The Wall Around Eden

by Joan Slonczewski

A few angelbees hovered, watching the people; unlike the earlier gathering at the Pylon, there was no fire to scare them away. One of them veered alongside the airwall, then it casually penetrated the curve of falling snow.

  Isabel frowned and squinted at the spot where the angelbee had entered the Pylon’s domain. In its wake, the angelbee had left behind a disturbance in the trajectory of the falling snowflakes. Some of the flakes were actually falling straight downward, through the airwall, to land upon the smooth platform supporting the Pylon. For a minute or so, Isabel watched the flakes trickle in, until they vanished, their invisible entrance presumably closed off.

  She blinked and rubbed her eyes, wondering if she had imagined it. But there on the platform lay a scattering of snowflakes, already melting into dark wet spots. The Pylon’s domain must be warmer than outside. In fact, it could be an entirely other place, like Alice’s Looking-glass Land, connected to this place at the interface of the airwall.

  The angelbee meanwhile appeared to be retracing its path, to come out through the airwall once more. Isabel watched intently to see whether the snowflakes would penetrate again.

  At the airwall, on its way out, the angelbee vanished. This time no snowflakes got through.

  “Daniel! That angelbee just disappeared—instead of coming out here. It must have gone somewhere—some other ‘here,’ where there’s no snow. A Looking-glass Land, connected to ‘here,’ at the airwall.”

  Daniel nodded but said nothing. She knew he was tense, awaiting the appearance within the Pylon. Beyond the tree-tops the last traces of sunlight faded away, leaving only the stuffy blackness of snow-filled sky. The cold deepened, and Isabel stepped up and down to keep warm. There was no telling whether anything would happen, since Daniel was not alone. The snow tapered off, and the clouds parted overhead revealing a pair of stars.

  The kernel of redness appeared in the Pylon, insulated at first, like a honeybee larva curled up in its cell.

  There were gasps from the people gathered, and hasty whisperings. “Let’s be silent,” warned Liza.

  The red glow grew until it filled the Pylon. A pattern emerged, of oval shapes against a mottled background. Isabel peered at it, trying to figure out what it was. Behind her came questioning whispers.

  “They’re honeybees,” said Liza.

  Of course: now she could see the striped bees on a comb. In a minute or so, the picture shifted; there appeared to be flowers, with worker bees gathering nectar. There were several shifts more, each a still view of bees in one activity or another. Bees were a favorite subject of the Pylon’s visions, Alice had said. It had never been quite clear what message, if any, the bees were intended to represent. Did the angelbees (or their keepers) see themselves as solicitous workers, tending their human brood?

  An apple tree appeared, with no sign of bees. It was an older tree; Isabel recognized the thick crooked side branch that bent so low its foliage brushed the ground. It was at the far end of the orchard, near the spring.

  The picture changed: flames of a bonfire, not unlike the fires that had surrounded the Pylon on the night of the witness against the burning sky. Then it changed again, back to apple trees, a view of the same area by the spring, at a slightly different angle. The pictures shifted, back and forth, twice more.

  “The apples must be hot.” Marguerite’s voice was unsteady. “The trees nearest the spring must have picked up hot water from underground. I thought they tested okay, but we’ll have to run the counter over every bushel.”

  Liza said, “I think this means that we should burn the crop.”

  “Burn and starve?” Marguerite said bitterly. “By official standards, everything we eat should be condemned.”

  Before anyone could answer, there was something different in the Pylon. It was something flat and angular, a machine of some sort, although the details were blurred. Then it changed, to an image of the Pylon itself. The Pylon’s image had another Pylon within, and so on, like a mirror trick.

  “That one Alice saw before,” Liza remembered. “When we had to give up things.”

  Carl said, “Yes, that was years ago. All those radios and TV sets.”

  “It’s not my radio,” Isabel said quickly. Her radio was long gone.

  The machine reappeared, at a different angle. Isabel clapped a hand to her mouth. “It’s the fetal monitor!”

  “Goodness,” said Vera, “no wonder so many angelbees were pestering us the night Patience was born.”

  “It can’t be,” Marguerite insisted. “The fetal monitor was for sale, right in the paper.”

  “No wonder it was marked down,” said Keith in a tone of disgust. “Sorry, I should have guessed. Its frequency must interfere with the bloody space cockies.”

  The Pylon-within-a-Pylon reappeared, then the machines returned once again. People shook their heads, and someone muttered, “We ought to get our money back.”

  There were gasps of surprise, and Isabel clutched Daniel’s arm. It was Becca Weiss.

  Becca was standing quietly in her familiar denim skirt, her hair tied back as usual. There was no sign of alteration in her sightless eyes, the lids half closed.

  “Where is she?” someone demanded. The background was indistinct; for that matter, it could have been a picture of her in Gwynwood from any time before she had disappeared. It was almost unbearable to watch her image, as though she were really there and could somehow step out of the Pylon.

  In a minute the ruddy image was gone. In its place stood a pair of deer, two young does, grazing in a field. Then there was a flock of birds in an oak tree; then a possum on the ground, sniffing with its pointed nose; then a hexagonal patterning, what looked like larval brood cells of a honeycomb. Becca reappeared, so did other birds, and some kind of frog, and even a sheep.

  Isabel looked to Liza, whose face could barely be made out in the darkness. But Liza had no clue to their meaning. Even Alice had never reported such visions.

  “Those birds,” Marguerite observed. “Scarlet tanagers, I could have sworn. But they’re extinct, here.”

  “The tree frogs, too,” someone else added.

  There were more scenes, including several more of brood combs. Then abruptly the Pylon went blank. In another minute, its outline became blurred as billows of fog swirled around it, growing within the airwall.

  Andrés grabbed her arm. “Get out, for Christ’s sake. Before the verdammt’ fog puts us to sleep.”

  Everyone made a hasty retreat, recalling what had happened on the night of the bonfire. Isabel left with reluctance, thinking what on Earth could the keepers have done with Becca to connect her with birds, sheep, and extinct tree frogs. And where were her infrared eyes?

  That airwall—there was a way to get through. And she, Isabel, was going to do it.

  XXIII

  ON SATURDAY MORNING, the black package had been replaced as usual by one from Sydney. At the Scattergoods’, Isabel perused the pages of the Herald, along with Daniel and Peace Hope, and Teacher Matthew and several others, all eager for the latest city news. The harbour area was being rebuilt. There was a suspect in the case, still at large, a leader of an Underground group known as the Shades. The Shades had claimed responsibility for the blast at the Wall. The name of the suspect was Dirk Brendan, a transportee from Vista, the Wall-town on America’s West Coast. A blurred photograph was published, of a fair-haired man wearing mirrorshades. Isabel studied the photograph with interest, poor though it was. She had never seen an Underground man in the paper before. Their activities were getting too big to ignore.

  Isabel exchanged pages with Matthew, who had been looking at the science column. “This should interest you,” Matthew said, “on medical thermography for detection of cancers.”

  “That sounds like something the hospital could use.” She looked up at him. “How did you like those ‘visions’ in the Pylon? What sort of technology could possibly make them?”

  “Actually, they didn’t impress me much.” He flipped the page over. �
�Why only still shots? Any video set can do better. I guess you didn’t grow up with television.”

  Isabel recalled watching a video screen of some sort, once when she was small, before the angelbees had claimed them all. “Well, they must think we’re rather primitive. Simple stuff is good enough for us chimps.”

  “Or else they’re just not used to working with visible light. Suppose we had to design an infrared TV set…” Matthew shook his head. “It shouldn’t be that hard. They’ve had twenty years at least.”

  “They must be a decadent race.”

  “No Yankee ingenuity.” He grinned at her, and she was glad to see him cheerful for a change, less withdrawn into his own thoughts.

  Then it flashed into her head, her own bit of ingenuity from the night before: a way to get in at the Pylon, by plunging in after an angelbee. If only there were a way to get the “hole” to stay open…

  Absently she dropped the newspaper and stood up, turning over ideas in her head. As she turned to leave the sitting room, Daniel caught her arm. “Where is thee going, Isabel?”

  She turned to face him. He knew so well when she was cooking up something. “I’m going to take another look at the Pylon.”

  “I’ll come with thee.”

  She said more quietly, “I intend to break into the Pylon.”

  “I’ll come.”

  With a deep breath, she said, “All right, then. Vamos.”

  The crust of the snow sparkled in the sunlight in the field where the Pylon stood. Boot prints crisscrossed the area, and several folding chairs were left over from the night before. The Pylon was no longer quite the sacred place it had been for so long.

  It was impossible to get the carriage through the snow, so Isabel had trudged out with the coil of rope over her arm, with an old skillet tied to one end for weight. Daniel had carried it part of the way; even so, now her shoulder was sore. She massaged it, hoping it would not affect the aim of her throw.

  “What now?” asked Daniel.

  “We wait for angelbees.” There were none in sight, so far. Isabel inspected the airwall closely. Around its perimeter, the snow had melted back a few inches. Inside, the otherworldly platform gleamed like polished metal.

  “Surely they’ll stop us,” Daniel said. “How could they not? I think it’s unwise, Isabel.”

  “We’ll be off again before they get us. They’re always slow to react.” Unwise he might say, yet Daniel would follow her nonetheless, just as he had on that night in August when the skystreaking began.

  She set down the coil of rope a few feet from the perimeter. Then she swung the skillet overhead a few times, testing her arm.

  Daniel in the meantime had sat in one of the folding chairs and was reading from Le Petit Prince; their final exam was Monday. Isabel dropped the skillet to rest, and she stepped back to read over his shoulder. It was near the ending, the part that made least sense of all. The Little Prince, sitting atop an old ruined stone wall, was conversing with a golden snake that reared its head from the sand. He was asking the snake for a deadly bite; and, somehow, his death was to carry him back to his own little planet with his baobabs, his three volcanoes, and his one beloved rose.

  Isabel shook her head and looked up toward the Pylon. The angelbees had come at last; two, she counted, then a third one, hovering overhead. “There, Daniel, they’ve come to snoop on us. Come on, you can help me out now.”

  “Don’t we have to wait till one of them crosses the airwall?”

  “We’ll give them some encouragement.” Isabel tied the other end of the rope to a chair leg, and she pounded the chair into the earth to anchor it. Then she took out a box of matches. “When I give the word, you light the match. It’s a good bet those angelbees will take fright and scoot right out the airwall.”

  Daniel looked uneasy. “We don’t want to hurt them.”

  “No, silly. Just give them a quick scare, that’s all. We can’t wait all day.”

  He looked away. A wisp of hair strayed gently beneath his hat, lifting in the breeze. But his mouth was set in that stern way.

  “It’s just a match,” Isabel said quietly. “Like lighting a candle. Remember, we have to find Becca.”

  His face wrinkled in anxious lines. Reluctantly he took the matchbox.

  Isabel picked up the skillet with the rope trailing behind. An angelbee sailed lazily overhead, a little too fast to manage. She would wait for one that moved a bit more slowly. At last another one came, closer, so close that the sun glinting off its surface made her eyes squint. “Okay, ready—now.”

  A crackling sound; behind her, the match was lit. Above her head, the angelbee moved through the airwall. It hung inside briefly, then its form became a black disk that shrank away to nothing.

  With all her strength, Isabel heaved the skillet upward, into the spot where the angelbee had disappeared.

  The skillet paused in midair and seemed to hang there for just a moment. Then it fell inside with a clatter, upon the platform. Behind it, the rope had uncoiled and flowed up through the unseen hole. Then it slowed, and the upper stretch sank a bit, still suspended as if by some magic thread.

  “It’s through! We’ve poked a hole!”

  “No.” Daniel grabbed her arm. “Isabel, let’s keep away from—whatever it is. It must be dangerous.”

  But Isabel pulled away from him. “It’s just a hole. The angelbees go back and forth all the time…” How big was the hole? It was flexible enough; she could pull the rope down and sideways, and the suspended stretch moved along the airwall.

  She stepped slowly into the airwall, feeling its pressure, then she moved her arm alongside the stretch of rope. Along the rope, the pressure lessened. Then, quite without warning, the airwall gave way, and she stumbled to the foot of the Pylon. Her mouth gaped open as she stared upon the smooth surface with its pale, swirling colors, just within reach. She raised an arm but did not dare to touch.

  “Isabel!” From behind her Daniel was calling. “Isabel, does thee hear me? For the love of God, please come back.”

  “It’s okay, I’m coming.”

  Isabel grabbed the rope again, and retraced her path, this time feeling the pressure in. For a moment, there was panic; she could be trapped in here…

  And then there was dark. In an instant day turned to night as Isabel tumbled forward onto the floor of a dimly lit corridor. The air was full of a mist that cut off her vision beyond a few paces. No snow, no Daniel; only her own shadow, cast from a light source somewhere behind her.

  Isabel cried out. She turned, and found that she stumbled for some reason, unable to keep her balance; she felt as if she had lost half her weight.

  There was the Pylon. It had stood there behind her, and the light came from within the circle of its airwall; its platform was a gleaming disk set in the dark floor. Its only source of light was Earth’s sunlight. The skillet still lay there, its rope seemingly cut off at the perimeter.

  The sight of this familiar object calmed her and helped get her brain working again. Of course, that was how the angelbees had done it the night before: first they crossed into the Pylon’s domain, then they turned and came out somewhere else. It was just like Heinlein’s tesseract story, where the two universes came together at an “edge,” and you could go either way.

  She reached for the end of the rope, the airwall pressing back on her. At last she grasped the rope and pulled it toward her. The skillet grated across the platform. When its handle reached her hand, the airwall gave way. She plunged through, turned and escaped back into the sunlit snow.

  Daniel threw his arms around her and held her so hard it hurt.

  “I got in,” she gasped. “I found the other place.”

  “Thee got out again, that’s the main thing.”

  “It was a dark corridor, and my feet felt light. Maybe it was their Hive, in the satellite! Maybe there are other pylons down the corridor…”

  Daniel pointed behind her. “Look.”

  The fog was creepin
g into the airwall from all sides. Someone inside had noticed something amiss.

  “Run for it.” The two of them ran to the road as fast as they could, stomping through the snow. When Isabel at last dared look back, the fog remained largely confined to the airwall, only a few puffs escaping.

  “My dad will be mad at the loss of that rope,” said Isabel.

  “He was lucky not to lose a great deal more.”

  Isabel bit her lip and said nothing. Perhaps it was crazy to follow the angelbees and their keepers into their own place. There had to be a way to do so, without getting caught, some way to creep inside unnoticed, like mice behind the barn walls.

  That afternoon Isabel spent in the microbiology lab with Keith, processing vats of bacteria making ampicillin and erythromycin. The filtrate containing the antibiotics went straight onto the columns for concentration. It was a taxing job, and by evening Isabel was barely awake enough to read.

  Sometime after sundown, there came a knock on the door. It was Terri Tran, her straight black hair cropped short around her face, so serious as she delivered her message. “My mom says you’d better come quick,” said Terri. “There’s a message for you in the Pylon.”

  “But—why? How do you know it’s for me?”

  “Mom says come now.”

  In the Pylon, as Isabel’s family looked on with the Scattergoods and the Trans, ruddy images flashed, one after another. The first was simply Isabel herself, with Daniel, a red-tinted “snapshot” that could have come from anywhere. The second was the image of the nested pylons, one within another within another, ad infinitum. The two scenes alternated ceaselessly, just as they had for the fetal monitor.

  XXIV

  THE NEXT MORNING was the last Sunday before Christmas. The temperature had dropped below freezing, and in the Meetinghouse the window cracks were stuffed with rags, and the fire was crackling in the wood stove. Isabel wore a pair of jeans under her skirt and a jacket of her mother’s that predated Doomsday. Debbie held up the woolen-wrapped bundle that was baby Patience, while Miracle and Charity and Faith wore hand-knit sweaters and scarves. Charity’s little cardigan had been worn by the Tran boy the year before, handed down by most of the Gwynwood children before that. The Pestlethwaite twins had not gotten new boots this year; they had layers of thick stockings stretched over their shoes.