Children of Eden (10 page)

I make a small confession. “I was afraid when I was outside the house tonight. For a while, anyway.”

Ash shakes his head slowly. “Nah, I don't believe you. Nerves, maybe. Anxiety, uncertainty. But never fear. I know you, Rowan. You're completely brave. Even if all you've ever had to face is boredom and loneliness, you've always faced them bravely. I know exactly how you'll be when you get out into the world at last. You'll eclipse me entirely.” He sighs. “Every time I fail, I think of you, what you would do in my
place. When I turn away from a group of people laughing and think they're laughing at me. When I try to tell Lark how I feel . . .”

I remember when Lark thought I was Ash, with some subtle difference. When her lips came near to mine. I flush in the darkness, and say nothing.

“I'm basically a coward, Rowan,” my brother confesses. Then he adds something that brings tears to my eyes. “You should have been the firstborn. You would have been a benefit to Eden. More than me, anyway.”

What can I say? I reassure him that he is a wonderful person, an asset to the community, that he has no failings, only quirks, that he is loved.

That I, in particular, love him, my other self.

I wonder what I'll do without him.

I wonder what he'll do without me.

“Go back to sleep, Ash. We can talk more in the morning.”

There is a melancholy edge to my thoughts, like the grim desert wasteland around Eden. But like the city itself, the center of my thoughts is bright as I drift off to sleep.

I sleep late in my tiny bare chamber. When I wake, Ash is at school and Mom is at work. I feel a twinge of resentment. Shouldn't they be home with me for my last few days in the family? Who knows when I'll be able to see them again. I might even live in an entirely different circle, and just be able to see them once a month for fauxchai and chapatis in public.

I hear a noise in the kitchen. My dad is home. I feel my jaw tighten right away, but make myself go in to say good morning. He's making an algae smoothie—straight algae and water, no synth flavors. Ew.

He doesn't hear me while the blender's whirring, but after he pours his green concoction into a tall frosted glass he turns and flinches slightly upon seeing me. As if I shouldn't be there.
A dribble of viscous green slush runs over the edge of his glass, pooling in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger.

“You're up,” he says. I don't know enough about people to determine if this stating of the obvious is a common conversational opener, but my dad does it all the time.

I grab a sweet roll from a basket and take a big bite. “Congratulations on your appointment as vice chancellor,” I say.

“It isn't official yet.”

“Don't worry,” I say wryly, unable to resist the jibe. “I won't tell anyone.” Who could I tell, for the next few days anyway? Except Lark. I decide to tell her tonight, an act of defiance.

“I need to have you squared away before anything is publicly announced.” He wipes the green drips with a pristine white cloth, then tosses the cloth into the reclamation chute.

“Squared away? Is that all I am to you? An issue to be dealt with, a mess to be made neat?” Does my father hate me? I wonder. It's a question I've been shaping in my mind ever since I was old enough to pay attention to the world around me.

“It's not as simple as that, Rowan,” he says. “You create—difficulties—by your very existence.”

I feel my lip twitch. I want to delve into it more, but I only say bitterly, “You'll be rid of me in a little while. That will be a relief, I guess.”

He takes another sip of his drink, scowling a bit as if he just realized how disgusting it is. “In a way,” he says evasively.

I look at him evenly. My feelings are mixed, but as before, anger trumps sadness. It's starting to be a trend with me, I think. “And you and Mom can move on with the perfect life I interrupted sixteen years ago. Pretty soon it will be like I never even existed at all.”

He doesn't answer, only downs the remainder of his drink and heads out the door.

IT IS A
day like any other—
almost
. Like every day for the past sixteen years of my life, I spend a good portion of the daylight home alone. I have my routines to keep me sane: studying, drawing, running, and exercising until my body is exhausted and my mind is calm.

But today there is a lilac tinge on everything I do.

When I draw, I find myself sketching Lark's face.

When I run, it's her I'm running to.

When I pull out my datablocks and vids to study, I turn immediately to all of the things Lark and I talked about. I search for information on the Dominion, but there is precious little. That makes sense, I think, with a new touch of cynicism painted onto my personality by Lark. The people in charge don't want people to know about that evil cult, even disparaging things.
Any
information might lure new converts.

So I search for other topics, expanding my knowledge so I'll have more to talk about with Lark. The thing that interests me most is the earliest days of Eden. I want to find out more concerning what Lark said about the original population of Eden. How were the first residents chosen? Were they just the last straggling survivors of humanity, or were they specially selected? I need a clue about why our population started
out so large, only to be trimmed down now. As one of the trimmed, I take it personally.

But there's almost nothing beyond what I already know. In fact, every source says almost exactly the same thing, in almost identical words, like a mantra or a prayer.
The remnants of the human species gathered in Eden, to wait until the Earth was renewed
. That's all, as if people were some migrating animals who coalesced by instinct, going into hibernation to wait out a long winter. I never noticed before how few details there are on our own history. I didn't question very much until now. I just swallowed down whatever I was fed.

I turn instead to our founding father, Aaron Al-Baz. There's a ton of information on him, all of it laudatory. It reads more like a legend than pure history. Like every child in Eden I learned this all before, but now that I know I'm living in the great man's house, it seems closer, more vital.

I read how Al-Baz was mocked as a young man for his radical beliefs in the coming end of the world. Still he attracted many followers, even as others condemned him and found fault in his science. He suffered deep humiliation as he was ostracized from the scientific community, his theories about man's doomed interaction with the Earth torn to shreds.

Breathless, I read about his self-imposed exile as he heroically dedicated his life to saving the planet. He was so secretive during that time that there are few facts, only anecdotes. He was trying to stop world governments from approving policies that were killing the environment—and from what I can gather, his methods were not 100 percent above the law. When the heads of nations wouldn't listen, he forced them to listen. In that newly burgeoning digital age when everything on the planet was already well on its way to being linked, a skilled computer scientist could force governments to pay attention.

They called his methods hacking, techno-terrorism,
cyber-guerrilla warfare. But he never harmed a soul, not a person or beast or plant. Unlike the world governments and the destructive weapons and technology they controlled. Al-Baz only took over systems to prove his point, to make people see that they were on a path to destruction—and offer them an alternative. For his pains, he was questioned multiple times and placed under house arrest, his assets frozen.

Somehow he escaped prison for many years. Then came the Ecofail.

According to the history I am reading, the world governments were about to launch their mission to alter the atmosphere to fight global warming. A laudable ambition, though Al-Baz told them it wouldn't work. He tried to stop them, attacking the system that would launch the particles into the atmosphere. But he failed, and was thrown in prison, and while he was captive the Earth died. By the time his followers broke him out, there was barely time to implement his long-term plan, the work of his lifetime: Eden. He activated the program that turned all of the world's technology toward two linked goals—reviving the planet and saving mankind.

In an act of great nobility he saved the people who betrayed him and the Earth—or as many as he could. He preserved the humans who had been unable to care for their own planet. Al-Baz gave us all a second chance, an opportunity to do penance for our selfishness, our stupidity.

And I've lived in his house all my life, and never knew it.

As soon as Mom comes home—before either Ash or Dad—I pounce with questions. “How did we end up living in Aaron Al-Baz's house?”

“Can we talk about it later?” she asks. There are dark circles under her eyes, and her hair is uncharacteristically messy, with strands flying crazily out of her usually tight twist. “We have a lot of other things to discuss.”

“No, this is important,” I say. “How could I not know?”

She shrugs. “It isn't a big deal. We're distant relations, through his sister, I think. But it was a long time ago. How did you find out?”

I didn't quite think that one through, but she doesn't seem to notice the long pause before I say, “I came across a mention in an old history of Eden. Is there anything here that belonged to him?”

“Oh, no,” she says quickly. “It was so long ago.”

“Not really. Two hundred years isn't that many generations.”

She won't tell me any more, and immediately changes the subject.

“Your lenses are ready to be implanted.”

I hurl myself into her arms. She's a little taken aback, and I realize she's expecting me to still be upset at leaving home. I am, of course, but to my chagrin the first thing I think of is that I'll be more easily able to walk the streets safely when I sneak out tonight to see Lark. With my eyes looking flat like everyone else's, and what's more keyed to someone else's identity, I can walk past any Greenshirt without a qualm.

“When do we leave?” I ask.

“Oh, they're ready, but your surgery won't be for a little while. Another couple of days at least.”

“And with them I can pass as an official citizen, a firstborn?”

She nods. “These will be a huge step up from the black market lenses criminals use. They can't access all of the technology. Some things, like the filter for the altered sun rays, and the identity chip, work okay on the cheap, removable lenses. But there are deeper layers that no one has been able to suss out . . . until we found someone brilliant. Normally, the lenses are manufactured in a factory, and then sent to the Center
for further modification by EcoPan. The cybersurgeon we found managed to hack into the Center to get the exact specifications. You don't have to worry. They'll work perfectly. Lots of other second children aren't as lucky as you.”

“Lots?” I repeat. This is the first I've ever heard of other second children. What a day for revelations.

“A few, yes, but others use the cheap, removable lenses too. My sources don't talk much, as you might imagine. But from what I gather there are criminals using lower-quality fake lenses, rebels, cheating husbands and wives . . .”

So I'm in great company. But back to the second children. “How many of us are there?” I ask.

She presses her lips together briefly. “Not many. According to my source, perhaps twenty still walking the streets.”

“Oh, that's . . . Wait, what do you mean
still
?”

“Oh, honey, you'll be just fine. We found a real genius to make your lens implants, bought the most secure identity, bribed all the right people . . .”

“What are you saying?”

She bites her lip. “My source told me that the survival rate for second children trying to integrate into society . . . isn't as high as we'd like.”

“You mean, we die?”

“No, no,” she hastily begins, then amends it to “Well . . . a few are captured. But there are a lot who simply . . . disappear.”

A chill tickles my spine.

“Don't worry, honey, it won't happen to you. We've taken every precaution.” She shakes her head as if tossing away the unpleasant thoughts.

I'm haunted by the image of second children disappearing. The way Mom said it, it sounded like they just evaporate, turn into mist and drift away. It must be the Center, though,
capturing second children. They must be dragged away into the night and fog, and no one ever knows what happened to them.

Mom won't talk about it anymore, no matter how much I press. Not long afterward Ash comes home, and with a quick mutual glance Mom and I agree not to discuss anything serious or worrying in front of him. Stress aggravates his condition. I also want to ask where I'll be going. Will it be to a childless couple? Will I be posing as an orphan, adopted by a kind relative? I might even have a brother or sister. Will I like them?