State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy (8 page)

She calls after us, “Will you give him a message for me?” When I turn and nod yes, she says, “Tell him that I love him. Just tell him that for me, will you?”

Before I can promise her that I will, she pulls the window closed again and disappears into the shadows of the room.

“That could have gone better,” Jimmy says.

“Tell me about it. And it didn’t kill much time either.”

“How much longer till midnight?”

“Too long,” I say. “But, hey, I know what might help pass the time. How about a trip to the beach?”

“The beach?” he asks. “Here? Underground?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

We take the lift up to the recreation tunnels and walk the corridor to the locker room door. Inside, we grab clean shorts from the rack and change into them, leaving our zipsuits and our belongings in lockers. I’m disappointed to see that the sign on the beach access door reads: LIFEGUARD NOT ON DUTY

I was hoping Bill would be here so I could show him how much taller and heavier I am. I think he’d be surprised.

But at least Jimmy is surprised, because when we step through the door, his jaw drops and he stands transfixed by the scene in front of him. It’s as if the cavern has disappeared and been replaced by blue skies and sandy beaches. The gulls call, the waves tumble up the sand, the perfect clouds float in their windless skies, and although the illusion is not as convincing as it was to me before, it’s still a remarkable likeness.

“I dunno whether to trust my eyes,” Jimmy says.

“Why not?”

“Because it looks like a beach, but it ain’t.”

“How do you know it isn’t?”

“Well, the air smells funny for starters. And those gulls in the sky is flappin’ but they ain’t goin’ nowhere. And there ain’t no shells or no rocks in the sand. It’s too perfect. Look at those clouds. They seem to be at the same height, but they’s goin’ in different directions. That jus’ ain’t possible. Plus, you can look right at the sun there without your eyes burnin’ up.”

“Well, we can at least enjoy the UV lights awhile,” I say, just a little bummed that he wasn’t more convinced.

We walk toward the water’s edge and sit on the sand.

“Are we goin’ swimmin’?” he asks.

“I guess we could,” I say, “but the water’s only about a meter deep.”

“How deep’s a meter?” he asks.

“About up to your waist.”

“No wonder I had to teach ya to swim,” he says, laughing as he flops onto his back in the sand and closes his eyes.

I lie down next to him and close my eyes too. I remember coming here to get away from the gray depression of the cavern and to dream about one day discovering a world without walls. Now I’ve found it, and hiked it, and swum in its oceans, and climbed its mountains, and sailed its seas, and here I am back again, right where it all began. Only this time, I have real worries and fears, not the silly boyhood problems I had then.

I feel a cold sprinkle of water hit my naked chest, and I’m momentarily frozen, with my eyes glued shut. I have to remind myself that Red is no longer a bully and that I’m no longer a victim. I open my eyes and sit up and see Bill, the lifeguard, crouched in front of me, scooping another handful of water from a retreating wave. He sees me and grins, letting the water drip between his open fingers.

“Thought I was going to have to chase for my bucket to wake you up,” he says. “You always did sleep like a stone.”

“I wasn’t sleeping,” I reply.

“Well, that’d be a first,” he says. “Didn’t they used to bury you to your neck in sand while you slept? Who’s your friend?”

“This is Jimmy.”

Bill reaches out and shakes Jimmy’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Jimmy. What’s that thing on your ankle there?”

“Oh, that?” Jimmy asks. “It’s jus’ a thing, you know.”

“It’s something people wear up at the foundation,” I say. “Like a monitor that warns you when the air is too thin.”

“Oh,” Bill says, nodding, “I see. And why do you have the Foundation’s emblem carved onto your chest? Is that just something they do up there too?”

I look down and realize that my scars are bright red in the UV lights. There’s a perfect upside down valknut there, carved in my flesh halfway around the globe by a five-hundred-year-old descendant of Dr. Radcliffe. This descendant had since been vaporized, along with the entire island and our fox. Maybe I should just tell Bill the truth—but he’d never believe it.

“That’s just ... well; it’s from an accident with a thing I was doing. A misunderstanding, really. It’s still healing.”

Bill shakes his head. “Looks painful, whatever it is. Listen, I heard your speech today in the square.”

“You did? What did you think?”

He scoops up a handful of sand and lets it fall between his fingers, thinking over his answer. The pause makes me nervous.

“I thought it was convincing,” he finally says.

Convincing? What does that mean? I want to ask him, but before I can say anything, he stands and says:

“Anyway, I came over to let you know that we’re shutting down rec time so that everyone can meet back in the square.”

“What meeting?” I ask, standing up and brushing the sand off my shorts. “Are we invited?”

“I don’t see why not,” he says. Then he looks me over and adds, “Man, they must have you lifting the drones off the trains by hand up there. You sure are bigger than when you left.”

I feel my chest swell a little with pride.

Then he says, “Nice to meet you, Jimmy,” nods goodbye, and jogs off to shut down the illusionary beach.

As Jimmy and I walk toward the locker rooms, the sun clicks off, the waves disappear, and the blue sky goes gray. We enter the shower together and shut the door. Jimmy follows my lead and strips off his shorts and stuffs them with mine in the hamper. Then we raise our arms and wait for the blast of hot water, looking like a couple of naked and surrendering refugees being washed down before being admitted into civilization.

Dry and clean, we don our zipsuits again and head for the lift to the valley. There’s a crowd gathering again in the square, so we duck behind buildings and work our way up to where we can watch from the safety of a breezeway. After several minutes waiting, Mrs. Hightower steps to the microphone.

“Welcome, Level 3 residents and those watching below.”

I nudge Jimmy and whisper, “They must be streaming this to the other levels as well.”

“After Aubrey’s speech today,” Mrs. Hightower continues, “I confirmed with the Foundation everything he said. Eden will be back online within the week if we begin sending up supplies again. You’ve been called here to vote, since it was a vote that put us all on strike in the first place. I’d encourage you to think about your fellows who are already overdue for retirement, and of yourselves, and the implications more delays might have on your own retirement plans.”

“Why is she lying?” I ask.

“I dunno,” Jimmy says. “I told you I dun’ trust her.”

“You can bet I’m going to ask her tonight,” I reply.

“So,” Mrs. Hightower says, “all those in favor of ending this silly strike and returning to business as usual, please raise your hands now.”

She steps back from the microphone and is the first to raise her hand high. Another hand goes up in the crowd. Then another. And another. Then, almost all at once, every hand in the place rises until the crowd assembled there in the square looks like some underground army returning the salute of their giant queen standing tall before them.

“I’ll be damned,” I mumble. “They bought my lies.”

The knock comes softly on the door at exactly midnight.

I toss the ball to Jimmy one final time, concluding our long game of catch, and rise to answer it.

When I open the door, a hooded stranger stands with his or her back to the door, looking nervously left and right. When this visitor turns to face me, I’m shocked to see that it’s Bill.

“What are you doing here, Bill?”

“There’s no time for that now,” he says. “You have to follow me. Fast and quiet. No talking, no questions. Got that?”

I nod that I do.

“Do you have something to cover your face with?”

“I have an old hoody upstairs.”

“Grab it,” he says.

“What about Jimmy?”

“He’s fine; nobody will recognize him.”

Leaving him at the open door, I race upstairs and grab my gray hoody and pull it on. Then I check to make sure I have my father’s pipe in my pocket before heading back down.

“You ready for this, Jimmy?” I ask.

“As ready as I’m gonna get,” he says.

“Okay, let’s do it.”

We leave the apartment and follow Bill across the dark valley. I have a strange feeling that this may be it for me, that I may never be coming back here again. I pull my hood lower over my face and walk beside Jimmy, my steps rhyming his. Wherever we’re going, at least we’re going there together.

Bill leads us to the elevator platform and swipes his card to open the door. We step inside and ascend to the transfer station on Level 2. When the elevator stops we all three suck in the disinfectant gas like pros and wait for the door to open.

The transfer station is empty, the dim lights casting the waiting train in shadow, but Bill doesn’t lead us to the train like I expect him to. Instead, he steps into the waiting elevator right next to the one we just got off.

“Doesn’t this elevator go to Level 4?” I ask.

Bill glares at me and draws his hand across his neck, telling me to be quiet. I look at Jimmy, but he just shrugs.

The ride down to Level 4 takes longer than the ride up from Level 3 did, and by the time the elevator finally stops, I’ve almost forgotten about the gas. It eventually clears and the door opens. Bill pops his head out, looks left and right, and then motions for us to follow as he exits the elevator.

Nothing I thought I knew about Level 4 prepared me for what it actually looks like. The platform is elevated enough to provide me with a sweeping view of the enormous cavern, although not quite as large as Level 3, illuminated by countless LED light strips hanging from the high, curved ceiling. There are so many lights that even though they’re turned down for rest hours, it’s almost as bright as being in the daylight, above. Every inch of polished floor is organized into manufacturing assembly lines, and enormous 3-D printers are unattended and working on their own. I see the nose cone for a flying drone taking shape in one, giant fan blades for our cooling systems being printed in another, and other various indistinguishable parts and pieces being honed and polished and packaged. But what strikes me as the most strange about the setup are the living quarters. They are all windowless and entered by porthole doors off of catwalks that circle the entire perimeter and rise to the ceiling. They are built into the walls, I’m assuming, in order to maximize available workspace below.

I lag behind Jimmy and Bill and take all of this in as we descend an open flight of stairs to the production floor. It’s an eerie feeling, being surrounded by autonomous machines as we hurry across the facility in the strange, shadowless light that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

At the far side of the cavern, Bill leads us up steel stairs to a wall of duct vents where giant turbine fans blast cool air into the level. Bill stops in front of one of the fans. The circular opening is twice as tall as he is, and the spinning fan is protected by a cage. I momentarily forget that I’m not supposed to talk, but it doesn’t matter because the blast of cool wind is so strong here that when I open my mouth, it fills with air and my cheeks flutter and flap. I feel like some kind of flatulent idiot.

Bill presses his palm to a glass plate in the wall next to the fan, and a door in the steel grate slides open. The fan blades whirl just on the other side, spinning so fast that I can clearly glimpse the dim tunnel beyond. Bill turns and gathers Jimmy and me into his arms in a kind of huddle.

“Listen up,” he says, his voice just barely audible above the wind. “When the fan stops, you’ve got to pass through quickly. No hesitating, understand?”

We nod that we do.

With no further instruction, he steps inside the steel cage and we follow. The door closes behind us, and we stand in a narrow breezeway, being blasted with cold air. The fan blades are spinning so close that if I reached out my hand, it would surely be hacked off instantly and blown back into my face.

The fan comes to an immediate halt. Bill ducks between the blades without a word and disappears on the other side. Jimmy follows. I don’t know why, but I’m gripped with fear. I inch toward the crack between the two blades where the others passed, leaning down to look, but hesitating. Strong hands reach up, wrap around my throat, and jerk me through. The blades take off again full speed, catching my foot and sending my amputated shoe hurling back the way we came. I hear it thud against the steel cage. Jimmy releases his hands from my neck, and we both look back with horror to see if my foot is gone with my shoe. But it’s still there, thankfully. Bill just shakes his head. I kick off my other shoe and carry it in my hand as I follow them barefoot down the windy tunnel.

The tunnel terminates at a large, vertical shaft into which Bill seems to disappear without a trace. Jimmy and I lean out over the edge and see him clinging to a ladder. There is no light in the shaft itself, but other intersecting ducts cut descending beams of light across its never-ending void. It seems to plunge to the center of the Earth itself.

“No way am I getting on that ladder,” I shout.

“You had better,” Bill shouts back, “because there isn’t any going back, unless you want to join what’s left of your shoe by being sucked through the fan.”

That said he starts climbing down.

“We’ve climbed tougher stuff,” Jimmy says, swinging out into the void and grabbing onto the ladder.

I stuff my remaining shoe as far as it will fit in my zipsuit pocket and follow after him. We climb down, one rung at a time, into almost absolute blackness, with only the distant wands of light crossing from ducts above. My hands grow tired; my legs grow shaky. I’m certain that only the cool air rushing past us keeps my fingers from sweating and sliding off the rungs. We climb in silence, the wind whistling through the ducts all around us, only my wild thoughts of falling to mark the passage of time.