The Gardener

  Maybe my earlier gut reaction had been wrong about Eve. Maybe she was only what she said she was, the assistant. But I was sick of the runaround. I just wanted answers, no matter how horrendous they were. “Is it the person behind the mirror again?”

  “No. You’ll be meeting the Gardener, face-to-face.” She tilted her head slightly. “Personally, I think you are nowhere near ready for this. But it’s not up to me.” And with a quick twist and push, she opened the door.

  Even though my heart was pounding, I thrust my chin in the air and walked into the room. There was nothing extraordinary about it; it looked like a reception area. A red couch sat in front of one wall, while the other wall was one big mural. On the opposite side of the room was another door, and I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to walk through it or not.

  Deciding to wait for further instruction, I paused to look at the mural.

  The painting was of men on horseback. The first horse was white, its eyes and mane wild, and the man on his back wore a gold crown and held a drawn bow. Behind him was a red horse, again looking as untamed as the first, but its rider held a sword.

  The third horse was black; its head was down, nostrils flared. The rider carried what looked like a pair of scales. And the last horse was a pale, greenish color, and seemed to be plodding as the others raged. Its rider was clothed in a white shroud and held a plain staff.

  But that wasn’t the part of the picture that disturbed me.

  Underneath the four horses were scores of bodies, some of them still alive, reaching up, either to ward off the horses or plead for help. I couldn’t tell which. And from the looks of those riders, if those people %were pleading for help, theyweren’t getting any. Behind them all, the sun was an eerie red.

  A buzzer sounded and I jumped.

  The door opened slowly, mechanically. A hint for me to go through, I guessed. Taking a last glance at the mural, I walked to the door and held on to it for a moment. My hand shook and my heart beat faster.

  As much as I wanted to find out the answers to all my questions, it took everything I had to take the first step through that door.

  The first thing I saw was a platform, about two feet high, that went from one side of the room to the other. A massive desk sat on top, and behind the desk sat a man in a white button-down shirt. His skin was darker than mine, as was his hair, which was clipped very short, gray speckling the edges. He was handsome, with big striking eyes and delicate features.

  A curtained window lay immediately behind him and, despite not really knowing my way around, I was fairly certain the green room with the books lay beyond the glass.

  My gaze went back to the man behind the desk. He was looking at me. No, not just looking. He was staring, studying, his eyes fixated so strongly that his forehead was wrinkled as he seemed to be trying to memorize me.

  I could tell he was looking at my scar and, not really thinking, I reached up with a hand to cover it.

  “Welcome. I’m Solomon.”

  Solomon. So unfamiliar.

  “Your scar. Does it bother you?”

  But that voice. So familiar.

  “Not anymore. Not really.” I swallowed. “I’m used to it.”

  “It’s become a part of you.”

  “Yes.” Where had I heard that voice before?

  Then it came to me.

  I staggered backward, grabbing for a chair.

  I’d heard that voice for the first time when I was five, the voice I’d heard hundreds of times since then. Always reading The Runaway Bunny.

  The man behind the desk, Solomon, was the man on the tape.

  Solomon was my father.

  And my father was the Gardener.

  FIFTEEN

  WORDS LEFT ME AS I SANK INTO A SOFT GREEN CHAIR AT THE base of the platform, looking up at the smiling man.

  He said, “I’m glad to see you.”

  Nothing. Even if I could speak, what would I say?

  “I realize this must be a bit of a surprise.” He rubbed his chin, looking a little puzzled. Maybe he thought I’d gone mute or something.

  I cleared my throat and sat up, trying to pull myself together. Although I wanted to, I couldn’t come right out and ask—

  “You’re wondering if I’m really your father.”

  I nodded.

  Solomon smiled. “Whether you want me to be or not, I am.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a stack of pictures. He held one up. An eight-by-ten of me in sixth grade. He flashed a few others, all my school pictures. “Your mother sent them.”

  “But how…” I didn’t even know what to ask.

  “Your mother worked here, for me. And as sometimes happens when people work closely, they fall in love. Then she disappeared. Fortunately we were able to find her and bring her back.”

  I asked, “Why?”

  “Why did she leave? She was going to have a baby, you, and didn’t want anyone to know.”

  My voice came back. “Because she didn’t want me to be part of the project.”

  He nodded. “She thought that I would force her to hand you over.”

  “Did you?”

  His brow wrinkled. “Of course not. Do you think you’d be living as you are if I had?”

  I shook my head.

  “I loved your mother and respected her wishes. My only request was that she stay in Melby Falls.”

  Which made me wonder something. “Request? Or demand?”

  “I’m no monster.” Solomon drew in a deep breath and sighed. “I arranged for her job at Haven of Peace. I arranged for a monthly stipend.”

  The fund Mom kept talking about. She wasn’t lying after all. “But you stopped paying that. I saw the notice.”

  He frowned, then jotted something on a piece of paper. “That’s odd. I’ll mention it to Eve and get it taken care of.” He continued explaining about my mom. “She would still be part of the project, yet she’d have you to herself, to raise as she wished. Besides, I knew I couldn’t be a proper father to you, eating breakfast, leaving for work, coming home to play catch in the backyard.”

  God, the times I’d wondered why I didn’t have a dad to do those very things. How many times had I asked my mom why I didn’t have a dad like everyone else? I wanted to know. “Why? Why couldn’t you?”

  He held out one hand, palm up. “Because I was already committed here. My work was here.”

  “The autotrophs.”

  He nodded. “I couldn’t let a family distract me from such crucial work. So the next best thing was to know you were close.” He gestured to a shelf on the wall, filled with DVD cases. “Choose one.” He pointed. “There’s a computer over there.”

  Standing, I walked over to the shelves and ran my fingers along the unmarked cases and selected one. Popping it into the computer, I hit play. Immediately, the sounds of cheering and screaming streamed out of the speaker as, filling the screen, was me, #45 in dark green, shoving #48 in black so the quarterback could slip through the hole to score the winning touchdown. Last year’s league championship against Woodland.

  “You watched my games?”

  Solomon nodded. “Of course. Every one. You’re very good.”

  On the monitor, the rest of the team left the sidelines and raced onto the field, surrounding me and the QB, all of us jumping and yelling at the victory. Before I could stop myself, I smiled. When the monitor went blank, I walked back over to the chair. “I have a tape of you, too.” I wondered if he knew, if he remembered.

  “I shouldn’t have done that.” His long fingers tapped the desk. “I suppose it was selfish of me, to want you to know who I was.”

  “But your face wasn’t even on it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The tape. It’s just from your neck down.”

  “Well. I was never good at those things.” He looked down at his hands. “I taped it myself, quickly, in a weak moment. I wasn’t ever going to send it. … To be honest, I’m surprised your mother showed it to you.”


  She probably wouldn’t ever have, if not for our neighbor’s dog. I shook my head slowly, trying to focus. Such a simple answer to all my lifelong, complicated questions.

  Mom, why don’t I have a dad? Well, honey, he wanted you to be an experimental guinea pig and I didn’t agree.

  There it was, the absurd answer that explained my entire existence.

  Holy crap.

  With one hand I flipped through the stack of DVDs and read the labels. Every football game, every school program … So my entire life, my father had seen everything. He knew all about me.

  I dropped my face into my hands as my shoulders slumped.

  Worse, my mom knew that he knew me. How did you keep something like that from a kid? Especially when he’s old enough to understand.

  Maybe that was just it. Maybe the truth was worse.

  No wonder she drank.

  “I’m sorry, Mason.”

  “Don’t!” I shouted into my hands, then looked up. Jabbing toward him with a finger, I said, “Don’t talk to me like you know me. You don’t know me any more than someone … someone who picked those tapes up off the street. Those tapes aren’t me.” I set a hand flat on my chest. “You don’t know the first thing about who I really am.”

  His voice was softer. “I want to know.”

  I glared. “A little late, don’t you think?” I turned around, not wanting to look at him. I was angry. Angry, still, with my mom for not telling me all this as soon as I got old enough to comprehend. Yet her hands %were a little tied. Unlike my father, my mother did know me. And had she come out and told me my father was a mere two miles away, I wouldn’t have just said, “Okay, cool. What’s for lunch?” No. I wouldn’t have let it drop. And the money. If I’d known about the money? I would have pushed to know everything, pushed to meet him, pushed to know him.

  But what was his excuse? He’d given her no choice at all. Stay at TroDyn and they’d put me in the project, make me a human plant.

  Wow, stellar option there.

  Silently, I thanked my mom for getting the hell out, although it might take more time to get over all the secrets.

  I whipped around. “Why couldn’t you just have let her go? She could have gone anywhere and still made you tapes of me. Why did you make her stay in Melby Falls?”

  He shrugged. “I hoped…”

  “Hoped what? That she’d invite you down for Sunday dinner?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I hoped for this. That, one day, you would come.”

  I flung my arms out to the side. “Well, here I am.”

  He started to speak, but I was done hashing it all. Nothing he said would get me to understand his view. And I had heard enough about myself.

  “How did the tape of The Runaway Bunny wake Lailaup?”

  Solomon seemed taken aback at my question. Did he really think I’d be satisfied just learning about him and my mom? Learning about myself? I wasn’t dumb.

  “When her group was younger, we faced the same issues any parents face. One was getting them to go to sleep at night. They all needed to be on the same schedule in order for our control to be constant. So we hypnotically programmed them, with the books. One of the lines would put them to sleep. One would wake them up.”

  I thought of the others who were with Laila the first time I’d met her. “But why didn’t the other kids wake up?”

  “The Runaway Bunny was not their book.” He must have noticed the confused look on my face, because he kept explaining. “The scientists who entered their children into the program needed to feel they were still individuals, despite being part of the larger group. So, when the children were little, their parents read the books to them before their naps and at bedtime. Each child had his or her own book that triggered them asleep or awake.”

  “And Laila’s was The Runaway Bunny.”

  He nodded.

  I wondered out loud. “So those books I saw in that room…”

  “Each represents a child in the program.”

  “But there were so many.”

  Solomon shrugged slightly and started to rub his hands together.

  There seemed to be so many more books in that room than there were children in the Greenhouse. “How many kids are in the Greenhouse?”

  He met my glare. “Many. There are many.”

  “And they’re all children of the scientists here?”

  “Here, yes, and…”

  “And what?”

  He looked away. “Other places. Not everyone who is passionate about this issue is a scientist at TroDyn.”

  I still didn’t understand. “How did you get all those people to just sacrifice their kids like that?”

  His eyes widened a bit. “You’re serious?”

  I scratched my head. “Yeah. I don’t get why they would do something like that.”

  Shaking his head slightly, he leaned forward, his chair creaking. “You’re missing the big picture by seeing only the here and now. Have you heard of the Iroquois Confederacy?”

  Other than knowing the Iroquois were Native American, I drew a blank, so I shook my head.

  “They were a league of Native American nations, five at first, then six. It was the oldest democratic organization in the world. Some believe it was in place in the twelfth century, formed before Europeans even stepped foot on this continent.”

  I didn’t get what, if anything, it had to do with TroDyn.

  “The Iroquois Confederacy believed that any decision they made had to keep in mind how it would affect the seventh generation down the line.”

  Seven generations. I did the math. At that time, women probably gave birth younger, so perhaps around fourteen. “Even at only fourteen years to a generation, that would be about…”

  “Ninety-eight years. They didn’t make a decision without considering how it would affect people almost a hundred years later.”

  “But generations now are further apart than that. Some people aren’t starting families until they’re forty, so seven generations now would be closer to three hundred years.”

  “Exactly.” He watched me. “Let me ask you this. How many generations ahead do you think our current government, all the world governments for that matter, are thinking when they make decisions?”

  For a minute I thought about things that affected me, or would in the near future. The price of gas. That wasn’t going down anytime soon. Global warming. That would only get worse. It seemed to me that governments weren’t even thinking one generation ahead, let alone seven.

  Solomon asked, “Do you ever wonder what kind of world will be left for you when you’re, say, forty?”

  Yeah, I did. I thought about that a lot. But I didn’t tell him that; instead I said, “I don’t get what this has to do with Laila. With the project.”

  He pointed behind me. “Do you see that?”

  On the wall was a poster-size photo of a child. He was crying, tears glistening on his cheeks and running into his open mouth. Despite sticks for limbs, his belly was huge and he was in rags, any uncovered skin crawling with flies. I could almost hear the cry coming from his mouth, if he had strength enough to make any noise.

  “That is part of your heritage, I’m afraid.”

  “What?”

  Solomon cleared his throat and nodded at the picture. “That child is me.”

  SIXTEEN

  “WHAT?” I GLANCED AT HIM, THEN BACK AT THE PHOTO. “Where?”

  “The famine was in Wollo. My village in Ethiopia.”

  I didn’t know what to say. First, I was stunned to find out that my ancestors, half of them anyway, came from Africa. I couldn’t help glancing down at my arm and the color of my skin, a blend of his brown skin and my mother’s paler hue. So much was explained in that brief moment.

  He continued. “My family died. My mother, your grandmother, gave me any food she found, letting herself starve. Can you imagine what it was like, a child of five, watching your family perish, one after the other?”

  My jaw f
ell. The child in the photo looked no older than two. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Nor could I wrap my mind around the idea that there was family in my past that I would never meet, that they were partly responsible for my existence, and I was never even on the planet at the same time they were. My eyes misted over.

  Solomon said, “Of course, my life quickly improved. I was very lucky. That photo made the cover of nearly every newspaper in America, and offers of help poured in. An American doctor brought me and several others back to the United States, and I never knew hunger again. Quite the opposite, in fact. I grew up in luxury.” He paused. “But I never forgot.”

  His eyes glazed over for a bit, like he was somewhere else, seeing other things. Then he looked at me, focused once again. “Mason, have you heard of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?”

  I rubbed my eyes. “Sure, I mean, sort of.” Then my head turned toward the other room, the first room. “The mural.”

  He nodded. “The four horsemen. Did you see the black horse? The rider with the scales?”

  “Yes.”

  “Famine. The third Horseman of the Apocalypse is Famine. End-of-the-world kind of famine.”

  I asked, “You believe biblical prophecies? Aren’t you a scientist?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I believe what I see. And I’ve seen famine, felt famine, like you could never imagine. You’ve seen it on television, probably, yes?”

  I nodded.

  “And wars?”

  I nodded again.

  “They just haven’t been bad enough to end the world. But that day will come.”

  That seemed too doomsdayish to me. “But won’t we have technology by then to combat famine? You know, like astronaut food, or we can go live on Mars or something?”

  Solomon held his arms out to the sides. “Look around you. The polar ice caps are melting. As that happens, more and more carbon dioxide is released, speeding up global warming. How long do you think the world will hold out? Until we make a new Earth out of Mars?” He dropped his arms and shook his head. “We’ll need an answer before then. Long before then, sad to say.”

  Despite holding an intense grudge against the man, I saw where he was coming from, his reasoning for wanting to create a human autotroph.