The Gardener (12 page)

Actually, that
was
what I was thinking. I mean, I knew about overpopulation. But in Melby Falls, it wasn’t high on my list of concerns.

“As long as you can drive your Hummer to Safeway and buy your groceries, this means nothing for you, am I right?”

Several people in the audience chuckled a bit, nodding.

The picture changed to a black-and-white portrait of an older guy in a white high-collared shirt. The author pointed. “Thomas Malthus, an economist born in 1766. His
Principle of Population
states that, first, food is necessary to the existence of man. Anyone disagree with that?”

Again, some chuckles. Most everyone shrugged and shook their heads.

She continued. “Second, passion between the sexes will always be there.” She stopped and smiled. “To put it in simple terms for my younger audience members, people are not going to stop having babies.”

Some people laughed.

The picture on the screen changed to a barren field with one cornstalk. “The problem is, as Malthus states, the power of population is greater than the power of the earth to provide enough food for that population.”

A guy raised his hand, and Dr. Emerson pointed at him. He asked, “You’re saying that, as the population grows, eventually we’ll run out of food?”

Dr. Emerson nodded. “Yes, the Malthusian catastrophe—our return to subsistence-level conditions because population outgrows agricultural production.”

The guy scratched his chin. “But isn’t that unrealistic in this day and age, with all our technology? We’re so far beyond subsistence. We have plenty of food and we keep coming up with better ways to grow food. I can see it being an issue in his day, but not in this century.”

“Aha!” She pointed at the man. “A technological optimist. You believe that humans will always get out of every situation we get ourselves into.”

The guy nodded and crossed his arms.

In front, the screen changed again, now to a map of Cuba. Dr. Emerson said, “Sorry to say, but this has happened, and quite recently. For decades, most of the food in Cuba came from Eastern Europe or was grown on big state-run farms with equipment provided by the Eastern Bloc countries. In 1989, the average Cuban was eating three thousand calories a day.”

The picture changed to one of the Berlin Wall.

“But when the Eastern Bloc countries fell, Cuba’s food supply was cut off, and their big farm operations were dependent on pesticides and on fuel for their machinery, which they no longer could get. Four years later, the average Cuban was getting only nineteen hundred calories a day, which is roughly equivalent to skipping one meal a day, and had lost twenty to thirty pounds.”

A woman called out, “What did they do?”

Dr. Emerson raised a palm. “What could they do? They learned to grow food again, without relying on machinery or oil or pesticides to do it. The old-fashioned way succeeded. They are now back up to that average three thousand calories a day. And Cuba is a working model of sustainable agriculture. They don’t rely heavily on machinery or fossil fuels or fertilizers. They can maintain what they are doing indefinitely.”

Another woman raised her hand. “Are you saying we should all grow a garden?”

“In so many words.” Dr. Emerson laughed a little, and then looked serious. “Here’s the thing. Climate change, wars, and our dependence on oil: These all affect the food supply. And the day is coming when, as Malthus predicted almost two hundred years ago, the population will outgrow the food supply, and those of us growing vegetables in our backyards are going to deal with it much better than the people driving to Safeway in their Hummers. Because the day will come when even the grocery stores will be empty.”

Next to me, the girl started to nod off and her head came to rest on my shoulder as I felt her deep, slow breaths. When Dr. Emerson finished and called for questions, hands went up. They were fairly dull and academic until the guy sitting in front of me raised his hand.

“Did you work on the food crisis when you were at TroDyn?”

Exactly what I was hoping for.

Dr. Emerson didn’t miss a beat as she started to recite that well-rehearsed spiel, same as she had at the press conference, and the same as Jack had read to me at the cabin. “While my time with TroDyn was enriching to my career…”

I sat up straighter, accidentally waking the girl. She bolted up, startled.

Dr. Emerson glanced our way and faltered, her words trailing off as her eyes widened and one hand sprang to her parted lips.

I rolled my eyes. I mean, sometimes I forgot how strangers reacted to my face. Although that was the first time it had ever interrupted a lecture.

But then I realized she wasn’t looking at me. The look on Dr. Emerson’s face was clear and obvious, and could mean only one thing.

Dr. Emerson had seen the girl before.

D
R
. E
MERSON SEEMED TO GET AHOLD OF HERSELF, BECAUSE
after she finished her sentence, she quickly turned to the lady in blue and said something. Then the lady turned to the audience and said, “I’d like to thank you all for coming. That will conclude our program. The author will autograph your books at the front.”

The girl shifted in her chair and I turned her way. “Did you see the way she looked at you? It was almost like…” My hand covered my mouth. Was it possible? It made sense. Why else would the author have been so stunned? “It was like she recognized you.”

She didn’t answer.

I noticed the girl seemed to be weaker. She just seemed
less
than she was before we got to Powell’s. “Are you okay?”

She turned sideways in the chair and put her arm on the back, then lay her head down on it. “If I could just sit here for a little bit.”

“Yeah.” I looked up toward the front where people lined up with their books to get signed. That look on Dr. Emerson’s face was just too odd to not investigate further. “We’re gonna hang out and see if we can get a moment alone with the author.”

The line showed no signs of shortening anytime soon, so the girl and I went over to the couch by the butterfly book.

When the last book had been signed, Dr. Emerson gathered her things. She stood and looked around for a moment.

Was she looking for the girl?

I stood up.

She noticed me, then her gaze dropped to the girl. Dr. Emerson quickly shook hands with the lady in blue, glanced our way once more, then walked around the corner to the stairs.

I debated. As much as I wanted to speak to her, ask her about the girl, she certainly didn’t seem like she wanted to talk to us. Still, it was time to take a risk. “Come on.” I grabbed the girl’s hand.

We hurried down the stairs, just in time to see Dr. Emerson head into the second floor. We followed, turning the way she did, but she’d disappeared. A bright orange traffic cone sat in front of the men’s room with a big closed for cleaning sign on it, and from inside, I heard the click of a mop on the floor. Hoping that Dr. Emerson was the only occupant of the ladies’ room, I slid the cone over to block the entrance and pulled the girl inside.

The author stood at the sink, applying lipstick, and her hand froze midair as she saw us in the mirror. Her eyes locked on the girl. She turned around to face us. She fumbled with the lipstick, capping it and slipping it into the bag on her arm before moving toward us. “When I saw you in the audience, I…”

Not knowing exactly why, I stepped partly aside.

Her eyes narrowed as she moved closer to the girl, and her hands reached out.

The girl’s eyes moved to me as she took a slight step back.

Dr. Emerson set a hand on either side of the girl’s face. “It
is
you.”

I grabbed her arm.

But Dr. Emerson shook me off as her eyes squeezed shut, tears spilling out. When she opened them, her eyes were glistening. “I never thought I’d see you again.” Ignoring me, she pulled the girl to her chest in a deep hug and said one more thing.

“Laila. Beautiful Laila.”

All I could do was stare as she continued to hold the girl and repeat her name. Part of me wanted to believe that it was just some trick. The other part wanted to believe that this mysterious girl would no longer be a mystery.

The girl peered at the author. “You know who I am?”

“Yes.” Dr. Emerson turned to me. “Does she remember anything?”

I shook my head.

“What are you doing with her? How in the world did she end up here?”

Up to this point, I’d had too little sleep, too much caffeine, and no answers. I rubbed my eyes as I thought about what to tell her. When I dropped my hands, she had already turned back to the girl, who was frowning.

“I didn’t know her name,” I said.

“Her name is Laila.” Dr. Emerson lifted the girl’s chin with one hand, her eyes roaming all over. “You look pale. How are you feeling?”

The girl—it was hard for me to think of her as Laila—just shrugged a bit.

I was suddenly annoyed and impatient. Dr. Emerson seemed to know so much more than I did, and I wanted to know all of it. But first, I wanted to tell her something
she
didn’t know.

“She practically threw me over a wall last night.”

Once again, Dr. Emerson sized me up, scrutinizing my scar, her eyes widening a little at my size. “Did she really?”

I nodded.

Smiling, Dr. Emerson turned back to Laila and spoke very low, but I still heard her. “Thank God they didn’t do it.”

“Do what?”

She didn’t answer me. She held the girl’s … Laila’s hand. “I don’t know how you managed to get her here, but thank you. I’ll take good care of her.”

There was no way I was letting her take Laila. And I still wanted answers. Thrusting my chin upward, I asked, “Did you know her at TroDyn?”

She turned so fast I jumped. Her forehead creased as she asked, “Why would you ask that?”

Not sure about how much I wanted to reveal, not sure how much I could trust her, if at all, I said, “I didn’t know anything about her. And she didn’t know anything about where she came from or who she was. But something happened when she saw the lights of TroDyn.”

Dr. Emerson stood up taller. “We did some medical work there. Case studies.”

I said, “I thought TroDyn was all about sustainability.”

Dr. Emerson’s eyes narrowed. “They have research projects in many areas.”

I muttered, “I’ll bet they do.” Still, I was surprised she’d say anything about TroDyn. I wondered if she’d say more, so I put some fake innocent cheer in my voice. “I’m applying for a summer program there.”

She started to pull Laila toward the door.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Listen. What’s your name?”

“Mason.”

“Mason.” Dr. Emerson spoke kindly for the first time since I’d met her. “I appreciate your escorting Laila here. You’ll never know what it means to me to see her again. But you know and I know it’s time for me to take over. My guess is that you’re a nice guy, a nice guy who fell into this and, like Alice in the rabbit hole, have no idea what you’re getting into.”

Laila met my eyes and shook her head slightly. I could tell she still wasn’t sure what to make of this woman. Not that she knew me, either, but I’d pretty much proved in the last twenty-four hours that she could trust me.

“We don’t know you.” I patted my chest. “All I know is
I’m
looking out for her. For Laila.”

The corner of Dr. Emerson’s mouth went up. “Look. I can see the attraction, damsel in distress and all that.”

She really had no idea how little that helped her case.

She sighed. “I know you’ve known me for all of two minutes. But you have to trust me. I have Laila’s best interests at heart and you are … you’re a kid. You’re not ready to follow this through.”

Follow
what
through? Sticking with Laila until she got her memory back? Until she found her parents? “But I—”

She cut me off by leaning in close. She had coffee breath. “You have done a great thing. But this leads nowhere good for you. So it’s time for you to just walk away.” She waved her hand a little bit. “Walk away. Pretend you never met this girl.”

Taking in Laila, her brown eyes, I knew I couldn’t do it. “No. I’m not going anywhere.”

Laila clutched my hand even tighter.

Dr. Emerson frowned. “You do know you’ll run out of options. You’ll have to let me take her … eventually.”

I asked, “Take her where?”

She sighed. “Haven’t you figured it out? I want to get her where they can’t get their hands on her anymore.”

I asked, “Who do you mean by they?”

She looked at me like I was something to scrape off her shoe. “You already know who they are.”

Had to be TroDyn.

“I’m not ready to hand her over yet. Not before you tell us everything.” Even then, there was no way I was going to abandon Laila, but Dr. Emerson didn’t need to know that. Yet.

“I’ll go along with your little mission or whatever,” Dr. Emerson said. She smiled at Laila. “You’re going to be fine.”

Laila’s forehead wrinkled as she looked up at Dr. Emerson. “I’m remembering things. Just starting to. I was in this place.”

Dr. Emerson leaned closer to Laila. “What do you remember?”

Laila looked at me first, then back to her. “A place. There were others, and…” Her eyes went blank again, like before, and I wondered what she was remembering. And then she started to speak in that same detached voice.

“The monitor and the light. The monitor and the light. That’s all there is. Until…”

She paused for a moment, frowning. Then she continued, “Until that day, the day the Gardener was not alone. Footsteps, many footsteps … They invaded our place. I wasn’t afraid, just curious. Why were others with the Gardener? But the Gardener’s voice was different that day. I felt a ripple of something make its way toward me. Something I’d never felt before. Something…”

Dr. Emerson looked puzzled as Laila started to tremble and her breaths became quicker, shorter. Her voice changed, became a whimper. “It started. The shrieks from the end of the row that turned into screams that gradually came closer one by one. It was my turn. And then, I didn’t know them before, fear and pain. But they rolled into one new giant feeling as, for the first time, I felt…”