The Wall Around Eden

by Joan Slonczewski

  “A fact thee has lived with, without knowing. Does it make such a difference now?”

  Above them a slight breeze stirred the branches of the trees, and a few dried leaves fluttered down. The old black walnut tree had already lost its leaves; its bare limbs pierced the sky, like a Hindu deity with a thousand arms. The angelbee that had been following Isabel floated high above, along with its daughter cell, which by now had budded off on its own.

  “Do you think it runs in the genes?”

  “I should think so. We all bear the mark of Cain.”

  “Even Daniel? Even your dad?”

  “My dad says that before Doomsday everyone was a murderer. Everyone paid taxes to build the bombs.”

  “Taxes?” Taxes, she recalled, were something like the town allowance in reverse. “Why would everybody pay taxes for such a wicked thing?”

  “It was the law. My dad says he refused to pay; he worked for himself, as a carpenter, and he gave the ‘tax’ to charity instead. When they found out, they took his car, and would have taken the house, too, only it was in Grandmother Alice’s name. They gave him thirty days in jail.”

  “Jail! Not your dad.” The thought of prim Nahum Scattergood in jail lightened her heart considerably.

  In November the Sydney shipment did not arrive after the new moon, nor the day after. For three days anxiety mounted, casting a shadow over preparations for Thanksgiving. Isabel knew they needed the medicines, and the special sutures for Debbie’s operation. What could have happened? Were the angelbees angry at Gwynwood? Did they still think Alice was alive? How could a new Contact be established?

  On the morning of the fourth day, the shipment came at last. Half the orders were unfilled, and the newspaper told the tale. There had been another breakout attempt at the Sydney Wall in the harbour, a much bigger explosive this time. The Wall appeared to have focused the blast back in some way, such that a major segment of the waterfront was leveled. People were still trying to dig out, and things would take a while to get back on schedule.

  Isabel read the story with mixed admiration and disquiet. Of course, no one could have expected the Wall to do that, but still—she tried to visualize half of Gwynwood blown away at once. Certainly her own Underground would not risk such a thing.

  She borrowed the paper to show Keith. Keith gripped the paper hard, and his face turned white as he read the headline. “Not the waterfront. For God’s sake, what a bloody fool thing to do. Did they list the casualties?” He fumbled through the pages.

  Isabel watched sympathetically. “You must know all those people.”

  “Not half. But my friend lives there. I must get in touch with him, straightaway. But the mail will take months.” Keith seemed to be talking to himself.

  “Someone you loved very much?” Isabel asked timidly.

  “Yes. Though it scarcely matters now, does it.” Keith relaxed his arm, and the paper fell to his side. Looking away, he put his fingers to his lips, as if holding the invisible cigarette.

  “Is it true that it’s a hard thing? Loving a man, I mean.”

  Keith looked at her, and his face changed. “Bloody hell,” he said in a low voice. “So your dad let on, then.”

  “Dad meant no harm. He just—”

  “No harm meant—that’s what they all say, the ‘breeders.’ Why do you suppose they threw me to the bush?”

  “What do you mean? You said there was a lottery.”

  “Your chance goes up tenfold if you’re not a breeder, or if you’re Catholic; and I’m both.”

  Isabel absorbed this in silence.

  “And you can tell your dad I did not filch the gene strains. It’s a government program, probably one of the few decent acts Parliament ever passed.” Keith crossed his arms and looked away again. “I suppose I’d better take off, now, hadn’t I. Get myself transported elsewhere in a hurry.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, once your Bible bashers find out, I’m finished, right?”

  “But—but why? We can’t possibly do without you at the hospital. Besides, you pledged to join our Underground.”

  “The Underground, yes.” The word took on a chilling tone. “I hope you see, now, why I never joined the real Underground. What a lot of hotheads. All breeders, too; why didn’t they blast their own neighborhood?”

  Isabel wondered what to make of it. She and Peace Hope would never try anything so dangerous. She winced to think that Keith had never taken their Underground seriously after all. But then, what had they accomplished so far: a radio that she had to give up, and a hexagonal device left behind by some angelbee.

  To her dismay, Peace Hope reacted much the way Keith did. “Friend Isabel,” Peace Hope solemnly announced after French class, “I must tell thee that, after very prayerful consideration, I feel compelled to withdraw from the Underground.”

  “Oh, Scatterbrain, how could you? After all we’ve been through? Besides, you promised.”

  “It’s a sinful thing to withdraw a pledge,” Peace Hope agreed. “But I’ve come to see that it was a worse sin to join in the first place.”

  “It’s not fair,” Isabel objected. “I’ve done nothing wrong, have I?”

  “Not yet, thee hasn’t. But the road has its destination.”

  “Your folks have been at you.”

  “They have not, indeed,” said Peace Hope with a rare flash of anger.

  Isabel’s patience ran out. “So go ahead and quit then; I’ll just have to carry on alone.”

  For the next day or so, Isabel spoke barely a word to anyone. At night she got out her radio components and the circuit diagram and looked them over by candlelight, but it was depressing to think of starting over from scratch. Besides, what was the use? What if there was no real Underground out here, in America? The nearest Wall-town was Vista, out on the West Coast. There had never, ever, been living people sighted in the deadland.

  The cooking for Thanksgiving went on, all the pies and the stuffed squash, the pastels of corn and peppers, and the goat’s milk cheeses. When the day came, everyone gathered at the Scattergoods’ for a community feast. Isabel served the soups and stews for a while. May and Amanda Pestlethwaite came by, their fingers flashing; they had grown so over the summer, she realized. What to eat? she signed, her finger brushing down across the left hand, then her right fingers together moving toward her mouth and back.

  Both girls pointed their right thumb and fingertips down into the left hand, twisting back and forth like a cookie cutter.

  Isabel knew it was not yet time for cookies. She reached down the table and fetched a couple of corn muffins. May signed a quick Thanks, then hurried after Amanda, whose mouth was already stuffed.

  When she finally got to her own turn, she faced the ordeal of her annual turkey serving. She enjoyed the taste, and her mother said that occasional meat was good for her, but she hated the thought of the lambs and chicks that were raised so clearly to be slaughtered. She had always thought, if the biblical Abraham were really so foolish as to consent to feed his own son to some God, then why had he not done so and spared the poor ram.

  Jon was serving the turkey, a major item from the Hubbards’ farm. He beamed at her and served her twice as much as she could eat. Isabel was conscious of her dress outfit again; she felt like pulling down the hem. “Will you come over this afternoon,” Jon asked, “and see what a lot of corn we got stored for the winter? The dry spell barely hurt at all.”

  Isabel caught Peace Hope’s eye, but her friend quickly turned away, blond curls swooping round her head. Peace Hope was still annoyed that the boys would never notice her.

  At last Isabel sat down, her plate filled with com bread and black bean pie, and Anna Tran’s stir-fry, a delicious vegetarian recipe from her Buddhist mother. Keith came over to join her; since their angry exchange, he had redoubled his efforts to be friendly. “Poor Isabel, to be chased by lovely young men you don’t want. Others should be so lucky.”

  Isabel tried to ignore him.
She did not yet want to forgive him for insulting the Underground.

  “Perhaps you prefer your two admirers in the trees,” Keith added, referring to the angelbees that tailed her. “I sympathize. At least they’re not breeders.”

  She glared at him. She considered several good curses in Spanish and one in German. Then she laughed, and kept laughing, until she noticed an ant crawling up her leg and brushed it off. For some reason a flood of fear came over her; the sense that, somehow, the angelbees were crawling into her life and there was no escape. Ants, too, were social insects, and much more bothersome than honeybees. “I still can’t see it, though,” Isabel told him, trying to shrug off her fear. “Why should the angelbees bother with me? So stupid,” she said, knocking her S hand against her forehead.

  “I agree,” said Keith. “They’re not completely brainless; but, smart enough to run a planet? Now that I see them, here, close up, like Jane Goodall giving us bananas—it doesn’t add up.”

  Isabel leaned back on her elbows. “They’re like bees in a hive, isn’t that right? Workers tending a Queen. Maybe the Queen is the intelligent one?”

  “Bees, okay; but where are their keepers?”

  The hair rose on the back of her scalp. “The Pylon. There must be something, or someone, inside…”

  Keith shrugged. “Who knows? All our guesses are no more than the gropings of blind men about an elephant. The space cockies aren’t exactly bees, any more than they’re exactly angels.”

  “Then we need better guesses.” There was one place to hunt for clues: her mother’s attic, where all the old books were stored. Those books had solved many a puzzle before.

  XVI

  THE ATTIC SMELLED musty but dry, except for one shrunken puddle beneath a cracked slate, which Isabel dreaded climbing out to fix, lest others crack, too. The light from her candle made the shadows dance wildly. She coughed from the dust, and her groping hands soon came away blackened. Outside the wind whistled, and she rubbed her arms to keep warm.

  Her mother’s books were packed away in unmarked cartons. One box was full of paperbacks, from Dickens to De Lillo; another, volumes of the New England Journal of Medicine, dating from the late nineties. That seemed closer; she heaved the box down, and checked underneath.

  She was in luck. College texts: Psychology, Microeconomics, History of Modern Europe, and finally Life: The Science of Biology. She thumbed through the yellowed pages of Life: photosynthesis, chromosomes, monera, protista. Taxonomy and phylogeny: there were ciliates, fungal hyphae, nematodes and annelids, bryophytes and brontosaurs…Were angelbees saprophytes or parasites? Did they have a genetic code? Did they exhibit kin selection?

  If angelbees reproduced by budding, then why on Earth would they need a “queen”?

  Bewildered, she shook her head. It was hard to believe one planet could have held so many life forms, each so complex in form and function. It would take her a thousand years to think through it all.

  She started in on arthropods, and got through trilobites and crustaceans. When she had enough she closed the book with a thud, nearly jarring out her candle flame, then moved to another box. These turned out to be old children’s books, most of which she herself had read once. Many were about biology, too, her mother’s childhood passion. Microbe Hunters, about picking scum from your teeth and watching the little animals wiggle under a lens. A storybook about a girl who shrank to the size of an ant and helped the ants milk their aphids; that one, she could see, all right. A guide to the human body, with the circulatory system illustrated in vivid color, arteries scarlet and veins blue. What kind of circulation did angelbees have? Her eyes swam and her head throbbed, but she read on into the night.

  From downstairs came a faint tapping on the door. A call for the doctors?

  Isabel picked up her candle and crept downstairs, the shadows swinging around her. The floorboards chilled her feet through the worn soles of her slippers; there was no heat downstairs at night. She opened the front door, and the wind swept in.

  Daniel stood on the step. “It’s you,” he sighed, slightly out of breath. “I hoped it would be you.”

  “Daniel! Whatever are you doing here? Come on in, for goodness sake. We can stir up the kitchen fire.”

  They raked up the embers and managed to get enough going to keep their hands warm at least. They sat together on the hearth, not quite touching. For just a moment Isabel felt light-headed, but then she caught herself. What had he come for? She looked at Daniel expectantly.

  “They chose me as Contact.”

  Isabel blinked. “They?”

  “The Pylon.”

  She caught a hand to her mouth. “Daniel, what happened?”

  “I went to sit outside the Pylon, as I had so many times before. I thought this would be my last time; it’s getting too cold at night.” He stopped.

  “What happened then?” she ventured.

  Daniel kneaded his forehead and stared into the fire. “The Pylon filled with reddish light. Then I saw…Alice. Like a still photograph. And then her shape sort of blurred and changed; and then it was me.”

  Her scalp prickled at the thought of it. With a tentative gesture she pressed his arm. “Somebody has to be Contact, Daniel. Someone has to do it.”

  “But why me? I’m young; I’m not an elder.”

  Taken aback, she nearly observed that he sure sounded like an elder most of the time. “They would pick someone young, so they don’t have to change too often. They don’t like change, do they?”

  Daniel said nothing.

  “What happened then?” she asked. “What did you see next? They must have lots of messages for us; it’s been so long.”

  “I can’t say. I ran away.”

  “You ran away? But why?”

  “Isabel, don’t you understand?” He turned and looked at her for the first time. “I can’t do it; I refuse. It’s not right, don’t you see? We are called to witness to one another, as equals in the Light of Truth. No power on Earth can justly single out one above another.”

  Isabel swallowed. There seemed to be nothing left to say. “Why did you come…here?” she asked at last, hesitantly.

  Daniel looked away again. “I just wanted you to know, that’s all.”

  Then it occurred to her. “You’ve joined the Underground, haven’t you. After Keith and Peace Hope quit.” She shook her head wonderingly. “You joined in a big way, too. Making a radio is nothing compared to—” She stopped as she thought of something else. “Are you really sure you must refuse? After all, you might do more good by going along, by using the chance to spy them out.”

  “Do you understand nothing? Don’t you see; it’s not a question of rebellion, but of obedience.” With a twist of his head, Daniel rose from the hearth and left as abruptly as he had come.

  XVII

  THE COLD, HARD benches were filling with neighbors as the town met to take up Daniel’s refusal to act as Contact. Miracle Dreher squealed as he ran along behind a back bench, running back now and then to tease his sister Faith; Charity was still confined to bed. Their parents sat up front; Debbie looked exhausted. Everyone seemed to be there: the Browns, the Weisses, the Scattergoods except for Nahum. Isabel did not sit with the Scattergoods because Daniel was unaccountably angry with her again, and she was still mad at Peace Hope for quitting the Underground.

  Keith shook his head. “I can’t make this out, mate.”

  Isabel herself was still amazed at what Daniel had done. She remembered last summer, that night on the hill, as he told her that people had to earn their freedom. But how? Why did he always reject her own way, and always come back again?

  “Daniel is a plain Friend,” Isabel tried to explain. “They’re extra strict. Quakers think that everybody is exactly equal in God’s sight. That’s why they don’t have preachers. So they aren’t about to let the angelbees set one up, either.”

  “But his grandmother Alice was a plain Friend too.”

  “I guess he had a different revela
tion.”

  Keith shook his head. “Your tribal superstitions confound me.”

  Isabel bridled at this. “At least he had the nerve to stand up for something—which is better than some of us.”

  “Too right.”

  “Anyway, why should the angelbees only talk to one of us?”

  “If they’re a ‘hive,’ maybe they have only one collective consciousness. Why should ‘it’ try to address the whole quarrelsome lot of us?”

  The room hushed as Liza rose to speak. “I wish to speak for myself and Nahum in supporting the stand our nephew has taken. Daniel has chosen to witness to the Light of Truth. This decision was his and his alone to make, but it must also be said that Daniel well knows the grief it caused his grandmother to serve our masters in this way. We ask the town to understand and support him in this time of trial.”

  There was some muttering, then Carl Dreher arose. “I wouldn’t want to go against anybody’s conscience, but I have to point out that the town has a lot at stake here. The angelbees have to reach us in their own way, and most of the time it’s to our benefit: climate forecasts and so on. Doesn’t the Apostle Paul instruct us to obey our earthly rulers, whoever they may be? ‘Every person must submit to the supreme authorities. The existing authorities are instituted by God.’”

  Several heads nodded, but Isabel was annoyed. Existing authorities, indeed. The devil take Carl and his sermons.

  Matthew asked, “What happens, then, when the rulers act against the Lord? The disciple Peter told his jailors, ‘We must obey God rather than men.’ Such obedience requires a special leading, of course, to know that one has heard God’s voice. I for one feel compelled to trust in Daniel. Let one who disagrees follow his or her own leading to act as Contact.”

  “But the angelbees chose Daniel,” said Carl. “How can we refuse? Besides, Scripture tells us exactly what happened when ‘the rulers made common cause against the Lord.’ The temple was destroyed, and the dead were exposed in their graves. Isn’t that what became of us, too, in our own generation? Our fathers ruled falsely; we have the Wall as witness to that. Today’s rulers may not be perfect, but they were sent by God to save our lives.”