Eden, p.4
Eden, page 4
“I know,” Jenn said.
“How do you know?” Dylan was reaching for answers, and his anger was growing. Anger didn’t belong in a group like this, especially minutes before they were due to begin a delicate, dangerous infiltration. They’d traversed three other Virgin Zones, this tight team of seven, and he knew they worked well together precisely because egos were kept in check; communication was smooth and unhindered by petty personal hang-ups. Sure, there were tensions, as was natural in any group of this size. But nothing damaging. Despite the lie, Dylan was their leader, and losing it in front of them now would put them all at risk.
“I just know, Dad,” Jenn said. “Mum… you know I’ve heard from her now and then, right?”
“Of course I know.” A wall of awkwardness had solidified between them, the weight that had always been there growing thicker. This is one of those times when life changes, he thought. He’d experienced enough of them to recognise the moment.
“Only six times since she’s been gone,” Jenn continued. “And each time is when she’s finished crossing one of the other Virgin Zones. We talked about doing that together when I was a kid, remember? Trying to do all of them? So she sends me a picture of herself and her team, standing on a roadside or in a wood, or sitting around a table drinking. She’s always looking at the camera holding up a map of the Zone with a red line through it. Like, ‘done’. Sometimes she’s smiling…” Jenn trailed off, aware of the silence around her. Aaron took a step closer to her and laid a hand on her shoulder, and Dylan felt a surge of gratitude for him. He’d known Aaron for five years, since Jenn had brought him into their team; he liked the guy, knew he was good for Jenn. He was waiting with the rest of them for her to finish. “And that’s how I knew she hadn’t finished this crossing. No picture, just that line: Eden is my last. A statement of intent. I’ve heard nothing from her about finishing Eden.”
“Is that it?” Dylan asked.
“That’s it,” Jenn said. But he knew she was still lying. There was something else she wasn’t telling them, and now that the lie about Kat had been revealed, he wasn’t sure he could ever trust her again.
She knew we were coming here to follow her mother and she said nothing!
But he couldn’t call her on it here and now, not in front of the others. There would still be time. If they even agreed to continue.
“So what, you wanted us to race her?” Selina asked. “Find her? What?”
Jenn shrugged. Perhaps she wasn’t even certain of that herself.
“Maybe it’s an invitation,” Aaron said. “Like she wants Jenn to try as well.”
“You knew?” Cove asked.
“No, he didn’t!” Jenn said. “This is all on me.”
“But why after all this time?” Selina asked.
Jenn blinked and looked down at her feet. There’s definitely more, Dylan thought, and he vowed to ask her as soon as they were alone.
“Do you know exactly how long?” Dylan asked Poke.
Poke looked uncomfortable. She consulted her watch and tapped it a few times.
“Eight weeks, two days.”
Eden was around three hundred miles across, a wilderness of forests and valleys, cliffs and ravines, rivers and lakes and marshland. Its eastern extreme was a wild, inaccessible coastline, jagged cliffs a hundred metres high bearing witness to the countless ships that had foundered on its shores over the centuries. To the north was a tall mountain range, and Eden’s western border mostly followed a deep valley, more a ravine in places, where a river growled and pounded as a white-water torrent for scores of miles. They were entering from the relatively easy southern extreme, and they intended to make their traverse in less than twenty days.
Kat had been inside for almost sixty.
“She might still be in there,” Dylan said.
“After eight weeks?” Cove asked.
Dylan shrugged. Cove was right to express his doubts, but that solidified the idea that she might be dead. Her and her whole team. The Zones were dangerous enough, Eden most of all, and racing across them amplified that danger, sometimes to unacceptable levels. Two years ago they had come across the remains of a team at the base of a cliff in Eritrea, broken and rotted together into death.
“We know she went in,” Jenn said, “and I’m pretty certain she didn’t come out. We work from that. And it doesn’t change anything we’re doing.”
“So is this a search party now?” Lucy asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m pissed you lied, but that’s your mother in there. We should go back to where we were dropped, retrieve our kit. I have stuff in there we could use.”
“You got stuff in there not yet invented,” Gee said. Dylan smiled, someone else chuckled, grateful for the levity. If it had come from anyone else but Gee it might have seemed wrong.
“Not a search party,” Jenn said. “Dad?”
“Not a search party,” Dylan said. “Kat can look after herself.” He meant it as a statement, not a dismissal.
“We can still keep our eyes open when we’re in there,” Cove said.
“We will,” Dylan said. “Of course. But we came here to do something, and we owe it to ourselves to get it done. First team to cross Eden. Set the benchmark. The reason we’re doing it right now… I’m not sure it matters. And it’s not as if any of you needed persuading. Right?”
“Right,” Aaron said. “If Kat hasn’t already set it.”
“Hundred thousand square miles,” Dylan said. “Yeah, we’ll keep our eyes open.”
“With respect… eight minutes,” Poke said.
“We all good with this?” Dylan asked.
“No,” Selina said. “Not good with it at all. I don’t like liars.” Dylan saw his daughter’s face drop, and he knew it was time to move this on.
“But?” Dylan looked around at them all. He’d shut Selina down, and he knew he’d pay for that later. But she said no more and no one pulled out. Their team had come together and planned for this moment, pooling all their experience and expertise, investing money and emotional effort. They were in it for the long haul. “Good. Let’s move.”
They gathered themselves, and for half a minute they prepared in silence. Only Aaron and Jenn stood close, fore-heads touching, whispering words no one else could hear. Gee jumped on the spot, psyching himself up. Cove and Lucy stood side by side, staring out across the valley at the different place beyond.
Selina came close to Dylan and he smiled at her. He didn’t want this to feel awkward for her, because they had something, though neither of them really knew what it might become. They’d slept together several times, but there were always long periods between each occasion. Between expeditions Selina returned home to her lecturing position and elderly mother in Madrid, and often they’d go months with little contact. Sometimes they felt like lovers, sometimes best friends. It didn’t help that he knew so little about her, other than her complete passion for the environment, and the way its continuing degradation mirrored her own frequent depressions. She was not secretive about her background, but she rarely spoke of it, and that made the present her somehow incomplete.
“Sorry,” he mouthed.
“You’re the team leader,” Selina said, voice low. “And her father. I imagine you’re more pissed than all of us.”
“Let’s hustle,” Poke said, clapping her hands. “Like you said, it’s a hundred thousand square miles, and most of it like nothing you’ve ever seen before. I’ve been in there once, and never again.”
“Huh?” Dylan said. “You’re our fixer.”
“Yeah, and I’ll get you in, if you follow me and do everything I say.” She glanced at her watch again.
“We’re experienced in places like this,” Cove said. “We’ve done Green Valley.”
Poke snorted. “That place is a parkland.”
“We did the Husky Plains in under thirty days, independently and unsupported,” Cove continued. “No one’s come within five days of that, even in a race scenario. And we hold the record for Zona Smerti, too. Same team, same setup. We know what we’re doing.”
“No, you don’t,” Poke said. “You know what you want to do, but Eden might have other ideas.”
“Why have you only been in once?” Dylan asked. She’d sold herself as their fixer by saying she knew everything there was to know about how to get him and his team in without being caught or detected. To be fair, she’d never claimed to know much about Eden itself. Only its borders and security measures.
“’Cause that was one time too many,” Poke said. “You know what these places are set up for, these Virgin Zones. Course you do, ’cause it’s people like you see them as their own playgrounds. Their challenges. Whatever. But these are places that were established decades ago and left alone, cut off from the rest of the world, leaving nature to heal itself. No humans in there. None of us, not even…” She nodded at Selina. “Scientists. That’s as pure as you can get, and it still surprises me people went for it. Governments, big business, just leaving these vast swathes of land to return to nature. Sure, it had to be done. Maybe in time they’ll become the lungs of the world. I guess they’re our apology to the planet. But…” She sucked on her rollie and its glowing end crackled in the still air. “… it’s different in there.”
“Some see the Zones as our last hope,” Selina said.
“Yeah, sure, humanity’s last hope,” Poke said. “Thing no one gets is, no matter how much we’ve fucked ourselves, the planet’s gonna be just fine.”
“Eventually,” Lucy said.
“Eventually’s too long for us, but the blink of an eye for nature,” Selina said.
“Different how?” Dylan asked. He could see Poke’s fear and didn’t like it. Her toughness wasn’t just a front.
“The one time I went in there, I felt something,” the fixer said. “I can’t call it unnatural, ’cause I think it was purely natural. Maybe it was inhuman. I dunno, but it affected me bad. Gave me nightmares I’m still having now.”
“What nightmares?” Jenn asked, but Poke ignored her. She seemed almost to be talking to herself.
“There’s this Jewish legend. Says that God left a corner of creation unfinished, and challenged anyone who thought themselves greater than Him to finish it for themselves. Now, I ain’t got faith, or not that sort anyway. But they had something with that idea. An’ if there’s any place on Earth similar to what they were talking about all that time ago, it’s Eden.”
She fell silent. No one spoke. Then she looked at her watch.
“Three minutes.”
“Good,” Gee said. “Too much talking. Let’s burn daylight.”
5
“From the very beginning, we were given no choice. We were in the way and had to be moved. Compulsory purchase orders on our land and businesses were more than fair, but it wasn’t about the money. It was about being uprooted, moved, and dumped in some resettlement camp four hundred miles from home. You can shift families, but you can’t reform communities. My marriage broke up. I hit the bottle. My wife committed suicide six years later. But it’s all okay, because nature found its home. What about my home? What about me?”
Vasilia (surname withheld) discussing the effects of Zona Smerti, Eyewitness: The Virgin Zone Upheaval in Pictures and Words, Alaska Pacific University Press
If their hike from the landing site had been managed to the minute by Poke and her programmed GPS, their infiltration of Eden was timed to the second. They all carried something that didn’t belong, a tension that hung between them and held them apart. Dylan didn’t like it, and he’d confront Jenn alone when he had the opportunity.
That time was not now. They were committed, and Poke was about to earn her fee.
She led them away from their hillside resting place and down into a shallow ravine, following the route of a stream as it headed for the valley floor. Dylan trailed close behind Poke, and behind him were Cove and Selina, then Aaron and Jenn, then Gee and Lucy. The spacing and order of their group was no accident. Gee and Lucy moved well together, fast and quiet, and they were an ideal pairing for the team’s tail. If anyone or anything was following or stalking them, they would know.
Dylan couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather have watching his back. Gee had saved his life on their first race together six years before, confronting and disarming a bandit on a jungle trail in Bolivia and sending his companions on their way. He’d used only the threat of violence, backed with intense confidence and calmness. Dylan suspected it was because Gee had faced much worse in his ten years as a cop in Vancouver, but he also knew that such toughness was natural, not learned. He might have been the toughest person Dylan knew, but he carried that with an appealing humility. He didn’t talk much about his past, and rarely offered the same story about how he’d lost his hand. Shark attack, infected spider bite, birth defect, Dylan had heard them all, but only once had Gee told him the tragic truth—that he’d lost his husband and left hand in a car crash. That had ended his time in the Vancouver PD, and eventually led to his new incarnation as an adventurer.
The stream carved a winding gulley into the hillside, skirting around tough rocky outcroppings, forming occasional wider pools where the slope lessened, and splashing over several small waterfalls where shelves of rock formed solid steps in the hillside. They leapt back and forth across the stream, dancing from occasional stepping stones in an effort to keep their footwear dry for as long as possible.
A few minutes after starting out they reached a branch where another stream joined from elsewhere, tumbling down a series of steep mini waterfalls and throwing a haze of refracted sunlight across the scene. It reminded Dylan of the view of the polluted river they’d seen from the plane, but this was natural, and beautiful.
Poke held up a hand to call them to a halt, then ushered them against a sheer rock wall beside the waterfalls. Dylan pressed against the surface, relishing the fine cool spray settling across his skin. It had been hot today, and as the sun dipped down the late afternoon heat was oppressive. He took a sip of water from the tube in his backpack shoulder strap and watched a small lizard skittering up the stone surface, leaping across a crack where water flowed down, disappearing into a crevice. It seemed unaware of their presence, and he wondered whether it moved in and out of Eden.
Poke looked at her watch, then glanced up, watching the skies. She lifted her hand to get their attention. Moments later a turbo-drone whispered past high above. Dylan froze, head lowered so that the drone wouldn’t spot his pale face. They were well sheltered by the cliff and the mist from the waterfalls, and moments after the drone disappeared over the trees, Poke waved them on.
They followed the gulley for another few minutes, then climbed a steep bank and found themselves on a woodland track. It surprised Dylan how well used the route was, and he could see Poke’s nervousness. She crouched beside the trail, they all did the same, and for a couple of minutes she listened, head tilted and mouth open.
Dylan glanced back at his team. Most of them were watching Poke, not him. He caught Jenn’s eyes and smiled, and she nodded back. Kat would be on her mind, and the pressure of a lie revealed, but they had to box that up and concentrate on the near future, not the present. And not the past.
Please be alive, he thought. The idea of finding his estranged wife dead in Eden was already haunting him. The thought that she might never be found was even worse.
Poke signalled and they crossed the track, fast and low. When they were on the other side she doubled back and scanned their trail, making sure they’d left no footprints behind. The ground was dry, the wheel ruts shallow and hard. She nodded, then moved back past the team to take point once again.
As they approached the valley floor, Poke concentrated more and more on her watch. Following close behind her Dylan could just hear as her net implant buzzed with a series of pre-programmed alarms. At every signal she would pause, change direction, wait for a defined period of time, then indicate that they should move on. They passed through a heavily wooded area, and now and then birds took flight away from them, and the undergrowth rustled as the darting shapes of small mammals sought safety. Poke frowned and watched the fleeing creatures every time this happened, worried at the ruckus that might attract attention, but there was nothing they could do about it. They were a couple of miles from Eden’s boundary, and these animals might still have a reason to fear humans.
Once inside, Dylan knew it would be different and he was excited to experience it again. He’d seen it before in Virgin Zones, where animals were born, lived and died never seeing or encountering a human being, other than he and his team. It was amazing how little they were feared. It was uplifting.
“Seven minutes here,” Poke whispered, and she crouched down close to a large bank of tangled brambles, ferns and dead branches. “Eat. Drink.” Several trees had fallen together, perhaps in high winds or a lightning strike, and the fall provided a thick barrier behind which she indicated they should hide.
“How far?” Dylan asked.
“Less than two miles. There are Zed patrols, one along soon. We’ll be safe here.”
“We will?” Dylan asked, but Poke didn’t respond. She looked at her watch, glanced back the way they’d come, and peered through the thicket and past the fallen trees, gaze never resting for more than a few seconds in one place. She waved once at the team, gesturing that they should stay down. She seemed in control.
Dylan wondered whether Kat had come this way, had hidden behind these dead trees. Over the years, racing across other Virgin Zones, he’d often had similar thoughts, but usually they were remote and unlikely, foolish ideas rather than certainties. Here, now, it suddenly felt more solid. If he closed his eyes he could sense Kat hunkered down beside him, waiting for the patrol to pass. He could almost smell her, that miasma of her preferred sun cream and the distinct Kat aroma that he had known for so long, and which was now gone. Sometimes he caught a similar coconut scent and memories assaulted him. He took in a deep breath, but there were no coconuts here, and no memories of Kat.
