Children of Eden (17 page)

For a while, anyway. Until my ankle gives out, or I make a wrong turn and get cornered.

Panting, I lean against a wall riddled with what look like old bullet holes. What on Earth happened out here? My leg muscles are starting to twitch in protest, and my side is cramped, but my ankle has swollen enough that, for a little while anyway, the nerves are too pinched to hurt much. I know it won't last, and any minute the stabbing pain will start. I just hope the ankle can bear my weight.

I know I shouldn't rest, but my body has a mind of its own and I lean against that wall way too long. A bullet hits the masonry over my head, and with agonizing slowness I coax my legs into a run.

I round a corner . . . smack into a twenty-foot wall of twisted, tangled metal and wires, and concrete, all corners and sharp places.
Bikk!
The second they come around this corner, they'll have an open shot. The wall of debris is unbroken, and there's no way back except the way I've come. Back
toward the Greenshirts. I try to climb—it's one of the things I do best—but every hold either slices my hands or collapses beneath them. The wall is impenetrable, unclimbable, and stretches as far as I can see in either direction.

I want to cry. Not from grief this time, but from pure self-pity. I'm so tired! I hurt so much! I'm thirsty and bloody and bruised and my ankle is screaming now and my hands are raw . . . I can't do this anymore. I can hear them coming.

I have no hope. I've reached the end.

I just want to lie down. What does it matter now? I let myself sink down, and the blessed relief of giving in to gravity—of giving in, period—is so welcome that I almost want to sprawl there, clasp my hands behind my head, and just gaze at the sky, waiting for the end to come.

But I don't. I can't. Not after Mom gave her life for me. I would be betraying her sacrifice if I just gave up.

Maybe I can't go
over
, but what if I can go
through
?

I scramble to my knees and begin to paw at the seemingly impenetrable wall of debris. It isn't long before I see it: a tunnel. Almost.

Go
, my mother's ghost commands, and I drop to my belly and begin to slither through headfirst.

“Halt!” someone bellows as my head disappears. Bullets pierce the wall around me, sending concrete dust into my eyes.

“Stop!” comes another voice, Rook's voice, I'm pretty sure. But I can tell from his tone it's not an order. It's a plea. I'm shoulder-deep now, twisting and flexing to maneuver through the winding opening. “Come back!” Rook calls again as my hips almost don't fit through, then squeeze past with a small avalanche of dust. He's not putting on an act for the other Greenshirts. Something about his voice tells me he really believes that whatever I'm crawling toward is far worse than being captured by his compatriots.

My feet disappear, and the last thing I hear is one of the other Greenshirts saying, “Let her go. If she goes out there, she's dead anyway.”

I don't stop. If I'm going to die, at least I'll die on my own terms.

I move through what feels like a maze of ruined civilization, wondering how this devastation came to be in our perfect society. Does everyone know about this, and I'm only surprised because I've lived a sheltered life? I'd think Ash would have told me about this if he knew. How many other truths have I missed out on for one reason or another?

I push and shove and wiggle and twist my way through, getting scraped by rough concrete and poked by shards of plastic. At the very least, why hasn't all this stuff been recycled? There are tons of reusable material making up this wall. It stretches as far as I can see on either side, and so far I've crawled through at least thirty feet of tangled mess with no end in sight.

In my weary, near-hallucinatory state I wonder if it will go on forever. I've had dreams like that, where I try to walk through a door that seems only across the room, and yet somehow I can never get through. What if this isn't just a wall but the world? What if Eden is surrounded by all the refuse and waste of humans' dead civilizations, pollution and garbage stacked up to our very borders and filling all the rest of the world?

I feel as if I've been crawling forever when the way finally opens up. I crawl over some archaic piece of machinery, through a tip-tilted pipe . . . and emerge in a monstrous fairyland.

Mom, who has access to all of the old pre-fail records, used to tell me the stories she discovered in dusty, crumbling books made from dead trees in the times before datablocks.
There was one story that was such a favorite I made her tell it over and over—“Jack and the Beanstalk.” It's the tale of a boy who seems to make a foolish trade, giving up the security of a milk cow for the allure of magical beans. His mother is furious, but his gamble pays off when his beans grow a giant beanstalk that leads him to fortune and—more important in my childish eyes—adventure.

I think of that story as I look up . . . and up . . . and up. They stretch into the sky, leviathan plants, a green so dark it is almost black. No, not plants, I realize as I look closer. Synthetic stalks and technological tendrils and mechanical leaves that turn on whispering gears to follow the sunlight. These are like the artificial photosynthesis “plants” that decorate Eden, but on a massive scale. Each trunk is ten feet across; the leaves are as broad as houses. They are three times as tall as the algae spires, the tallest structures in Eden.

There are thousands of them.

They are so tall that they could probably be seen from the Center. And yet, when I sat on my wall, or on the abandoned spire with Lark, I never saw anything like this. Just the city, blurring into the distance, and a faint shimmer at my eyes' farthest reach that I assumed was heat rising from the blistering desert wasteland.

But even if I'm wrong, and you can't see them from the Center, surely I would have noticed them later, when out with Lark, or driving with Mom, or running from the Greenshirts. I definitely would have seen them loom over the wall of debris. They would have blocked out the sun! Had I been too blinded by excitement or anxiety to notice?

I look up at the gently undulating field of giant beanstalks. No, there's no way I could have missed these.

In the bean forest, I can only see the trees, so I decide to forge my way through. It feels unnaturally still. It shouldn't
be like this, I think. In the faux-forests I've visited—the Rain Forest Club and the exciting laser tag arena—there were birds and bugs and the rustling of paws that step, and are still. There was life in those places, even if it was artificial.

Here, in this vast constructed forest, there is nothing but me.

I wander for hours, losing track of direction. The sun is mostly blocked by the canopy, and when it reaches the ground it is in confused angles, splitting shadows. Twice I find myself back at the debris pile, a wall that reaches to the artificial roots of the bean trees where they embed in the concrete. Finally, abruptly, the beanstalks stop in a uniform rigid wall and the desert stretches golden before me.

Heat hits my face like a slap, and I stagger back, turning my face away from the glare. I look into the cool shade of the bean trees to give my eyes time to adjust . . . and suddenly I think I know why I couldn't see the beanstalks from Eden. Why no one can see them.

They're camouflaged.

Not in a broken-pattern kind of way. When I look at the bean trees nearest to me, I can see them very clearly. But as I look down the row of them, they gradually vanish from my sight. Only the slightest imperfection lets me realize that the trees aren't just in this one patch. A bit out and the trees look a little fuzzy. Past that, there is a slight metallic shimmer. Then a little farther, and I can see a strange double vision—both the bean trees and the sky beyond them.

I have to stare and pace, move backward and forward across the burning sands to realize that each individual leaf, each stalk, is projecting an almost seamless image of the landscape behind it, as it would look if the trees weren't there. Like each tree is a datablock showing me an image.

When I was in the forest there was no illusion. Out here,
I can
just
tell it exists. If I was only a little bit farther away, I wouldn't have any idea the bean trees were here at all.

How can all of Eden not know that these beanstalks are out here? All my life, I thought I was the only secret Eden was hiding. Now I don't know what to think about my perfect city.

But now what? I can't go back, at least not for a while. Maybe after dark I can creep back and make my way to the breadline.

I turn to find a shady spot underneath the synthetic bean trees, away from the desert heat that is already threatening to blister my skin. It's a dramatic change, like stepping from an oven to a refrigerator. There must be a forty-degree difference between the forest and the desert, in just a couple of steps. In addition to collecting energy from the sun, does this artificial forest shield Eden from the heat of the wasteland the rest of Earth has become?

Suddenly, I think I hear footsteps. I can't be sure, though. Maybe the mechanical beanstalks are just moving. The sound is soft, stealthy, just the barest crunch. If the rest of the world wasn't so hushed I never would have heard it. I can't see anyone yet, but the huge trees are spaced widely enough that they don't offer much cover. In just a few seconds I'll be able to see whoever it is . . . and they'll see me.

I can't hide in the forest. It's too open. I'm too hurt and exhausted to outrun anyone, even a chubby new recruit.

So I make the impossible choice. The deadly choice. With a last gasp of cool shady air I limp into the desert and hope whoever is after me isn't foolish enough to follow me.

Funny that survival might hinge on being stupider than your enemy.

Within seconds my lungs are burning, scorched. The air is so dry the heat rises up in visible waves around me. It sucks
the moisture from my body, and sweat beads and dries almost instantly. My eyes become so dry that my lids stick to my eyeballs on each blink with a gritty feel. Breathing through my nose helps my parched mouth, but it does nothing for the fact that my body temperature seems to be rising with each step.

But I press on, because survival somehow feels less important right now than not getting caught. I spent my life behind a wall. I won't be a prisoner again. Even if they kill me immediately after capture, even a moment of captivity would be too much. I'd rather die.

That's big talk, isn't it?

At first it is easy going. The sand is almost springy under my feet, and such a novel sensation after synthetic surfaces that I almost enjoy it. It cushions my aching feet as I hobble along.

After a while, though, the sand becomes loose and deep. My feet sink past the ankles with each step and I drag along like I'm wading through water. I fall, and the sand scalds my hands, but I drag myself up and forge on through this merciless sea of sand.

I start to sink deeper with every step, but in my dehydrated, almost delirious state I don't realize exactly what is happening. First my feet feel cool, and the sensation is so pleasant I just stop and enjoy it for a moment before moving on. But when I try to pull my foot out the ground seems to grab it and hold on tight. With a supreme effort I pull my leg up and take another step. When I pull my foot out, I can see that the sand is clinging peculiarly to my shoe. I try to brush it off, but it sticks to my hand, too. It almost feels wet, but when I rub a little between my fingertips there's no moisture.

Baffled, I try to take another step, but it is my bad ankle, and when I pull, it feels like I'm pulling my foot off. I have to bite back a scream. The sand feels like it's sucking me down!
Panicking, I turn, but my body moves while my feet stay still, and I topple in slow motion. I try to catch myself with my hands, but there's nothing solid. They slide right through the sand to the quicksand below and I pitch down face-first. The muck fills my mouth and nose as I thrash and gasp for breath; it blinds me.

Did I just say I'd rather die than be captured? In the space of an instant I learn better.

I thrash and kick and fail, and manage to get my head above the quicksand for one desperate, blessed breath before sinking down again. I can't swim; I've never been in water deeper than my bath. But I think even if I could, it wouldn't help in this strange, clinging sand. This is thick, clawing at me. It feels like a living thing trying to swallow me.

Like the Earth itself eating me up.

I can feel my body growing cool and soft. I stop struggling. For a second it almost feels good, to give up, to hang suspended here, to know that I don't have to run, or fight, or be lonely ever again.

Then something catches my arm, pulling me up. I'm being hauled out of the pit. Someone lays me on the scorching sand and I don't care if it's a Greenshirt with a gun to my head. I would kiss his boots if I had the strength, just because he gave me one last breath.

A hand wipes muck away from my mouth, my nose, almost tenderly. My eyes are still crusted with muck, and I can't open them. My head is swimming, my lungs convulsing so I feel like I still can't breathe.

Just before I pass out, I hear someone say, “You're a hard girl to save.”

THE WORLD COMES
back to me one piece at a time. In the beginning I can't move. I hardly even know I have a body. Am I dead? Sounds return before anything else, before I can even feel my own skin. First there's a rushing, a pulsing in my ears. I imagine the ocean sounds like that, surging to the shore in an endless cycle. My blood is like an ocean, the tides slowly rising in my veins. I lie in darkness, with no real sensation of my body.