The Park Service: Book One of The Park Service Trilogy Read online

  “I’m sure she will,” he says, his gaze coming back to me. “And you can bet I’ll tell her what a smart, wonderful young man you’ve become. I wish you’d known her, son. I wish she’d known you. She was so beautiful. Almost too beautiful for this place. Maybe that’s why she left us so early.”

  “Was it my fault, Dad?”

  “Was what your fault?”

  “Her leaving us.”

  “Why would you say that?”’

  I shrug. “Some of the kids say it was my fault. They say that I killed her coming out.”

  He reaches across the table and grips my hand. I notice the veins snaking across the back of his hand and running like ropes up his forearm.

  “Now you listen to me,” he says. “Your mother had an infected appendix. Had nothing to do with you. In the old days, above, they’d have fixed her up no problem. Like that!” He snaps his fingers with his free hand to make the point. “But things are different down here. The Foundation decided long ago that it doesn’t make sense to invest in those costly medical treatments. When it’s your time, it’s your time—whether you make it to 35 or head for the horizon early.” He squeezes my hand harder. “She’s in a better place, anyway. You’ll see. We’ll all be together soon.” Releasing my hand, he dismisses the conversation with a wave.

  He reaches across the table for his trusty tea tin, pulls it to him, opens it, and lifts out his pipe—just as I’ve seen him do every Sunday since I can remember. Smoking is supposed to be prohibited in the Valley, but my dad’s lab work in underground agriculture development allows him to always manage a steady supply of tobacco from Level 5, where they grow it for nicotine to use as an organic pesticide against the insects we cultivate to pollinate and manage the vast underground fields.

  “Did I ever tell you about this pipe?” he asks, as he packs the stringy tobacco into the bowl with his thumb.

  When I shake my head, he continues in his serious tone:

  “It’s from up there.” He lifts his eyes to the ceiling. “From before the War. Your forty-third … no, must be your forty-fourth great-grandfather now, carved this pipe himself. Carved it under the actual sun. Look here. See that design.”

  He holds the pipe out to me and I take it in my hand. It’s heavier than it looks; the carbon fiber stem cool on my fingers, the yellowed-stone bowl soft and warm in my palm.

  “See the butterflies there?”

  I look and notice for the first time the intricate detail work, worn thin by almost a thousand years of fingers and thumbs, but still visible. Beautiful butterflies. Butterflies beginning big at the base of the bowl then shrinking as they increase in number, creating the illusion of a rabble rising toward the pipe lip.

  “The stem there’s been replaced a few times, of course,” he says, nodding, “but the soapstone bowl was quarried right in our family’s backyard in a state called Georgia.”

  “I thought you said our ancestors came from a country called Holland? Not Georgia?”

  “And they did, they did. Sailed to early America from Holland and migrated down south. But I never told you that generations later, one of your great-grandfathers grew up on a butterfly conservatory there. Real live butterflies, son. Just like the ones you’ve studied in lessons. You know, they’re the one thing I really wish I could see. Wish we had a few down in Agri. But not one, not a single butterfly survived …”

  His voice trails off, his eyes on the pipe in my hand.

  “… I love the idea of butterflies,” he continues after a pause. “I love their color, their metamorphosis, their freedom.”

  He shakes his head, as if waking from a daydream.

  “Anyway, I guess it was the butterfly breeding that inspired your great-grandfather Eli’s interest in genetics and led him to a career with the U.S. Department of Defense. He came west to work in the labs down here, forty-some generations ago now, and he brought his beloved father’s butterfly pipe with him. It’s been passed down to the eldest child ever since. Father to son, sometimes mother to daughter. But it was always passed down, passed at last on to me. I plan to pass it to you when I retire.”

  I notice the weight of the pipe, the centuries of history trapped like resin in its chambers, and I don’t ever want it to be mine. I don’t want my dad to retire, to render his body to the machine. I don’t want him to leave me alone.

  I hand the pipe back.

  “Never too early to learn,” he says, clicking the lighter and bringing it to the pipe. He puffs it lit, the flame illuminating the butterflies, shadows creating the illusion of fluttering wings—monarchs moving up the bowl. When he removes the flame, a coil of smoke rises from the pipe as if the tiny winged creatures have finally escaped their fossil prison and at last taken flight.

  He hands me back the lit pipe. Unsure, I take it and look at the red-glowing ember smoking in the bed of tobacco.

  “The other end, boy,” he says, “the other end.”

  “I know it.” I stick the stem between my teeth and breathe in, acrid tobacco smoke filling my lungs. Pulling the pipe away, I cough gray smoke across the table. “Ugh,” I say, holding out the pipe to him. “It tastes nothing like it smells.”

  He laughs and peels the pipe from my hand. “I coughed, too,” he says. “You’ll get the hang of it when it’s time. Now run on up to bed and get rested. Tomorrow’s the big day.”

  My room feels smaller than it ever has. As if I’m just now noticing that I’ve outgrown it. Tiny dollhouse drawers built into the wall. My study desk too short. My bed a child’s cot lying beneath the window.

  I lean against the sill and look out on the Valley. The lights are dim, reducing the buildings to outline. It’s quiet, everyone in their quarters for curfew, the only sound from the ventilation fans humming unseen. The Valley is the largest cavern in Holocene II, but tonight it closes in on me.

  I think about the levels beneath us, the levels above. If I score well on tomorrow’s test, I’ll stay here to work in the labs, or in engineering, maybe. If I’m lucky, I’ll even inherit these same living quarters when my dad retires. But if I don’t score well, they’ll send me down to manufacturing on Level 4, where I’ll operate machinery building the unmanned exploration craft we send to the surface. Or worse, maybe Level 5 to work crops, where productive hours are twice as long. And if I really fail, they’ll sterilize me and send me to Level 6, where I’ll spend my days working the recycling and sewage plants, and my father’s pipe will be left without an heir.

  But I don’t really care. Because regardless of how I score tomorrow, I only have to make it another 20 years and then I can retire, too. And when I do, I’ll join my dad and meet my mom and spend an eternity in Eden. We know there’s no such thing as heaven, but Eden is close—the Foundation’s virtual world where anything can be had just for wishing—

  Waterfront mansions for every family.

  A blue-sky paradise filled with dreams.

  All your friends, all your family, all your fantasies.

  I imagine all of my ancestors gathered at a never-ending picnic, each of them 35, forever. I think of my father’s pipe, about all of their fingerprints worn there. Would they share it? No. I guess they’d each call up their own replica pipe as real as the original just by thinking it—the butterflies worn a little less to match the memories of its earlier owners.

  I can almost see it now: everyone sitting around visiting with their ancestral peers, grandparents indistinguishable from grandchildren, the men all puffing great clouds of smoke into the afternoon sky. How weird it will feel to be there with them. To listen to the grandmothers and granddaughters, all with the same tenor belonging to women of 35, except my mother—my mother who left us at 20. At 20! The same day I was born. She was only five years older than I am now. Dad says they got her up there just in time. Up to Eden. I wonder what it will be like to meet her. I bet it will be weird.

  I imagine evening dropping on that digital picnic paradise, an endless feast appearing perfect to everyone’s tast
e. I imagine stepping inside, looking into my mother’s eyes. What will they look like, her eyes? I’ll be fifteen years older than she is when I retire. A child grown meeting his mother still a child. It must be strange to be 20 in a place where everyone is always 35.

  I feel the bottle of food dye pressing into my armpit. Red knows I’m testing tomorrow—he’s testing, too. And he and his buddies buried me in the sand wanting to shake my nerves.

  I climb out my window and onto the ledge, easing toward the plumbing junction. Once there, I scurry up to the catwalk that runs between the units. I peer into windows, checking to make sure it’s clear before passing quickly, my steps short and careful. I spot an albino rat lumbering toward me, its white hair glowing in the low UV light. No room for both of us.

  It’s funny that of all the species that were lost in the War, rats managed to survive. Rats and gulls at our electric beach, of course. But Dad says they’re just rats with wings. And I guess we do have some worms and insects working in agriculture on Level 5. Rumor is they used to house monkeys on much lower and forbidden floors, in the unmapped basements, but after so many generations they refused to reproduce down there. Maybe they’re smarter than us, the monkeys—hard to say.

  Without slowing, the rat steps on my foot, slides between my legs, and carries on with its brainless, tail-dragging march. I carry on toward Red’s window. When I reach it, I remove the bottle of green food dye from my jacket and screw off the lid. The room is dark. Red must be downstairs, maybe getting his blood sample drawn by Mr. Zales. But I know he’ll be sneaking out soon enough to go play grab and grope with his girl.

  I set the open bottle of dye on the sill and tip it toward the window, resting it against the frame. I wish I could hang out, just to see his face, but I have no intention of getting beat to a pulp tonight. Tomorrow, maybe, but not tonight.

  When I climb back in my window, my room seems normal size again. I wonder what was wrong with me earlier.

  I pull the covers back and slide into bed.

  My eyes close, my body sinks into the sheets.

  I try to relax and think of anything except tomorrow’s test. Anything. A rat sniffing its way through a never-ending maze in my brain. Blue benitoite hanging from the rocky sky of my skull. Warm sand, gentle waves. A single yellow butterfly, rising and falling and rising again, moves in a peaceful arc across a crimson sky. As I drift off, I inhale a sweet, familiar smell—rich and warm and safe.

  My father’s fathers’ pipe.

  CHAPTER 2

  Good Thinking and Good Luck

  It’s finally here.

  The day I’ve been dreading.

  I throw open my window and look out on morning in the Valley. The benitoite no longer glows, the bright LED lights washing out the blue. The quiet rest-hour whir of fans is now overrun by the buzz of productive-hour conversation. Metal doors open and clang shut. Groups of giggling children wobble along toward their waiting classrooms, lunch rations and lesson slates tucked beneath their little arms. A pathway polisher halts his machine to let two women pass, tilting his head and raising his hand as if saluting, or tipping an invisible hat.

  It’s busy and bustling, and in a way funny, because everyone hurries through the same routine every day only to end up right back where they started. We’re all just pacing well-worn paths in an underground cage. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if the ceiling were to disappear one day, if the walls just fell away, would everyone really rejoice, or would they go through the same old motions anyway?

  My dad says I think too much; he’s probably right.

  I drop and force out 27 pushups—two more than yesterday. I roll over and do crunches until my stomach burns. I open my closet and curl my water jugs—each seven liters and seven kilograms—left and right, until I can’t lift them anymore. Stripping off my shirt, I look at myself in the mirror. I hate what I see. I’m pale and thin, my chest sunken, my legs spindly, my bony arms dangling at my side. After forty plus generations of international scientists mixing their DNA down here, most people look about the same: average height, dark hair, dark eyes. But not me. I’m a misfit in the mix. Red calls me a little freak, although I’ve pointed out more than once that he looks more different than I do.

  Downstairs, my father waits at the table, his eyes on his work slate propped in his lap, our cereal rations measured and waiting. I know he sees me but he doesn’t look up when I slide the chair out and sit. I pour soymilk over my cereal and devour it without thinking, the taste as familiar as my own breath.

  When I finish, he pushes his untouched bowl across the table to me. I push it back, but he slides it across again, so I pour more soymilk and eat his cereal, too.

  With an expanding bellyful of soymilk and algaecrisps, I stand from the table and look down at my dad. He sets his slate on his lap and looks up at me. I think maybe there is more to say after our talk last night—about today’s test, about us, about anything. I want to tell him how nervous I am, I want to hear him say everything will be alright. I want to hug him, to be little again and feel his arms embracing me.

  He nods, I nod, but we say nothing. When he picks up his reader again from his lap, I grab my own lesson slate from its charger and head for the door without a word.

  The metal door bangs shut behind me, and my ears are instantly bombarded with productive clatter as I pass through the Valley, following the same path I’ve taken every day for the decade I’ve been in school, heading for the last time to the gray, windowless Foundation education annex building.

  Today, the elevator passes my usual stop and lifts me five stories to the testing room floor. The elevator door slides open and mean Mrs. Hightower stands before me guarding a plastic collection bin filled with the abandoned lesson slates recently belonging to the boys and girls already seated for the test.

  She tilts her head toward the bin. I look at the slate in my hand. I’ve had it since I was five. Ten years, the same device. I remember the morning my first lesson blinked on the screen—a reading challenge titled Hear Tommy Talk. The lessons came fast then, a new lesson with each one completed. I graduated from reading and writing to linguistics. Then to social sciences, anthropology, even some pre-Holocene II history. The natural and applied science lessons came next—math, logic, chemistry, physics, geology, biology, engineering—all leading to lessons on the complex systems that support and maintain our life down here in Holocene II.

  But it wasn’t all work.

  I read in my free time, too.

  Poetry, novels, plays. Everything I could download about the old world above. By the time my last lesson blinked off the screen three days ago, I had nearly finished every title in the Foundation library. My dad says all that reading just makes me wish for things that no longer exist, but I cherish those hours spent dreaming. This slate has been my constant companion, my window into new worlds, my only escape.

  I place it in the bin, where it joins the others, becoming just another indistinguishable LCD screen framed in stainless steel. Some kid had it before me—some kid will have it after.

  Everyone’s eyes are on me as I walk to an empty test chair. When I sit, their heads swivel again to stare at the blank screen at the front of the testing room. I recognize them all, even from the back of their heads, but I can’t call any of them my friends. I just never fit into any of their cliques. Today I’m glad for that, though, because after this test, most will be staying here, but those who don’t score well will be going down to new levels.

  The mood is edgy. Everyone knows how serious today is. Not only is it a family disgrace to move down, but we’re not allowed to visit other levels.

  The elevator door slides open. I turn with everyone else to watch the latecomer enter. Red steps off, steaming. His chest is heaving, his fist clutching his slate, his face and neck stained a bright and shocking green. His eyes scan the room and bore straight into me. I don’t know what to do, so I just smile. He chucks his slate into the bin and stomps to the only empty seat, one r
ight behind me. I can feel his hot breath on my neck, hear his heart thumping. Recalling my father’s advice, I breathe good energy in, breathe bad energy out, and force myself to forget Red for now and focus on the task ahead.

  The lights dim. The screen fades from black to gray and the Foundation crest comes on: a shield of three interlocking triangles, a valknut of bound belief, a holy trinity of science representing nature above knowledge and humankind. It was one of my very first lessons, of course.

  The crest fades and is replaced by our founder’s face. The one, the only Dr. Radcliffe. His expression is stern but kind, his jaw well defined below a pointed nose, his bright blue eyes, his head of gray hair cut close and combed to the side. Of course, he’s dead now. Or in Eden, I should say. I think he was around 60 when he retired. How long ago now? Forty-five generations, maybe. Almost 900 years. My dad says he could have served the Foundation better by staying on until he died naturally, but the lessons say he didn’t think it was fair to ask the other men to go to Eden unless he was willing to go first himself.

  “Good morning, future citizens,” he says. “I’m Doctor Robert Radcliffe, your Foundation President when this was recorded; your President Emeritus living on in Eden today.”

  He blinks three times and pauses. Even though I know I’m watching a recording from almost a millennium ago, something in his voice makes me sit up straight in my chair.

  “If you’re seeing this, you’ve achieved a great and noble accomplishment already by reaching near human adulthood. Let me sincerely wish you a happy belated fifteenth birthday, and, for today’s undertaking, good thinking and good luck.”

  Blink, blink, blink—his blinking must be a tic.

  He continues talking and blinking:

  “We all must make sacrifices to keep our species alive and thriving here in Holocene II. With only so much space for us to live and yet so very much for us to do, we offer our productive years to the community in exchange for an eternity of bliss. And I’m proud to be the first of us to offer my space, as I am recording this message on the eve of my own retirement. The first to go to Eden. I want to assure you, there is nothing in biology that indicates the inevitability of our death beyond the limitations of these bodies that carry our brains.”