“Short run today,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re staying in the redwoods tonight. It’s only a little way south of here.”
The redwoods. Lod’s favorite place on earth. When I was a little girl, he read picture books about the redwoods to me. When I got older, he showed me photographs of the giant trees. His favorite quote about them was: “The redwoods are the last sentinels of our past, reminding us of what was and what should be again.”
Our destination wasn’t coincidental. If someone were to ask me, what’s the one place your grandfather would most want to see again before he died, I’d say the redwoods.
Bella was acting like this was just another stop, but I knew it was more. There were a lot more direct routes from the East Coast to California than the one Lod had mapped out. He had come this way for a specific reason.
“Lod is very fond of the redwoods,” I said.
“I know, just like he loves all nature. As we all do.”
“I think it’s more than that. The redwoods are his special place.”
“Really,” Bella said vaguely.
She was playing with me. She knew a lot more about this stop than she was letting on. It was time to get down to it.
“How long have you known Lod?” I asked.
“You know that as well as I do. We met at the university. I was twenty years old. I’m an Original. I’ve known him for nearly fifty years.”
“And he never mentioned the redwoods?”
“In passing, maybe. Why?”
“He talked to me about the redwoods a lot when I was little. Showed me photos. Read to me about them.”
“Lod reading to you. That’s hard to imagine.”
I shrugged. “What about Alex Dane?”
Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What does he have to do with the redwoods?”
“Nothing. I’ve just been thinking about him. Actually, Lod asked me to think about him. I’m trying to remember everything he said to me in the Deep. He was an Original. You must have known him for a long time too.”
“Longer than I’ve known Lod, or as we called him back then, Lawrence. And it was never Alex, it was Alexander. If you called him Alex, he wouldn’t acknowledge you were even there. Alexander introduced me to Lod. He was in the Weather Underground before Lod. I think he introduced Lod to most of us. We’d all been Weathermen a couple years before Lod came along.”
“What happened between them?”
Bella shrugged. “They were always bumping heads. Alexander thought he was a lot smarter than Lod, and he was smart, but not nearly as smart as his older brother. There was a nasty rivalry between them. Eventually Alexander went up top. It was the best thing that ever happened to us. After he left, everything settled down.”
“Did you ever wonder what happened to him?”
“Not really. He wasn’t the most popular guy in the Deep. I figured he just went his own way.”
“You must have been surprised when you found out he had been watching you all those years.”
“Shocked would be more accurate. Along with those two boys showing up, and you taking off. But Lod had planned for all of it, almost as if he knew it was going to happen. You know how he is.”
“Actually I don’t know how he is.” This was out of my mouth before I knew it.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, really.”
“Tell me.”
Bella wasn’t about to let this go. Suddenly my tenuous status was in jeopardy. I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. Bella’s intense eyes were locked on me.
“Tell me what you meant.”
Lod was above reproach. Untouchable. No one ever questioned him, although I had gotten away with it a few times. I could have gone defiant with Bella at this point, but that would have undone everything I had gained with her the past couple of days. I needed Bella and Bill to find out what was really going on.
“While I was heading west, I came across some newspaper articles,” I said.
“So?”
“They said that Lod had sarin gas ready to be released above, on innocent people, and explosives set to destroy the Deep and those left behind.”
I didn’t know how she would react to this, but I didn’t expect the reaction I got. She laughed.
Long and hard.
Bill looked in the rearview mirror. “What’s so funny?”
Bella told him, and he started laughing with her.
When Bella had recovered enough to speak, she said, “And you believed it?”
I nodded.
“You are very naïve,” she said. “I guess that’s Lod’s fault in a way. He should have made you an Original like we agreed. If he had, none of this might have happened.”
“What are you talking about?” I’d never been more confused in my life.
“Bombs. Sarin gas. That’s not what we are about. Well, maybe in the old days it was. But we’ve evolved. Lod would have never hurt his own people. We couldn’t take everyone with us, but he had no intention of killing those left behind. They were left on their own with enough food and water to live for decades in the Deep.”
“What about the sarin gas?”
“We never had an ounce of it. Killing thousands of innocent New Yorkers would not have accomplished anything. Even in the old days we made sure that the government buildings we blew up were empty.”
“But the newspaper articles.”
“Lies,” Bella said. “The FBI planted that story to outrage the public, and to scare those left behind into telling them what they knew. Ridiculous, because the people we left back there have no idea what we’re doing. The story is a diversion to take the public’s eye off the embarrassing fact that we operated right under the FBI’s noses for decades without them knowing it.”
I didn’t believe what she was saying, but I was certain she believed it. She and Bill didn’t know about the explosives and gas. Lod hadn’t told them. Just like he hadn’t told them about Alex and my parents.
“You said something about me being made an Original,” I said.
Bella nodded. “I voted you in. So did Bill and everyone else. But Lod wanted to wait. He said you were close but not quite ready. It turned out that he was right, as he usually is.”
Even if he had made me an Original I doubt I would have acted differently after learning that he murdered my parents. “Not much chance of becoming an Original now,” I said.
“You never know. It’s a new world. A lot of changes coming our way.”
“Like what?”
“Not even I know everything.”
“If you don’t know, you can’t tell,” I said. Yet another Pod mantra.
“Ha! And you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
This wasn’t quite true. They did need a weatherman.
Lod was the only person who knew which way the wind was blowing.
Alex poked his head into the cab. “From what I’ve been able to hear, I think they’re in the redwoods along with several other rigs. Maybe all of them, for all I know.”
“Kind of early for them to stop,” I said. “It’s only three o’clock. Kate said they were traveling during the day and stopping at night.”
Coop had Kate’s note out. Again. He must have taken it out of his pocket fifty times since he had found it. He had to have memorized the hundred words by now.
“Something’s changed,” Alex said. “Something’s up. Have you seen the helicopter?”
I hadn’t, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was a perfect day for flying.
“Not that easy to spot a helicopter from the cab of a truck,” Coop pointed out.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
“We’ll go to Arcata,” Alex said. “It’s just south of where they are. There’s an airport eight miles north of the city.”
“That’s pretty specific,” Coop said. “Sounds like you know the area.”
I thought Alex wa
s going to say it was one of the places he had traveled to through books, but he didn’t.
“I know it well,” he said. “I went to Humboldt State University. I got accepted at Stanford like Larry, but my parents didn’t have enough money for both of us go to Stanford at the same time. In our family, it was always about Larry. I got stuck in Arcata. I transferred to Berkeley for my postgraduate work.”
“What did you major in?” Coop asked.
“Computer science.”
“Like Larry?”
“Yeah, like Larry. But he got the computer science bug from me. Computer science was one of his later degrees, and he wasn’t very good at it.”
“I guess that changed when he got into the Deep,” Coop said.
“A chimpanzee could use the systems they have today,” Alex said.
“You set up a pretty decent surveillance system to keep track of the Pod,” I said.
“Child’s play,” Alex scoffed. “I got most of the hardware I used in the library out of Dumpsters. Obsolete junk that nobody wanted. If I’d been able to get inside the Originals’ room and hack their system I’d be able to tell if Larry had brushed his teeth this morning. It’s all about the software, but you have to have access to the hardware to run it.”
“So did Larry ever drive up from Stanford to visit you?” Coop asked.
“Almost every weekend. My parents bought him a brand-new Volkswagen van, but he rarely stayed with me at my flophouse. He had this big thing for the redwoods. He’d go out among the giant trees to commune with them, usually with a girl to keep him company. Even then he needed an adoring audience to preach to. What are you getting at?”
“So he knows this area pretty well,” Coop said.
“I guess. I never went into the redwoods with him. I was busy in the computer lab working, and the few times I offered to go with him he turned me down, claiming three’s a crowd.”
“Don’t you think it’s interesting that after thousands of miles of driving and flying he’s ended up in what is obviously one of his favorite places on earth?”
Alex stared at Coop for a long time, then shook his head. “The redwoods can’t be his final destination. It’s one of the least populated areas on the west coast of California. Whatever he has in mind has to do with hurting people. Politicians and businesspeople in particular. The redwoods are state and federally owned. This isn’t the tourist season. Nobody’s here. And he’d never do anything to jeopardize his beloved trees.”
I felt someone shaking my shoulder, gently, saying my name. I thought it was Bill. I opened my eyes. It was Lod.
I sat up.
Lod was sitting on the edge of the sofa.
There was light coming through the windows. I looked out onto hundreds of giant trees.
“Redwoods,” Lod said quietly.
Bella and Bill weren’t there. This surprised me almost as much as Lod’s unexpected appearance. I couldn’t believe I had slept right through our arrival, which was usually a noisy process, with backup alarms, hydraulic leveling feet being deployed, and Bill and Bella shouting parking suggestions at each other.
“How long was I asleep?”
“I have no idea.” Lod looked at his watch. “It’s a little after three.”
“Where are Bella and Bill?”
“Bill’s helping some of the others set up their rigs. Bella is out checking on security. Want to go for a walk?”
Lod seemed a lot more relaxed than he had been the night before. He was almost cheerful, which made me a little suspicious, but my only choice was to agree.
“Sure,” I said.
“Let me see your ankle.”
I put my foot on the sofa. He took the small tool out of his pocket and removed the bracelet, which was a huge relief.
“I took Bella’s off too. I’ll put them back on when we get back.”
“That’s not necessary. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I will decide what’s necessary. You’re lucky you’re still alive.”
I was hit by a bolt of anger, but I held it back.
“I know,” I said quietly, with as much meekness as I could manage.
When I stepped outside, my anger was whisked away by the sight of the giant redwoods. The photos I had seen, and Lod’s descriptions of them, hadn’t prepared me for the real thing. I was awestruck. Speechless. I’d seen a lot of new things since I’d left the Deep. In fact, almost everything had been new. Beautiful rivers, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Ocean … but none had moved me as much as these giant, prehistoric trees. It was as if we had entered a different dimension, another world, where we were insignificant, the smallest beings on a newly discovered planet.
“Magnificent, aren’t they?” Lod said.
Unwillingly, I looked away from the trees. Lod was smiling, a rare expression for him, even in the Deep. It made him look ten years younger.
“They are unbelievable,” I said, and I meant it.
Lod laughed. Another shock. I hadn’t heard him laugh in months. “You look pretty much like I must have looked when I first saw these trees fifty years ago.”
I glanced around the campgrounds. Several people were outside their rigs setting up camp chairs and starting fires in the fire pits like real campers. It seemed that Lod wasn’t the only one in a good mood.
“There’s a trail at the end of the road.”
We started to walk. People watched us as we passed their campsites. Even with their disguises they were recognizable. I’d known them my entire life.
“Have you been here before?” I asked.
“Dozens of times.”
“Did you ever think you’d get back here?”
“I certainly planned to get back, but of course you never know. Did you think more about Alex last night?”
“I was up most of the night thinking about him, racking my brain, trying to remember if there was anything he said, or did, that I forgot.”
“And?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
Lod frowned.
“But I’ll keep thinking about it.”
“Do that.”
We reached the trailhead.
“There’s a tree down the trail that I was particularly fond of. I’ve always wanted to show it to you.”
I caught a movement to my left and saw LaNae just before she disappeared behind a tree. She had always been a lousy Shadow. I looked to my right. Carl was fifty feet away, paralleling our route, not even bothering to hide himself. Guards rarely tried to hide themselves. Their job was to intimidate. To do that, they had to be seen. I guess he was off the graveyard shift. He and LaNae were working security. Lod rarely went anywhere without someone watching his back, although I was surprised he needed it for a walk in the woods with his granddaughter, even if she was an alleged traitor. LaNae flitted to the next tree clumsily in clear view.
“She’s not very subtle, but she has her uses,” Lod said.
“I have no idea why you made her a Shadow. She should have been a Guard.”
“I made her a Shadow because she wanted to be a Shadow. LaNae’s best attribute is her loyalty, which I value above all else.”
This, of course, was a personal dig at me, but I let it go. This was not the time. Actually, it was never the time to get into it with Lod. I’d never been on a walk with him. All the times we had been above in New York didn’t count because I had been in front of him or behind him, acting as his Shadow.
It was cool out. Shafts of misty sunlight shot down from the tops of the trees to the ground. The trail was soft from the recent rain, blanketed with sweet-smelling needles.
“Sequoia sempervirens,” Lod said.
The Latin name for the redwood. Lod had taught me the name when I was little.
“Forever living,” I said.
“You remembered,” he said. “Some of the redwoods here are a thousand years old. That’s not forever, but it’s a very long time. Much longer than I have.”
Lod was cl
ose to seventy now, but he was still pretty fit. As far as I knew he didn’t have any life-threatening diseases. The Deep was a healthy place to live. We sometimes caught colds, and when I was little the flu went through the group, but other than that it was a disease-free zone. We had a physician and a dentist in the Deep. I hadn’t seen them above, but I was sure they were in one of the rigs. Lod wouldn’t have left them behind.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“You mean my health?”
“Yes.”
“As far as I know, it’s fine. I’m old. So are most of the Originals. We’re not redwoods. We don’t have that many years left. You pushed my plans up by a few months, which made little difference to me personally because everything was already in place. But you did do great harm to yourself.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” he said.
I didn’t want to repeat my lies about my intentions being good, and not knowing that Coop and Pat were going to report the Pod to the FBI. My intention was to bring Lod down. I helped Coop and Pat put together the Beneath report, which had saved a lot of lives.
“I guess I don’t,” I finally answered.
“By helping those boys, by not reporting Alex, you ruined your future. I was on the verge of making you an Original. I wanted you to take my place one day. The reason I was so hard on you in the Deep was to toughen you up for the job.”
I stopped walking. I knew about the Original promotion from Bella, but I couldn’t let Lod know this, or she would get in trouble for speaking out of turn. I still needed Bella on my side. I didn’t think she knew about Lod’s long-range plan of having me take his place. She was a good ten years younger than Lod. I suspect she, and several other Originals, saw themselves inheriting Lod’s crown.
“It would have been nice to know this before I met those two boys,” I said.
“Would it have made any difference?”
“Yes,” I lied.
It wouldn’t have made the slightest difference.
“I’m not planning on dying anytime soon,” Lod said. “It will take a long time, but there might be a chance for you to redeem yourself, to gain back the Pod’s trust, perhaps even take my place. It all depends on how you conduct yourself from this moment on.”