State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy (16 page)

Then LED lights come on, and I see that we’re inside a tunnel at the end of a narrow runway. The drone taxis forward to where the tunnel terminates at a larger, circular hangar, then spins itself around and comes to rest facing out again. The canopies lift open, and my lungs fill with cold, biting air.

Jimmy turns and looks at me. “We made it,” he says.

When my feet hit the floor, my sleeping legs give out from beneath me, and I fall on the polished concrete. Jimmy jumps down and reaches to help me up.

“You alright, buddy?” he asks.

“I think so,” I say. “But I need to find a restroom.”

“You wanna use my water bottle?”

“Nah, I can hold it a little longer. Let’s go investigate.”

Other than miscellaneous drone parts and chests of tools stacked against the walls, the hangar is empty of furnishings. It has no doors and no windows, but a metal ladder leads up the far wall and into an opening in the ceiling. There isn’t any light coming from above, so we cautiously climb the ladder, with me leading. When I poke my head into another pitch black space, I take a deep breath and hoist myself up into the room.

As soon as I stand, LED lights snap on and illuminate what is obviously someone’s home. Jimmy joins me and we inspect the cozy space. Stone floor, concrete walls, a bed in the corner behind a curtain. A simple wooden table and chairs. An icebox. An electric stove. On the far end of the room is a desk with a chair, a computer screen, and wires running up the wall. It looks like some forgotten outpost from an earlier era.

I notice a heavy wooden door and step over to see where it leads. The door is locked with a crude mechanism that requires some kind of primitive key. Jimmy squats and eyeballs the lock. Two trips down to the hangar for tools and ten minutes later, the lock is sprung. We swing the door open on its heavy hinges and step out onto the pathway on top of the wall.

The sun has set and it’s snowing. Cold wind drives flurries past where we stand, sending them whirling down into the twilight canyons below. It’s a wild and windswept scene, and I can’t imagine who could scrape by in such an unwelcoming place. Despite the biting cold and the fact that I’m half naked after having given up my upper zipsuit to Roger, I haul out my shriveled manhood and send a golden arc of relief down into the falling snow. Jimmy joins me. We stand on the wall and piss together into the wind until we’re both relieved and ready to head back in.

With the wind and snow once again sealed outside the heavy door, we inspect the living quarters more closely, this time in search of food. There’s a cupboard built into the stone wall hung with jerked meat, and a shallow cold cellar built into the floor contains root vegetables. We find clay jugs of milk in the icebox. Settling on milk and meat, we sit on the bed and eat as if we’ve been starved our entire lives. We chew the nearly frozen jerky and chase it with milk, passing the jug back and forth between us until it’s empty. When we finish, we pull the rough blanket around our shoulders and prop ourselves up on the bed with our backs against the wall to watch the door.

“Someone has to come eventually,” I say.

“Who do you think lives here?” Jimmy asks.

“I’m guessing it’s this Chief they keep talking about.”

“Whoever they is,” Jimmy says, eyeing the small room, “they ain’t the Chief of much.”

With both our bodies heating the air trapped inside the thick blanket, I actually begin to feel quite cozy sitting here next to Jimmy. My thoughts wander and my eyes droop. Just a sip or two of sleep, and then I wake again and watch my breath blow plumes of smoke into the cold room. At one point the lights click off, leaving us in darkness, but I wave my hands in front of me, and they turn on again.

“Do you think Bill’s okay?”

“What’s that?” Jimmy asks, waking from a nap.

“Bill. Do you think he’ll make it back?”

“I dunno,” Jimmy says. “I hope he does.” Then he leans his head back against the wall and closes his eyes again. A few moments later, he adds, “I’ll bet he makes it.”

Eventually, I’m overtaken by a combination of boredom and cold, and I drift off and sleep for a while. I’m not sure if I dream, but I am faintly aware of opening my eyes and the room being dark. I reach over to make sure Jimmy is still next to me beneath the blanket before falling asleep again.

I get the feeling many hours have passed when I’m startled awake by the sound of a key in the lock. I watch from the bed as the door creaks open. A hooded figure is framed in the moonlight there, his shadow cast long and blue on the concrete floor. Then he stomps the snow off his boots, steps into the room, and pulls the door closed. There’s a moment of darkness where I’m tempted to announce our presence, but then the light turns on, and the figure is standing over the bed looking down on us, his face obscured in the shadow of his hood. I can smell the outside on his clothes. I nudge Jimmy with my elbow. He lifts his head and looks at me. With a swing of my eyes, I direct him to this stranger standing before us.

A long time seems to pass with him taking us both in, as if perhaps trying to figure out how two boys came to be in his bed. Then he reaches up his gloved hand and pulls back his hood. But he is not a he at all. It’s a woman. And not just any woman, but one I know from my dreams.

She smiles and simply says, “Aubrey.”

If I wasn’t sure before, the sound of her voice so perfectly matches the way I’d imagined it that any doubt is erased from my mind. My voice catches in my throat when I finally speak.

“Mother ...”

The similarities are impossible not to recognize.

The dark hair, the dark eyes.

It’s as if I’ve died again and gone to Eden, but for real this time. I wonder if perhaps my father won’t step in from outside and announce that he’s home too.

She sits on the edge of the bed and pulls me into her arms.

“Aubrey,” she says, “my sweet, sweet Aubrey.”

Her cheek is cold against mine, and her hair smells like snow. Her arms are wrapped around me, and the fur of her coat tickles my neck. Time seems to be moving slowly. I’m numb and confused. I don’t know whether to be happy or angry or sad. Maybe I’d be all three if I could wrap my mind around what’s happening and allow myself to feel anything. I’ve dreamt about this moment, about meeting my mother and what it might be like, but in my dreams we always met in Eden, not in the flesh, and certainly not high in some China-mountain hideaway.

Maybe this is a dream.

I pull away and look at her face in the light. Her cheeks are red with cold, and her eyes are wet with tears. Her dark hair is silky and thick. She looks just as my father had described her looking all those years ago when she died.

“Mom? Is it really you?”

“Yes, Son,” she says, cupping her hand beneath my chin and turning my face to the light to see it better. “It’s really me.”

“But I don’t understand ...”

“Of course, you don’t,” she says. “How could you? We have much talking to do. I’ll explain everything, I promise. But first, please introduce me to your friend.”

I had forgotten Jimmy. When I look over at him now, his eyes dart back and forth between me and her, obviously noting the similarities in our features despite his disbelief.

“This is my best friend Jimmy,” I say.

She peels her glove off and reaches to shake Jimmy’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Jimmy. I’m Aubrey, but seeing as how that could get a little confusing, you can call me Miss Bradford.”

“Are you the one they call Chief?” he asks.

“You can call me that too, if you’d like,” she says.

“Why not Mrs. VanHouten?”

“What’s that, Son?” she asks, turning back to me as if she hadn’t heard my question.

“Why did you just introduce yourself as Miss Bradford and not Mrs. VanHouten? Dad’s name was VanHouten.”

“You ask smart questions,” she says, “and you’re certainly entitled to answers. Why don’t we get you both settled and into some warm clothes and then you and I can take a little walk?”

It isn’t really a question because she stands from the bed and steps over to one of the corners, opens a chest, and pulls out wool shirts, socks, and a pair of fur coats and hands them over to us. When I stand and let the blanket drop from my shoulders, she sees the valknut symbol scarred onto my naked chest. Her hand jumps to her mouth. I expect her to ask about it, but she doesn’t. Instead, she crosses the room and turns on a small electric heater.

“The sun isn’t out enough this time of year to keep the batteries fully charged, but this should be good to warm the place up a bit tonight. Jimmy, would you like something to eat while Aubrey and I take a short walk?”

“No, thank you, ma’am,” he says. “I’m afraid we already raided your jerky and your milk.”

“Good,” she says. “That’s what it’s there for. You’ll find a wash basin and fresh water over there. And there’s a crude but workable privy behind that curtain.”

Then she steps to the door and waits beside it while I finish dressing. When I join her, she hands me her gloves. I pull them on and look back at Jimmy where he’s sitting on the bed, swallowed up in the enormous fur coat she gave him. I’m reminded of that silly rabbit fur jacket he wore in Finn’s castle, seemingly a hundred lifetimes ago now. We share a knowing look, a silent oath to be there for one another no matter what, and then Jimmy lifts a hand to wave goodbye. I wave back. I don’t know where she’s taking me, or how long we’ll be gone, but I have a feeling I’ll be different somehow when I return.

She opens the door, and I follow her out into the darkness and the cold. The snow has ceased, but the wind is still blowing. I pull the jacket tight and follow her along the top of the wall, walking away from the shelter. The wind whistles through the stones at my feet and howls in the canyons below. The clouds have moved on, and a cold, clear gibbous moon reflects off the surrounding snowdrifts, lighting our way. Just as my teeth begin chattering, we arrive at a tower built up in the wall. She unlocks the tower door and leads me inside. The wind abruptly fades when she closes the door. We’re alone in a small passage. She takes my hand in hers and leads me through the dark up a narrow, spiral staircase. At the top of the staircase, we enter a square room with windows on two sides and the moon hanging in one of them as if it were painted there, casting us and the room in its silver light. She crosses to a stone bench and sits down, motioning for me to join her.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“This is the watchtower,” she says. “I brought you here so we can talk in private. There’s a lot you need to know. But first, I must ask you a few questions.”

I pull my coat tighter. “Okay, ask me.”

“Beth and Jillian sent word about Seth. But how are Bill and Roger?”

“Roger’s dead,” I say.

She nods her head, accepting the news, but she doesn’t say anything or even ask how.

“He fell into a sinkhole. Bill was heading back alone, but I don’t think he has much chance.”

“Can you tell me how many are left at the Foundation?”

“Just the professor and Hannah. And the tunnelrats, of course. Oh, and Red. We left him there but I didn’t mean to, and we need to get him before Hannah hurts him.”

She ignores my comment about Red, changing the subject instead. “And Hannah has control of the drones?”

“Yes, we went to the Isle of Man and got the encryption code. But we didn’t know what she was planning to do.”

“No,” she says, “of course, you didn’t.”

“And I don’t really understand what’s going on now either. Are you even my mother? Because she died giving birth to me. Burst appendix. Rushed up to Eden. That’s what I was told.”

“Yes, you must be very confused.”

“You think? So tell me, how come you’re alive?”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Aubrey. It isn’t easy. But my appendicitis was a lie. It all was. It was just an excuse to get me out of Holocene II and up to the Foundation.”

“Okay, but why?”

“Because that’s where I came from.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t come up from Level 4 like everyone believed. That was just a cover. I came down from the Foundation.”

“But why?” I ask. “And why did you have to go back up there when I was born?”

“Because I couldn’t stay,” she says. “I wanted to, Aubrey, believe me. I just couldn’t.”

Then it hits me. She looks exactly as my father described her, but the last time he saw her was nearly sixteen years ago.

“You have the serum in you, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she says. “How much do you know about it?”

“I have it in me. So does Jimmy.”

She nods. “And Hannah too, I assume.”

“And Hannah too.”

A moment of silence passes between us. I can hear the wind outside. I notice that the moon has moved. Only half of it is now visible in the window.

“So you’ve probably guessed then that I’m a little older than I look,” she says.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“I’m not exactly sure,” she says, “but I think I’ll be about three hundred and ten in the spring. My birthday is close to yours. I just can’t remember what year anymore.”

“Only three hundred? But the Radcliffes were over nine-hundred years old. And the professor. So how do you fit in?”

“I did come up from Level 4,” she says, “but all the way to the Foundation and nearly three hundred years before I went back down to have you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know,” she says. “Let me tell you.”

“Okay, tell me.”

“They were reworking all their hardware and software systems at the Foundation. Making an upgrade. I was especially gifted with writing computer code. I don’t know why, but I loved it. Anyway, Radcliffe called me up when I was fifteen and they trained me there. At first, I couldn’t understand why they were so old and why they weren’t in Eden. Then he gave me the serum when I was twenty. I didn’t know then what it was for. I didn’t even know there was a lake over our heads or that the surface was like it is, until maybe fifty years or so after I had come up. They kept a lot of things from me at first, until they thought they could trust me.”