Isle of Man Read online

  “Level 5.”

  “Huh?”

  “He’s from down below,” I say, jumping in. “Holocene II. We grew up together.”

  “Oh,” Jimmy looks him up and down. “You’s the bully.”

  Red drops his head.

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Well that’s more’n most folks ever do,” Jimmy replies, patting him on the back. “Welcome to our little club then.”

  “Thanks,” Red says.

  “Speakin’ of apologies, Aubrey,” Jimmy continues, “I owe you one my own self.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do,” he says. “I acted like a spoilt kid. And you was right, I was wrong. It wouldn’t be right bringin’ them people up jus’ to be slaughtered out there.”

  For all Red’s apparent ignorance, he has the good sense to see what should be a private moment, and he says: “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go play with the dog.”

  Jimmy nods, handing him the string.

  “He’s a fox. His name’s Junior.”

  Red lumbers away, dragging the rabbit fur, and Junior tears off after him, yipping and swatting at it as they go.

  “Junior’s getting big,” I say, wanting to lighten the mood. “Remember when you wanted to eat him?”

  Jimmy smiles.

  “He might be my fox now, but he missed you, too. Kept lookin’ back and whimperin’ the whole time we was gone up there.”

  “Are you saying you missed me?” I ask.

  Jimmy dips his chin, then looks back up into my eyes.

  He says: “I got as far as our river. You know, where you’s almost drown. Anyway, we made camp at dusk, and no sooner had I lit a fire when that whole river got dark with a passin’ shadow. I looked up and could’ve damn near spit and hit the underside of a drone. I swear it was brushin’ the treetops. Evil lookin’, I tell ya. And I ain’t too proud to say I’s scared. I’s scared as I ever been. And the first thin’ I thought, before I even thought about dyin’, was I thought how much I wished you was there.”

  Now my eyes well up.

  “I had the same feeling here,” I say, my voice cracking a little. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “You forgive me?” he asks.

  “I couldn’t ever not forgive you,” I say.

  Jimmy laughs.

  “I think you jus’ said you’d forgive me, but I ain’t quite sure about it the way it come out.”

  We both laugh, then an uncomfortable silence follows—nothing more to say. We stand there looking after Red, as he kneels on the ground, trying to wrestle the rabbit fur from Junior’s mouth.

  After a minute or so, Jimmy says: “We’d better get on and catch up ’fore ol’ Junior there decides he likes the taste of Red better’n those awful algaecrisps.”

  The next two days pass in a blur of boredom.

  The professor spends most of his time locked away in the command center, messing with the computers. Whenever he does come out to use the restroom or get some food, we can hear a string of muffled profanities echoing across the cavern as he moves. Red proves very useful busying himself with loading the supplies into the storeroom, even though he does eat almost as much as he manages to organize. Jimmy and Hannah seem to get on fine, both treating the other with a polite distance at meal times, but I feel as though something has come between Hannah and myself. Deciding the submarine was too cramped, she moved into a sleeping room next to the professor’s, which is still just too creepy for me, since we found dead people in there, and she spends most of her awake time working alone in the lab.

  Today, I find the lab door locked as usual, and I knock for three minutes.

  “What’s up?” she says, finally opening the door, but not inviting me in.

  “Nothing. I just wanted to talk.”

  “I’m kind of busy right now. Can we talk later?”

  “Actually, I thought maybe we could get away for a bit.”

  “Get away? Where?”

  “Come on,” I say, my tone bordering on pleading. “Just say yes. It won’t take long.”

  She takes a deep breath then lets it out in a sigh.

  “Okay, but I need a few minutes to wrap up here.”

  “Cool. Just meet me at the dock.”

  Her few minutes turns into more than half an hour, and I have everything ready and am waiting long before she arrives at the dock. She sees the boat and stops.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just out for a little picnic.”

  “A picnic? Up top?”

  “Yes, up top. I need a little break from all this gray down here. And I’m sure you could use one, too.”

  Hannah hesitates, looking across the bay at the tunnel leading to the locks.

  “Fine,” she says. “But only if you promise we won’t be gone long.”

  We don’t say much until we’re out above, cruising on the lake. Most of the snow has melted away, replaced with a winter frost that catches the setting sun and sparkles like pink and gold ornaments on the trees that line the shores. The lake is calm, almost like an inverted second sky over which we fly, breaking the clouds into ripples and sending them rolling in our wake. Both our moods begin to lift, and Hannah remarks about how beautiful everything is.

  I purposely take us away from the lake house site, toward the eastern shore where I run the boat up on a bank far enough for us to step out onto dry ground. It’s cold, but invigorating. I lay out one of the foil emergency blankets and gesture for Hannah to sit down. Then I wrap another blanket around her shoulders and ask her to wait while I run for wood.

  “I’ll help,” she says.

  “No. Stay here. I’ll be fast.”

  The wave’s line of destruction is littered with limbs left behind, and although covered in a light frost, they seem to be mostly dry. When I get them arranged in front of our blanket, I realize that I forgot to ask Jimmy for his strike-a-light. But then I remember the flares, and I grab one from the boat and use it to light the fire.

  I offer Hannah a meal bar, but she laughs and waves it away. She seems much more interested in the bottle of algae ethanol I smuggled from the storeroom. I get the top off and hand the bottle to Hannah.

  “What’s this?” she asks. “No glass?”

  I recall our first dinner together, outside the lake house, beneath the mosquito net, and I remember the bottle of port and the fine crystal glasses. I feel suddenly unsophisticated. Hannah must see the shame on my face, because she laughs and passes me back the bottle and says:

  “I’m only kidding. It’s fine. But you first.”

  I tilt the bottle to my lips and take a long pull. It burns my throat and makes me feel instantly sick. Too embarrassed to show it, I control my expression until most of the pain passes. Hannah takes a swig next, and her head jerks to the side and she spews the ethanol out onto the sand. She thrusts the bottle at me.

  “Ugh! That’s terrible.”

  Relieved, I recap it and stow it away in my bag.

  Hannah opens her blanket and invites me to scoot next to her. We sit together and watch the last of the pink light fading behind the mountains where the sun has set.

  “This was a good idea,” she says.

  “Kind of cold, though.”

  “Yeah, but still a good idea.”

  A few minutes of silence pass. A coyote calls somewhere. I take a deep breath and smell the cold, pine air.

  “Hannah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know how when we first met, we kind of fell for one another really fast?”

  “Yes, I remember,” she says. “It wasn’t very long ago, although it feels like it was.”

  “Well, that’s just it. Do you think ... well, never mind.”

  “Do I think what, Aubrey?”

  “Was it too fast? Us, I mean. I’m just saying, I guess ... well, I mean it seems like you don’t really like me like you did.”

  Hannah sighs and leans into me.

  “I still like y
ou the same, Aubrey. I always will.”

  “Well, what’s going on then?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she says, her voice faraway. “It’s just been a lot. We’ve been through a lot. And, you know, you were the first boy I’d ever seen. The first person I’d ever seen, other than my parents, of course. And, well, it was kind of all set up for us. I mean by my dad ... ” Her voice fades away with her gaze, obviously thinking about her dad now.

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Maybe the idea of him,” she says. “But mostly I just miss my mom a lot.”

  There doesn’t seem to be much else to say, so we sit and watch the light drain from the sky. A duck lands on the lake not far away, its feet skipping across the surface several times before it touches down and slides to a halt.

  “Do you want to break it off?” I ask, after a while. “Break us off, I mean. Do you want to just be friends?”

  “Friends?” she asks. “But I thought we were friends. How about we just start over and take it slow?”

  I feel Hannah’s warm breath on my cold neck. I turn and our lips meet. She tastes of salt and just a faint bite of leftover ethanol. I lie her down on the blanket and kiss her. It feels nice, but my mind is thinking about other things. I’m thinking about our predicament with the drones. I’m thinking about freeing Holocene II, and about where we’ll live once we do. And I’m thinking about Jimmy. About the debt I owe him for saving my life. About how terrible it was for me to abandon him when I met Hannah. About how sad I was when he was gone.

  Hannah stops and pulls away.

  “Are you cold?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty cold.” I look up and see the sun is fully set, our fire bright against the dark blue lake. “We better get on back,” I say, standing and brushing dirt off my butt. Hannah helps me fold the blankets and gather our things.

  The sky is fully dark by the time I steer the boat into the locks again. I turn and look back as the doors close out the clear, cold night, and I catch a glimpse of our fading fire on the faraway shore, burning like a lonely candle on a sea of black. And then it’s gone.

  The minute we enter the cavern, we see Jimmy waiting for us on the dock, waving his arms frantically.

  “What is it!” I shout, pulling up to the dock.

  “The professor,” he says. “Something’s wrong.”

  When we enter the command center, Red is leaning over the professor, slapping him in the face.

  “Wake up! Wake up!”

  I push Red aside.

  “What are you doing?”

  “He won’t wake up.”

  The professor appears lifeless enough. Drool hangs from his mouth, clinging to his white, bristly stubble. His unblinking eyes stare off somewhere far beyond the walls of the room. Hannah removes a handkerchief from the professor’s pocket and touches the corner of it to his eye. He blinks instinctively.

  “He’s catatonic,” she says. “We need to get him to the infirmary for an ECT.”

  “An ECT?” I ask.

  “Just help me carry him. It’s not far. Next to the lab.”

  Red grabs the professor’s legs, Jimmy and I each take an arm, and with Hannah supporting his head from behind, we carry the catatonic old man to the door. We somehow manage to angle him through to outside, where a comedy of errors ensues over which way is left and which way is right when half of us are facing backward, until we finally agree and the whole procession heads toward the infirmary with Junior running in circles ahead of us, as if it were the most exciting game. The professor is heavier than he looks.

  Hannah has us rest the professor on a metal chair that reminds me of the dentist’s chair I used to lie in for cleanings down in Holocene II. But when she straps his arms and legs into metal cuffs, I’m suddenly reminded of Eden’s killing chair that I saw my father butchered in.

  “What are you planning to do to him?”

  “Electroconvulsive therapy,” she says, opening a cabinet attached to the chair and connecting two electrodes to the professor’s head.

  “You’re going to shock him? He made us promise not to.”

  Hannah pushes me away, ignoring my protest.

  “I don’t care what we promised,” she says. “We’re saving his life here.”

  “He made it sound like it was torture.”

  “My father would never torture anyone,” she says, stuffing a rubber bite-guard into the professor’s mouth.

  I look to Jimmy, but he shrugs.

  “How’s it work?” Red asks.

  “It induces a seizure,” Hannah says, turning the machine on and adjusting the dials.

  I shake my head.

  “And a seizure’s a good thing?”

  “In this case, it is,” she replies.

  “Well, how do you know so much about it?”

  “Because my mother had to have them from time to time, too. Stand back, please.”

  Hannah throws the switch, and the professor jumps on the table, his back arched, his limbs shaking in their cuffs. Then it’s done. Just like that, I guess. The professor looks up at us and moans, his eyes blinking with an unsettling rapidity.

  “Are you okay?” I ask him.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Aubrey.”

  “Funny name for a boy,” he says.

  Hannah grins.

  “Sometimes a little short term memory loss happens. He’ll remember you soon enough.”

  “Catherine? Is that you, Catherine?”

  Hannah removes the electrodes from his temples.

  “Hello, Professor Beckenbauer. I’m Catherine’s daughter.”

  “Well, no need to be all formal about it,” he says. “Just call me Moody.”

  “I can see why,” Hannah laughs. Then she turns to us. “Maybe you two could help me walk the professor to his room for some rest. And, Red, how about you run and get some water and meet us there? I’m guessing the professor is thirsty.”

  With the professor tucked in and sleeping, we all gather in the command center again. It’s littered with laminated maps and waterlogged journals laid out open to dry, pages torn free and arranged in odd patterns on the floor. The strange scene, coupled with the professor’s apparent psychological problems, has me believing that maybe he’s madder than we originally thought. It’s time to start thinking for ourselves.

  “You can’t even read most of this old junk, it’s so faded,” Hannah says, holding a moldy journal up to Jimmy. “Can you read any of that, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy looks embarrassed.

  “No,” is all he says.

  I thought Hannah knew Jimmy couldn’t read. I hope she’s not just being mean. The mastercode header page is up on the screens, the words spreading across the monitors and covering the entire wall. Just reading the title makes me sick:

  THE HUMAN EXTINCTION PROJECT

  “So,” Red says, scratching his head and looking at the screens, “what does ex-tink-tee-on mean?”

  “You’re reading it wrong,” I say. “You have to sound it out: ik-stink-shun.”

  “Ex-stink-shun,” he drawls. “Like something used to stink and now it doesn’t.”

  I can’t help but laugh.

  “Something like that.”

  Hannah reads the encryption key clue out loud: “‘Where man rises from the sea, in the right hand of David you shall find your key.’ What do you think it means?”

  “‘Where man rises from the sea’? Does it have something to do with evolution, maybe?” I suggest. “And who’s David? And why would the key be in his hand?”

  “Maybe it’s a volcano or somethin’,” Jimmy says.

  Hannah scrunches up her face.

  “A volcano?”

  Jimmy shrugs. “Heck, I dunno. But my pa said there was places where volcanoes rose right up from the sea. He said that’s how lots of places got made in the beginnin’.”

  “That’s silly,” Hannah says.

  “No, it’s not,” I jump in, not just to defend Jimmy, but because
I also think he might be onto something. “He actually makes a good point.”

  Hannah scoffs, “Why would an encryption key be hidden in a volcano?”

  “You tell me,” I say, irritated with her constant jibing of Jimmy. “It was your crazy dad who left the stupid clue.”

  “Jus’ forget about the volcano,” Jimmy says.

  “Does an encryption key open some kind of coffin thing?” Red asks, either more ignorant than I thought, or purposefully trying to diffuse the situation with humor. Hard to tell.

  “No,” I say, deciding he must not know what it is. “We need the encryption key to unlock the software so we can take control of the drones and stop them from killing humans.”

  “Then we can free the people below?” he asks.

  “Yes, then we can free the people.”

  He smiles.

  “Good. I miss my girl.”

  Bang! The door flies open and slams into the wall. We all spin around in unison and look. The professor stands in the doorway with a crazed look in his eyes, his wild hair appearing more electric than ever.

  “The Isle of Man!” he shouts, so loud we all flinch. Then he storms into the room and points at the screens. “The Isle of Man,” he says, again. “That’s the clue. ‘Where man rises from the sea.’ It’s the Isle of Man.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask, still suspicious of his mental state.

  “Das ist so offensichtlich, sonnenklar,” he says, so excited he doesn’t appear to realize he’s speaking some other language. “I can’t believe it took me so long to figure it out. Radcliffe used to go there all the time. And always alone, too. Not long after we launched this latest software, he ceased his visits. But it remains a black zone. As we speak, no drones can fly near it, and the ships stay a mile from its shores. Our satellite software even blurs it out when they pass overhead. Don’t you see? ‘Where man rises from the sea.’ It’s the Isle of Man.”

  His enthusiasm is catching, and I feel my pulse quicken. “Well, what about the second part? ‘In the right hand of David you shall find your key.’—?”

  The professor’s shoulders slump.

  “I’m afraid I still have no idea on that,” he mumbles.

  Worried that he’s lapsing into a mood again, I pat him on the back and smile.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “You’ve done it! You’ve solved the most important part, and we owe you big time. You might have just saved us all.”