Children of Eden (2 page)

I know that I shouldn't think of it that way. Home should be thought of as a sanctuary, and the alternative to having a home is too horrible to even consider. But all the same, I can't shake my sense of entrapment.

With so many lonely hours to fill, I've learned to schedule my days tightly. Empty time leads to daydreaming, and daydreams are dangerous for a person in my position. Schoolwork, art, and exercise are all arranged in regular sequence so I don't have too much time to yearn for what I can't have.

Right now, it's too dark to draw or paint, and I feel as though I've read every book in the database. So I run.

In the dim starlight I can just make out the faint path where I run miles every day. The moss is resilient—that's why it is one of the few kinds of vegetation that survived the Ecofail—but even it loses its spring under the onslaught of my feet.

As I run, the steady hypnotic pounding centers me. I can feel the blood start to move more quickly through my veins. When I push my body I feel alive. Alive, when almost all of the world is dead. But what good is it to be alive when I'm trapped?

Frustrated, I run faster, taking the corners of the courtyard hard enough to kick up bits of moss. Mom will be mad, but I don't care. I am madder. Furious. Just because of some stupid law, I'm hidden away behind walls, a pariah who will be slaughtered or enslaved if I'm ever discovered.

Movement usually makes me feel better, but tonight it is torment. I am so sick of running in this same rectangle,
clockwise, then counterclockwise. With a cry of frustration I begin to zigzag, sprinting faster and faster, jumping over the lichen-covered rocks, the chairs, leaping to the tabletop and springing off again.

All at once, I feel like I can't breathe. The high walls seem to close in on me, like a giant mouth about to crush me with stony teeth. I dash one way, then the other, crashing into the walls, pounding them with my fists, almost snarling in bitter frustration. I know I'm spinning out of control, but I can't help myself. Most of the time I'm somber, regulated, content. But sometimes, for reasons I don't quite understand, I become enraged at my situation.

It's the strangest thing, but what bothers me most is that Ash couldn't describe Lark's outfit. It's so stupid, so trivial, but it gnaws at me that, with all his privileges and freedom, he couldn't bother to take note of the one thing that mattered to me. Why does that little detail matter so much? I don't understand it. Ash does the best he can, and it can't be easy having to give up most of his social life so he can regale his secret sister with stories about the outside world. He must resent me sometimes.

Yet tonight, I resent him, and that makes me feel guilty, and even madder. At myself. At the Center and its laws that took everything away from me. Even at the EcoPan that keeps us all alive. I have to get away from these walls. I have to break free!

With an animal gasp of relief I begin to climb a wall, digging my fingers into the handholds I know so well, jamming my toes into crevices where the mortar has crumbled. I climb these walls as part of the physical conditioning my mother insists on. Almost every night I would pull myself up to the top, some thirty feet above the ground, and slyly peer over the edge.

Tonight, that isn't enough. Not nearly enough.

Without so much as a moment's hesitation I fling a leg over the rough stones and sit straddling the wall, one leg imprisoned, the other free. No one will see me; no one will look up. I'm feeling reckless as I gaze out at Eden stretched before me, its concentric circles looking like some strange glyph carved into the land.

Instead of trees, tall spires of algae protein synthesizers jut hundreds of feet above the highest building. The vibrant circles just beyond the Center are lit with bioluminescence that shows off the abundant greenery that carpets the city. Most of the city is equipped with artificial photosynthesis, engineered to act almost as real plants and convert the carbon dioxide we exhale into breathable oxygen. Some of it is like what Mom cultivates in our courtyard—hardy mosses and fungi, decorative algae swirling in liquid mediums. Even in the near-dark it is a green city.

If I didn't know better, I might be fooled into thinking that it is a thriving ecosystem instead of an artificial survival pod. What isn't green, glitters. Unlike our stone house, most buildings are made of polymers and coated in either clear or reflective photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight into energy to power our city. In the daylight, Eden shines like a giant emerald. At night, it looks more like a huge green eye, darkly bright with hidden secrets.

Past the rings of the luxurious inner circles comes the less elegant outer circle. Here in the inner circles, where we live just beyond the Center, the houses are large and fine. Nearer the boundary, though, houses grow smaller, more tightly packed. No one would ever starve in Eden—the EcoPanopticon makes sure of that—but from what Mom and Ash told me, life is not nearly as comfortable near the boundary as it is here, near the Center.

Even at this height I can't begin to see as far as the boundary of Eden, but I know from my lessons what lies there. Desert, burning and merciless. And beyond that, a wasteland far worse.

Compared to my courtyard, Eden is an infinity. It is so big, and I'm so small! The city teems with people. I'm just a particle in that cosmos of humanity. All my life I've only ever met three people. The idea of meeting anyone new frankly terrifies me even more than the very real possibility of being caught. Strangers seem like dangerous animals.

But in a world without life, I would risk being torn and rendered by fearsome fangs just for the chance to see a real live tiger up close. I would give anything, even my own life, to experience what I've been missing out on.

I've thought about going out so many times. There are days when I think of nothing else, when the lure of freedom consumes my thoughts and I can't draw, or study, or run. Now, tonight more than ever before, as I think about that one detail about Lark's outfit and how Ash doesn't know it and I don't know it and I may never know it, Eden seems to call me with its strongest voice yet, and though I'm terrified, I swing my other leg over the edge of the wall—my elation overpowering my terror.

AS I POISE
on the precipice between safety and freedom, about to descend into the unknown, I hear a small sound: the melodious chime of three notes that announces someone is at our front door.
Bikk!
I curse under my breath. I freeze, and the air around me is suddenly cold. Did someone see me? Is it the Greenshirts coming for me? I try to steady my breathing. It's probably just a delivery, or maybe a messenger from the hospital, come to fetch my father for an emergency surgery.

Then Ash creeps into the courtyard. I see him look around, quickly, then when he doesn't immediately spot me, again more slowly. I whistle softly, a bird call I heard on a vid, and he looks up.

“You have to hide!” he hisses urgently. “He has a Center uniform on!”

My eyes fly open wide, and for a moment I feel like I'm pinned to the wall, immobile and helpless.

“Hurry!” Ash says, and even from up here I can tell he's panicking. It's only because I climb this wall every day that I can make my way down so fast. Even so, I push out and let myself drop the last few feet, landing in a light crouch.

“Who is it?” I ask as we sprint together to the house.
He only shrugs, and I hear a rasping sound as my brother breathes. Nerves and even this small amount of running are making his lungs act up.

“You have to go straight for your inhaler,” I insist, suddenly more worried about him than myself.

He slows down, but shakes his head. “Gotta . . . get you safe,” he gasps.

“No!” I say too loudly. “I'll be fine. But if you code out I
won't
be fine. Can you make it upstairs by yourself?” His breathing is ragged. These attacks, mostly brought on by stress, come only rarely. But every time it happens I'm sure I'm going to lose my brother. I force my face to stay calm, because I know that any kind of worry will only make him worse at this point.

He nods, not wanting to waste his breath on speaking.

“Okay, then. You go, and I'll use the wall hideout.”

There are four hiding places in our large and sprawling house. The best of them, a small cellar, has a trapdoor that has to be closed from above and then concealed under a carpet and heavy chair. Next best is a secret recess in the wall behind a bookcase that looks immovable but can swing out on pneumatic gliders. Unfortunately, that mechanism has a design flaw in that it has to be operated from the outside. So both of those depend on someone outside to seal me in (and release me again).

That means I have to go either up to the attic—which is spacious and comfortable but also one of the first places someone would search—or into an insufferably narrow space between two walls. The gap, no more than a foot and a half wide, used to hold some kind of ventilation system that was modernized and moved at some point in the house's history. Now only the old air vent remains, and serves as an access port to a place that is so uncomfortable it makes torture sound like fun.

Ash is gasping now. I take his arm and guide him to the foot of the stairs that lead to his room.
Our
room, really. I have a bedroom of sorts, but there's nothing of my own in it. It's a guest room, which I make up every morning just as if no one has slept there in weeks. If anyone ever came to inspect the house, they'd find nothing more than a neat, generic bedroom waiting for a visitor.

For everything other than sleeping, Ash and I have more or less shared a room since childhood. Shared
everything
, really. Any personal possessions I have are in Ash's bedroom, hidden among his things. And they all look like things a boy might have. I can't have too many possessions of my own. Imagine if someone came in and found a bedroom with dresses, and holoposters of shirtless pop stars and all the other things other girls probably have in their rooms. Dead giveaway. Ash and I even share most of our clothes.

I don't want to let Ash go. He feels my hold on his arm tighten, sees the fear in my eyes I can't quite hide. I'm hardly even thinking about the unexpected visitor. “You go hide,” he says in a raspy whisper. “I can make it.”

I'm not sure he's right, but I don't have any more time to spare. I hear the quiet whine of the front door sliding open, and then the murmur of unfamiliar voices. With a final worried glance at Ash hauling himself up the stairs, I whirl and run for the closest sanctuary, hoping I'll be in time.

I have to crawl backwards on my belly through the low ventilation access door into an impossibly cramped space. If I go forward, I won't be able to close the door myself. I have only about an inch of clearance on either side. As I snap the door shut, I remember that I was running on moss, climbing on rocks just a moment before. Did I leave any telltale marks on the floor outside my hiding place? Too late to check now. I slither backwards on my elbows and toes, an inch at a time,
for several feet, until I reach the place where the crevice opens up enough for me to stand.

It's a little better here, but not much. Unlike my other hiding spots, this one isn't built for any kind of comfort. It's an emergency bolt-hole. We run periodic drills, Mom timing me, to make sure I can access all four of my hiding places quickly. But I've never had to use this one before. It's the last resort.

I have room to stand, and that's about it. Each time I breathe, my chest and back press against the plaster of the wall. It smells odd in here, stale and close. I've gotten used to having a limited life, but this is a little extreme. My vista ends about three inches away from my eyes.

But I'm safe, hidden away. Just in time. I hear an unfamiliar voice coming nearer. I'm surprised I can hear it so clearly. The walls must be thinner than I thought. For a crazy second I think about knocking on the wall, sending a mysterious message like an unseen spirit. Mom has told me ghost stories, gleaned from records in the archives. In the days of ignorance, people believed in all kinds of things. I don't believe the old tales, though I've always liked hearing them. But if Ash is right, this is a Center official. They're known for having zero patience with superstition or anything to do with the way we lived before the Ecofail. Not to mention, of course, the whole threat-of-death thing if I'm discovered.

So I stand at attention in my narrow sliver of safety, upright and alert like a Greenshirt recruit, and wait for the all clear.

When I hear the distinctive sound of people settling themselves in our living room, I figure the all clear will be a long time coming. I sigh, and my breath bounces against the wall back to me, warming my face.

I don't know exactly what I'm expecting out of the unknown
visitor. Probably something terse and official. Most likely, they've come by for some after-hours emergency, or what passes as an emergency. Maybe Mom needs to sign off on the duplication and distribution of some pre-fail artifact, or Dad has to authorize one of the restricted drugs for an upper-level Center official. Usually they message ahead, either calling on the unicom or sending a messagebot to herald their approach, giving me time to hide. What can be so urgent that it has to be a surprise?