The Wall Around Eden

by Joan Slonczewski

  “Anyway, who can ever be sure to live past thirty? I’ll probably get melanoma by then.”

  To this Daniel said nothing.

  She added, “You still have to marry somebody and have kids. If you die, you know they’ll be looked after.”

  “The Specials are children enough, for me.”

  “So that’s why you came back to me, is it—because I’m Special now?” Isabel was indignant. “Well, is it?”

  “It’s true.” Daniel’s voice was muffled, so she could barely hear. “I wished that you would be less ‘perfect,’ too, so I would have a right to ask.”

  “But—but that’s silly. I only wished that you could be well.”

  “I know. But I can’t help wishing dark things sometimes.”

  “Even you? No matter how many Specials you teach?”

  “The darkness lives in all of us,” Daniel said, steadier now. “When I forget, I need only face the souls behind the Wall.”

  “But we can’t help them now. Nobody can.”

  “Our grandfathers could have, or our great-grandfathers.”

  “They didn’t know what was coming.”

  “They had eyes to see and ears to hear. Our eyes and ears are theirs.” The cushion lifted as Daniel stood up. “I think I’d best be going, to prepare the noon class.”

  She reached out to him, and he clasped her arm firmly.

  “I’ll come again, every day,” he promised.

  Isabel withdrew her arm. “I don’t need charity, just because I’m Special.”

  “I’ll come anyway if you get better.”

  She nodded, and some of the bitterness subsided. A sense of peace crept over her, as if a window had opened to another place. It was perhaps the first honest conversation they had ever shared.

  XX

  THE NEXT FEW days brought a stream of visitors. Peace Hope came by to play chess, and Daniel came back at four o’clock when he was done teaching the little ones. Ruth brought more Braille books for Isabel, Vera came to pray for her, and Matthew came to help her catch up on physics, painfully awkward though that was. Isabel, hating to be pitied, almost wished they would all stay away, except for Peace Hope and Daniel. Each morning Marguerite examined her eyes again, and for three days there was no change.

  On the fourth day of December, while her mother was looking at her retina, a flicker of something appeared out of the fog. Isabel gasped. “I saw something; I know I did.”

  Marguerite brought the instrument close to Isabel’s eyeball and set the switch on and off. The flicker of light came and went as she did so.

  By the end of the week, her sight had recovered to the point that she could distinguish the faces around the dinner table. As Isabel’s eyesight improved, she was milking the goats again and sorting apples from the second crop, and in the repair shop tacking insulation into the winterized frames of Ruth Weiss’s beehives. She went back to physics and French class, although the reading gave her a headache. Daniel still came to visit every day.

  One afternoon Keith had something to show her. “Where do you think this came from?”

  It was a disk of rock crystal, a handbreadth across, polished smooth in the form of a lens, except for one jagged edge that had broken off. From the intact edges hung folds of tough membranous material. As Isabel turned it over in her palm, her scalp prickled. “It’s from an angelbee? Not the one I…”

  “Too right, mate; it’s the one you popped. I found some pieces of it, mortal remains you might say, scattered on the floor. Did you know how the infrared eye works? A professor at the Uni figured it out. Look.” He held up the lens. “A space cockie grows its lens out of rock salt, which transmits far infrared—that includes body heat radiation. Now to detect that radiation, there’s a retina of sorts along the inner back side of the hydrogen balloon.”

  He held out another fragment of membrane, which felt something like a snakeskin, stretched out between his fingers. “This ‘retina’ is coated with pigmented sensory cells—they act like microscopic thermometers. They detect the image focused by the lens. The outer surface, however, is reflective, to avoid incident radiation.” He turned the membrane over. Its other side reflected iridescently, with thousands of tiny scales that Isabel could see when she held it up to her eye.

  “A giant eyeball full of methane and hydrogen.”

  “Mostly hydrogen,” said Keith. “Methane absorbs some infrared.”

  “But the radio signals,” said Isabel. “How do the angelbees transmit their signal?” She recalled that penetrating signal her receiver had picked up from the angelbee out in the graveyard.

  “That’s more of a mystery,” Keith admitted. “At the Uni they found crystals of magnetite in the eyespot, rather like those found in pigeon brains. However the signal generator works, it must be contained in this thingo here.” From his pocket he held out a brown fragment of chitinous stuff that looked like the same material as Becca’s hexagonal scale. One surface, presumably that which faced the angelbee, was flat, whereas the outer surface was rounded like a breadloaf. In between there were supporting braces forming channels, presumably some sort of circulatory system. The outer surface had a flattened region that cut off at an obtuse angle, possibly a fragment of the hexagonal facet cut into it. “The scale would fit right there,” Isabel decided.

  “Right. I picked this up, too.” Keith fished from his pocket a hexagonal scale with a pupil hole. A corner was crushed and broken off; otherwise, it looked just like the one in the candle box.

  Isabel clapped a hand to her mouth. “It’s a transmitter! The angelbees—they’ll know, every time you touch it.”

  “I doubt it, mate. The space cockie it belonged to is dead.” He fitted the scale neatly into the broken corner of the eye-spot.

  “Then it must have been the daughter I hit,” Isabel observed, “since I still have the scale from the parent. The parent may still be around. Have you seen it?”

  Keith shook his head. “Not a trace.”

  That was a relief. And yet, Isabel found herself vaguely disappointed; she almost missed her two followers. She kept watching for the parent, and one evening, she thought she glimpsed it hovering above the oak tree uphill, like Banquo’s ghost to haunt her, but it did not come near. Isabel thought of the polyhedral keepers that lay in wait behind it and its sisters, coordinating their invisible tentacles across the landscape of Gwynwood. And yet, it was hard to think of angelbees as totally lacking individuality. Were they really just body parts, “obligate symbionts,” or might they be able to exist on their own?

  After physics class, Isabel showed Matthew the fragments that Keith had picked up from the angelbee eye. The lens caught his interest. “This could focus infrared,” he said, turning the object over in his palm, “though the resolution would never be as good as ours in the visible.”

  “Couldn’t the angelbees see our visible range, too?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not? Salt transmits visible light.”

  “The optics would be completely different. Remember how a prism spreads out the bent light rays at different wavelengths? To ‘see’ body heat, we’re talking nine microns, a twentyfold increase in wavelength. I’d guess the angelbee’s range of wavelength, like ours, is less than twofold; say, five to ten microns.”

  Isabel considered this. “In that case, how do they see in the daytime, when everything warms up?”

  “The contrast would be lower, that’s all. The sun itself would be barely noticeable.”

  “But sunlight is warm; you can feel it.”

  “That’s due to absorption of visible light, converted to heat in your skin. That is how you start a fire with a glass lens. Sunlight peaks in the visible; beyond four microns, direct solar radiation is swamped by ambient heat emission. You wouldn’t see much shadow, either; you would see relative amounts of glow. Think of a stained-glass window, with glass panes of varying brightness: that’s how it might look. At night, the contrast would be spectacular. Peop
le would literally glow like stars.”

  Isabel stared in shock. “That is what Becca wrote—people shine like stars! Do you see, they gave her infrared eyes.” The terrible memories came back, and she had to sit down to steady herself. Why had the angelbees taken Becca—and why had she chosen to go? “It must be,” she whispered.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Matthew said gently.

  “Yes we can. We can demand Becca back, at the Pylon.”

  “She said she chose to go.”

  “I don’t understand any of it. Why would they give her infrared eyes? As an experiment? Out of a guilty conscience? I think they’ve got no conscience at all. Why do they keep burning our sky?”

  “That’s a good question.” Matthew rolled his eyes around. “I’ve always wondered why they bother. It would be so much simpler to inject nitrogen oxides into the upper atmosphere, as the bombs did. Instead, what they’re doing looks like some kind of electrical discharge, which is more likely to create ozone than to destroy it.”

  “But the Sydney Herald says—” She recalled that Keith’s opinion of the Herald was little better than Nahum’s.

  “I’m sure the Herald’s right, Isabel. It’s outside my field entirely.”

  Still, the seed of doubt was sown. Isabel felt frustrated. It was hopeless; the more she learned, the less she knew.

  XXI

  NOW THAT DANIEL was coming to visit every day, Isabel found she could think of little else. All morning she looked forward to his coming, and after he left she spent the evening reliving what they had said and done. Some days they walked out a bit in the orchard, but it was too cold to walk far. Daniel was always very proper; the Pirate book did not seem to apply at all.

  In mid-December there was a warm spell, a bit of Indian summer. One day, Isabel set out on her bicycle at three-thirty to catch Daniel before he left home. A mild breeze ruffled her jacket. The ground had unfrozen and glistened wet in the dirt road, perhaps the last reminder of summer before the snow came. As the gables of the Scattergood house appeared through the tree branches, which were bare now but for a few crinkled brown leaves, Isabel’s heart beat faster. She got off the bike, banged the kickstand hard, and tried to compose herself at the door.

  Grace Feltman came to the door with her usual exaggerated grin. At Isabel’s request, she stumbled off, calling, “Dan-iel!”

  Daniel came to the door. He did not seem surprised to see her.

  Isabel shifted her feet on the step. “I thought we might ride out for a picnic on the hill. This may be the last warm weather we get.” She tried to keep the tension out of her voice.

  Daniel said, “I’ll get my bike.” With a nod, he turned and went down to the garage.

  A thrill of elation coursed through her veins. As she sped off beside him, the late-afternoon sun gleamed through the branches, a bluejay flew upward with a raucous shriek, and a rabbit tore off into the bushes, flashing its white puff tail. The light in the trees seemed to sparkle as it played across the branches. It seemed as if every piece of the day was in perfect place.

  They stopped at the bank of the road across from the Trans’ house where the trail winded upward into the pines. Isabel skipped uphill rapidly, breathing deeply the scent of the pines, her feet bouncing on the thick carpet of needle leaves. At the summit of Gwynwood Hill the cliff overlooked the Pylon, now inert except for its pale, shifting colors, casting a long shadow back toward the hill. She stopped and leaned into a birch trunk to catch her breath, wincing as a branch dug into her back.

  Daniel came up and passed her, stepping over a log that had fallen across the path since last August. He stopped and looked out into the valley. He seemed not to notice her, watching the Pylon as if he could penetrate its secrets from afar.

  Isabel rested in quiet, scraping her sole against the tree bark, until she could hold back no longer. She stepped forward tentatively over the log, and the crunch of pine needles underfoot seemed suddenly very loud. Reaching Daniel from behind, she raised her hand and caught him on the shoulder. She pulled him around and kissed him, hard, holding him so he could not break away. Then she felt his hands behind her shoulder blades, returning her embrace, and her head swam.

  But then he withdrew and held her at arm’s length. She read the familiar “no” in his eyes.

  An unexpected bitterness welled up. “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “Is it only broken things you can love?”

  “In God’s name, no. How could thee think so?” His voice was strange, a voice she had never heard before. “It’s just that I long for thee too much. More than one should, for any one person. ‘If this be death…I would woo death everlasting.’”

  Isabel blinked at this, a little scared despite herself. “It’s not too much for me. What else can you love, if not one person?”

  He pulled her close and kissed her again, this time so hard it hurt. He drew her in at the waist as well; then they sank back into the grass and lay together for a long while, until the sun turned red and touched the horizon, spilling rays of blood across the far deadland.

  When at last they drew apart, Isabel found the top buttons of her blouse had popped.

  “I’m sorry,” said Daniel. “I’ll sew them back on for you.”

  “It’s all right, really.”

  “Isabel,” he said with a trace of impatience. “Thee is good at giving gifts, but thee has to learn to receive as well.”

  She smiled. “Well in that case, Friend, thee’ll have to give me thy shirt to wear home.” Hearing no objection, she undid the rest of the buttons and exchanged the blouse for his shirt, which fit a bit loose but well enough. Daniel folded the blouse neatly and tucked it into his knapsack.

  “Thee’ll have to explain,” Isabel added, “what a hot day it was, to go shirtless.”

  XXII

  THE NEXT FEW days passed like a dream. Wherever she went she felt Daniel in her thoughts, as if he breathed just behind her shoulder. Yet when they met together, she would freeze, thinking it was impossible; he could not really have accepted her, it was all a mistake. So each time they embraced again it was almost like new, like the first time, like Christmas morning every day. “La lumière de l’arbre de Noël…”

  A dusting of snow appeared one morning, enough to scrape up a snowball or two. The temperature took a serious dive, and at home the family had to huddle around the wood stove. Peewee and her children slept on top of one another in a great ball of fur, snug in the corner of the cage. Surface-to-volume ratio, conserving body heat, thought Isabel, recalling the lesson out of College Physics.

  One afternoon she went out with Daniel to cut Christmas trees, one each for the Scattergood and Garcia-Chase households. They picked two well-proportioned Scotch pines from behind the Meetinghouse, sawed them off and hauled them onto the carriages. In the meantime they carried on an old debate about the Quaker colonial hero, John Dickinson. “I still don’t see why he refused to help the war effort,” Isabel insisted. “He could have at least run an ambulance or something. What should the colonists have done—accept British rule forever?” She pulled the ropes tight around the tree, securing it in the carriage.

  “John Dickinson considered himself an Englishman,” said Daniel. “He had grievances against the Crown. He led the economic fight against taxation and essentially won, well before Independence Day.”

  “But King George was a tyrant. If we had all followed Dickinson, we’d be ruled by tyrants to this day.”

  “At least they would be human tyrants.” Daniel smiled briefly. “Human tyrants always fall. It is God’s will.” He rested his arm upon the cut trunk and looked across at her. Their eyes met for a long moment. “Thee knows I can’t take this much longer, Isabel. Will we be married?”

  “Oh yes!” She threw her arms around him and they hugged tight, awkwardly with their bulky jackets squeezed between. “But not for a while, yet,” she added. “I want to finish college first.”

  Daniel looked down as if he had something di
fficult to say. “I know, I want to finish college, too. The trouble is, if we’re to have children, it may as well be now, while I’m still here to help thee raise them.”

  The sense of his words chilled her. She had never looked at it that way before. She felt slightly sick. “You can’t think like that, Daniel. We’ll get you to Sydney…somehow.”

  There had to be a way. If someone destroyed the Hive of the angelbees, Keith had said, then the Walls would fall. But where was this Hive; and how was it to be stormed? There was no God to come out with a miracle and throw down the Walls.

  The words came back: “Like all walls, it was ambiguous, two-faced…” The little airwall around the Pylon was somehow the real way out. She would have to find out how.

  On the Friday before Christmas, the night of the December new moon, the townspeople gathered around the Pylon. The sun had set an hour before, and snow was falling thickly in huge fluffy flakes. The Scattergoods were there, including Nahum, and the Browns, wrapped up in blankets to keep warm. Anna Tran was there, but Carl and Debbie were home with the children and baby Patience. It was a hard time for the Drehers, for Charity was still bedridden, and she needed special tests which the doctors upstairs could not provide.

  Isabel squeezed Daniel’s gloved hand, and watched the snow fall around the airwall of the Pylon. It was curious to watch the flakes falling directly above it part and veer outward, descending along the shape of the airwall. The same thing still happened above the outer Wall, too. An enormous rampart of snow would accumulate above the skeletons, twenty feet of solid whiteness, enclosing Gwynwood like the wall of Jericho. The snow that fell here, inside, came entirely from water condensed beneath the outer Wall’s dome.

  Around the Pylon, its unearthly platform was bare, while the blanket of snow thickened outside. The black plastic package for Sydney, full of Peace Hope’s stamps and orders for medicines, sat in the snow at right leaning into the airwall.