Children of Eden

  There’s the food pantry, but I see someone who looks suspicious. It’s probably just a hungry man waiting for them to serve breakfast, but it could also be a Center official undercover. So I don’t even glance at the soup kitchen, but just walk past. He doesn’t follow me. Good. Because it’s not that I want to die or anything. I hope I can get to safety, get back in touch with Lachlan, see my brother again, spend long hours talking to Lark, resume my spying mission. I just hope it in a hopeless kind of way.

  I think about doubling back and seeing if I can get into the soup kitchen unobserved after all. It will be full light soon, and I’ll lose the advantage the darkness and dim dawn have given me so far. Then I have a better idea. I’ll leave Eden entirely. Why not spend the day in the forest of synthetic bean trees? It will be safe and cool. Maybe it will even occur to Lachlan that I’ll go there. Maybe he’ll come and find me.

  I know they’re coming before I see or hear them. How? It’s like a little switch goes on in my brain. Like I’m seeing the scene from somewhere else, on a datablock screen maybe. Close but far away. I see myself, tiny. I see myself being spotted by a group of Greenshirts turning slowly with their handheld scanners. As if I’m watching from above I see them all focus in my direction and start to move toward me.

  It’s just a paranoid feeling, I tell myself. How could I see them as if through the eye of a bot or a security camera?

  I have to be imagining it . . . but I start to run again anyway. There’s the wall of junk, piled high, another wall to keep me in—or out? I recognize the place I managed to crawl through the last time, and I’m on my belly wiggling when the Greenshirts shout.

  “She’s over here, some place.”

  “Do you see her?”

  “Scanner says a hundred yards or less.”

  Of course they can scan me now. I have lenses, real lenses that link to the EcoPan. They don’t know I’m Rowan, but they must have scanned me at the Center, and now it is a relatively simple matter to have the cameras and bots that all connect to the EcoPan look for me. In becoming a first child, I’ve lost my anonymity.

  “There she is!” one of them calls out just before my legs wiggle all the way into the dense pile of refuse. I move as quickly as I can, but I must take a slightly different route and I’m blocked in. I double back, but they’ve started to crawl after me.

  I hear a hum, and think it must be in my head, another weird symptom. Are my lenses humming now, as well as giving me visions?

  For long moments more I crawl through the twisted junk, the refuse of civilization. I can hear clattering behind me, but I still have hope. They might get lost in the labyrinth of garbage. They might get trapped.

  But then, so might I. I’ve lost all sense of direction. Right now I’m just crawling away from the sounds of pursuit. That seems like the best bet right now.

  Then I hear more sounds, rattling from all around me. I’m surrounded? But how?

  Finally I see an opening ahead, and I wiggle toward it. If I can get out ahead of them and run . . .

  Then the ground begins to shift under me. There’s no ignoring it, no denying it. The entire Earth heaves up like it is breathing a huge sigh of exasperation at the humans crawling across it. That first movement is almost gentle.

  It is the last gentle thing for a very long time.

  With a violent, jarring punch the entire Earth seems to throw me upward against the trash, then throw me down again. Things start to collapse on my head.

  From the shouts and agonized wails behind me, I can tell the pursuing Greenshirts aren’t so lucky. One cry is abruptly cut off. Someone shouts for someone named Wolf and gets no answer.

  Piteously, one calls for his mother.

  I get half of my body out of the wall of trash, and then another mighty heave of the Earth lifts me, and everything, up high and brings us crashing down again. I hear a terrible creak above me and drag myself forward, not even daring to look up. There’s a deafening crash, and a huge beam shifts and pins my leg.

  I scream, my cries of pain joining those of the surviving Greenshirts. At first I’m sure my leg must be broken, even severed, it hurts so much. But as I pull, I realize it’s just painfully trapped at the thigh. Not that that’s much better. If the Greenshirts don’t find me, I’ll die a slow death of dehydration . . .

  My head is clear of the tangle. The beanstalk forest is just in front of me, the massive tree-like constructs moving gently in the wind.

  No, not the wind. Some of the giant bean trees are shifting from the roots up. I watch as the ground buckles, liquifies around a clump of them nearest to me. Then I see in horror what is happening. In slow motion, three of the mechanical behemoths begin to tilt. Slowly, with a grinding, creaking sound, they topple . . . right toward me.

  I scream again, begging for help I know will never come, and pull with all my strength, but my leg remains wedged under the beam. With my lips curled back in a primal snarl of fear, and rage against my coming end, I watch the three bean trees gain momentum as they crash toward me. Two of them cross, bouncing and sliding off each other, sending the massive trunks in two different directions. But the third is listing directly toward me.

  I want to meet my fate directly, with strength or at the very least with anger, but to my shame I cover my head at the last second. The booming crash deafens me, the sound alone so painful I almost think I’ve been crushed. Instead the weight miraculously lifts from my leg and I instinctively squirm free of the tangle. Only when I’ve crawled breathlessly away do I see that the bean tree fell at just the right angle to seesaw the crushing beam off of my leg.

  But it isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot. Trees are falling all around me. I drag myself to my feet and try to run, but the ground buckles under me, falling away from my feet, and I have to crawl.

  The Earth is spitting the artificial trees out, tearing the fake things from her breast and casting them on the ground. Under the ground there are cables and wires, all useless now in the face of the Earth’s own awesome force. Spellbound, on my knees like a supplicant, I watch them fall.

  All around me they crash, closer and closer as I desperately try to find my balance on the shifting ground. I try to tuck my feet under me and jump away, but the Earth seems to have turned liquid, as bad as the nanosand in the desert. I flop and flail helplessly, trying to get away as the huge twisted trunk crashes toward me, but I can’t maneuver. I curl my body, and throw my arms over my head. I expected to die tonight, but not like this.

  I feel the whoosh of air, hear a crash so loud I can’t hear anything else for a few minutes, as the tree snags on another tree’s vine and lands just a few feet to my side. Another miss! I use the monstrous leaves to pull myself out of the heaving, devouring Earth and on top of the stalk. The shaking has lessened, but the ground around me is like a sea and the trees keep falling. I run, slipping and sliding on the broad gnarled trunks, dodging other beanstalks as they fall.

  When the heat of the desert smacks me in the face, I turn behind me, and find a ruin. At least half of the synthetic beanstalks are down. I don’t even want to think what this will mean for Eden. The algae spires and the photosynthetic material impregnated in all the buildings make oxygen, too, but is it enough? Without these beanstalks will Eden suffocate?

  I see movement on the far side of the massive deadfall of collapsed bean trees. Two of the Greenshirts made it through the wall and are picking their way over the tangle of trunks and vines. I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. I think of the man crying out for his mother, and want to run to the survivors, to see if they’re okay, if I can help rescue their comrades.

  But I don’t. Because the world doesn’t work like that, and people don’t think like that. We’re not altruistic. Humans fight and kill and follow orders, and the only way to survive is to be like everyone else, only worse. They don’t ask for help, or see if I’m okay. We don’t find common ground in the face of this catastrophic earthquake. We just keep fighting, running, hur
ting, killing.

  They open fire at me, and I run into the desert. There’s nowhere else to go.

  It’s as awful as I remember. The heat smacks me like an explosion. Each breath scorches my lungs, but I keep going because the Greenshirts keep shooting. Why do they care about duty at a moment like this, with the ground trembling beneath our feet? Or are they so persistent because they blame me for their comrades’ deaths? But they don’t have to chase me, shoot at me. It’s not me making them do it. Don’t they realize they could just stop?

  But I can’t. I have to keep running out into this brutal oven while they do their best to kill me for reasons none of us fully understand.

  And the nanosand is coming.

  Now that I know what to look for I can see it. It shimmers just a little, setting it apart from the matte dun color of the rest of the sand. There’s a patch behind me, and one to my left. Maybe another ahead of me, I can’t quite tell. They’re moving at the pace of a brisk walk, swimming through the sea of sand directly toward me. The quaking has stopped for the moment, and I can move faster than the nanosand pools for now. But there are more now, two coming from the right, and I know however fast I’m traveling now the heat will make me slow down soon. They’ll surround me, swallow me down.

  My skin is scorched pink, so hot I don’t even sweat. I stumble to one knee but scramble up again right away. For a moment I look at the two Greenshirts standing on the edge of the desert. They don’t dare follow me. Smart men.

  What if I just walk toward them? Will they shoot me the moment I’m in range? Will they talk to me about how ridiculous it is that we three of the few surviving humans on the planet want to kill each other? The nanosand slithers inexorably closer.

  Uncertain, I raise my hand to the tiny distant figures standing on the edge of the ruined beanstalk forest. I see one of them start to raise a hand, too. To wave, to beckon me in? Or to shoot at me again?

  Before I can decide, the Earth decides for me. I hear a terrible grinding, cracking, exploding sound, and in the most powerful tremor of all the ground rises at least ten feet, throwing me down on my belly. From my new high vantage point I think I see the Earth begin to smile, a fierce grin of jagged, rocky teeth. Another vision from my lenses? No, the Earth really is splitting, opening up in a fissure fifty feet wide. As I watch, it stretches from the desert toward Eden, traveling like an arrow toward the Center. I see a brilliant green flash at the heart of Eden, so bright it burns an afterimage on my retinas.

  And then, from one blink to another, the world changes.

  As if by magic all the heat is sucked out of the air. The glaring white light dims to pinkish morning sunshine, rosy and comforting. As the ground shivers and grows still again, I see the merciless desert change to a mere strip of sand. It’s cool beneath my hands. I look down at my palms, scorched and blistered from touching the sand just a moment ago. A soft wind begins to blow from out beyond the desert, cooling my skin.

  I look around me. The shimmering nanosand is gone.

  I smell something, sharp and strange and compelling, carried on the fresh breeze. It reminds me a little bit of the camphor tree, wild and peaceful all at once. I turn toward the scent, eager. In this sudden calm, the terror of the earthquake, of my escape and pursuit, are forgotten.

  On the far horizon, where before I only saw the shimmer of rising desert heat, I see a smudge of green.

  I take a step toward it. Another.

  Then I’m running, not away from something for the first time in forever, but toward something. Some spark, some nerve hidden deep within me hopes—no, knows—what it is. But my conscious mind doesn’t get that far. I only know I have to get to it.

  I hear indistinct shouting behind me. The two surviving Greenshirts are coming after me, moving swiftly now that the sand is solid, the heat gone, the land still, and the air gentle. I don’t care. I have to get to the horizon. Something primitive and atavistic in me has taken over.

  The very sand beneath my feet changes. It’s no longer thick, rolling dunes of desert, but a sprinkling of sand over something else. I kick at the sand as I run. Earth! Black, rich dirt, of the kind no one in Eden has ever seen. Wild dirt. Laughing as I run, I want to roll in it, rub it on my arms, taste it.

  But ahead of me the green smudge is resolving itself into something wonderful.

  How long do I run? A mile, two miles, over land that until recently was desert. But I see now it was a fake desert, false like so many things in Eden. Where the breeze blows sand away I see the grates of what can only be heaters, now cool and dead. They must have been elevating the temperature, creating a desert environment where none existed.

  To keep humans from venturing out into the dead, barren land, I would have guessed once. To keep us safe from the poisons we put into our own world.

  That was before I saw the forest.

  It makes a mockery of the fake beanstalk woods. When I first saw them, I thought they were glorious, because I had no grounds for comparison. Even the camphor, huge and lovely and unbelievable as it may be, is sad compared to what I’m looking at right now. The camphor is a tree out of place, trapped as I was trapped my whole life. They’ve done wonders keeping it alive, thriving even, but how can a tree be a proper tree imprisoned underground?

  I’m standing in grass, as high as my knees, shot through with flowers and scratchy seed heads. There’s a low buzzing sound, and I think another tremor is starting, but no, it is only a bee flying sleepily from flower to flower.

  Beyond the little field of grass the forest springs up abruptly, thick and dark. Birds flit through the boughs. There’s a movement to one side. An animal, as tall as I am, slenderly made and elegant, steps carefully on small sharp hooves, testing the air with its black nose. Antlers branch from its brow. It smells me, but doesn’t seem to see me. I’m perfectly still, and it can’t have ever seen my kind in all its lifetime.

  Everything I’ve read about, seen illustrated in datablocks, animated in vids . . . it exists, right before my eyes. This isn’t another vision. It’s not a trick.

  The trick was keeping it from us.

  Has the world been healed all this time? Why didn’t they tell us? Do they even know?

  I want Lachlan to see this, and Lark. And oh, my mother! What I wouldn’t give to have her standing beside me gazing at what we all thought was lost. How many times Ash went to the temple to repent, on behalf of mankind, for the terrible things we did to the planet, the animals, the very dirt itself. How guilty we all felt that we’d destroyed our home, killed almost every living thing but us. I want the people I love to be here with me, knowing they can let that guilt blow away in the tender breeze.

  Maybe we hurt the world. Maybe we even killed it.

  But it’s back to life now.

  I sigh, and at the sound the deer tosses its magnificent rack, stares at me a long moment with one prancing hoof raised, then turns and, with a bunching of muscles, springs away. I feel a pang of regret when it is gone. But it doesn’t matter. The world is here, and it’s not dead!

  I smile, and the smile turns into a laugh. Giddy, I turn to look for the Greenshirts. They’re still far behind me, but they must see it. I wave, laughing like a maniac. Wait until they’re close! Wait until they see! Nothing else will matter to them. Wait until the citizens of Eden see. Rich and poor alike. Politics, poverty, second children—it will fade into nothing once people know that the world has been reborn.

  “Look!” I cry joyfully to the Greenshirts. “Can you believe it? Look at it!” I run toward them. I want to embrace them, to dance with them. They are sharing this incredible discovery, enemies no more.

  I move lightly over the grass, then the sand, back into the artificial desert. “Come see!” I call to them.

  Then the air around me smacks me from all angles with a whoosh, and I’m enveloped by killing heat, blinded by white light. I can see the heat rising from the almost-hidden grates. Whatever the earthquake broke, it’s been reactivated.

&nb
sp; It doesn’t matter. The Greenshirts will join me out here. We’ll manage to get back somehow, to tell everyone the miraculous news. The Center officials will shut down this burning hot wall-without-walls that has kept us clueless about the outside world for so long. We’ll start anew in the world.

  In this beautiful green world of birds and deer and trees and rich fertile Earth behind me.

  I turn . . . and the forest is gone.

  All I see is the shimmering silvery wave of heat rising from the desert sand.

  The cry that escapes my lips has no words, only raw, wrenching pain.

  Gone.

  Was it there?

  Yes. Yes! I know it. I saw it, smelled it, felt it beneath my feet. It was real.

  It is real.

  I try to run to the place where it was, but I’m hit by a wall of heat so intense I can’t cross it. When I try to put my hand through, my fingertips come back blistered.

  The Greenshirts know. They’ve seen it. We can go back to the Center and . . .

  They tackle me from behind, putting their combined weight on me, pressing my face into the burning sand so that I can’t breathe, can’t see. I try to shout at them, beg them for help, tell them that the wonderful wooded living world we found is more important than punishing a second child. But my words are choked in the sand.

  One of them hits me in the back of the head, and a second later everything goes black.

  But in that second I realize the truth. The Center knows about this. They’ve been deliberately keeping everyone in Eden from knowing that the Earth healed itself long ago. Maybe it was never even really destroyed in the first place. Now, for reasons unknown, they are keeping every human left on Earth trapped in a giant cage.

  * * *

  I WAKE IN cool comfort. I’m lying on a bed, dressed in something light and clean. The torturous desert is gone. I open my eyes to gray walls. To a door with a small barred window.

  A face looks through the bars. It’s a woman, with a cap of dark curling hair and comforting brown eyes. She smiles at me.