Freda: Volume III in the New Eden series (17 page)

Dane answers without hesitation. “It meant that the world was being cleansed of everyone who wasn’t among God’s chosen. Most of the world was destroyed with bombs, but this part, the part we were meant to return to, was cleansed, not destroyed. Cleansed with biology.”

“I don’t think so,” I reply, everything suddenly becoming clear. “I think the Founders had some biology—remember it’s the study of life, not the study of death—”

“What’s the difference?”

“Are you going to listen to me?”

“Sorry.”

“The Founders had some biology that would cleanse this area from the Radiation, making the world into a new paradise for us to return to.”

I am certain of it. I am certain that’s what the Founders meant. I am certain that’s how God’s word must be interpreted.

The others continue in silence, and Dane frowns and nods. But he does not reply. I’ve surprised him with a new thought, a new interpretation that doesn’t fit with his idea that everything we learned growing up was a lie.

After several seconds, he says gently, “Perhaps. It may be that I’m too much like my uncle, seeing violence in everything. Perhaps you’re right, Freda.”

“Cleansing means removing the impurities,” Tom says.

“I know,” Dane replies quietly, but there’s no happiness in him now. His frown has deepened, and his stare has turned inward again. “But which impurities?”

CHAPTER 18

A half hour later we come to a place where a dozen wide roads come together in a strange tangle of concrete ribbons, curves upon curves, rising to each other on concrete stilts and falling away in swooping slopes. Metal poles, a lot like the Lift Poles in Tawtrukk, hold signs high overhead, but the writing has long ago faded.

Dane and I pause at the apex of this union of concrete ribbons, standing hundreds of feet above the ground. From here, we can peer through the crumbling side walls of the road to see the enormous buildings of the city just north and east, and the wide cut of a green-brown river just west, with more city on the other side of it. All the tall buildings sit on this side, close behind. Dane points out a singularly odd building to the northeast, shorter and round-topped. A behemoth squatting among the giants.

“I want to show you that place,” he says softly. “We have a lot to talk about.”

As if by some prearranged agreement, Lupay hands Dane a small bundle. “See you in a few hours,” she says, then kicks her horse forward to rejoin Patrick.

“You’ll have the people start building right away?” Dane asks.

Lupay looks back over her shoulder and scowls. “Yes, cabron, I will do my job. But... boats or shelter?”

“For now, shelter.” He squints west. It looks like this road may have continued that way in a huge, soaring bridge across this enormous river, but the bridge has crumbled into the water, leaving only the tips of rubble carving silent ripples in its smooth surface.

Lupay nods and continues toward Patrick. They turn south, as if they already know their way through this baffling maze of concrete ribbons. Dane and I watch as they clip-clop ahead of the others, who glance back at us from time to time as they move along. The two thousand refugees that have followed us all morning trail off behind us on the road. As I gaze down on them, I feel like I’m watching a slow river of people, flowing along this ancient canal left here for us by a people long disappeared.

I had expected to feel some connection to those lost generations, but I don’t. I’ve seen their buildings, seen their cars, seen their roads, seen their signs and so many other parts of their world, but none of it has felt familiar. It all has felt so strange. I feel more connection with the Subterrans than I do any of the people who once lived here.

“Come on,” Dane says as he slips the bundle that Lupay gave him into his knapsack and hefts it back onto his shoulders. At my questioning look, he smiles with his answer: “Lunch. You’re not hungry?”

I want to smile back, but instead I ask, “We’re going alone?”

“Just the two of us, yes.” He seems untroubled by this. But why would he be? It is his plan, and it’s a surprise to me.

“Is it safe?”

“We’ve scouted the area for days. It’s safe. To be honest, I’m more afraid of the weather than anything.”

I follow his gaze west and see the horizon darkening. At first it looks like another mountain range in the distance, but the haze of the wide plain and the brightness of the blue sky blur the details. “Is that a storm coming?”

“I don’t know,” Dane replies as he reins his horse around and starts along another of the concrete ribbons, curving away from the flow of the human river. “None of us knows what to expect anymore.”

A few people look up and smile and wave at me, then watch us go. They flow along with the human current, a mile long, behind Lupay and Patrick. As Dane and I leave the big road onto a smaller curve that takes us north and east, we quickly lose sight of the quiet flow of people.

“Where will they go,” I ask. “All the refugees, I mean?”

“Refugees?” Dane seems startled by the word.

“Yes, of course.”

“They’re not refugees anymore,” Dane says. “They’re pioneers.”

If he’d spent as much time among them as I have the past week, he might not be so optimistic.

“Another half mile or so is a big open space in a bend in the river. Tom and Micktuk discovered it a few days ago. It’s flat and open with plenty of trees. Good shelter, good water... and believe it or not, somehow a small herd of cattle has found its way there and settled down. A good place to stop for an extended rest.”

“The people need that,” I reply. “It sounds comfortable. And then?”

Our conversation is slow as we let the horses saunter along. Still, I find myself glancing around after a few minutes, unsure what I’m looking for but keeping watch anyway.

“Not sure. Maybe west. Maybe downriver.”

He’s avoiding the thought he must know is in my head. I am certain he remembers the words as well as I do: ...
follow the westward highway to the river, then follow the river to the iron fleet, finally turning south to find the peak of Reunion Mountain.

We’ve followed the westward highway. We’ve found the river. And Dane is unsure what to do next, or so he wants me to believe. But Lupay asked if the people should build boats or shelter, so he must be thinking that going downriver is our next move. Excitement is rising within me. He’s following the directions in Prophecies.

“I’m hoping you can help me figure that out,” he says quietly with one more glance at the westward horizon, which has darkened considerably in the past fifteen minutes even though it’s barely after noon.

We’ve descended to the flat roads of the city and walk between a mixture of crumbled and intact ruins. The tallest buildings are still a distance away, but I feel like we’re in a narrow canyon, between sheer, unclimbable cliffs of brick and crisply carved stone. Midday shadows paint angles across everything.

The barren streets and vacant buildings are haunted by an eerie emptiness. Nature hasn’t returned to this brick canyon except in occasional weeds struggling through cracks in the concrete. Little, metal posts a few feet tall poke out of the road like a fence without rails. In corners and dark doorways, leaves and dirt have blown into drifts. From some of these drifts poke unnatural items I don’t recognize, trash that’s survived three hundred years.

We go on in silence for another few minutes, turning left, then right, then left again, but always staying between the walls of this artificial canyon. The place is so bereft of life, so cold and straight-lined, that I begin to feel disgust for the people who created it. Who could live in a place so hard and severe? Even if people filled the streets, this would be a lonely place. My attention is drawn to the wonderful imperfections: Twisted beams poking out from crumbling stone like splintered bones. Blackened streaks that look scorched by fire. One huge building leaning against its shorter neighbor, all the glass that used to be windows shattered across the street. These are the spots where the infuriating, perfect geometry of the city has been conquered by time.

Dane seems to catch my thoughts and says, “Almost makes you think that God got so sick of people that He decided to start all over. Doesn’t it?” He doesn’t look my way.

“I wouldn’t blame Him,” I answer. “This city is like a body without a soul. But you know God doesn’t work that way.”

“Hmm.”

After another few minutes of silence, he asks, “We’ve seen a lot of strange things in the past six months, haven’t we?”

“I can’t begin to count them,” I reply.

“Things that a year ago would sound so fantastic you’d think I was crazy if I told you about them. The moon-white Subterrans in their burrows. The humility and nobility of Tawtrukkers. The unbelievable destructive power that stood in our own chapel our whole lives. Our own people turning to war in the name of God.”

“It wasn’t God—”

“Freda, whether you agree that God was involved or not, our people went to war in God’s name. They followed Darius, and they knew he meant to cleanse the world of mutants.”

The memory of the snowy morning of the decisive battle rises in my thoughts. The day we defeated Darius and drove him from Tawtrukk. I stood opposite Darius and asked him to relent, to call back his army. His answer chilled me more than any snowfall could have:
This is the final step in cleansing the Earth. God wanted men to destroy cities and technology and each other. His plan was perfect, but we did an imperfect job. It is now up to us to finish what our ancestors began.

Dane wasn’t there and didn’t hear Darius speak the words.

Dane continues, “Darius didn’t even see it as war. For it to be war, you have to have an enemy. Darius never, not even at the end, thought of Tawtrukkers as human. So it wasn’t war.”

I see what Dane is saying and hear it in Darius’ own words. “It was a cleansing,” I whisper. “Like smoking wasps out of an attic, or throwing all the snakes out of a garden.”

“Exactly. And it’s important you understand that, Freda. I need you to understand that.”

“Of course I do.” Does he think I’m stupid? Darius was insane and misinterpreted a lot of things. The people were following a madman. Understanding that is the key to forgiveness and healing.

“You and I are the only people who know the full text of Prophecies,” Dane says.

I can’t tell him about my talks with Tynan. Although I couldn’t remember every word of the text, I shared nearly all of it with him. We contemplated its meanings, wondered together about its instructions. But I can’t tell Dane that.

“We’ve disagreed over parts of it.”

“Well, that’s natural. You don’t believe in God.”

And there’s our problem. Tynan believes. Tynan and I could discuss these things with a shared belief, a shared truth. With Dane, it’s... frustrating.

“It’s not that simple,” he says.

“Yes, it really is,” I answer. “You either believe or you don’t. And you don’t.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not simple at all.” he replies with a gentle patience in his voice that prickles me like a thicket of thorns. “I believe...” His voice fades into a deep sigh as he looks past me, down the crumbling concrete canyon, into a distance only he can see.

“What? What do you believe, Dane?” I don’t mean to sound angry and impatient, but I can’t help it. At some level, his rejection of God is also a rejection of me.

He looks sharply at me but softens immediately. “Come,” he says. “I need to show you.”

He yanks his horse back around and lurches into a canter.

I kick my horse to follow as he disappears around the corner at the end of this row of buildings.

For a moment when I can’t see him, my heart flutters in panic. I don’t like being here alone.

I press the horse faster as I turn the same corner to be confronted with a majestic view that fills me with awe.

Dane is galloping away across a wide swath of tall, brown grass and thick clover dotted with a handful of dead oaks. The grass is a hundred yards wide and stretches a half mile or more away from us, a rectangle of bright openness carved out of the concrete mountains. At the far end, the round-topped behemoth spans the width of the grass, its wide steps leading up to a grand entrance framed by thick pillars. Dane heads for this building, and I barely have to nudge my horse to send her into a gallop to follow. She does not want to be left behind, either.

The cool air watering my eyes and grabbing at my hair feels good. The speed and rhythm of our gallop thrills like nothing I’ve felt in some time. It lasts only a few seconds, and we halt abruptly next to Dane just as he’s dismounting to the grass. I can’t help but smile and laugh with the exhilaration of the brief ride. We’re both out of breath, and the horses snort and stamp. They want to run some more, too.

Dane gives me his hand and helps me slip down to the hard ground. Although it’s covered in grass, it’s not much softer than the concrete and stone around us.

Dane holds my hand for a moment, and I like his warm touch. I want him to keep holding, but he lets go and looks to the west where the sky continues to darken. Clouds have appeared high above us, white and puffy and not particularly threatening.

“I think we’ve got some time,” Dane thinks out loud. “We can let the horses graze free here.”

We tuck the reins up under the riding blankets and leave them to the grassy space, turning our attention to the round-topped building.

It’s not as unblemished as I’d thought from afar. Some of it has crumbled. The enormous dome that defines it was golden at one time, but now it’s darkened by dirt and grime, its smoothness broken by black holes. A pair of birds rise from one of these holes and fly off to the north. The arcing steps before us span a hundred feet wide leading up to a line of doors under a heavy balcony supported by tentative, stone pillars. One of the pillars has collapsed, and the balcony sags in that spot, threatening to collapse in a thunder of stone.

Dane says, “Come on,” but I hold him back.

“Is it safe?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been here.”