A Grave Tree

by Jennifer Ellis

  His hunger clawed at him now, and his thoughts shifted to salami sandwiches and spaghetti and meatballs. And since he was in a future that appeared to have mostly become a jungle, with no evidence of any settlements whatsoever, it might be a long time before he found food.

  In retrospect, he realized that his plan also depended on Sylvain and the others caring enough about him to come and retrieve him—which may have been a mistake. Perhaps Sylvain and the others didn’t care about him. And worse, perhaps they didn’t need Mark to get home.

  A rustle in the forest caused him to leap to his feet. He scanned the edge of the tree line and the dim silhouettes of the massive evergreens that lay beyond the first row of trunks. Anything could be out there ready to devour him.

  The cloud of mosquitos increased in density, and Mark wanted to rip his arms off and swing them around at the stinging creatures. Already his face, wrists, and ankles felt swollen and itchy with welts. The air around him seemed alive and frothing. The lack of food, the long walk, the dam discovery, the movement in the woods, and now the mosquitos—it was all too much. He ran in a circle, waving his arms, looking for a place to get away from the humming black scourge.

  He saw it again. A flash of movement in the trees, low to the ground.

  In a panic, he plunged into the river, the frigid water nipping at his feet, ankles, and then knees as he waded out into the current.

  The roiling water at the base of the dam by the first outlet valve threatened to destabilize him, but it wasn’t deep, and Mark managed to keep his footing, although he wanted to yelp from the cold. The faint spray thrown into the air seemed to deter the mosquitos, and Mark made his way deeper into the river, grateful for the blessed relief from the swarming tide of black.

  The water pooling near the grey wall of the dam in the middle of the river away from the outlet valve was calmer, and Mark headed in that direction. Mosquitos could not bite him underwater. Maybe he could submerge himself and be free of them altogether. Perhaps without the relentless attack of the mosquitos, he could think, and decide what to do.

  He watched the edge of the forest with an intensity that made his eyes burn with dryness. Nothing had emerged, but he had the distinct feeling that something was watching him. Then again, he was prone to fits of imagination, and fits in general. It was an unfortunate aspect of his brain programming. He was just more acutely aware of his environment, of threats, and of the potential for discomfort, than other people were.

  The cement of the dam remained surprisingly warm in the setting sun, and Mark placed a hand on the structure. Now was not the time to run through his mental list of the tallest dams and largest reservoirs in the world, although he started listing a few under his breath to calm himself. He needed to come up with a plan, immediately.

  He glanced to the south in the direction of Four-Valley Gap. He had wanted to see it from the air, where he could fully appreciate it as a landform, not via a hike through mosquito-infested forest, but Sylvain and the others might still be there, and the people in the animal skins who lived in this future had indicated they were heading there as well.

  Of course the people in the animal skins hadn’t seemed entirely friendly. (In fact, it might be them watching him from the trees right now.) But if his future self was among them, perhaps they would feed him, and he could ask his future self what he had meant about losing Luanne, and Abbey’s baby, and the fifth map. But especially Luanne.

  Mark had never entertained the prospect of a girlfriend. He was just too different, too solitary. Dealing with someone else’s emotions and having to constantly try to understand how someone else was feeling seemed impossible, exhausting. And yet, if he were to entertain the possibility of a girlfriend, he had to admit that that girlfriend might look an awful lot like Luanne, who might, just possibly, know just as much about maps as Mark did.

  Mark’s legs were starting to go numb; he needed to act soon. He decided that heading to Four-Valley Gap was probably the best plan from a wide variety of angles. There might be food there, and if the others were going to Simon’s future, then perhaps he would be able to go there too and start looking for the fifth map, which he apparently needed to find. (He tried not to think about the significant problem that being near his future self made him very, very sick. The very bad man had also said something about people exploding when they got too close to themselves.)

  The sun reemerged from a single puff of cloud on the horizon and began to drop behind the ridge of the Circle Mountains. The upper part of the dam glowed orange, and Mark turned to gaze at it; the massive edifice of human development seemed so out of place in this almost abandoned world. He ran his fingers along the rough cement, feeling the small bubble holes and indents where tiny pebbles had fallen away. He studied the holes and indents, looking for a pattern, a face, or a coastline, or an island. Something to guide him. But the markings on the dam seemed alarmingly random, and his brain could conjure no reassuring map lines.

  One of the holes seemed deeper than the others and more elongated… like a keyhole. Mark examined the dam more closely. He could see where three-foot wide slabs of cement had been fitted together to form the wall of the dam, resulting in lines that ran up to the top. And then his heart nearly stopped.

  Embedded in the middle of the slab in front of him, ever so faintly, possibly only visible to someone who was used to studying everything for shapes and patterns, was a stone shaped a bit like a pentagon.

  A pentagon and a keyhole.

  A door… right here in the middle of the dam.

  *****

  Abbey tried to process what Selena was saying while she scanned the boardwalk again and again for an escape route. She had to get back to the hospital and rescue Caleb. How was it possible that Simon worked for Sylvain? She’d been to the offices of Sinclair Systems just a couple of months ago and had been on a spaceship that used Sinclair Systems software just a month before that.

  Selena sauntered casually beside Abbey, but the feeling that Selena occupied the air all around Abbey intensified, and Abbey started to choke. She raised her arms to fend off the invisible forces that seemed to be pinning her in place.

  “Stop whatever you’re doing,” Abbey managed to force out.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Selena said.

  Anger and worry for Caleb welled up inside Abbey. They gathered in her stomach, and she felt like she might be vibrating. And then with one violent push—at what? at the air? at Selena? at nothing?—she swept away the strands of whatever was holding her in place.

  Selena looked winded and surprised. Abbey took the opportunity to hit her for real right across the jaw with her closed fist, then sweep one stilettoed foot out from underneath the woman with her sneaker. Selena hit the ground hard, but the feeling that Abbey was surrounded again resurfaced, threatening to pin her limbs back in place.

  She fought it off again, then turned and leapt over the side of the boardwalk. Selena grabbed her backpack just as she went over the barrier, but Abbey shrugged it off and fell hard onto the riverbank. She rolled and bolted into a grove of willow trees, their thin fronds hanging down into the sand, her right hand throbbing.

  She fought her way through the wispy branches, tripping and blinded by the swaying leaves, expecting any second to be grabbed by one of Selena’s enforcers, Nate and Damian. She heard rustling behind her as if someone else also struggled through the low-hanging branches. She wasn’t moving fast enough. She sped up, and as she thrust her foot forward, it encountered something hard. She had too much forward momentum to stop, and her shin hit the small wooden rowboat next.

  Could it be the same one Mark and Caleb had used a month ago, still unrecovered on the edge of the Moon River? Abbey whispered a small prayer of thanks, shoved it into the water, and hopped inside. Although the river was glassy and nothing like the tumultuous torrent that had carried them downstream just a few hours ago, the current picked up the boat immediately, and wit
h a few strokes of the oars, Abbey was out in the middle of the river, accelerating away from the hospital.

  Selena emerged from the willow tree, her dark hair studded with leaves and branches and her beautiful face tight.

  “Stop! I’m not your enemy, Abbey. I can help you get Caleb back and tell you where your parents are. I’ve changed. I’m sorry for the things my younger self did. I was eager—too eager. You don’t even know what’s going on. Your parents are in danger, and you might be the only person who can help them. Sylvain and Ian are using you. This future is crumbling. Simon has realized that he needs to work with us now. That’s why he’s hired me. We’re going to try again, and you can still help us in the present. You can come, too, to the new world… Trust me, you don’t want to be here.”

  Abbey pulled harder on the oars. Despite being low, the current was swift, and the distance between Abbey and Selena expanded quickly. Acceleration equals change in velocity over time, her brainiac mind-feed supplied helpfully.

  “Please, Abbey. Stop!”

  The current started to carry Abbey faster and faster. Acceleration is the second derivative of displacement. It is the rate of change in velocity.

  “The river goes underground at Coventry Stadium. I’d get out before then,” Selena called, and then she was out of earshot.

  Abbey let the current pull her downstream while she sucked in big breaths of air and tried to bring her heart rate down. The choking sensation still burned at her throat, and if she weren’t worried about giardia and any number of other waterborne parasites, she would scoop water into her mouth to try to wash the feeling away.

  What had just happened? What invisible net had Selena placed over her, and how had Abbey thrown it off? Her mind grasped at explanations in physics or chemistry—she refused to consider the possibility of witchcraft—and came up blank.

  Selena no longer stood on the beach, and Abbey craned to see where the woman had gone. The hospital building was right on the riverfront, and there was no beach in this section, just a thick cement wall. Selena would have to go back up and around the hospital if she wanted to follow the boat, and Abbey was moving too quickly for Selena to catch her, unless Selena had a vehicle, which was entirely possible. She might head to the stadium to pounce again when Abbey was forced ashore by the tunnel.

  She would have to get out of the river. She couldn’t go through the tunnel. The prospect of rats, spiders, and darkness—not to mention the potential for the tunnel to narrow, trapping the rowboat underground—made that decision easy. But where to go?

  Ian was supposed to be meeting them at Abbott’s Apothecary. But the apothecary was far too close to the hospital with Selena lurking around. And Selena’s words about Ian using them lingered in Abbey’s mind. She needed to find older Simon and get his help rescuing Caleb. Surely Selena was lying about Simon having been arrested and working for Sylvain. She had to be.

  Abbey stuck the oars firmly into the water and turned the boat. She would go ashore on the other side of the river and head to Simon’s offices on Oltree Road.

  Sweat poured down her back and her arms ached by the time she managed to maneuver the boat through the current to a small beach in a residential area. She tied it to a rock and scurried through street after street of dome houses until she found a train platform. She took the train to the central train station, then picked the spoke that she thought would drop her closest to Oltree.

  As she waited for the second train, the digital billboard in the train station scrolled through photo after photo of a smiling and still perky Sandy in a white jumpsuit, giving speeches, wearing a hardhat on a mining site, and shaking hands with groups of smiling people in a rainbow of jumpsuits. The words “Arrest Made in the Dunham Murder” scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Abbey’s hands felt icy.

  With the tall glass cube library looming above the houses behind her, she practically ran down the boardwalk to Simon’s offices. 309 Oltree Road.

  309.

  According to one of Ian’s cards, 309 was the number they were supposed to be looking for, but 309s had followed them everywhere. Simon’s address, Sylvain’s locker number, a map drawer number… “The final lesson is at 309,” Abbey murmured, repeating the script on the card. But what final lesson?

  She slowed as she approached 309 Oltree Road, looking for the metal gate and adobe fence with the Sinclair Systems tree sign. But they didn’t appear as expected. Instead, she passed unfenced dome house after dome house set into the ground. Abbey blinked and checked the street name and the address again. She was standing in front of 307 Oltree Road. Simon’s offices should be right there.

  But they weren’t. She waked past again, scrutinizing the addresses. 303, 305, 307, 311.

  There was no 309 Oltree Road. She ran across the street and checked the addresses on the other side. Nothing. She looked for a vacant lot where a building might have recently been torn down, but there was no gap between 307 and 311.

  Simon’s offices didn’t exist anymore. Abbey felt her knees buckle beneath her, and she sank onto the curb.

  What was going on? What had they done that would alter the future so significantly? And what was she going to do now? She wiped away a tear furiously with her dirty jumpsuit sleeve.

  A dark-haired man with a goatee rode a bicycle down the deserted street toward her. Max. Maybe he could help.

  She stood and waved. Max slowed the bike and cocked his head at her, his face quizzical.

  “Max!” she called.

  He pulled the bike to a stop. “Do I know you?” he said.

  “I’m Abbey, remember? One of the technicians who fixed your ship computer.”

  Max studied her through narrowed eyes. “I’m afraid you have me mixed up with someone else. I don’t own a ship. I wish I did, but I’m not quite rich or famous enough for that. G’day, mate.” He flipped a hand in a gesture of salute, and made as if to pull away on his bike.

  “Wait!” Abbey yelled. “I mean your spaceship. We went to New L.A. to collect ALICE, remember? With Caleb and Simon.”

  Max turned back. His demeanor had shifted from confused to wary, as if she might be about to lose it, and he would have to be the one to call authorities and see her off in a straitjacket.

  “If this is a sting operation, I’ll have no part of it. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, shifting his gaze from Abbey to look all around her, as if people or cameras occupied the bushes and houses. Then he spoke clearly and loudly. “I’ve never been in a spaceship, nor have I been to New L.A. I don’t know anything about New L.A. I show up for work every day at the library, like I’m supposed to, like I always do. Have a good day.”

  He resumed pedaling at a considerably faster clip and soon disappeared around the corner.

  Abbey stared after him, dumbfounded. Everything was different from the times they had been here before. Simon no longer owned his own company. Max didn’t own a spaceship, didn’t even remember meeting them. Sandy was running for mayor.

  Abbey turned to look up at Coventry Hill, where the last times they had been here, a spaceship causeway had hung in the air, dotted with ships of all shapes and sizes. The causeway was still there, but it seemed to Abbey that it might be smaller, and occupied by larger ships than she recalled seeing before.

  She looked all around her. What else was different? The dome houses remained sunken into the ground along the wide streets. The train station had still been set up like a wagon wheel with spokes running out in all directions. The library looked as it had before. But now that she looked closer, the streets and houses appeared perhaps a little more run-down than she remembered. Then again, it had been dark many of the times she had been here before. If she had actually been here before.

  This future is crumbling… Selena had said.

  Abbey made her way to the library. Would Kasey remember meeting them?

  Ominous thunderclouds hung over the Stairway Mountains. The air seemed less
arid than she remembered, and the banks of Coventry Hill and the surrounding mountains redder and more scoured.

  A trick of the light, perhaps.

  In the library, Abbey headed to one of the computer terminals. The library at least seemed the same. She glanced up at the map room on the mezzanine. She would go up and see if Kasey was there in a few minutes. See if he remembered her. She ran her fingers over the digital keyboard on the desk, and when the outlines of letters appeared, she typed in “Sylvain Salvador.” Maybe the future Sylvain could help her.

  “Sylvain Salvador, local business owner, gravely injured in spaceship accident.”

  The story expounded on the dangers of space travel and emphasized that earth-to-space and space-to-space jumps were for trained pilots only. Sylvain lost his legs in the incident and remained heavily sedated and in the hospital. The article indicated that the Coventry Council would be reassessing their position on the national regulations for civilian space travel in their next sitting.

  Abbey stared at the screen. Why would the Coventry Council be reassessing their position on national regulations? Did a city council have any influence over national regulations?

  She looked up Sinclair Systems next, but nothing came up. Then she typed in Simon Sinclair. Simon’s bespectacled, dark-haired image came up. “Simon Sinclair, Director of Space Travel Technology, Salvador Systems,” read the caption beneath the photo.

  So. It was true. Simon did work for Sylvain. There was no Sinclair Systems.

  Abbey felt a sickness expand in her belly. Was it because of her choice to help Sylvain move the older Caleb and his people to this future? Had Caleb really betrayed Simon and destroyed his business, forcing him to work for Sylvain? Had that one thing changed everything, for the worse?