State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy (13 page)

“Bill, you know what I always wanted to ask you?”

“What’s that, Aubrey?”

“How come you never married? I mean almost everyone on our level had a family, but you didn’t.”

“Most of us thought it would be too difficult to try and keep our secret from a spouse,” Bill says. “It was just easier to stay single. Beth was married, though, until her husband had cancer and went to Eden. That was rough, because she knew and couldn’t tell him. And Seth had a wife once too.”

“So you don’t have anyone either, Roger?”

Bill laughs. “Who would have him?”

“I actually quite like being alone,” Roger says. “I find that it’s comforting. But no, I don’t have anyone special. I’m a plant engineer on 6 and I enjoy my job.”

“You’re on 6?” I ask. “You don’t seem stupid.”

“Gee,” he says, “thanks. Not everyone down there is low IQ. Someone needs to run things you know. And besides, I was educated on Level 3 just like you. I volunteered for 6 when I was fifteen because the Chief needed someone down there to access the basement.”

“You’ve been to the basement?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says.

“I’ve been down there too,” I say. “It’s creepy.”

I expect them to ask me when I was in the basements, but they don’t. Perhaps they already know. The sky has grown dark and so has the jungle surrounding us, but the pools still glow against the blackness, somehow holding onto the last of the reflected light a little longer than everything else. A log pops and a coal rolls out of the fire. I kick it back, thankful for Seth’s shoes. For some reason my hand moves to my pocket to make sure I still have my father’s pipe. I pull it out and run my fingers over the butterflies engraved on the stone pipe bowl.

“So are you all the only ones who know? The truth, I mean. About the surface and about Eden?”

“We’re the only ones,” Bill replies.

“So my father didn’t know any of this?”

Bill shakes his head. “No, he was kept in the dark. That’s the way the Chief wanted it.”

“So what all do you get out of the deal?”

“What deal?” Bill asks.

“Well, you’re staying single, keeping secrets, and now you’re out here risking your life, all for this Chief.”

“Yeah,” Bill says, “so what?”

“So what do you get out of it?”

“Isn’t our freedom enough?” he asks.

“Maybe,” I say. “Is that all he promised you?”

Neither of them answers me and we sit in silence, listening to wild jungle calls echo in the blackness. Even the pools have now disappeared into the night.

“There’s the rain,” Jimmy says.

“What rain?” Bill asks.

“I don’t hear it either,” Roger says.

They hardly get the words out when a downpour drops all at once, the last of the coals hissing and going out. We scamper into the shelter, and the sound of the rain hammering the roof and pounding the ground outside makes any further discussion nearly impossible. One by one, we find comfortable positions in which to hope for sleep as we pass the night.

I have questions running through my mind like so many veins of silver in the tunnelrat mines. I want to know who this Chief is and what his interest is in me. And why China? I mean, it’s practically the other side of the world. And maybe I’m just jaded, but I don’t believe that these people would sacrifice so much for me and for Holocene II, just because it’s the right thing to do. So what’s in it for them?

Space is tight in the shelter, and Jimmy lies next to me on his back with his arms clasped on his chest. The sound of the rain outside soothes me into a welcome rest. My thoughts drift to the Foundation and to Hannah and the professor. I wonder how they’re getting on and what they’re doing. I know they’re the enemy now, but a small part of me still misses that companionship we all had when we shared the goal of setting out to get the encryption code from the Isle of Man. Where did everything go so terribly wrong? And what kind of monsters must they be to have destroyed everyone on that island? And to have locked Red away like that with no food and no water?

I bolt upright in the dark, my breath caught in my chest. Red! I forgot about Red. I lean over and shake Jimmy.

“Jimmy, we forgot about Red. We have to go back.”

Jimmy groans and knocks my hand away. “Can we talk about it in the mornin’?” he asks. “I jus’ got to sleep.”

I reach past him and poke Bill. “Bill, we have to go back. We left Red at the Foundation with Hannah. Wake up, Bill.”

There’s a great rustling from the other end of the shelter as Roger thrashes around wildly, nearly taking off the shelter roof. “What is it?” he calls. “Another snake?”

“Relax, Roger,” Bill says. “It’s just Aubrey.”

“We need to go back and rescue Red,” I say. “I shouldn’t have ever left him.”

“There’s nothing you can do now, Aubrey,” Bill replies. “Maybe the Chief can help.”

“I’m sick of hearing about this Chief already. It’s Chief this and Chief that. Who the hell is he anyway?”

“Let’s talk about it over breakfast,” Bill says. “Now go back to sleep. Please.”

Frustrated, I storm out of the shelter and into the pouring rain. As I stand there getting soaked in the dark, my anger subsides. I realize how silly it was to come outside in the middle of the night. Still, I’m too proud to go back in now, so I plop down against the limestone where I’ll at least have a little cover, cross my arms, and grit my teeth to wait for sunrise.

There’s no wind tonight, and the rain falls down steady and straight. The jungle in front of me is nothing but shades of darkness out of which my mind makes a mural of monsters, all set upon tormenting me. My eyes droop and close. When they open again, the rain has stopped, and a sliver of moon hangs low above the treetops beyond the pools. I’m not sure why, but I stand and walk several feet to the edge of our camp and take in the quiet view.

A black jaguar crouches at the base of the hill. Its shiny coat glistens in the moonlight. The monochrome spots are just barely visible on its powerful hindquarters, and its sharp shoulders support its reach as it laps up water from the pool. It raises its head to look at me. In that moment I know what it means to be at the mercy of another creature’s whim.

It licks its dripping chops, turns slowly, and trots away into the jungle without looking back.

“I’ve never seen so many shades of green.”

That’s what Bill says when he steps from the shelter into the golden glow of a glorious sunrise.

I must have fallen asleep, because I’m lying on the rocky ground. My back is sore. I notice the fire burning with fresh wood, which tells me Jimmy’s already up too. Sure enough, he appears from the jungle just a few minutes later, stopping to rinse something in one of the pools before carrying it up to us.

“A fella could get fat livin’ ’round here,” he says.

He displays two pink rodents that may have been squirrels when they still had their skins. The moment he holds them up, Roger appears from the shelter rubbing his eyes and runs into them. He veers, leans over, and begins to retch.

“Man,” Jimmy says, spearing the rodents on his lizard sticks, “these two are bigger wimps than you was, Aubrey.”

After everyone has done their morning business, we sit around the fire and eat while watching the shadows disappear back into the jungle as the sun climbs above the trees.

“What was all this barking last night about Red?” Bill asks.

“We left him up there,” I say. “With Hannah.”

“Didn’t he used to bully you all the time?”

“Yeah, but we made up. He’s actually a pretty good guy. We can’t just leave him behind.”

“I think Aubrey’s right for once,” Roger says. “We need to go back right away.”

“Oh, be quiet, Roger,” Bill says. Then he turns to me. “We can’t go back. Hannah will kill you, Jimmy, and Red.”

Jimmy cracks a bone and sucks the marrow. Roger winces.

“I’m up for whatever you decide, Aubrey,” Jimmy says. “My loyalty is with you, not this Chief they keep talkin’ about.”

“Thanks, Jimmy. But now that I’ve slept on it, I know Bill is right. Even if we got back to Holocene II, and even if we made it to the Foundation, Hannah would surely kill us anyway. Our only hope is to hurry and get to this Chief and see if he can help us somehow. Can you promise me he’ll help, Bill?”

“If anyone will know what to do,” he says, “it’s the Chief.”

I lick the last of the squirrel fat off my fingers and wipe my hands on my zipsuit. “Well, let’s get moving then.”

Before we leave, Jimmy crushes up charcoal from our fire in a limestone hollow and mixes it with water from one of the pools. Then he calls Roger and Bill over and smears it with his fingers on their faces, covering almost all of their exposed skin. Sometimes I wish I were as smart as him.

We trudge east all morning and all afternoon. The jungle thickens then thins; the pools disappear then reappear again. When it gets hot, I unzip my suit and peel the upper half off and let it hang, walking bareback. Roger cringes when he sees the valknut scar on my chest, but he doesn’t ask anything about it. He does do plenty of complaining, however. He looks like some mad mud person spit out of the Earth and trying to find his way back—the whites of his eyes are staring wildly out from his dark, charcoal-smeared face, and his lips are quivering as he mutters endlessly about how happy he’d been underground.

When we enter a dense portion of jungle, I notice the trees rustling as we pass, as if something concealed there in the branches is following us. Soon, we’re all looking up to the canopy to try and spy what it might be. I hear a bark, followed by a high-pitched holler, and then more barking all around us. Then, all at once, the trees come alive, branches shaking violently, leaves dropping. Something wild has us surrounded.

Jimmy bends and picks up a stone.

The trees shake harder; the barking gets louder.

Then, as if this weren’t enough, Roger screams bloody murder and jumps around like some berserker embattled with ghosts. What in all of Eden is happening here, I wonder. He hops and shimmies and jiggers as if he’s doing some lunatic dance, all the time surrounded by the shaking trees. It’s as if some maniac convention has convened right here in the jungle. Then Roger sheds his pack as if it was on fire, unzips his zipsuit, peels it off, and emerges from his discarded clothing naked and still dancing. No sooner is he free and away when a black monkey drops from a tree, races over and snatches Roger’s zipsuit, and carries it off. Two others drop and fight over his pack. Jimmy rushes them with his stone upraised, but they settle on sharing and scamper back up into the trees with the pack between them. I spy the other there, already picking the ants from the zipsuit fabric and eating them.

Roger sits on the ground, crying. Fire ants crawl in his hair. Bill flicks the ants away one by one and then helps Roger to his feet. We all hurry past the swath of trees, away from the crazy monkeys and the ant nest Roger had been standing on.

Roger plods along in silence, either unashamed or unaware of his nakedness. I want to ask him if he’s okay, but the answer is so obvious, the question seems silly. Bill tries to speak with him, but he won’t respond. He just walks with his head hung, as if marching to his own funeral.

Sometime later, when the sun is high in the sky, we come to a small clearing in the center of which lies a perfectly round, perfectly blue, pool. We stop to collect ourselves and inventory our rations. I tear the top of my zipsuit free and pass it to Bill, who ties it around Roger’s waist like a kind of toga. Roger lets him do it but lifts no hand to help, almost like an infant being dressed. Then Roger flops down on the ground, lays his open palms in his lap and stares at them. Why, I can’t guess. Perhaps he’s reading his fortune.

As we’re bending over the pool, refilling our water bottles, Jimmy points down into the blue water.

“What’s that down there?” he asks.

The water is so clear that it could be two meters or twenty meters deep. It’s impossible to tell, but several round objects are plainly visible lying on the bottom. They look like a dozen rusty cannon balls to me. Or maybe turtles. When I turn to ask Bill to come and take a look, I hear a splash and turn back. The ripples clear away from the water’s surface, and I see Jimmy swimming down into the depths of the pool. Bill joins me, and we watch as some trickery of liquid magnification causes Jimmy to shrink as he descends into the pool, and then grow again as he dives even deeper, returning to nearly his normal size as he reaches the bottom.

“How deep do you think it is?” Bill asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “But it must be deep, as long as it took him to dive it.”

Jimmy picks up one of the balls and turns it over in his hands, examining it. He looks up to us on the edge of the pool, his face as plain as day down there on the other side of all that water. He seems to be deciding something. Then he swims back up, repeating the process of shrinking and then growing again. He breaks the surface, gasping for air, climbs dripping from the pool, and hands me a human skull.

The skull is brown and ancient. It is a calcified and misshapen head, born from some alien species spawned from a human dream. The mandible is missing, and the row of upper teeth seem to silently snicker at us, suggesting that there might be some grand joke in death we can’t yet understand.

“I wasn’t gonna disturb it,” Jimmy says, “but I thought you might wanna see it. I ain’t never seen no head like that one.”

“How old do you think it is?” Bill asks.

“I dunno,” Jimmy says. “But there was some slabs down there like the roof had fallen in on this hole not too long ago. I bet it was covered up for ages.”

“Maybe we should put it back,” I suggest.

“I agree,” Bill says.

Jimmy reaches for the skull to return it, but before he can take it, Roger appears at my side and snatches it from my hand, scurrying off and cradling it to his breast.

“Is he alright?” I ask.

“I don’t think so,” Bill says.

We pack up and move on.

Bill checks his compass every half hour to confirm we’re traveling east, but I begin to wonder if maybe the thing doesn’t work. I bring this up to Jimmy on the sly, but he observes the sun moving across the sky for a while and puts my mind at ease by confirming our direction. We all cast worried glances back at Roger as he follows along behind us in his nearly naked rags, the charcoal dripping with his sweat and streaking his pale chest, the bared skin already turning red in the sun. He won’t let go of his skull for anything and keeps it cradled in his arm like a child, occasionally whispering to it as he lurches along.