The Deep (10 page)

“I’m happy this isn’t the only city in the
new world,” Walt mumbles as he dutifully waves at the president.
The bus starts rolling away, and very soon, the walled city is no
more than a gray stain and a terrifying memory on the horizon.

I smile bleakly. “I know. Me too.” I hold up
the New Testament. “You want to read along?”

“Sure, that’d be nice.”

As the level road to Moretonhampstead is
smoothly eaten away by the wheels of the bus, we read about Jesse,
the bogeyman from Walt’s religion, whose real name is slightly
different. I have to admit I’m very much impressed with his life
and teachings, although some of the elements seem like a fairytale
to me. Walt, on the other hand, becomes less and less responsive to
my remarks and observations, until he turns his eyes away from the
book completely.

“What’s up?” I ask gingerly.

He shrugs. “It’s just – this is difficult for
me. Reading about him. We always thought Jesus represented evil
temptation. How could we have gotten it so wrong?”

“Well, in here people can read his words
straight from the source and they’re
still
getting it
wrong,” I point out. “That’s just the way it is. It’s the same
thing that happens in the Whisper Game. Where you sit in a circle
and you whisper the message to the next person so it comes out all
garbled in the end?”

Walt shakes his head. “We don’t know that
game.”

“Oh.” I sigh. “Well, you get the idea. Over
time, important information gets distorted to the point that it
doesn’t even resemble the original message anymore. Just look at
us. We thought some fairytale hero was our forefather.”

“Tony says they have images of the story in
that library. So you can watch the story. A movie, I think he
called it?”

With a heavy sigh, I slam Gideon’s book shut.
“Yeah. I just might.”

“Might?” Walt shoots me a surprised look.

I can’t really explain why, but I realize
that I don’t actually care what was told about Luke and Leia in the
books and movies of yore. What we did with that knowledge has been
transformed so immensely over the years that it will probably only
depress me if I see the original. “You know what I would really
like to see?” I say softly, yet urgently. “Exeter.”

Walt stares at me in fascination. “Yeah,” he
agrees. “Yes, I’d like that too. That’s where we all come
from.”

I smile. “Exactly. At least that’s real.”

“You think we can go there?”

“It’s not that far from Moretonhampstead,” I
say, digging up a map from my shoulder bag. I got it from the
museum we visited during our tour of the city yesterday. It’s a
replica of a page from an old map book they had on display –
something called an atlas. According to the plaque, it was a
‘Collins Britain’ from 2023. The page replica I got from the shop
shows Devon and Cornwall long before the war broke out and the
world was destroyed.

Walt’s eyes skim the map. “That’s at least a
half-day walk,” he protests.

“So we take one of those electric
vehicles.”

“Well, if someone wants to give us a ride…”
Walt gets up from his seat and leans forward to address Tony in the
driver’s seat. “Hey, Tony, can we do some sightseeing in Exeter
too?”

“I’m afraid not,” I hear him say to my utter
disappointment. “There’s radiation hazard in the entire area. And
the risk of catching the disease, of course.”

“So can’t we look at it from a distance?”
Walt tries again.

“You can take a bus from Moretonhampstead to
Dunsford. It’s a village close to the fence. About ten miles away
from Exeter. Trust me, you can’t get any closer. All the roads
leading there were either destroyed or blocked. Well, apart from
the one footpath, that is.”

“A footpath?” I echo. “Why is it there?”

Tony hesitates for a few beats. “It’s for the
pilgrims.”

“Who are they?” I inquire.

“Some people in Dartmoor suffer from the war
disease,” our friend from Bodmin explains. “Which means they will
never recover. We don’t have a cure. Sometimes, patients leave for
Exeter a few weeks before their deaths to visit the cathedral and
take an object from the interior to give to the Dartmoor church.
The cathedral is the holiest building in all of Devon and Cornwall.
Sometimes, they don’t make it – they collapse from radiation
symptoms before even getting out of Exeter. That’s why we always
send two people at once. If one is too weak, the other person can
still take the object to make a donation in the dead pilgrim’s
name.”

“Does that mean there are always two people
available to make the trip at the same time?” Walt wonders
aloud.

“Well. Some of those people are volunteers.
According to the manifest, they should be Purged, so they offer
their services to the church to wash away their sins and not fear
death.”

“So it’s a suicide mission,” I conclude
incredulously.

“Yes.” Tony nods solemnly. “But they do it of
their own free will. In case neither of the two returns, a small
monument is erected for them in Dartmoor’s graveyard.”

“And Dunsford is the starting point for these
pilgrims?” Walt asks.

“That’s right. But don’t delude yourself –
there is no way you’ll get past the border control. Only people who
are on death’s doorstep can leave for Exeter.”

“So what do they take from that cathedral?” I
want to know. “What kind of beautiful trinkets are in there that
make people sacrifice their lives?”

“Symbols from Gideon’s religion. Crosses and
goblets, icons, books full of hymns. Every pilgrim can pick one
thing to take back. But they don’t swap their lives for those
objects, Leia. They do it in honor of their religion.”

I can’t help but suddenly think of a certain
passage in Gideon’s book. Jesus outside the temple, overturning the
tables of moneychangers and salesmen selling precious merchandise.
He did it because he thought a house of worship should never get
involved with accumulating wealth. And then I think of the priests
in Walt’s city, whose grabby hands hid all the gifts to the Goddess
in a cave far away from Hope Harbor, so they could reap the
benefits themselves.

“Whatever,” I say curtly. With a frown, I
lean against Walt’s side and stare ahead through the windshield as
Walt and William ask our guide even more questions.

Tony can say what he will – my mind is set on
getting to Exeter. Nobody is going to stop me. If terminally ill
people manage to go there and come back, then surely I can take a
quick look around as well.

I really hope Walt is willing to tag along,
because I have no idea how to pull it off, as of yet.

Once we’re inside the Moretonhampstead
Library, Walt and William can’t stop gawking at all the books it
contains. Most people in our travel party ask one of the librarians
to show them around, but we three decide to look around by
ourselves, checking out whatever looks most interesting to us.

“Have a look at this,” Walt exclaims,
stopping in front of a large map on the wall. “This was what the
world looked like before the war broke out.”

The giant land mass, printed in all different
colors of the rainbow, is dwarfed by the amount of water
surrounding it. “It’s like a big island,” I say. “Or two islands,
more like. Where’s Cornwall?”

Finding our current whereabouts proves to be
very difficult. At last, we manage to pinpoint a small, irregularly
shaped island called Great Britain. “That’s the country that
Cornwall formerly belonged to,” William mumbles. “But Cornwall is
not on this map. It’s – too small.”

Again, I get the feeling that the world is
never-ending. Frighteningly wide. Filled with people who are all so
different from me. Seven days ago, I stole Saul’s book and broke
the rules for the first time, and now, I find myself here. It feels
as though that theft took place years ago. So much has happened and
so much has changed that it overwhelms me.

“Walt,” I mumble, tugging at his arm and
pulling him away from the map. “I want to go to Dunsford. And to
Exeter from there. That’s the only thing in the old world I really
want to see.”

Walt shoots me a baffled look. “But Tony said
they won’t allow us.” He lowers his voice. “You want to sneak
out?”

I shrug. “Wouldn’t be the first time I
climbed a wall or fence I’m not supposed to look behind.”

He starts to smile. “Yeah, same here.” He
casts a nervous look over his shoulder. His father has sat down at
the table and is engrossed in a large volume entitled ‘Encyclopedia
–
Tonalite-Vesuvius
’. “You want to go right now?”

“Yes, actually I do.” I cock my head and look
at him. “Unless you want to stick around to unveil the mysteries of
the Tonalite-Vesuvius. Whatever that is.”

Walt bursts out laughing. “Nah, never mind.
I’ll ask my dad for the summary.”

He turns around and quickly tells his father
about our plan to spend the rest of the day exploring the
neighborhood. He doesn’t mention just how far we plan to venture
out, though. We don’t want to alarm him.

“So I’ll catch up with the two of you in the
hotel tonight,” William says. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep myself
entertained.”

After we step outside, I slip my hand into
Walt’s hand and look up at him. “How do we get to Dunsford? Tony
said there’s a bus, but how are we supposed to drive it?”

“It’s being driven,” Walt replies. “Every
half hour. By a driver who does it for a living.” He inches toward
me and continues in a serious voice: “Entering Exeter might make us
sick. Tony said it would. Don’t get me wrong, I want to see the
place just as much as you do, but you have to promise me we’ll turn
around and go back the minute we start feeling unwell. The first
symptoms of radiation poisoning are headache and vomiting.”

“Of course.” I smile, pressing a kiss to his
cheek. “Thanks for coming with me.”

“My pleasure. You’re not the only one with a
sense of adventure. I’ve rocked some boats in my life, too.”

A passer-by is kind enough to tell us that
the bench opposite the library is a bus stop. That’s where we can
wait for the bus to Dunsford to get here. We’re lucky – it shows up
at the end of the street just as we’re about to sit down. The door
opens with that peculiar hissing sound I’m getting used to, and a
man with a brown cap on his head greets us amicably as we
board.

The two seats behind the driver are still
free, so that’s where we sit. We’re starting to have our ‘usual’
seats on a bus, I think with a smile. I have to admit, the new
world is equipped with everything to make life easy. I wouldn’t
mind having a bus service like this on Tresco, connecting east and
west. That would save a lot of time. The westerners have
domesticated their horses and ride them regularly, but we don’t
have that. For us, it was a sport to get close enough to a wild
horse to jump on its back and ride around without falling off. I
was always good at that. Ben said my skills with horses wouldn’t
help me much when it came down to surviving the wild, but I always
ignored his comments. He was probably just jealous.

For the very first time since leaving the
island, I wonder how Ben and Saul are doing. It’s strange – now
that I’m so far away from the place where they used to terrify me,
I can’t imagine why I was ever that scared of them. I’ve seen much
more horrifying things by now. With Saul, at least it was clear he
was a cruel brute, but the people in charge of Dartmoor hide their
bloodthirstiness behind a mask of pacifism. How did the new world
get twisted this way?

“You still have Gideon’s book with you?” I
ask Walt as we drive out of town and once again dissolve into the
greens and grays of the moors.

He pulls it out of his pocket. “Yeah, I do.
You want to read some more?”

I look sideways. “What I’d like to know is
where the Dartmoorers’ motto comes from.”

“The no crying, no pain thing?” Walt flips
through the book. “I happen to know that, because my dad bookmarked
that particular passage. He asked about it in the church.”

The story is called ‘Revelations’ and the
chapter marked by a piece of ribbon sticking out is number
twenty-one. “I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” I read out
softly. “For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,
and the sea was no more.”

“What does that mean?” Walt wonders aloud.
“The sea is still there, isn’t it?”

“No idea.” My eyes absorb the words. “Then I
saw the holy city, New Dartmoor, coming down out of heaven. God’s
home is now among his people.” The next line contains the words I
was looking for.

“How can Dartmoor be in that holy book?” Walt
mumbles. “This is a text from the old world, right?”

“It’s not the original text, remember?” I
observe. “It’s in the palace. Maybe they put in some extra things
to clarify the meaning.”

It doesn’t take long for us to get to
Dunsford. In the distance, I can see the high fence surrounding all
of Dartmoor County. In my memory it was a lot lower. Only a miracle
will get us over that fence without anyone seeing us, so I’m hoping
for one.

The bus calls at a few important-looking
buildings in the little town of Dunsford. The driver calls out
where we are each time. City Hall. Market. Hospital. And then he
announces the border checkpoint. “Final stop,” he adds. “All
passengers need to leave this bus.”

Walt gets up and reaches for my hand. “You
coming?”

We get off and stand there, looking around a
bit forlornly. All the other passengers clearly have business here.
They fan out and disappear into various directions, leaving us
lingering next to the bus stop long after the vehicle has left
again.

“Let’s walk over to the checkpoint,” Walt
suggests. “Who knows, we might be able to see Exeter from there.”
He doesn’t sound very convinced.