But they don’t take me into the killing room, at least not right away. Instead, they drag me into Eden’s control room, now remarkably restored from the fire Jimmy and I set, and slump me into a chair. As my eyes adjust to the light, I look about at sour-faced tunnelrats and at the new equipment in the room. It’s amazing that they’ve restored it so quickly. I lean forward and look through the window into the pool of red-glowing liquid where my mother and father’s brains had been enslaved before Jimmy and I blew it up. It has been refreshed, and countless new hoses turn and coil in the soft, gelatinous current, like serpents just waiting for new brains to latch onto. I can’t believe Eden’s back in business.
The door opens and Hannah walks in, followed by the professor. She’s wearing a pressed white zipsuit, with her red hair pulled back and tied in a ponytail. She looks professional and competent, like some futuristic executioner, especially next to the professor, who looks more frazzled than ever with his wild hair and his missing teeth.
“You need to get water down to Red right now,” I say.
Hannah smiles, pulls out a chair from the control panel, and sits facing me. She says, “We’ve got to work on your manners, Aubrey. Once again, you don’t even say hello before you start barking at me.”
“He’s dying down there. You need to bring him food and water. Please.”
“Well, since you asked nicely.” She nods to the professor. “Get them some algaecrisps and something to drink.”
“Have the rats do it,” he says.
Hannah shakes her head. “I’m telling you to do it. Now get on it. And do the other thing too. Just in case.”
The professor reluctantly marches to the door and leaves the room. I can only hope he goes down there alone and that Jimmy can have his way with him. I doubt he’d be that stupid though, especially after what happened on the dock.
Hannah looks me over and then sighs. “Aubrey, Aubrey, Aubrey. What’s going on with you right now?”
“What’s going on with me? How about what in the hell’s going on with you? You send Jimmy and me out there with that crazy fool, filled with misinformation. You lie about wanting to free my people. You damn near kill us. You did kill Junior. And you killed all those people ... even your own brother, Hannah. You killed your own brother.”
“I didn’t intend for him to die,” she says, as if that were her only crime. “I thought maybe you’d get him to come back with you. I was actually hoping to meet him.”
“Well, he cut off his hand to do the right thing, Hannah. And then he died for it. You know what? I’m almost glad he didn’t get to meet you, because you’d be a disappointment to a good man like him. You didn’t deserve to meet him.”
Hannah leaps up from her chair and points her finger at me, as if she’d like to stab me with it. “You have no right to say that to me, Aubrey! No right.”
“I have all the right in the world, Hannah. I don’t even know who you are. And I don’t think I ever really did.”
When I finish speaking, I realize that I’m standing too. A tunnelrat steps over and pushes me back down into my chair.
“You and I are no different,” she finally says.
“Oh, yes, we are. I’m nothing like you.”
“We do what we have to do,” she says. “Just like the wave. You killed my father and Tom and all the scientists down here because you thought you had no choice.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, why did you do it then?”
“No,”—I shake my head—“I didn’t do it. I didn’t set off that wave, Hannah. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill one life, even to save many.”
“Well, then, who did, if it wasn’t you?”
“Your mother did.”
“You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not. She came down and set off the wave, and she gave me those vials of longevity serum, and she said we needed to do the right thing this time, Hannah. The right thing. That’s what she said. And none of what you’re doing here is the right thing, and I know you know it too.”
For a moment, Hannah looks sad. Maybe even remorseful. Ten years seem to erase from her face, and she looks once again like the girl I first saw hitting tennis balls. She paces the room, her hands clasped behind her back and her eyes focused on the floor. The tunnelrats’ heads swivel to follow her, as if entranced by her movements. But when she stops and looks up at me again, her expression has transformed back to its practiced passivity, her chin slightly raised and a half smile on her mouth. Wherever she’s gone, there’s no coming back.
She says, “My mother was sick, and sick people do irrational things.”
“Yeah, right,” I reply. “Because your father killing Gloria and then trying to flood Holocene II was completely rational.”
As soon as I mention Holocene II, I remember what Red said to me about being responsible for killing everyone.
“Did you flood Holocene II, Hannah?”
Hannah leans on the edge of the control panel, her hands resting on her thighs and her green eyes drilling into mine.
“I’m glad you asked that,” she says, “because that’s actually why I have you here. I’m going to give you a chance to save them, Aubrey. I’m going to give you a chance to be the hero.”
“I don’t want to be a hero,” I say.
“Oh, yes, you do,” she replies. “Don’t be silly.”
“What are you up to, Hannah?”
“Up to? I’ve been hard at work getting things back in order here. It’s amazing, really, what you can do when you have the plans for everything and 3-D printers. It’s like machines giving birth to more machines. But we still need products from Holocene II where they have much larger sintering equipment than we do here. And things were moving along smoothly when your little friend Red couldn’t help himself—he just had to brag about being at the Foundation. Well, now he’s set them to worrying down there, and they won’t send up the supply train until they’re reassured.”
“Just set them free, Hannah. It’s the right thing to do.”
“You’re not very bright, are you, Aubrey? I thought you were once, but I’m not so sure now. I’m not letting humankind destroy things again. I’m fulfilling my parents’ mission.”
“You mean your father’s mission.”
She waves my comment off, saying, “Whatever. But what I am willing to do is fulfill the original promise of Eden. I think we can make it a pleasurable experience for the occupants.”
“Occupants?” I ask, doing my best to sound sarcastic.
“Yes,” she says, “occupants. I’m convinced that there’s no reason to run any further tests on them, so now I’m willing to provide them with pleasure.”
I look again into the red pool of coiling hoses.
“No way, Hannah. This is insane. Even if you won’t set them free, why not just let them live out their full lives below? Why put them in that soup and torture them?”
“Because we have to, Aubrey,” she says. “It’s resource management. If we let people get old, there will be too many of them down below. There’s only so much space, you know.”
“Why not just let them have fewer babies?”
“That won’t work either. We’ll have an aging population that will be less productive and drain precious resources. Plus, you know as well as I do that if people don’t have something to look forward to, they start to want to change the conditions they’re currently living in. We can’t allow that.”
I look at her and think how surreal this is. It’s as if I’m sitting in this chair listening to Dr. Radcliffe speak through his daughter. I can’t understand her. I just can’t.
“So what do you want from me, Hannah?”
“I want you to go down and reassure them that everything is fine. Let them know Eden is just undergoing improvements and will be up and running and better than ever in no time. Let them know they have no reason to question anything. They’ll listen to you, Aubrey. You’re from there. They know who you are. I can�
��t send the professor; he’s too old. I couldn’t possibly risk going myself. And Red’s too stupid. You have to go.”
“Are you insane?” I ask. “Why would I help you?”
“No, I’m perfectly rational. And you’ll help me because if you don’t, I’ll have no choice but to flood Holocene II.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t?”
“Oh, I’m sure you’re heartless enough to do it, but you couldn’t get by without them. Who would build your drones? Who would produce your supplies? Who would mine your chemicals for weapons? You can’t carry out the Park Service mission on your own, Hannah, and you know it.”
“Maybe you’re smarter than I thought,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “But you’re still going to help me.”
“Why would I help you murder all those people, Hannah?”
“To stop me from murdering one,” she replies.
She steps over to an LCD monitor and switches it on. An image pops on the screen. My heart pops from my chest ...
Jimmy is strapped into the killing chair, just as my father was when I watched them take out his brain. He’s stripped naked, and his head has been shaved. I feel suddenly hot. My vision blurs. The next thing I know, I’m being restrained in my chair by several tunnelrats.
“No! No! No! No!”
“You can stop this, Aubrey.”
I catch glimpses of the monitor as the robotic saw drops from the ceiling and descends toward Jimmy’s head. I thrash in my chair, my heart racing, my teeth clenched to near cracking. Drool dribbles from the corners of my mouth, and I hear myself screaming like a pig being slaughtered.
“Just say you’ll do it, and you can stop this, Aubrey.”
It isn’t until the saw stops and Hannah turns the monitor off that I hear myself chanting, “I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’ll do it.”
Hannah smiles at me as if this were all some big game.
“I thought for a moment there I was going to get to test the new Eden,” she says. “But you made the right choice.”
I settle back down in my chair, but the tunnelrats on either side of me keep a firm grip on my shoulders.
“I have two conditions,” I say, when I’ve recovered a little.
“Oh, you do, do you? And what are they?”
“Well, three, actually. First, you give Jimmy the longevity serum that you lied about. And I’ll inject it myself this time.”
“You caught me again,” she says. “I guess you are smart. I’ve managed to reproduce it, so I’m fine with that. What else?”
“After I do this, we get to go free. Red, Jimmy, and me.”
“Go free? Go free where?”
“Up there. Outside.”
“What about the drones?”
“We’ll take our chances, unless you want to let us stay in a safe zone, like the lake was before all this happened.”
She pauses to consider this. Then she says, “Fine, but only if I can give you each vasectomies.”
“Vasectomies?”
“Yes. I can’t have you reproducing with others up there, for reasons you well understand. It won’t hurt. I promise.”
“Okay,” I say. “Deal. The idea of possibly having had a kid with you has turned me off to it entirely anyway.”
“No need to be nasty,” she retorts. “What’s the last one?”
“The last one what?”
“Your last condition. You said you had three.”
“Jimmy and Red get to go down to Holocene II with me.”
She shakes her head. “Absolutely not.”
“Then no deal.”
“Then I’ll put your brain in Eden right next to Jimmy’s. He’s still in the chair, if you’d like me to give the order.”
I shake my head, trying my best to look unafraid. “Jimmy goes with me or no deal. I don’t trust you, Hannah.”
“Well, why should I trust you if I let him go?”
“Because if we go down, we have to come up. Plus, you could drown us and everyone else too if we pull anything.”
“They’ll know he’s not from the Foundation,” she says.
“No they won’t. We’ll put him in a zipsuit and they won’t know a thing. He can be my assistant.”
She stares at me for a moment, the wheels turning in that gray matter behind her green eyes. Then she seems to settle on a thought, and a smile teases the edges of her lips.
“Fine,” she says. “But Red stays here.”
I think about Red lying in that dungeon dying without water or food, and I want to tell her no way. But then I think of Jimmy strapped into that chair, inches away from having his brain sliced out, and I can’t risk losing the deal I’ve made.
“Fine,” I say. “Jimmy goes, Red stays.”
Hannah nods, signaling that we have an agreement. The tunnelrats release their grip on my shoulders.
“You have to promise to treat Red well,” I say. “No more locking him away down there.”
“Hmph,” she says, apathetically. “He can have the run of the place as long as he stays out of my way.”
CHAPTER 5
Take Care, Alex
Jimmy winces as the needle goes in.
I pause with my thumb on the plunger and look at him.
“You sure, buddy? I won’t do this unless you’re sure.”
Jimmy glances over at Red, passed out on the bed in the sleeping quarters we’ve temporarily taken residence in.
“So Red there’ll just age like anyone else, but I won’t?”
“That’s right.”
“And when will I die?”
“Well, it looks to be about nine-hundred years or more before the brain begins to give out. At least that’s how it was for Mr. and Mrs. Radcliffe and the other scientists up here.”
Jimmy looks down at the needle in his arm and asks, “And you’ve got this in your body already?” When I nod that I do, he continues, “Well, I dun’ wanna leave ya hangin’, so let’s do it.”
I press the plunger and empty the syringe into his vein.
“Well, that’s that then,” I say. “Now we can be best friends for a thousand years.”
Jimmy smiles at me as I cap the empty syringe, and for some reason I feel suddenly shy. Maybe he doesn’t consider us best friends. I don’t know; I’ve never asked. But then he stands and hugs me—a surprisingly uncomfortable gesture for us still, especially considering all we’ve been through. When he pulls away, I notice how different he looks with his head shaved. Different but good. I remember seeing him for the first time, crouched on that coral rock with his long hair hanging to his shoulders. I reach up and run my fingers through my own hair, more aware than ever of how long it is.
“Jimmy, if I go get the clippers from Hannah, will you help me shave my head?”
“Look at you,” he says, “copyin’ my new look already.”
“No, I’m not. I just know that they’ll never believe we wear our hair this long up here when we get to Holocene II.”
“Whatever you say,” he concedes.
“I did grow it out for that reason though,” I admit.
“What reason?” he asks.
“To try and look like you.”
Jimmy laughs. “And here I’ve been workin’ so hard on the way I speak, tryin’ to sound more like you, and you’s tryin’ to look more like me. We better be careful or we’ll each end up as somethin’ in the middle, and neither of us will be able to stand the other a minute. And that would be bad if we’ve got to be best buddies for a thousand years.”
“Shoot,” I say, “that serum must be doing something already. You’ve up and got wise on me all of a sudden.”
“Wise? Me? Never.”
“Well, wise for a hairless savage anyway.”
The tunnelrat assigned to guard our door brings us to Hannah. She’s standing near the train platform, handing out bottles one at a time to tunnelrats lined up in front of her with expectant looks of desire on their odd faces. They each take
their bottle with a jubilant squeal and hustle off with it to the nearest place where they can flop down and begin sucking on it like overgrown piglets. Their eyes close and their heads loll, the milky meal dribbling down their strange albino chins.
“What is that they’re drinking?” I ask.
Hannah turns to look at us, a desperate tunnelrat frozen before her with its hands outstretched for its milk.
“This is their meal,” she says. “And their medicine.”
“Why do they need medicine?” I ask.
Hannah hands the tunnelrat its bottle, and another moves up the line.
“You may have noticed that they’re all boys,” she says. “Silly, silly, boys. That’s because the few females are kept below for breeding and for milking. They’re sedated with a drug that makes them happy. We used to use it in Eden too. Anyway, it has the lucky side effect of making these fellas here born addicted. So every afternoon they get their medicine. They’re a nightmare to control if they don’t have it.”
“Well, you sure seem to have caught up quickly on how to run things around here,” I say. “Makes me wonder how much of what you told me before about never having left the lake house was even true.”
She turns to me. “Why aren’t you two ready to go?”
“I think I need a haircut before I go down.”
“Yes,” she says, looking me over, “you most certainly do. And you both need to put on zipsuits too. The professor’s sleeping off a shock, but you can use one of his from the submarine for Jimmy. When you’re all set, meet me back here.”
As the tunnelrat leads us down to the prep room for Eden, I have to keep reassuring myself that I’m only going for a haircut. There’s a mirrored window in front of the chair and I watch in it as our tunnelrat chaperone stands behind us with its arms crossed, and Jimmy passes the clippers over my head. In just a few minutes, my hair is piled on the floor. I run my hand over my scalp and feel the bristly stubble.
“How come I don’t look as good as you do without hair?”
“Shit,” Jimmy says, “prob’ly ’cause you didn’t look as good as I did with it.”
“Oh, shut up,” I say, trying to contain a laugh. “I think it’s because my head isn’t shaped as well as yours.”
State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy Page 3
