The Wall Around Eden

by Joan Slonczewski

  The illustrations were indifferent; Peace Hope could have done much better. But the picture of the Little Prince sailing off behind the migrating birds did interest Isabel. It was not so much more farfetched than some of her own ideas for escaping the Wall. Of course, all the migratory birds had died off in the Death Year. Hummingbirds, for instance, legendary for their tininess, were extinct. Still, local birds might carry messages, at least, if not people. Could they fly through the upper Wall, though Sydney’s airplanes could not?

  What about angelbees? Angelbees just melted through airwalls, somehow. Could you harness angelbees to penetrate the Wall?

  Isabel and Peace Hope paid another call on Teacher Becca, to apprise her of their progress. The fate of the cardboard “spaceship” excited her interest, even more so than Isabel had expected. Becca demanded to know every detail, from its precise dimensions to the placement of its “legs.”

  “But what about the angelbees?” Isabel asked at last. “What do you think? Could they be captured somehow? The airwall always seems to melt before them, automatically. They must emit some kind of signal.” Another question for Teacher Matthew, after next physics class. “Perhaps we could shove an angelbee through, and follow through the hole.”

  “No,” said Peace Hope. “Why would these ‘masters of Earth’ let us get away with such a thing?”

  “I wonder.” Becca seemed to be talking to herself as she sat in her chair pulled at an angle from the desk. “The angelbees are our masters, and yet, not, somehow. But Peace Hope is right: I warn you, Isabel.”

  “Yes, but, Teacher Becca, you caught one, and nothing happened to you.”

  Suddenly Becca gripped the edge of the desk as if in pain. “Of course…yes, nothing happened. But that was different. The little friend came of its own accord, of its desire to see me. I merely encouraged it to stay awhile.” She seemed to be trying to convince herself.

  “Is thee all right, Teacher Becca?”

  “Yes, of course.” Becca was her usual crisp self again. “Isabel, you might consider this: Our friends have accepted a gift from you, have they not? Wait to see what they may offer in return.”

  IX

  BY SUNDAY THE rain cloud had cleared, though in the Meetinghouse the odor of damp earth lingered. Isabel was sitting next to Peace Hope. She thought of how Alice yet clung to life, and how little Charity was confined to bed now, with a bone that would not heal. She scratched at an arm, then made herself stop, and felt a quick spasm of fear. Epithelioma was rarely malignant, she told herself. Still, what if her mother was wrong?

  She had looked up “placenta previa” in the obstetrics text. It meant that the placenta, the baby’s organ of nourishment, had grown over the cervical opening, obstructing the passage for birth. It also meant that, without surgery, Debbie would not survive.

  She took a deep breath and tried to center, giving Peace Hope a nudge to stop clicking her grippers.

  But Peace Hope nudged back, and nodded off to the right.

  Isabel made an indignant face. It was highly incorrect to point or stare during silent worship.

  Peace Hope nodded again, and this time, Isabel followed her gaze.

  It was a stranger.

  There was no doubt about it: a strange man sat on the back bench to the right, next to Anna Tran. A stranger in the Gwynwood Meetinghouse; a stranger, from beyond the Wall.

  A transportee? But why no advance warning? Angelbees made very deliberate decisions and gave good warning, most of the time. But then, Alice had just missed her second appointment with the Pylon. Maybe this was a warning: Do not ignore us.

  Transportees had to have done something very bad, for their neighbors to leave them to the angelbees. But the only transportee ever received by tiny Gwynwood was her father, and he had turned out well enough, whatever he had done before.

  Isabel tried but could not take her eyes off the stranger. A muscular Caucasian, he was tanned coffee-brown, square face and thick jaw, hair straw blond. Age, going on thirty, she guessed. Unlike her father, he had not thought to wear his best suit for the trip. His shirtsleeves were rolled back, revealing what unmistakably was a tattooed snake, dark blue, twining up his left arm.

  Nobody in Gwynwood ever had a tattoo. Isabel had seen it only in pictures, in old National Geographic magazines.

  As he sat there with his arms crossed, suddenly the man winked. He actually winked at her.

  Isabel was scandalized. She looked down immediately, feeling heat rush into her face, and for the remainder of the period of silence she studied the worn toes of her shoes.

  At the rise of Worship, the stranger stood up, and Liza announced him: Keith Moran, M.D., from the City of Sydney.

  “A doctor!” said Isabel. “A modern city doctor.”

  “An Australian!” Peace Hope exclaimed, adding in a hoarse whisper, “I wonder what he knows about the Underground!”

  During social hour amid the teacups, Keith Moran related his story to a rapt audience. “All I know is, I awoke there, alone outside your Pylon, at midnight, in the pouring rain.” He pronounced it “ruh-een.” “I found a dirt road full of muck and trudged on till I came upon this house, where Mrs. Tran opened the door. So I said in what passes for Chinese, ‘Where am I? Is it the wet season?’”

  Several chuckled.

  “I hate to guess what Mrs. Tran thought of me, soaked to the skin with my pockets bulging with suspicious ampules.”

  “You’re a godsend,” called Marguerite. “What’s your training?”

  “Just got my M.D. at the Uni,” he said. “It’s like this: A while back, we were hearing bad news from transportees about health standards out in the bush. Most of you do without doctors at all. So Parliament got this bright idea to help out: let the space cockies transport new M.D.s, at random of course, just like the pickpockets. The devil of it is, we get picked at random, too. We have to sign the bloody paper to matriculate; then at graduation, there’s a lottery, and it’s ‘Sydney or the bush.’” He shrugged. “I got the bush.”

  “You’ll stay at our place,” Marguerite insisted.

  Isabel was beside herself. “Oh, Dad, isn’t it fantastic? Another transportee, just like you.”

  “Una buena historia,” muttered Andrés as he leaned against the wall, his face dark. He distrusted this Dr. Moran.

  For Keith’s first dinner at their home, Andrés cooked the empanadas so spicy that they burned in Isabel’s mouth. But Keith ate everything with relish, and he had a great time recounting tales of the City, including actions of the Underground which had not made it into the foreign edition. “Those dills at the Herald are scared to death,” he said. “Wouldn’t dream of offending the space cockies.”

  Marguerite nodded politely and expressed no overt interest, though she listened keenly, Isabel thought. “And your professional interests? Surgery, did you say?”

  “Plastic surgery was my aim. But when my number came up, I took a crash course in parasitology. More relevant to the bush—no offense meant.” He tasted the milk, and hesitated.

  “Goat’s milk,” said Marguerite. “Our cows didn’t last the Death Year.”

  “No worries. What is your illustrious background, Dr. Chase?”

  “Kenyon College, then Jefferson School of Medicine, in Philadelphia.” Marguerite had pointed out the places once for Isabel, in the old road atlas.

  “I’ll bet your dad was a doctor, too, eh? Family tradition?”

  “Hardly. Dad was a Vietnam vet who turned Quaker and made a career of pouring blood onto missile tubes.”

  Keith laughed. “A lot of good that did. Lucrative, too, I imagine.”

  “It hardly mattered, as Mother was a Philadelphia lawyer.”

  “So how’d you end up here on D-day?”

  Marguerite swallowed, and her voice went lower. “I nearly didn’t. I worked at a clinic in Nicaragua, run by the American Friends Service Committee. I came back to Gwynwood for a vacation with my parents. That’s where I was, on that day.”
>
  There was a pause. A line crossed before the time after “that day,” a line as invisible and inviolable as the Wall itself. Andrés stared grimly at the table.

  “And you, Andrés?” asked Keith.

  “Born in Valdivia,” Andrés said without looking up. “Mother was German. Probably the only Germans left are in Chile.”

  Marguerite added, “Andrés knows corn and sheep like no one else does. I don’t think we’d have made it through the lean years without him.”

  Andrés caught Isabel’s eye, and she knew he would guess the question in it. His face softened. “Of course, Keith amigo, I did not come here the same way you did.” Deliberately he put on a thick accent. “In my town, there was a girl known far and wide for her beauty; ‘Bianca the beautiful’ they called her, and she belonged to the heavens, not this Earth. One of many rivals for her hand, I was challenged to a duel. My rival was slain, and I alas…”

  Isabel glared at him. “Buena historia!”

  Everyone laughed, except Isabel.

  “And your family, in Sydney,” Marguerite said to Keith. “How sad for them.”

  “I don’t have much family. My parents died of radiation sickness shortly after D-day. I grew up in an orphanage run by the Sisters.” He paused, then added, “Lifespan’s improving, you know. Down Under, that is; you folks up north caught it worse than we did. At any rate, now that I’m here, I’d better get to work. I’d like to look at your hospital, first off.”

  Marguerite nodded. “It’s right upstairs.”

  Keith’s face changed. In the City, a hospital would not be found on the second story of an old Quaker mansion.

  “What exactly did you bring?” Marguerite asked. “Not to press, but you did mention…”

  For answer, Keith reached into his pocket. Onto the table he spread a handful of sealed ampules. “Antibiotic producers. Tetracycline, penicillin, gentamycin—these bacteria are engineered to make them all. It was the easiest thing to carry, and all you need’s a good micro lab to maintain them.”

  “Antibiotic producers?” Marguerite was astounded. If true, Isabel guessed, they would never run out of antibiotics again. “But the patents on those strains; the cost is prohibitive. The town’s budget for the year won’t cover them.”

  “No worries; Parliament—” He caught the eye of Andrés and changed his mind. “The truth is, I filched them. Figured if I had to lose their bloody lottery, I’d get some of my own back.”

  Andrés grinned. “That’s better, my friend. See, you are a pickpocket after all.”

  After dinner, Peace Hope showed up with her portfolio. Having toured the hospital upstairs, Keith was resting out on the porch, a tumbler of iced tea next to the lawn chair. His open collar revealed a cross on a chain, like Isabel’s father. He rubbed his fingers on the muscle of his upper arm, and his eyes seemed to have a faraway haggard look.

  “Don’t suppose you’d have a pot of beer?” he asked Isabel.

  “The Drehers make beer.”

  He was puffing on a cigarette, another novelty for Gwynwood. As Isabel spoke, he removed the cigarette and tapped out sparks over the porch rail. “My last pack. Which way to the milkbar? That is, the deli? The grocery?”

  Isabel was puzzled. Then she remembered. “The ‘grocery’ is boarded up. Since before I was born,” she added, recalling the number of times she had biked past the faded sign. “You might try to get them by mail, once you get your allowance.”

  “Allowance?” Keith laughed. “From whom?”

  “From the town. You’ll get paid for your work, too—in potatoes, probably. You can’t export those.”

  Keith shuddered. “Don’t remind me.” Sydney had a stricter radiation standard, which Gwynwood could not afford. With a shrug, he dropped the cigarette and ground it beneath his heel.

  “Peace Hope earns all our foreign exchange,” said Isabel proudly, giving her a nudge.

  Keith nodded politely. “G’day, Miss. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “Peace Hope Scattergood,” said Isabel. “The artist. She does our stamps.”

  “Stamps? You mean you’re ‘Gwynwood, USA’? Well, I’ll be darned. A dear friend of mine collects them. Pleased to meet you, Miss Scattergood.” He stood up and extended his hand.

  Peace Hope reddened and averted her eyes. She had never met anyone who did not know her condition.

  “Beg yours, no harm meant.”

  “She draws with her teeth,” Isabel explained. “Dr. Moran, have you ever seen an angelbee spacecraft?”

  “What’s that? Never. I can’t say that anyone has.”

  “We have.”

  “What? You’re having me on.”

  Isabel nodded at Peace Hope, who still looked like she wished she were somewhere else. She reluctantly let Isabel take the portfolio and open it to her sketch of the spacecraft.

  For a second or two he stared. Then he grasped the picture and held it out to the fading sunlight, eyes squinting, the blue snake rippling on his arm. “This is real? Not fancified at all?”

  Peace Hope’s head came up. “Of course it’s real. Mom and Dad don’t let me draw any way else.”

  “They’re plain Friends,” Isabel explained, but he was not listening.

  “Was it daytime?”

  “No, past midnight.”

  “Where’d the light come from?”

  “The fire, of course.”

  “Fire?”

  “The bonfire,” said Isabel. “We made a bonfire, to protest the destruction of the ozone.”

  “The skystreaking, yes; that’s one theory for it.”

  “The angelbees wouldn’t come out near the fire. But they came on their spacecraft, to put us to sleep.”

  Keith looked puzzled. “Space cockies wouldn’t be caught dead near a fire. And they short out anything electric.”

  “They gave us a good fifteen minutes,” said Isabel. “Right next to the Pylon, too.”

  He laughed. “That you could never manage in Sydney. Our Pylon’s kept under twenty-four-hour guard.”

  “By the angelbees?”

  “No, by act of Parliament. To avoid bloody fool incidents that get the city put to sleep for a week.”

  “We’re not supposed to, either. Only the Contact sees the visions in the Pylon, but she is ill.”

  “Contact? Visions in the Pylon?” Keith seemed to be thinking to himself. “I’ve heard of such, from transportees. Never in Sydney, though. The Pylon’s covered with thick fog within its airwall, all the time. The angelbees must think we’re too dangerous, and they’re too right.” Keith looked at the sketch again, then he looked at Peace Hope. “Draw me something: that bird over there.” He pointed to a cardinal in the maple tree.

  “That wouldn’t be fair; I’ve done a hundred cardinals.”

  “Well do the tree, then.”

  Peace Hope got out a pencil, and for the next ten minutes she scratched away at her pad. A tree took shape, each pencil stroke a branch at just the right angle, each branch shaded in real as life.

  Keith looked it over. “Okay, I’m sold.” Keith looked again at the sketch of the spaceship. “Those legs—and those little hexagonal things on the sides. How odd. I wonder where the door is.”

  “Doesn’t it look flimsy?” Isabel asked. “Has anyone ever managed to blow one up?”

  “Isabel!” Peace Hope was scandalized.

  “I’ve never heard of a spacecraft like that,” said Keith. “The angelbees, now, they pop like balloons.”

  “Does thee know, is it true that they do not take life in return?” Peace Hope was convinced that the angelbees had a “peace testimony,” as Quakers did.

  Keith shook his head. “It’s hard to know what logic the space cockies follow. Maybe they think we’re wild animals who just don’t know any better.”

  “You must be a member of the Underground!” Isabel exclaimed at last.

  He laughed. “Not I. I just keep up with things.”

  “But I read the paper; I’
ve never heard anything like that, aside from the escape attempt in Port Jackson.”

  “That was too big to hush, even for the foreign edition.”

  “Well, you can join us then: we’re the Gwynwood Underground.”

  Keith did not smile. He seemed to hesitate.

  “It’s just us two, so far,” Isabel admitted. “But we mean business. We’ve pledged our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

  “I see. In that case, I’ll tell you what. I’ll join your Underground, if you promise to help me out here. See, I’m new to the bush; I need to learn the laws of the tribe.”

  “The tribe?”

  “Your town. Rules and regs, especially the unwritten ones. Life-style, you understand?” He seemed to mean something specific, just what, Isabel could not guess.

  “Don’t wink during Worship,” Peace Hope offered. “And call me ‘friend,’ not ‘Miss,’ since I’m a plain Friend. And don’t spend thy allowance on cigarettes, lest the town vote to cut it.”

  “That’s the idea,” said Keith with enthusiasm.

  “Don’t worry,” said Isabel. “If you’re ever in real trouble, we’ll warn you before they send a Committee of Concern.”

  “Well then, Friends.” Keith raised his iced tea, then said with a wink, “Lives, fortunes, and honor—here’s to Free Gwynwood.”

  Isabel found herself echoing her mother—this Keith was a godsend. Yet it was the angelbees who had sent him.

  And Becca had said, the angelbees would send her a “gift” in return for hers. Could this be it? For just a moment, her flesh turned cold.