers back. “I can’t hate her either,” I admit. “But I can’t forgive her for what she did to you.” I glance down at my wet cast. It’s looser than ever. No protection for a broken bone. My wrist whines at me; I know it needs a doctor but finding one will be the last thing on our list.
“Does it hurt?” Freya asks, concern in her eyes.
I smile. “Only when I move.”
“Right.” Freya smiles too. “So you just sit tight here while I go save the world.”
Laughter races up my throat. For a second my body forgets to feel cold. Then a cloud passes over Freya’s face. “Maybe it’s better that I can’t remember Latham changing in the ways you saw happen to Kinnari. But I wish I could remember other things. You do feel familiar, more familiar than you should considering the wipe. Maybe that means there’s a deeper part of me they couldn’t make forget.”
“Maybe.” My esophagus tightens. Freya must sense how much I want her to remember. Even without that, and even if we don’t make it through this, I’d rather be with her at the end than anyone else. In a way nothing has changed.
There’s a thread running between us that stretches and slackens but never breaks. I feel it tug as Freya pulls her feet back behind her and leans in close to me. Her head tilts, our lips lining up just right. As much as I want this, I make myself wait. She has to be the one to do it. I’m not the one without memories; I’m not the one who is new to this.
When it does come, her kiss is as soft as new skin. More like breath against my mouth than genuine pressure. Then Freya opens her lips and lets me in. Our tongues are sweet and slow against each other. The same old parts finding their way afresh. It feels like the very beginning of a long story. A beginning I already know; the rest of it is the mystery. Then Freya pulls away, her retreat as soft as what came before. “In case there isn’t another chance,” she murmurs, her cheeks rosy with the cold and the same determination in her face I’ve seen there a thousand other times.
This one, at least, she’ll remember. What might be the last kiss.
“We should go,” she says. “The woman who sleeps here is coming back. She’ll be angry if she sees us.”
We scramble out of the tent and back into the wet, a husky figure in a hooded yellow slicker lumbering through the forest towards us. “Stay away from what’s not yours,” she shouts hoarsely. The woman’s still too far away for me to guess her age when Freya and I turn to break into a run. A hurled stone thumps onto the ground behind us. “Go back where you came from and don’t come back!” she howls. “This forest is mine.”
Freya and I stumble onto the nearest trail, glancing back over our shoulders to check if the woman’s following us. She’s not. “I guess we shouldn’t have gone in,” I say. “The tent is probably all she has.”
Freya’s frown sets into her cheeks. Her feet root to the soil underneath her feet, her toes muddy and her eyes looking beyond the forest at something I can’t see. I stop next to her, watching her face. She presses her eyelids together and lifts her face to the sky. Her gift is magic, pure and simple. No less so than the chute that transports people through time.
It’s finally stopped raining. Weak sunshine breaks through the clouds overhead. The forest scatters the faint yellow light, only the thinnest wafer of sunlight striking Freya’s red hair as I stand waiting.
Freya blinks at me, her eyes darkly alert. “He’s awake. On a paved pathway. There’s water on one side of him. Much more than the lake we passed here. Mountains across the water and a long bridge behind him.”
Vancouver’s Stanley Park. “I think I know where he is, then.” Everything she said fits. Lion’s Gate Bridge behind him. Burrard Inlet, a sheltered coastal fjord of Georgia Strait, at his side. Considering where Isaac was picked up, Surrey made more sense, but we’re in the wrong place. It will take well over thirty minutes to reach Stanley Park once we leave here. “We have to hurry.”
We retrace our way through Green Timbers, Freya describing the sense of purpose powering Minnow’s steps. Wherever he’s going now, it’s important. He’s finished waiting.
As we tear towards the road Freya flashes in and out of visions, seeing Minnow’s steps almost as clearly as her own. People on bicycles wheel past him. People on foot too. Stanley Park’s seawall promenade is one of the most picturesque walks in Vancouver. The second the rain stops people flock to it like ants to cracks in the pavement. With the Lions Gate Bridge at his back Isaac must be on his way out of the park. According to Freya he’s stronger than before he slept but not yet his usual self.
The muck underfoot slows us down. It takes longer than it should for me and Freya to reach the street and longer than it should for a taxi to stop for us. The driver makes it up to us in speed when we tell him we’re in a hurry. The cab hustles north over the Fraser River, races west along the Trans-Canada Highway, and then swings hurriedly through downtown Vancouver, Minnow keeping pace with us behind Freya’s eyes.
It’s possible we’re not the only ones watching him. The U.N.A. might be trailing him too—waiting for him to lead them to his destination—and as the car enters the park and winds along the seawall, my tension level skyrockets. “Totem poles,” Freya cries. “Like the one we saw in Seattle, but more of them. He can see them in the distance.”
“They’re in the park. We’re almost there.” I stare at the back of the driver’s head and tell him to take us to the totem poles at Brockton Point. He pulls abruptly over to the curb at the crosswalk ahead. Freya jumps out of the car and sprints across the street, moving deeper into the park. I crumple a collection of bills into the driver’s hand and stagger after her, opening my mouth to yell at her to wait and then clamping it shut again without spilling a word. I can’t give us away.
Twenty-five to thirty feet in front of me, Freya’s been stopped by a group of people gathered on the stony path. One of them has thrown his arms around her and I realize, with a start, that it’s Scott. Dennis is standing next to him along with three other people I don’t recognize—two women and one man. Freya’s smack in the middle of the chattering group, overwhelmed and struggling to extricate herself. She wouldn’t remember Dennis or Scott but they might be able to keep her safe anyway. I stream past them, Dennis shouting something at my back.
>
The sun’s brighter than when we left Green Timbers and I squint at the sight of the totem poles as they come into view. Freya and I’ve come to visit them at the park several times. They look like visions from a dream. Vivid. Other-worldly. Mesmerizing.
A ditch separates the totem poles from the viewing area, lowering the temptation people may feel to touch or deface them. The magnetic pull towards them is undeniable. Who doesn’t want to see the face of another world?
But today I barely look at the totem poles. My eyes flick to the tourists and Vancouverites surveying the native visions. Behind me, in the distance, lie snow-capped mountains across the water. Ahead of me, beyond the totem poles and the park, sprawls the city itself. Glass towers reflected in the clarity of Vancouver Harbour. This place is stunning any way you face.
But I don’t notice that today either. I know the views from memory but it’s Isaac that fills my eyes. His clothes are torn and blood-splattered but he’s steady on his feet, holding his spine straight. Even blood-stained and in rags, he has the bold bearing of a leader.
A figure approaches him from the left. Isaac sees her and turns. My jaw drops in disbelief. Seneval. Here. He let me believe she was dead, pretended he thought I could’ve been her murderer. Instead she’s standing in Stanley Park in 1986 with a knapsack resting on her back. Still in allegiance with him.
Seneval shrugs the knapsack off her shoulders to hand it to Minnow. I’m a second behind, paused by shock. Then I lurch to life, pebbles scattering under my feet as I run.
Neither of them has seen me yet and for a moment I have the upper hand. Cutting between Seneval and Isaac, I grab for the knapsack. The bag’s not heavy but not empty either. Shoving Minnow to the ground, I wrestle it out of his grip. Hard earth wallops his head, making him groan. “Is this it?” I shout, spinning to face Seneval as I jog backwards, putting distance between the three of us. “How could you do this?”
Tomorrow Page 23
