Children of Eden (14 page)

He's in striped pajamas, perched tensely at the edge of the bed. “You're still here,” he says.

Oh, Dad, even now, even at the end, you can't just lie and pretend to just a little bit of feeling? Not a
good luck
, or an
I'll miss you
, or anything?

Nothing. So I steel myself and say coldly, though with a tremor in my voice, “For another minute, anyway.”

He nods, looking down at his knees. I search for anything—sadness, anger—but his expression is unreadable. Mostly it seems like he's waiting. He's been waiting for sixteen years for me to conveniently disappear from his life, and now, if he can just hold out a little longer, he'll get his fondest wish.

“Okay then, Dad,” I say, swallowing hard. “Good-bye.”

I wait. Nothing except the crease of his frown deepening between his brows.

So I leave. Leaving him is the one thing I'm truly glad of in all this mess.

IT FEELS SO
weird going out through the front door like a regular person. Mom glances at me like she's expecting me to be in shock at being outside for the first time in my life, so I do my best to look awestruck, to gawk at everything from what she imagines is a new perspective.

She leads me to the small arched outbuilding that holds our tiny car. I've read that back before the Ecofail, cars were huge monsters that ate fossil fuels with a gluttonous appetite. They actually burned gasoline, with engines that ran by caging explosions. They were violent juggernauts that thundered through the world by the billions like vast migrating herds of some destructive creature.

We still use the word “car,” but the few that exist in Eden (almost all in the inner circles) are nothing like their namesake. Our water-fueled vehicle is an elegant deep-pink egg with a shell so thin we can see the world around us in a rose-colored haze. It reminds me of Lark's glasses.

We sit in comfort in the center, as Mom switches the controls to manual. Usually, you tell it where you want to go, close your eyes, and listen to music until you're there. Like the bots that zip through the city, Eden's cars are programmed to avoid collisions, and are usually completely autonomous.
Few people use the manual option. Of course, Mom doesn't want a record of where we're going.

I have to keep it together
, I think as I stare out at the fleeting scenery, the landscape that, after a couple of nights out, now seems almost familiar. It is slowly sinking in how serious this is. Not just that it is the end of everything I know. Suddenly, the danger feels real. Before, when I snuck out it was scary, sure, but there was always an edge of excitement to it, like when I played laser hunt with Lark. Sneaking out was a challenge, and getting home again with adventure and experience under my belt was a victory.

Now, though, someone is apparently actively hunting me. This just got real.

I reach over and take my mom's hand, leaving her to drive with the other. She flashes me a quick, loving look, then fixes her eyes back on the road. It's about 3 a.m. and the streets are virtually deserted. Even the cleanbots are recharging. Still, she has to be careful. An accident would be disastrous.

“Out in the world at last,” Mom says, squeezing my fingers as she maneuvers down one of the radial streets, away from the green glowing eye of the Center. “And you didn't even have to knock down the courtyard walls to do it,” she jokes. “I always knew, right from the start, that it was going to be hard for you. But now my strong-willed little girl is growing into a strong-willed woman. Rowan, I am so proud of you.”

She speaks the words very distinctly, as if she's trying to burn them into my memory.

“And now you're finally going to get the freedom you deserve.”

“But the price!” I say.

She shakes her head. “I . . . we would have spent anything to help you have a normal life. Luckily we can afford it.”

“That's
not what I mean.”

“I know,” she says softly. “But there's always a price, to every decision. I've paid a heavy price since the moment you were born, a price of guilt at the life I've forced you to lead. And your father . . .” She breaks off, and I notice for the first time that she has my habit of clenching her jaw in moments of extreme emotion. I don't think I've ever seen her upset until the past few days. She always seemed so calm, so stable, so happy . . . though I wonder now whether she kept her equilibrium at home to make things easier for the rest of us.

“What about my father?” I ask sharply.

“It's . . . nothing.”

Of course I can tell from her voice, from the play of muscles in her jaw, that it is the very opposite of nothing. “We only have a little while longer, Mom. You owe me honesty.” I see her wince a little. “He hates me, and I don't know why. Is it just because I'm an inconvenience? An obstacle on his path to greatness?”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she begins, and I can tell she wants to lie. But finally she says, “He doesn't hate you, Rowan. He hates himself.”

In a halting voice she tells me what she herself only found out a few years ago, when my father was drunk and tired and weak and too crushed under the burden of his guilt to keep the secret any longer.

When my dad found out that Mom was pregnant with twins he took it upon himself—without asking her, without telling her—to try to abort one of us. During what was supposed to be a routine prenatal check he used a modified ultrasound device he created to try to destroy one of us.

Did he pick his victim at random? Did he let chance decide whether Ash or I would be a first child, an only child—or no child at all?

No. He wanted a son.

When there were billions of people still crawling on the planet, men and women weren't always treated equally. Ash and I used to laugh about that when we studied ancient history together. Imagine, anyone thinking women were lesser than men! Here in Eden, I believed that kind of prejudice didn't exist.

Dear old Dad, though—he wanted a child created in his own image. He wanted a boy to mold like him, to follow in his footsteps, to become a great doctor or politician.

“He aimed the ultrasound device . . .”

“Call it what it is, Mom,” I say bitterly. “A weapon.” I think of myself, huddled in the womb with Ash, safe and warm . . . with my own father aiming a gun at my head.

“He aimed it at you, but something happened. He was almost incoherent when he confessed, and I never spoke with him about it again, but he said that you moved at the last second. That you were close to Ash, that . . . that you hugged him. You pulled him to you, and the sound beam hit Ash instead of you. Your father shut it off instantly, but some damage was done. It hit Ash in the chest. It injured his lungs.”

To my surprise, a tiny part of me almost feels sorry for the monster that is my father. For sixteen years he's lived with the guilt of the crime he committed. Every day he has to look at his ill son and think
That's my fault
.

But every day he has to look at his daughter and think
I tried to kill her, and failed
.

I feel sick inside.

There's one thing I can't understand. “You forgave him for that?”

She's quiet for a long moment, steering the car around a tricky curve as we skirt an algae spire.

“No,” she whispers at last. “But it was best we stay together.”
She takes a deep breath. “Rowan, I know you want to talk more about that, but it isn't relevant now. The past can't be changed. But . . . it has to be understood. Listen carefully. I put something in your backpack. Something I found in the house long ago, around the time you were born. It . . . it changed the way I see things. It made me believe that . . .
Bikk
!”

I see her eyes widen at the vista ahead. “Oh, great Earth, no!”

Ahead of us are the flashing blue-and-green lights of a Greenshirt checkpoint. We've just turned onto one of the narrow radial roads that connect one ring to another. There are no side streets, and the road is barely wider than our car. We could turn around, but it would be blatantly obvious we were avoiding the checkpoint. They would be after us in a heartbeat.

I can see the choices flashing across my mother's face, foremost among them a panicked urge to make a run for it. I don't know. If I was on foot, and alone, I'd go for it. But cars aren't designed to go more than twenty-five miles per hour, and if we bailed, Mom couldn't run as fast as me. Plus they'd easily find out who owned the car.

Mom has an answer, though.

“Pretend you're asleep. Pull your hat over your face and curl up against the far door. I can probably talk my way through.” She gives a weak chuckle. “After all, I work for the Center, and have friends in high places.” Dropping my father's name would certainly help. How ironic, that he might actually save my life this time.

I have confidence it will work. I know that Greenshirts tend to respect anyone with a Center ID. Still, I can feel myself tremble as I tuck myself into a ball. We cruise slowly toward the checkpoint. It is such a long way away that it feels
foolish now not to have turned around, but I have to trust Mom's judgment.

She talks to me in a low voice as we progress toward the barricades and flashing lights. “The surgery center is in a back office of a modification parlor called Serpentine.” I understand. That's a place where the people who believe they should have been born into an animal body get their scales and claws and horns. “It's in the next-to-last circle, on the east side. An orange building, almost the color of your tunic. There's an electric fence around it, but third panel from the left on the southeast corner is turned off from three to four in the morning. You can climb over. Go to the back door and knock twice up high, and three times down low. Can you remember that?”

“Yes,” I murmur into the sleeve that is curled over my face.

“And whatever happens, keep that backpack close. Keep it safe.”

Wait . . . keep
it
safe? Not keep
me
safe?

“What . . . ?”

“Shh,” she cautions. “There's something inside for you. Something that . . . Stay down! They're coming toward us. They have their weapons out.” She gasps. “Are those
real
guns?”

It's too late for me to ask what she means by that, but I have a terrible idea I know. All Greenshirts carry weapons, the kind that slam you with an electrical charge carried in plasma. They're usually called guns. But before the Ecofail I know there used to be more lethal things, also called guns, which shot metal bullets that ripped through human bodies. They've been outlawed in Eden. Could Mom possibly mean . . . ?

I try not to move, but I know my rapid breathing will give me away if they look too closely. Try as I might, I can't
calm my breath to sound like I'm sleeping. I listen as hard as I can.

“Step out of the car, ma'am,” one barks right away in a deep, gruff voice.

I can hear the smile in her voice, and I silently applaud her cool. “I'm on Center business,” she says, and I'm sure she is tilting her head at him so he can more easily scan her eyes. “My assistant and I were collecting some archival material from the outer circles, and I got turned around. Am I heading inbound now, or out?”

He doesn't answer her question, but only says, “Step out of the car.”

Mom's voice hardens slightly. “I said I'm on Center business. There are very valuable documents that needed to be . . .”

“Step out,” he says again, flatly. “Now.”

I can tell she's starting to sound desperate, but to the Greenshirt she probably only sounds angry when she says, “My husband is Dr. . . .”

I hear the door open, and there's a tussle and scramble. “What do you think you're doing?” she shrieks. “Do you know who I am? You're impeding Center research.”

“Quiet!” the Greenshirt commands. “I have orders to search every vehicle originating in the inner circles, no exceptions. Get your assistant out and scanned, and you can be on your way.”

“She . . . she's asleep. I've made her work a double shift. Don't wake her, please.” She's babbling now, and every nerve of my body yearns to spring to her aid. But I do what she told me, staying curled and helpless as a baby in the womb, even when I hear her say, “Let go of me!” followed by a cry of pain.

I stay immobile, following Mom's orders, trusting her to
protect me, even when I hear someone grasp the door handle on my side. A second later my body is shifting as the door I'm leaning against is pulled open. I turn my grunt of alarm into a sleepy sound and keep my eyes closed. There's a crunch of rapid footsteps. “Leave her alone! She's my assistant, traveling under my pass! You have no right!”

But I feel hands under my armpits, trying to haul me out. I want to kick, to punch, to run, to scream, but all I can do is curl up, eyes closed. I hate being helpless. But Mom said . . .