Children of Eden

  “How the hell could you do that to me?” I ask, my voice furious and hurt. “Lachlan, I thought this was supposed to be a brotherhood, a family of second children. I trusted you with everything about myself. Why couldn’t you trust me?”

  I expect an apology, but he looks at me levelly and says, “The Underground is bigger than any one person, more important than one night of suffering. We’ve only known about you for a matter of days, so we know less about you than we typically do about second children. Most we find when they’re very young, even babies, or before birth. Our hunting methods are sophisticated—more so than the Center’s, anyway. But we missed you entirely, and only found you by luck. Most second children come here so early they are part of the family. They’re loyal. But you . . .”

  “We don’t know where your loyalties lie,” Flint supplies.

  “I’ve been a prisoner all of my life because of Center policies!” I rage. “I’ve been in constant danger of prison or death. The government killed my mother! Do you really have any doubt about my loyalties at this point?”

  “People can be surprising—even to themselves,” Flint says. “You don’t know what you’d do in the worst situations, until they happen to you. But for now, I’m willing to let you into the Underground. You’re one of us . . . sister.”

  He offers me his hand. I stare at it, considering. I understand why he did what he did. I really do. In theory. But the fact that he did it to me makes it different. There’s a world of difference between what is rationally necessary and what a good person should actually do. Logic shouldn’t always win.

  But my hand rises and clasps his firmly. Something seems to surge through me. Flint is a natural leader, I can tell. Just looking at him makes me feel like he has everything firmly under control. He’s inspiring, and I feel like I can rely on him. Sister . . . I’m no longer alone.

  But when Lachlan holds out his hand, too, I glare coldly at him and then deliberately look away. We confided in each other. We talked about our lives. He shouldn’t have let that happen to me. I understand why Flint did it, and forgive him, but somehow I can’t forgive Lachlan. It might not make perfect sense, but there it is.

  “Come,” Flint says, touching me lightly on the shoulder. “Let me introduce you to the Underground.” We exit the torture cave—just a room now—and step out into something I could never have imagined.

  I’m inside a jewel. A faceted, glowing, many-hued jewel.

  “Are . . . are we still under Eden?” I stammer, not believing my eyes.

  I look out over a huge crystal cavern, maybe half a mile across. The entire roof and most of the walls of the gigantic cave are covered with clear bright jutting stones that look like colored ice. In subtle shining shades of palest pink and amethyst, of smoky silver and water-blue and pure clear diamond they surround me, catching the dim artificial light, so beautiful that for just a second I don’t notice the even more remarkable thing below them. In the center of the twinkling crystal cavern, rising almost to the ceiling and spreading its canopy more than a hundred feet across, is a tree.

  A tree. A living tree.

  The trunk is massive, twenty, thirty feet across, lumpy and gnarled. Roots spread aboveground for around the trunk before plunging into Earth. Earth? Dirt? It can’t be. The ground of the cavern looks like a forest floor, Earth covered in brown fallen leaves.

  My eyes rise to the tree again, and for the first time in my life I make the gesture they make in temple. My fist rises from my belly to my face, my fingers branch out, like a seed growing, sprouting. I feel reverent awe, like I should fall to my knees, hide my face in the presence of something so radiantly beautiful, so perfect as a tree.

  Then dawn breaks over the green, living canopy, making the crystals above seem to dance, and tears fall silently from my eyes.

  “It can’t be real,” I whisper. But I can smell a sharp-sweet scent, and beneath that something rich and moist. Leaves, and Earth. I’ve never smelled anything like that—no one has, for generations—but some part deep within me recognizes the scents right away. Somewhere in my blood is a memory of nature, and it rejoices.

  The sky goes from gray to pearl touched with pink as the sun breaks an unseen horizon and bathes the world with gentle morning light. That part has to be illusion, technology. We’re deep underground, with rock all around us. Somehow they’ve made an almost perfect simulacrum of breaking dawn. But it’s not just color, or light. I feel a flush of warmth hit my skin from where the sun is rising. The crystals in the roof and walls shine brightly beautiful.

  “The tree is real,” Lachlan says from beside me. I’m so awestruck I don’t even think to move away from him. “And the Earth.”

  “But . . . there aren’t any more trees.” That’s what we’ve been taught. The world is dead, the dirt is toxic, all living things extinct except for a few hardy lichens, single-celled organisms . . . and a handful of humans.

  “There’s one,” Lachlan says.

  “But how?”

  “Aaron Al-Baz, of course,” Flint says, his voice low and reverent. “The man who saved us. The man who will save the world. He made a perfect Eden, and humans corrupted it. We mean to bring Eden back to the paradise he intended it to be.”

  “What is this place?”

  “The backup Eden,” Flint answers. “This is where humans would have had to live if Eden wasn’t ready in time, or if the world was more toxic than predicted. Underground. He kept it as a secret fail-safe in case humans managed to ruin things once again on the surface. It is self-contained and self-perpetuating, set up on computer controls and automation entirely separate from EcoPan.”

  That’s amazing, I think. We’ve been taught that EcoPan took over control of every computer and electronic system on the planet.

  “But he knew man can’t live completely apart from nature,” Flint went on, “so he managed to preserve this tree. The dirt is real organic soil from the surface, clean, good, uncontaminated pre-fail dirt. It goes down fifty feet, so the roots can bury deep. Hidden panels among the crystals simulate sunlight. As far as the tree knows, it’s still on the surface. It gets sunlight, water, nutrients, seasons . . . and it gives us almost all the oxygen we need to survive down here with the place entirely sealed.”

  “He must have loved us, Rowan, to give us all this,” Lachlan says. I won’t look at him. “He must have loved humans so much, to save us from ourselves.”

  “I have work to do,” Flint said abruptly. “Lachlan, show her around.”

  I try to protest, but Flint turns on his heel and is gone.

  Lachlan reaches for my hand, but I shake him off before he can so much as touch me. Every time I look at him, I feel like the wet bag is over my head again, and I’m choking. He steps back and nods, gesturing for me to precede him, giving me space. I want to stay up here gazing at the tree, but then he says, “I know you want to touch it.”

  I can’t resist that offer. I storm ahead of him, but it’s all I can do not to smile.

  The walls are high, ringed with galleries at multiple levels. I can see many cave-like rooms all around. The interrogation chamber I just left is four stories up along the curving walls of the cavernous hall. I fly down stairs cut into the stone, getting curious glances from a few people. I’ll look at them later. Just a few days ago, other humans were exciting. But a tree! For the moment, nothing else exists.

  I sprint across the smooth stone floor until suddenly my feet hit dirt. I skid to a stop and look down at my boots. Lachlan is behind me. “Take them off,” he urges, and I do, laughing as my bare toes grip the real, natural packed Earth. I touch it with my hands; I kneel. Ecstatically, I kiss it. I must look like an idiot, dirt on my lips, but I don’t care. I never thought I’d experience this in my lifetime. Everyone in Eden must endure artificiality for generations so that one day our descendants might know the glory of nature.

  I meet Lachlan’s eyes, still smiling . . . and remember my night of torture. My smile dies, and I stand, turning aw
ay from him.

  The tree looms before me, a true behemoth, dwarfing me as I creep closer. I pick up a dead leaf from the litter at my feet and rub it gently between my fingers, releasing a burst of that sharp, stimulating smell that permeates the air and makes me feel so alert and alive.

  And then I’m touching the tree, tentatively at first, like a newfound love, then pressing my cheek against the rough, fragrant bark, embracing it. My tears wet the bark, soak into it, and are gone.

  With my arms wrapped around the huge tree, my chin on the trunk, I look up into the canopy with all its myriad shades of light and dark green. As I look, a leaf detaches from its twig and drifts slowly down, tacking left and right in elegant swoops. I catch it in my hand. Can I keep it? One leaf is more precious than a jewel. I don’t care if I hang for it—I slip the leaf beneath my shirt, nestling it close to my heart. It is a gift from the tree to me.

  “Stop! Look out!” a voice calls from behind me, and I whip around on high alert, ready for Greenshirts, for anything.

  Anything, except being under attack from a horde of tiny people in patchwork clothes.

  I haven’t seen children since I was one, and then only Ash. It feels strange to see this pack of screaming, laughing, tiny humans, and I brace myself as they surge toward me, having no idea what they will do, no real comprehension of childish behavior.

  But they’re not running for me. As one they tackle Lachlan, clinging to his legs, squealing with glee and pretend aggression. And that big, hard man, the one who allowed me to be tortured, is suddenly on the ground beneath a pile of children, laughing, tickling them, letting them put him in headlocks, giving them rides on his back . . .

  Which is the real Lachlan? The one who said that torturing me was perfectly fine? Or the one who is currently letting a four-year-old girl in pigtails pull his hair?

  He flashes me a quick, almost apologetic smile before a little boy does a belly flop on his head and brings him down. “Lach!” they squeal. “You’re back! We missed you, Lach! What did you bring us? Did you fight anyone? Lach, tell us a story of the Above!”

  “That’s quite enough of that, kidlets,” says a plump but solid maternal-looking woman as she bustles up behind the children. “Let Lachlan breathe.”

  The tiny girl in pigtails looks up at the woman with huge, sincere eyes and says emphatically, “But Lach is our favorite.”

  The woman nods. “I’ve heard that before, perhaps a bit too often.” She looks archly at Lachlan as he rises and brushes the dirt from his clothes.

  And I realize, as the children gaze lovingly at Lachlan, that this is what he did it for. These little second children are the reason he thought it was justifiable to torture a girl who had just lost her mother, who had been hunted through the streets. They need to be protected, at any cost. Now that I understand, I wonder if I would do the same thing myself. I don’t know . . . but I understand why Lachlan did it, and I find that I can’t be mad at him anymore.

  The woman holds out her hand to me. “I’m Iris, housemother of the Underground. Welcome.” I introduce myself, and she tells me to come to her if I need any clothes or personal items. “A ruffian like our Lachlan here wouldn’t think of creature comforts like lotion and nail files and such. We might be a bit primitive down here, but I like to think we manage to hold on to the best parts of civilization.”

  She gives my shoulder a friendly squeeze and herds the children away. The children all say hello as they pass, making me feel welcome. All except the little girl in pigtails. She shakes my hand very formally, and then says, “You can like Lach a little, but not too much. He says I’m his favorite girl. Don’t you forget!” She shakes a warning finger at me and scampers off. I manage to keep a straight face until she’s gone.

  “I’ll take you to your room,” Lachlan says. “I know you need to shower and change. Do you have clothes in there?” He nods to my backpack.

  I don’t even know. I haven’t had a moment to open it.

  “I’ll see what I can scrounge up in your size.”

  “Thanks . . . Lach,” I say, and he grins sidelong at me as he leads me to my room.

  ONCE I’M ALONE, the bed looks so inviting I want to flop down on it, curl beneath the crisp new-leaf green sheets, and sleep for years. But I’m so filthy I can’t bear to dirty the sheets, so I go into the little shower alcove and let the cold water wash over me until I’m approximately, if not completely, clean.

  Being in this room—in the Underground itself—is like being in the heart of the Earth. The rooms are carved directly into the stone, and every surface is smooth, connected, without the edges and corners and seams of the rest of Eden. I know the rooms are man-made, not natural caves, but because the material is all-natural it feels almost like the Earth made this place for them.

  For us. I’m a part of all this now.

  Finally I lie in bed, still damp and cool from my shower, and stare at the ceiling, somewhere between happy and sad and drained. My backpack is on the floor beside me. I know I need to go through it soon, take stock . . . but I also know that once I delve into the last thing Mom did for me, the sorrow I’ve kept at bay will return. I will grieve forever, but I know I can’t let myself weep forever.

  So I think about this wonderful, strange place I find myself in. Lachlan said there are about two hundred people living here, from infants to elders, all second children. The community has been thriving below ground for around fifty years, ever since a second child rediscovered the hidden world. Even though many of its members venture out into Eden for supplies, it is separate enough that it has developed its own culture.

  I haven’t found out exactly what life is like down here, but I can see the difference even in the clothes. In Eden, styles are brash and sharp, deliberately loud and provocative. Here, colors are a little more muted, more natural. The cut is easy, flowing, and often the material is a beautiful patchwork, made up of complementary fabrics interspersed with occasional jarring—but oddly fitting—elements that make the whole outfit extraordinary. The effect of the pieced-together motley somehow isn’t one of patching and make-do, but of a deliberate choice, taking the best of everything and fitting it together into something even better.

  Almost everyone I see is wearing a piece of crystal. Most have a simple chunk on a piece of cord around their necks. One pretty young girl has a purple piece at the center of a circlet in her flowing hair. I see one older man with no visible crystal jewelry reach into his pocket and pull out a piece of clear, polished crystal which he rubs meditatively as he talks to me.

  I don’t see one on Lachlan, but I notice a thin cord around his neck, braided red and orange in a snake-like pattern. Maybe he has a crystal, too.

  I haven’t met anyone beyond Iris and the children, but attitudes here seem so relaxed, so low-key. No one is hurrying to work or entertainment like they do in the inner circles, or hustling in search of money, or away from danger, as they do in the outer circles. People down here seem to operate on a different internal clock. No one seems hunted, harried, like they do up in Eden. Everyone up there, now that I think about it, seems caffeinated, driven, a little too sharp.

  Maybe it’s the tree that calms them down, the soothing proximity of nature. Maybe it is a relief to finally be in a place they truly belong.

  I start to feel it myself, breathing in the leafy scent, feeling the cool cavern air touch my skin. Eventually, I feel centered enough to go through my backpack.

  The first thing I pull out almost makes me lose it: my ragged stuffed chimpanzee. Mom must have rescued him from the garbage and stuck him in the pack when I wasn’t looking. I hug him tight to my chest . . . but then set him gently aside.

  There’s one change of clothes, and a pair of soft shoes. A pretty filigree hair ornament Mom often wore. A new sketchbook and a set of pencils.

  And, in a tightly sealed bag, a notebook.

  Its pages are made from a substance I don’t quite recognize, a plastic of some sort, I think. We use a kind of
plastic that is completely recyclable, but I learned in Eco-history that people used to use plastics that couldn’t be easily broken down, that persisted in the environment forever. Plastics choked entire oceans, and the animals that lived in them. I shudder when I touch it . . . though I have to admit that such an enduring substance makes a perfect medium for a book. Waterproof, virtually time-proof, whatever is in here will last through the centuries.

  Written in cramped, awkward hand is a manifesto, or maybe a confession. Sometimes the words are perfectly lucid, textbook-clear. In some passages, though, the language rambles incoherently, the handwriting becomes almost illegible, as if the only way the author could squeeze the words out was to scribble them as fast, as unthinkingly, as possible.

  I have a sneaking suspicion who the author might be even before I turn to the last written page. The page is at the end . . . and at the middle. That is, the last half of the notebook has been cut out, carved raggedly, hacked, even. The scrunched signature has been added in a different ink on the last remaining page that grips the binding weakly, flapping loosely in the space where the missing pages used to be. I stare at the signature.

  Aaron Al-Baz. Prophet of environmental doom. Founder of Eden. Savior of Earth.

  And, if these, his own words, are true, a deluded, psychotic monster.

  I read through the notebook, and then read it again to be sure I understand. It takes me hours to parse the tale, and when I have, I still can’t believe it. Aaron Al-Baz is a hero, half-god, the whole reason any humans still survive and the only reason the Earth will one day flourish again after the global devastation we caused. Every textbook says so. Every temple hails him as near-divine.

  I need to tell someone about what I’ve read, I think at once. But at that very moment there’s a knock on my door and Lachlan walks in without waiting for an answer. I shove the notebook under the bedclothes and force a friendly smile. It must look pained, but he doesn’t say anything. He knows I have plenty to be distraught about.