State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy (26 page)

When we make eye contact, Jimmy shrugs as if apologizing for having interrupted my solitude.

“Your mom said I stink,” he says.

“I’m glad she said it before I had to,” I joke. “In fact, the real reason I’m flying halfway around the world today is to get away from your smell.”

Jimmy’s smirk disappears beneath the water and reappears moments later much closer to me. He spits water at me and laughs, saying, “Sometimes I miss it, you know.”

“Miss what?”

“Swimming. Seems like I grew up in the water. Then ever since that day in the cove, it just ain’t been the same. When I remember it now, all I see is blood.”

I nod that I understand. “I’m sorry Jimmy.”

“Do you ever miss it?” he asks.

“Do I miss the water?”

“No,” he says. “Underground. Where you grew up.”

“I miss my dad a lot. And now that I know he wasn’t my biological father, I think I miss him even more. He was a good man to have raised me like he did. But miss underground? No way. I spent my entire childhood down there dreaming of being up here. Sometimes I wish I had something to miss, though. It’s like I don’t have a home. Not even in my memories.”

“Well, maybe someday you will,” he says.

“Would you be there?”

“Where?”

“Wherever my home is.”

“I wouldn’t wanna be nowhere else.”

After a moment of silence, I ask, “Did you mean what you said back in Holocene II? In my old childhood apartment?”

“What did I say?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

We share an awkward silence.

A small clutch of birds veers down and alights in one of the trees, shaking its branches and giving Jimmy something to look at. I watch him as he watches the birds. No matter where he is, he looks like he was meant to be there, perhaps carved out the very landscape. And he looks exactly like he did when I first saw him crouched over the water on the rock that day, except his hair is shorter, and he has a bit of stubble on his chin. I guess it won’t be long now, and we’ll both be shaving.

He turns and catches me staring at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” I say. Then I add, “Your hair’s growing in.”

“Yours is too,” he says. “So you better not let Hannah cut it this time. You know she would.”

I sigh. “I’m not looking forward to seeing her.”

“Are you gonna tell her?”

“Tell her what?”

“That she’s your sister.”

“Half-sister.”

“Sure. Are you gonna tell her?”

“I don’t know. My mom and I discussed it a lot. What I should say. What I shouldn’t say. Stuff like that. I’m going to try and get her to release Red, I know that.”

“My pa always said you can’t trade unless both sides have somethin’ the other wants. Whatcha gonna give her for Red?”

“I think she knows we have support down in Holocene II. And I think she’s worried sick about it too.”

“You mean Mrs. Hightower and that lady that took the bracelet off my ankle?”

“That’s right,” I say, nodding.

“You ain’t gonna give ’em up, are you?”

“Of course not,” I say. “But if she’ll agree to release them somehow without my naming them, then we both win. She gets back Holocene II, and we get them.”

“Release ’em where?”

“Back here, I hope.”

“I dun’ think you should trust her for nothin’.”

“I know you don’t, Jimmy. But I have to try.”

“But why?” he asks. “Why should you be the one to have to go off and do it? Haven’t we been through enough?”

“Because I couldn’t live with myself otherwise, Jimmy. I think we have to try to do right. That’s what makes us human.”

“Yeah,” he says, looking down. “I guess you’s right.”

We soak in the silence for several minutes. As the morning air warms, the thick steam that had been drawing off the pool’s surface fades to a faint mist.

“I guess we better get back,” I say. “Otherwise my mom might eat the last of that cake. I’d sure like to have another piece before I go.”

We climb from the pool, wrap towels around ourselves, and walk up the path barefoot, carrying our kilts, shirts, and shoes. As we near the shelter, Jimmy stops on the path. I turn back to see what’s wrong.

“I meant it,” he says.

“You meant what?”

“What I said in your apartment.”

“You did?”

He nods.

We drop our cloths on the ground and hug each other. The path and the mountains and the entire world seem to slip away beneath us until only he and I remain. Then the sun rises over the peaks and warms my naked back. Of all the birthday gifts ever given in the history of the world, I can’t imagine one better than an embrace like this from your best friend.

My mother is just logging off her computer when we enter the shelter. Jimmy must sense that she and I need some time alone together, because he heads out to feed Valor again.

“Are you nervous?” my mother asks once we’re alone.

“I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t.”

“Well, it takes courage to admit it,” she says. “I was able to hack into the satellites. The weather appears fine for a flight. You’re leaving here at about ten, and it’s sixteen hours to get there with a twelve hour time difference. I think you should arrive right on time. I’ve programmed the drone to take you straight to the landing strip in the Keys and then bring you back again. I’ll send the manual flight controller, but only use it in an emergency, the way I’ve shown you.”

“I know, Mom, I know. We’ve only been over this like a hundred times already.”

She sits down on her bed and pats the mattress, signaling for me to sit next to her. I flop down and look at my feet.

“Can I tell you something, Son?”

I nod and she continues.

“Mondays were my favorite days at the Foundation. You know why? Because I used to get reports on you. Beth would tell me all about your progress in class. How smart you were; how much you’d read that week. Bill would send messages about you at the electric beach. He’d tell me you were doing pushups and trying to gain weight. I know you felt alone a lot. I feel that way myself sometimes still. But I want you to know that you were never alone. I was always up there thinking about you. And I’m proud of the man you’ve become.”

“You are?”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t feel like a man, Mom. I’m scared and I’m selfish, and I’m having second thoughts about even going.”

“Are you going to listen to your fears and stay?” she asks.

“No,” I reply. “I’m going, no matter what.”

“And that, Son, is why you’re a man now. When a child starts doing what’s right even though they don’t want to, that’s when he or she becomes an adult.”

I turn and look at her. When we first met I recognized her as the mother my father always described to me. But for the first time, I recognize her now as the mother I always wished I’d had.

“Mom, even though you say I’m a man now, do you think you could do something for me? Something I always dreamed about when I was a kid?”

“Sure, Son. What is it?”

“Could I lay my head on your chest and have you just hold me for a while?”

“Oh, Aubrey,” she says. “I’ve dreamed of the same thing.”

She reaches out and pulls me into her arms.

By ten o’clock I’m sitting in the drone’s cockpit, watching my mother try not to cry. She stands beside the drone, faking a smile, and Jimmy stands next to her doing the same.

“I’ll be fine, you two,” I announce. “There aren’t even any venomous snakes where I’m going.”

“No, there aren’t,” my mother replies. “Except maybe the one you’re going there to meet. Be careful.”

She leans in and kisses me on the cheek. Then Jimmy steps forward and hands me his pee bottle.

“Here,” he says, “you might need this.”

“Jimmy, I’m not peeing in a bottle.”

“Well, keep it anyway. Jus’ in case.”

They both step back and look at me. My mother crosses her arms and rubs her shoulders as if to keep warm.

She forces another smile and says, “I love you, Aubrey.”

Jimmy nods toward her.

“Yeah. What she said.”

“I love you both too,” I say.

Then I reach up and pull the canopy closed.

The door opens and the runway fills with light. I look at Jimmy and my mother and place my hand against the glass.

And then they’re gone.

Her drone is already parked on the runway when I land.

My drone taxis, turns, and parks next to hers.

I click off my slate and do my best to forget the Roman poem I had been reading about a beauty who became so ugly she could turn onlookers to stone. When the canopy opens, I step out and stretch my legs. Then I retrieve the bottle Jimmy lent me for the trip and empty the contents onto the ground.

The steps leading down to the beach are nearly buried now beneath sand, but the path to the bungalow is still visible. The porch has been swept clean. I knock but no one answers. I step over to look in the window, but all I see is the cramped and empty room where Radcliffe brought Hannah and me. It’s hard to believe that was only seven months or so ago now.

A breeze tickles the hairs on my neck, and I turn and see her coming toward me along the beach. It can’t be much after two, but dark clouds have passed in front of the sun. The filtered light casts Hannah’s red hair, as it waves wildly in the ocean breeze, in stark contrast against the sand, giving her the appearance of being on fire. I stay on the porch and watch her approach. As she gets closer, it becomes clear to me that she’s much older than sixteen—so much so that I can hardly believe I fell for her lies before.

She stops at the steps, her hand gripping the railing, and we lock eyes—the silence between us broken only by the waves slapping the sand, sliding up the beach, and then hissing as they retreat again.

When she finally speaks she says, “I suppose I should wish you a happy birthday.”

“I wondered if you knew when you picked this day.”

“Of course, I knew,” she says, smiling flirtatiously as she climbs the steps onto the porch. She motions toward the deck chairs. “Shall we sit or would you rather go inside to talk?”

I answer by taking a seat.

She nods and lowers herself into the other chair and leans back as if she were on vacation, gazing out to sea.

“It’s nice to get away from the Foundations for a while,” she says. “I can see why my father liked to come here.”

“Was it really your first time here when we came?” I ask.

“Of course, it was,” she replies. “I told that then.”

“Like you told me you were sixteen?”

She smiles but doesn’t look at me.

“I see someone’s been filling you in on some things. The traitor who’s harboring you, I assume.”

I don’t bother replying to her comment, and we both fall quiet for several minutes. The wind momentarily picks up, and I watch as a whirling dervish of dust appears, races along the beach, and then disappears as quickly as it had formed.

“My father always said she was a smart woman,” Hannah says. “He liked her a lot. He told us she had died in a drone crash in China. Maybe he even believed that, but I think he knew she was alive and left her alone. He always was much too sentimental. Same as with Finn. Which is curious, because he always thought a woman wouldn’t have what it takes to run the Park Service. But he was wrong. It was him who didn’t have the guts. You know why I chose today to meet, Aubrey?”

“Because it’s my birthday?”

“Yes. There’s that. But also because this was the day that my father planned to turn everything over to you.”

“Is that why you betrayed me, then?” I ask. “Because you were jealous your father was going to turn things over to me?”

“You can’t betray a trust you never wanted in the first place, Aubrey. I did what I did because it was necessary. You have no idea what it was like for me: trapped at that house and waiting for my sixteenth birthday and my chance to contribute to the cause, only to be told that I wasn’t ready, that a suitable mate wasn’t ready, that I needed a man. Then the hormones and the shots began. Keeping me young. Young and waiting. Waiting for what? For you. For you to score well on some stupid test. A stupid, silly test and my father was willing to put more faith in you than he had in me, his own daughter.”

“That’s not why he called me up, Hannah.”

“What do you know, Aubrey? He told me all about it. He said how we would make a great team and how I would learn to trust you to lead. Can you imagine?”

“That’s not what I meant, Hannah. I said that he didn’t call me up because of the stupid test.”

“Then why did he?”

“Because the woman who you called a traitor is actually my mother, for one thing. She tried to rescue me. That’s why the train crashed. That’s why she had to disappear.”

“Well, that makes sense then,” she says. “My father would have valued you for her DNA and not just your test score.”

“But that’s still not the reason he called me up, Hannah.”

“Well, aren’t you just full of surprises,” she says. “Since you think you know everything, why don’t you go ahead and tell me why my own father called you up?”

“Because he’s my father too.”

She turns so quickly to look at me that her hair swings in front of her face and a strand catches in her mouth.

She spits it out and says, “You’re lying. That’s not true.”

“It is true, Hannah. He got my mother pregnant with his frozen sperm, and he sent her down to Holocene II to have the baby. To have me. That’s why he made you wait all that time. Because he finally had the son he always wanted.”

She plants her hands on her knees and stands.

“I’m hungry,” she says, “Are you hungry?”

“No.”—I shake my head—“I ate in the drone.”

She crosses to the railing and looks out over the water. A minute later, she pulls her hair back and ties it in a ponytail with a band she fishes from her zipsuit pocket. Then she turns, leans on the railing, and looks at me.

“How’s Jimmy?”

“He’s fine,” I say. “How’s Red?”

“As annoying as ever. I’ve kept my promise, though, and seen that he’s been taken care of.”

“What did you bring me here for, Hannah?”