But once I got past the gross-out factor, another thought occurred to me. First the Shepherds had a bunch of space chimps, and now they were rating possible astronaut food. Was this entire island filled with projects to help humanity make it in space? After all, in a space station, there wasn’t room for cotton fields. We’d have to make our clothes out of silk, or . . .
“Wool,” I blurted. “Wool, and meat. Silk and jam.”
“Peas and carrots,” said Eric. “What’s your point?”
“Those tiny sheep. They wouldn’t take up much room on a spaceship.”
“Yeah,” said Eric, “but do you know how much sheep fart?”
I ignored him, but Howard didn’t.
“They were measuring how much they fart, actually,” said Howard. “They were keeping data on the methane production.”
“Eww!” I cried, even though that probably was important. You wouldn’t want to live on a spaceship full of sheep farts. It still fit my theory. “And they can be used to provide cloth and meat, which makes them doubly useful. And then these worms, they can fit into an even smaller space. . . .”
“And you can eat them, too!” said Howard.
“I’d rather get hit by an asteroid,” said Eric.
I examined the listings again. As with the flocks of sheep, the groups whose “resource rating” was listed as satisfactory showed no “completion date.” They must be the successful experiments. I thought about the mama chimp the Shepherds had captured. Would her experiment be successful, or would she join the other skeletons with “completion dates” we’d seen in the dermestid tanks and on the walls in the apes’ habitat?
“Let’s go,” Eric urged us. He pointed at the end of the hall, where a dark doorway loomed beneath a telltale red exit sign. “What are we waiting for?”
“Do you think this whole building has bugs in it?”
“Probably,” said Savannah. “Every floor. Every room. I only hope they didn’t escape.”
“You guys,” Eric said faintly, “this isn’t funny anymore.”
“Okay, Eric, we’re leaving.” I smirked at my best friend and we made for the exit sign.
The stairwell went up four landings and dead-ended at another door. I was at the head of the line, and when I saw what was written on the door, I stopped dead.
“Um, Eric, you might want to head back to the beetles.”
He pushed past Savannah to see. “Why, what does it—” He paled, because beneath the red exit sign, this was what it said:
WARNING:
BEES
DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT PROTECTIVE GEAR
Eric threw his hands in the air in despair. “What is with this place? What kind of Shepherd keeps bees? Sheep, I understand.”
“And chimps?” Savannah asked.
“And dermestids?” added Howard.
Eric turned to Howard. “No one should keep beetles, dude. Remind me to never go to your house again, now that I know what kind of monsters your dad thinks of as pets.”
“That’s not fair,” said Howard. “They’re Nate’s, too.”
“Have you ever heard of exterminators? People pay to get pests out of their houses.”
“Pests like you?” Savannah teased. She looked at me. “Gillian, there’s hope for your family.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Okay, enough. Eric, do you want me to open this door or do you want to go back to the beetles?”
“I want to get to the beach,” Eric said. “However I can. But I don’t think I can handle bees.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll check. Maybe the room will be empty like that Lady Bird one.”
Carefully, I opened the door, bracing for buzzing, but the room beyond was silent. I ducked my head in and gasped, then opened the door wide.
“Eric,” I said breathlessly, “I don’t think you have to worry about the bees.”
We entered the vast, open space. The room was several stories tall, and the ceiling was made of giant panes of dirty glass, which bathed us all in a sickly yellow light. It was late afternoon, and the sky must be a brilliant orange over the cove, but only the dregs made it into this forlorn, abandoned place.
Tall, narrow square columns stood in silent rows like forgotten monuments, some with missing panels that revealed gray-tinged honeycombs inside. There was a narrow metal walkway a foot or so off the floor that divided the room into a neat grid, with one of the giant white towers in the middle of each square. I realized they were beehives, though I’d never seen any this large. Below the walkways was a curdled, brownish mulch. I looked closer, then gasped.
The ground was a carpet of dead bees.
I guessed this entire room had reached its completion date.
I now realized why we hadn’t been able to find a door to this building. The whole back wall looked like a giant automatic garage door. A red exit sign glowed dimly at the top.
By now, the Shepherd signs marking each experiment were almost familiar.
COLONY 2
REPRODUCTION RATE: IDEAL
POLLINATION EFFICIENCY: SATISFACTORY
SUBSTITUTION RATE: SATISFACTORY
RELEASE PENETRATION: COMPLETE
GUARANTEED COLLAPSE: SATISFACTORY
COMPLETION DATE:
COLONY 4:
REPRODUCTION RATE: UNSATISFACTORY
POLLINATION EFFICIENCY: IDEAL
SUBSTITUTION RATE: UNSATISFACTORY
RELEASE PENETRATION: INCOMPLETE
GUARANTEED COLLAPSE: IDEAL
COMPLETION DATE:
Weird. These colonies didn’t have completion dates listed, but the bees inside were obviously dead. Every bee in this building was dead. I checked out a few more signs as we made our way across the metal walkways. Every step dislodged another shower of flaky bee carcasses onto the concrete below. Their wings sparkled with iridescence as they crumbled beneath our feet.
All the other experiments we’d found on the island were designed to help humans survive in space, but bees didn’t fit the pattern. Why would anyone want to bring bees into space? They only made honey. You couldn’t wear them, and you couldn’t really live on honey, anyway. Not like—ick—moth jam.
“What’s a ‘guaranteed collapse’?” Eric asked as we passed another tower.
“I don’t know.” I examined the sign. Another overall satisfactory rating on a sign marking a hive full of dead bees. “Maybe it has something to do with colony collapse disorder?”
“What’s that?” asked Savannah.
“It’s that disease that bees have. You remember, the one Anton was talking about at dinner last night? Colony collapse disorder. The bees would just go off to gather pollen one day and never come back to their hive.”
“Oh yeah,” Eric said. “When all the bees started dying off, like, ten years ago. No one knows why. Some people blamed cell phones or new pesticides.”
“Dad said it was Wi-Fi.”
“No,” said Eric. “Dad taught a class to his wacko friends saying it was Wi-Fi. There’s a difference.”
I was quickly learning that. Dad had taught me to be wary of people who wanted to track where people were going and what they were doing in the name of safety, but he’d been fine when Elana had done that exact thing in order to find us.
“Well, now we know why Anton was freaking out about it,” I said. “He had a whole warehouse full of dead bees.”
“Was there some kind of honey shortage I don’t know about?” Savannah asked.
“Weren’t you paying attention to Anton’s lecture at dinner last night?”
“No,” she replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Because it was a lecture. At dinner.”
“Honey is the smallest part of the problem,” I said. “Most of the crops in this country depend on bees for pollination. Without bees, the plants don’t make fruit. And the scary part is, since no one ever knew what caused the collapse, there’s nothing we can do to prevent it from happening again.”
Savannah frowned. �
��Poor bees. Maybe the Shepherds’ research was on how to prevent it from happening. Maybe they were breeding bees who were immune.”
“But then wouldn’t they call it ‘collapse resistance’ instead of ‘collapse guarantee’ or whatever?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea why the Shepherds do what they do, Gillian. Isn’t that what we’re here to find out?”
Yes, but the more I learned about Eureka Cove, the more confused I got. I wished Dr. Underberg had given us a book to help unravel this puzzle, too. He wanted us to break their codes, and we had, but now what?
In the center of the room, the walkway widened into a small platform, on which sat a control panel as well as assorted screens and keyboards. “Oh, good, a command center. Maybe it’ll tell us how to open those doors.”
The panel was off, but when I pressed the power button, the machines hummed to life, echoing oddly in the dead space. All the buttons and dials were oversized and encased in heavy plastic, which I supposed made sense if they were designed to be operated by people wearing beekeeping suits.
A menu appeared on-screen:
HOME
OPERATIONS
SUBSTITUTION PENETRATION MAP
REPORTS
“Operations?” I guessed. I chose that option.
WATER
TEMPERATURE
CLEANING
RELEASE
“Release,” Howard suggested from over my shoulder. But when I clicked, it wasn’t the large cargo doors that opened, but instead a bank of tiny windows right under the translucent roof.
“Hmm.” I went back to the home screen.
“I wonder what the penetration map is,” I said.
“Not the way out.” Eric tugged my sleeve. “Come on, Gills, quit stalling. I bet Dad is here already.”
I clicked through anyway. Just one quick peek.
A multicolored map of the United States came up on-screen. Vast swaths of the map were shaded red and pink, with smaller segments in orange, yellow, green, and blue. To the right was a key marked CCD Rate. Red corresponded to 70 percent, pink to 60 percent, and so on. On the right, I could click through similar maps, labeled by colony and year.
“You’re right,” Savannah said, pointing at the key. “CCD, like colony collapse disorder. I guess they were trying to find a cure.”
I bit my lip. The title of the map was “Substitution Penetration.” But the only measurement seemed to show the rate of bees dying from colony collapse. I thought about the ratings on the signs: Guaranteed Collapse.
“I’m not so sure,” I said.
“Gillian,” Eric said in warning.
“One sec.” I clicked over to the Reports section. A long list of documents filled the screen, each with a different date, and all from several years ago and marked “AE Update.” The last one was marked “AE Conclusion.”
“Seriously, Gills,” said Eric. “If we’re not out of here in ten seconds, I’m dragging you out by your hair. Ten . . .”
“Hold your horses!” If CCD was colony collapse disorder, then what was AE?
“Nine . . .”
I clicked on the conclusion.
By consensus of the board, Project Sweet Dreams has been terminated. All were in agreement that the principles of the project were sound. All main objectives were achieved. Strains exhibited excellent rates of penetration and substitution on release, and CCD rates peaked at 33 percent nationally, causing massive disruption of the agricultural chain and outcry for change at high levels.
Publicity for the campaign was also a success, with major coverage in both mainstream and alternative news, a documentary film, and even a major Hollywood disaster movie covering the phenomenon.
However, the effect on public consciousness has not lived up to expectations. Though there was an initial swell of interest, it has been determined that the consequences are either too subtle or too removed from day-to-day life to have any serious impact. (See also: global climate change.)
Future projects will focus on more immediate and noticeably disastrous effects. Board strongly feels that only panic will induce action on the part of humanity.—AE
Eric forgot about counting down and we all stared, openmouthed, at the screen.
“Wait,” said Savannah. “Am I reading this right? They weren’t trying to cure colony collapse disorder—”
“No.” My throat seemed to choke on the words. “They caused it.”
19
FREEZE!
FOR TWELVE YEARS, MY FATHER HAD TAUGHT ME ABOUT CONSPIRACY theories. He’d told me about the lies in my history books, about the way “They” twisted everything we knew to suit the facts they wanted known. He’d showed me how to spot the story behind the story. He’d made sure that I knew what kind of questions to ask to get beyond the standard excuses and find out the real truth. What about the cover story sounds fishy? Who stands to gain from making the public believe it? And, the biggie: Why are they doing all of this?
Usually, people kept secrets because telling the world the truth would send them into a panic. People liked nice, neat stories, where the bad guys got caught and the good guys were heroes and everyone turned out okay in the end.
But this—this was a conspiracy to start a panic.
I looked around this massive room, filled with tens of thousands of dead bees. Bees that had been bred to die—to go out and interbreed with normal bees, to substitute their faulty genetics, spread across the country, then conveniently die off, making everyone think there was a major problem with their pesticides or their cell phones or—if you were my father—their Wi-Fi signal.
And then what?
Board strongly feels that only panic will induce action on the part of humanity.—AE
AE: Anton Everett. I thought about dinner, about his passionate arguments to see the Earth as a world on the brink of destruction.
I’m trying to save humanity, he’d said. The planet will go on. He’d even sided with the Shepherds right in front of us, saying he agreed with them that the human race, as a whole, refused to see the danger staring us in the face. And he’d been right. All along, Anton was a Shepherd, sitting across the dinner table, telling us what he believed, and we hadn’t seen it. Dani Alcestis was a Shepherd, and she’d gotten us invited to Guidant to give a talk in order to get us here and fulfill some Shepherd plot, and we came along like . . . well, like sheep.
Baa.
And as much as I hated to admit it, I saw Anton’s point. No one liked change. As long as things were working, even if they weren’t working great, most people would just muddle along the best they could. Like Mom and Dad, fighting over the way he’d get lost in his work, or whether or not the risks he took were worth it. It took some big, horrible crisis to change it all. The scandal, the flood, the weeks spent hiding out in the woods. That’s when Mom finally had enough and decided to get out.
I wondered if that was what the Shepherds were trying to do by tampering with the Capella data. To push humanity to choose to get out, too. If we all thought an asteroid was coming toward Earth, we would definitely panic. And if we panicked enough, maybe we’d start to think more seriously about space. Maybe we’d start to behave the way the Shepherds wanted us to.
Elana had said Capella was her “pet project.” I doubted she’d like her second-in-command’s attempts to ruin it in order to help the Shepherds.
“You know what, Eric?” I turned to my brother. “You’re right. We need to get out of here. Now.”
“Freeze!” shouted a voice.
We whirled around to see four security guards standing on the walkway. Their uniforms were beige, with the Guidant logo on them. The guard in front held up her hand. “Hold on, it’s the kids. We found them.”
Behind me, Eric let out a sigh of relief. “Rescue.”
I nudged him to keep quiet. For all we knew, these were just Shepherds in Guidant uniforms.
“Come with us,” said the guard. “You have no idea how long we’ve been looking for you.”
I didn’t move. “Who sent you?”
She rolled her eyes. “Ms. Mero? Your father? It would have been way easier if you hadn’t hung up on them before we figured out where you were going to meet. Now, come on. This island was dangerous before the trespassers came.”
She must mean the trespassing Shepherds. I nodded, relieved that someone was finally on our side. Before we knew it, we were being hustled through an unseen exit near the cargo doors and down a few more flights of dimly lit stairs.
“I want to talk to my dad.”
“We have to get you off the island,” the guard said. There were two of them walking in front of us and two of them behind as we made our way down a sloping path of what looked like a basement tunnel. Pipes and wiring ran the length of the corridor, and the floor was nothing more than packed dirt. “Communication between here and the mainland is being monitored.”
I shut my mouth.
At the end of the corridor, there was a large metal door, fastened with a wheel, like a safe. One of the guards turned the wheel, unsealing the door, but it took two of them to pull it open. A gust of frigid air hit our faces, and with it, the dank smell of deep earth.
“Well,” said Eric drily. “At least this looks familiar.”
It did remind me of Omega City, and not just because we were clearly underground. Darkness stretched out around us, curved tiled walls and packed-earth floor receding into the distance. The only island of light was an inflatable enclosure about the size of our cottage sitting fifty feet away, glowing like a paper lantern in a moonless sky. Two large cargo trucks were parked in front of the door to the enclosure, and the guards led us toward them without delay.
“Is this a tunnel?” I asked one of them. “Does it go under the cove?”
She gave me a look and I shut up. Okay, I guess that was a stupid question. Of course it was a tunnel. And where else would it be going, if not under the cove? The island wasn’t that big.
“I can’t believe,” she muttered, “that I’ve spent the entire day chasing down a bunch of children.”
The guards stopped at the trucks.
“You kids stay here a second, while we check in. Do. Not. Move. Do you understand me?” She wagged her finger at us.
The Forbidden Fortress Page 16
