H2O (4 page)

After fifteen
minutes or so, I heard the soft rush of water and saw sunlight up ahead.
Twenty-five yards later, I stepped into an open swath of land that cut a path
right through the woods. A concrete channel, carrying water, ran down the
center of the path, and there was enough sunlight here to spur the undergrowth
to life. The vegetation was so vibrant that it used the metal mesh that covered
the channel as a trellis and crept all the way across the aqueduct.

I looked to my
south and, two hundred yards down, I saw the pumping station. It was a concrete
and wood enclosure about the size of a small room. The channel fed into it and
I could see that the water was backed up.

As I
approached the pumping station, I heard the spasmodic rhythm of the pumps
inside. That ragged tempo meant that there was probably something wrong with
the pumps, rather than the machinery that drove them. The machinery was trying
to do its job, but something was stopping one or more of the pumps from
following through.

I opened the
door to the pumping station, stepped inside, lit the gas lantern, and
immediately saw that someone had smashed one of the four pumps. The plastic
cylinder which housed the pump had been cracked wide open and, inside, the pump
was bent, but still moving, sporadically. Luckily, each pump was controlled by
its own machinery, so the other three were fine.

My immediate
thought was
marauders
. But my next thought was
why
? Why would
they sabotage the distribution of water? Stealing water made sense, but why
sabotage the flow? To punish a town downstream? But if they wanted to do that,
they would’ve smashed all the pumps. Maybe it wasn’t marauders.

I spend the
next couple hours checking the machinery for each pump. It all worked. Then I
headed back toward the van, keeping an eye out for marauders the entire way.

I picked up
the supplies I’d need for the repairs and returned. Then I made another trip
for tools. I still hadn’t seen any marauders, but on that third trip back, I
felt like I was being watched. I caught glimpses of squirrels, raccoons, and a
large deer so I told myself that they were the ones watching me.

I worked late
into the evening and then called it a day. It was going to take me another
twelve hours to finish, so I’d get up early tomorrow and start again then.

I set up a
small tent nearby, built a small fire and ate a light meal. Even though I’d
worked hard, I wasn’t that hungry because I was anxious. I still felt like I
was being watched. After eating, I pulled out the book I’d brought,
Ender’s
Game
, and read by the fire.

I first read
Ender’s Game
when I was six. My dad had said that I’d love it, but I didn’t. He liked
science fiction and rated
Ender’s Game
one of his top five sci-fi books.
At the time, I thought, what’s the big deal? A kid saves the world. I’d already
read books with that plot and I didn’t find the specifics anything special.
Ender’s world was boring. It was a hyped-up version of school.

A few years
later, after my dad was gone, I read it again and this time I loved it. I
understood it. The book wasn’t about Ender’s world. It was about Ender. His
classmates hated him, picked on him, and beat the crap out of him, all because
he was different. Like I was. I wasn’t brilliant like Ender, not even close,
and I never rose to the top either, but my classmates did hate me and kick the
crap out of me. And like Ender, I fought back even when I was outnumbered. Back
then, I’d wondered if my dad wanted me to read this book because he knew that
some day I’d identify with Ender, a boy who had few friends.

I still wonder
about that.

I read until
the fire died, the entire time planning to open that bottle of Curado. I wasn’t
a drinker, but a drink would’ve been a good defense against the dark. I never
opened the bottle.

Before heading
into my tent, I looked up at the sky and saw a thin crescent moon between the
branches of the hemlocks. It offered almost no light. I maneuvered so I could
get a better look at the sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of a shooting star. My
dad had paid close attention to shooting stars. He’d said that, before the
Virus, people couldn’t see many stars. The ambient light created by thousands
of cities had made star gazing almost impossible. But now the stars shone
bright, millions of gold specks lighting up the night sky, a consolation prize
courtesy of the Virus. And the shooting stars were the brightest of all.

I knew they
weren’t really stars, but meteors entering the earth’s atmosphere and burning
up. But on that cold dark night, I had no idea that they were also part of a
bigger connection between my life and Ender’s life.

I couldn’t get
a clear angle on the sky, so I crawled into my tent, slid into my sleeping bag,
and tried to fall asleep.

The night sounds were louder than
I’d expected. Louder than the water rushing through the channel and louder than
the rhythmic beating of the three working pumps. The night was dominated by the
hoots of owls, the symphony of chirping crickets, and the scurrying of mice and
raccoons and every so often, the deer added their human-like snorts to the
blanket of sounds.

I don’t know
how long it took me to fall asleep, but I do know that I awoke abruptly.
Someone
was out there
. I don’t know how I knew, it could’ve been the subtle change
in the sea of night sounds, but I knew. And I was guessing it was a marauder.

I reached over
and grabbed the bowie knife I’d brought with me and I suddenly wished I’d made
the effort to acquire a gun. Guns were illegal Remnants, and expensive, and
only Fibs were allowed to own them.

I slid out of
my sleeping bag, crouched low in my tent, and tried to pick out more hints of
the marauder. The cadence of scurrying mice and raccoons had changed and so had
the pitch of the owls’ hoots.

Then I heard
silence take over the space behind my tent and I pictured the marauder standing
there, ready to attack.

I crouched,
motionless, and realized that my heart was pumping wildly.

I had a couple
of choices. I could race out of my tent, across the top of the channel,
hopefully light-stepping it enough so I wouldn’t fall through the metal mesh,
and disappear into the woods on the other side. Or I could charge the marauder
with my bowie knife. But if he were armed, he’d shoot me. Of course, he could
do that even if I high-tailed it across the channel. So I stayed stock-still
and tried to come up with another plan.

The silence
behind my tent started to fill back up with night sounds. The marauder must’ve
been circling around to the front, but I couldn’t hear his footsteps.

I made a
decision right then.

I scooped up
the keys to my van, stuffed it in my pocket, unzipped the tent flap as fast as
I could and sprang out of the tent. I raced back around, into the woods,
gaining speed with every step, running as fast as I could toward the road. I
didn’t look back for the marauder.

I ran,
stumbled and regained my balance, and repeated that over and over again,
lurching forward in the dark, adrenaline and fear propelling me. I avoided tree
trunks as best I could and ignored the scrapes and cuts accumulating on my bare
feet and arms. I lost my bowie knife somewhere along the way.

I finally saw
the road up ahead and scanned the shoulder for my van. Only then did I consider
that another marauder might be stationed out here. I buried that thought and
exploded out of the woods, pulling the keys from my pocket. I spotted my van,
and it was clear of marauders.

I ran to it,
unlocked the door, jumped in, jammed the keys into the ignition and as the
engine roared to life, one word crossed my mind.

Coward.

I was a
coward, running from the marauders. The marauders who murdered my father and
destroyed my life.

I turned on
the headlights, put the van in gear, and was just about to hit the gas, when I
saw him. He was standing in front of the van and, if I pressed the gas, I’d
barrel right into him, killing him.

I hesitated.

The man wasn’t
holding a weapon and his arms were down by his sides. His eyes were fixed on me
but I knew that he couldn’t really see me in the glare of the headlights. So I
took a second to look him over.

He was a big
man, tall and unyielding. And he looked old, but rugged, like old age had made
him stronger, not weaker. The skin on his face was weathered like dark armor,
proud and invincible.

But why was he
standing in front of my van, in the dead of night, with no weapon?

I didn’t put
my foot on the gas.

He approached
the van.

I didn’t move.
Was it possible that he wasn’t a marauder?

I watched him
walk up to my door. He stopped a couple of yards away and didn’t make another
move. I waited a few seconds, then stepped outside.

He glanced at
my hands and saw that I wasn’t holding a weapon.

“You’re right
about the water,” he said. His voice was calm and as still as the night.

My mind
reeled. How did he know about my discovery? Did he know who I was?

“I can’t
answer all your questions,” he said. “Right now, it’s too dangerous to talk. My
name is Jim Crater—”

Suddenly, to
my right, I saw a shooting star streak across the vast black sky. He looked
over and saw it, too, its gold tail shimmering.

“That’s not a
star,” he said and then looked back at me. “Don’t stop here. Keep moving
south.”

And then he
walked away, down the road.

I watched him
until he disappeared into the dark and then realized, I hadn’t said a word.

Back in my tent, I analyzed what
Jim Crater had said.

He could’ve
learned from anyone in Clearview that I was the nut with the crazy theory about
the water. Or from a trucker passing through. But he’d said
you’re right
about the water
and that was jarring. He was saying that excess water
was
being shipped throughout the Territory. Or, at the very least, it meant that
he
believed that. So
why
did he believe that?

And why did he
say that the shooting star hadn’t been a star? Did he know it was a meteor
entering the earth’s atmosphere? Did he know science? And I couldn’t figure out
why he’d tracked me down to say so little. Why didn’t he just tell me exactly
why he’d cornered me?

And finally,
why did he want me to keep moving south?

I thought all
these questions through and I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop thinking
them through, which would’ve kept me up all night, if the long day’s work
hadn’t finally caught up to me. I fell asleep right away with only one issue
resolved. I wasn’t going to take Jim Crater’s advice. I wasn’t going to keep
moving south. I’d finish my job and head north, back to Clearview.

A few hours later, dawn rose and
lit up the forest, and I geared up for the day. I planned to work as hard as I
could so I’d be able to head back home tonight. But as soon as I stepped out of
my tent, my eyes fell on something that threatened to change that plan.

I saw a sketch
in the dirt. It was crude, but I could tell what it was. A reptilian body with
four squat legs, a long thick tail, a broad snout, and protruding eyes.

It was a
salamander.

And above it,
I saw twigs laid out in the form of an arrow. The arrow pointed from the salamander
to the charred wood from last night’s fire.

The element
was Fire.

The animal was
a salamander.

The direction
was south.

Fire stole
salamanders from Water and headed south. That connection was engrained in me
from childhood. Engrained right alongside the memory of my father. It was part
of my father.

Maybe the
animal wasn’t a salamander. Maybe it was an iguana or a gecko or a chameleon.
But it wasn’t. It was a salamander.

Fire stole
salamanders from Water and headed south.

Crater had
drawn the salamander to reiterate his message from last night.
Keep moving
south.

But how did he
know about the ancient elements? That each had their own animals? That each had
their own
direction
? Had he learned that as a child, like I had? But how
did he know that
I
knew about them? How did he know that
for me
,
drawing a salamander would turn Fire into south? And that question led to the
most disturbing question of all.

Did Crater
know my father?

I didn’t stop to think more about
that question, but went right to work. As I was repairing the pump, all the
questions from the prior night ran through my mind. But I couldn’t come up with
any answers. I didn’t have enough information.

By late
morning, I’d decided that the only question I had to answer was whether to head
south or back to Clearview. Even though I’d already dismissed heading south, it
now seemed like the only way to get some answers.

The repairs
went smoothly and the hours passed quickly. At three, I took a break to eat. I
sat by the pumping station, staring south, where the wilderness rose to a peak,
and that’s when an answer to one of those earlier questions took shape. I
understood why someone had sabotaged the pumping station. They wanted to draw a
Corolaqua worker out here. The next man on the list. The man with the theory
about the water.

I was sure
that Crater had waited on that peak in the distance, waited until he saw me
arrive, then, in the dead of night, he had hiked down to deliver his message.
Keep
moving south.
And he’d added such a compelling illustration to his message,
that he knew I’d take it seriously.