A Grave Tree (12 page)

They had encountered no problems. Nobody had asked for a medical card or insurance, or inquired about their family doctor. Their explanation—that they were from the Outlands, were sponsored by the Sinclairs, and that a bike collision had been the cause of their injuries—had been recorded without as much as a raised eyebrow. It was as if people wandered in off the street all the time seeking medical treatment.

“In fact, I feel better than I did when I woke up this morning,” Caleb continued.

“Where exactly are the Outlands, and how did you know about them?” Abbey asked.

“From what I understand, they’re anything beyond the boundaries of Coventry. Simon mentioned them when I was here that night Mark and Sylvain went to the library. Apparently Coventry is so anxious for population growth that it accepts new citizens sponsored by existing citizens without much question. It seems like a great system if you ask me, especially if free medical services come as part of the package. C’mon. We’d better hurry if we’re going to meet Ian at the apothecary on time.”

Abbey felt a flutter of movement on her left and right, and two burly security guards materialized out of nowhere. They swooped in on Caleb, catching him by the arms on either side.

“Wha—?” Caleb yelped.

“I’m sorry, sir, but you’re being detained,” one of the men said. They proceeded to guide Caleb away from the front door of the hospital. Caleb stiffened and automatically tensed into a fighting stance, his fists balled and face scrunched up, but the men were bigger and armed, and they easily maneuvered him through the lobby.

Abbey scuttled after them. “Wait! Where are you taking him?”

One of the men scrutinized her, as if trying to decide whether she should be detained too. “He’s going to detention for questioning due to some irregularities.”

“What do you mean?” Abbey said.

The man shook his head, while the other man punched in a code on a keypad door just off the lobby. “We’re just security, miss. If you’ll excuse us.” Without another word, they dragged a now struggling and red-faced Caleb through the door and down a narrow hall.

Abbey stared at the now-closed door, her jaw slack with shock. What was she going to do? She had to find Ian, or older Simon, or someone who could help her. She hustled out the main door of the hospital.

The woman in the turquoise jumpsuit who approached Abbey wore a friendly smile, but she carried a tablet with a picture of Abbey on the screen.

“Abigail Sinclair?” the woman said. Her bushy dark hair was caught up in a ponytail, and her lined face flickered with crisp assessment beneath an air of fatigue.

Abbey shook her head.

The woman put a firm hand on her arm. “I know you are. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. My name is Diana, and I’m with immigration services. We accept refugees here in Coventry. We just need to get you registered, talk about your parents, if you have any, and see about finding you a foster home if you don’t. My office is only a few blocks away.”

Abbey scanned the front walkway of the hospital frantically. Could she make a run for it? Diana had started guiding her briskly down the boardwalk.

“Can I come and register later, with my brother?” Abbey said. “He’s still in the hospital. Just give me the address and we’ll come together, and no need for a foster home. We’re going to live with my Uncle Simon. He was going to register us when we hurt ourselves. This is all just a misunderstanding, I’m sure. Just call my uncle.”

The woman frowned and consulted her tablet, flipping through screens with her finger. Her eyes widened slightly, and then she shut down the tablet with a quick swoop of her thumb.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. You’re going to have to come with me. And don’t try anything or I’ll call in the authorities.”

Abbey was bracing to run, when someone grabbed her arm on the other side. She caught a whiff of floral perfume and heard the click of fingernails meeting, and she turned to see an older-looking Selena. The Selena of the future. Did this mean Selena had failed to find a parallel universe?

“Abbey, I’m so glad I caught you,” Selena intoned, before turning to Diana. “She’s with me.”

Abbey froze. What was worse? Being with Selena, who was potentially evil, or going with some unknown woman to some unknown fate in the future foster care system?

Diana stopped walking and eyed Selena in her brilliant red jumpsuit. “Who are you?”

“Selena Darby. I’m Simon Sinclair’s assistant at Salvador Systems. Just look me up. Mr. Sinclair sent me down because he’s in a meeting with Mr. Salvador. Mr. Sinclair is sponsoring Abbey and he’ll bring her in to register her tomorrow morning.” Selena gave Diana a patient but tight sort of smile. She had placed a lot of emphasis on the names. Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Salvador. But none of it made any sense. Simon worked at Sinclair Systems, not for Sylvain. And Simon would never hire Selena as an assistant.

“I’ll have to scan your chip,” Diana said.

Selena shook her head, her still-shiny dark hair sweeping back and forth over her shoulder. “I’m exempt from scans for health reasons. Just look me up on the Salvador site. You’ll see my picture there.”

“There’s been a serious security breach by someone associated with this girl,” Diana said, typing furiously on her tablet.

Selena smiled again. “We know. They were plants. It was a test of the 8.01 scan system. Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Salvador are thrilled with your response efficiency. You’ll be receiving a commendation in your file.”

Diana drew back a bit, a pleased half smile slipping over her face. “Really?”

“Really.”

Abbey wanted to shout, “Don’t believe her!” but she didn’t. Somehow a known evil, but renegade, entity seemed safer than an administrative entity. “Now if you don’t mind, Abbey and I need to get back to the office.”

Diana consulted her tablet, and whatever was on it must have satisfied her because she grunted, nodded, and stepped back while Selena hustled Abbey back along the boardwalk.

After a few feet, Abbey wrenched her arm out of Selena’s hand. “If you grab me again, I’ll start yelling that you’re a fake,” she hissed.

“Ah, but I’m not,” Selena almost purred. She didn’t grab Abbey again, but as she walked, she seemed to fill the air around Abbey in a terrifying way, like Abbey’s limbs had been put in an invisible chokehold.

“You don’t really work for my brother, and Simon doesn’t work for Sylvain,” Abbey said.

“I do, and he does,” Selena replied sweetly. “And since he was just arrested an hour ago for the murder of Abraham Dunham, and Sylvain never comes in anymore, I pretty much have full control of the office.”

*****

Slipping off had been easier than Mark had expected. He had just hung back and thought invisible thoughts, and then eventually, when the others weren’t looking, he turned and slipped into the trees. He thought he had been exceptionally crafty and stealthy.

Now Mark sat on a rock in the shadow of the grey cement wall of the Granton Dam. The last ten minutes of hiking had been arduous, and despite the cool air of this future, sweat bathed his back and forehead. The clouds had cleared, and shafts of light eased between the mountains as the sun began its evening descent. From this vantage point, he could even see the hill on the Circle Plateau that they’d climbed before Christmas, where he’d been quite absolutely certain that a waterfall, not a dam, occupied the space between the two mountains that bookended the dam. But there was no waterfall now. There was a dam, and Mark was hopelessly confused.

Here, right up against the dam—a shocking vertical edifice of cement up this close—the drop in the water level of the Moon River relative to the present was stunning. At its middle point, the Moon River looked barely waist-deep. When Mark had been to this future the last time—at least he thought it was the same future—there had been lots of water. His future self had said the water was being diverted. But who would divert the water, and why?

The mosquitos clustered around him in a humming frenzy, and Mark was quite certain he was going to go mad, both from the crawl of insects on his skin and the bewilderment that had taken over his brain.

He reviewed the facts. The Moon River in the Coventry City of the future (Simon’s future) flowed in serpentine loops, and the erosion, high water mark, and defoliation along some of its edges were clearly suggestive of flooding. The very bad man’s map marked the five-meter contour line all along the river. Mark had assumed that it was intended to mark out the areas that would be flooded. He had also assumed that the flooding had occurred because the dam had been decommissioned. (This was the most likely scenario that would precipitate flooding, although he had entertained the possibility that the dam had been blown up, or weakened somehow by an explosion of some sort. Future Caleb’s talk of a bomb that was not a bomb had led him down this path.) But here the dam still stood, and the small amount of water that flowed from the two outlet valves at the base of the dam was hardly voluminous enough to suggest the possibility of flooding.

His hunger clawed at him now, and his thoughts shifted to salami sandwiches and spaghetti and meatballs. And since he was in a future that appeared to have mostly become a jungle, with no evidence of any settlements whatsoever, it might be a long time before he found food.

In retrospect, he realized that his plan also depended on Sylvain and the others caring enough about him to come and retrieve him—which may have been a mistake. Perhaps Sylvain and the others didn’t care about him. And worse, perhaps they didn’t need Mark to get home.

A rustle in the forest caused him to leap to his feet. He scanned the edge of the tree line and the dim silhouettes of the massive evergreens that lay beyond the first row of trunks. Anything could be out there ready to devour him.

The cloud of mosquitos increased in density, and Mark wanted to rip his arms off and swing them around at the stinging creatures. Already his face, wrists, and ankles felt swollen and itchy with welts. The air around him seemed alive and frothing. The lack of food, the long walk, the dam discovery, the movement in the woods, and now the mosquitos—it was all too much. He ran in a circle, waving his arms, looking for a place to get away from the humming black scourge.

He saw it again. A flash of movement in the trees, low to the ground.

In a panic, he plunged into the river, the frigid water nipping at his feet, ankles, and then knees as he waded out into the current.

The roiling water at the base of the dam by the first outlet valve threatened to destabilize him, but it wasn’t deep, and Mark managed to keep his footing, although he wanted to yelp from the cold. The faint spray thrown into the air seemed to deter the mosquitos, and Mark made his way deeper into the river, grateful for the blessed relief from the swarming tide of black.

The water pooling near the grey wall of the dam in the middle of the river away from the outlet valve was calmer, and Mark headed in that direction. Mosquitos could not bite him underwater. Maybe he could submerge himself and be free of them altogether. Perhaps without the relentless attack of the mosquitos, he could think, and decide what to do.

He watched the edge of the forest with an intensity that made his eyes burn with dryness. Nothing had emerged, but he had the distinct feeling that something was watching him. Then again, he was prone to fits of imagination, and fits in general. It was an unfortunate aspect of his brain programming. He was just more acutely aware of his environment, of threats, and of the potential for discomfort, than other people were.

The cement of the dam remained surprisingly warm in the setting sun, and Mark placed a hand on the structure. Now was not the time to run through his mental list of the tallest dams and largest reservoirs in the world, although he started listing a few under his breath to calm himself. He needed to come up with a plan, immediately.

He glanced to the south in the direction of Four-Valley Gap. He had wanted to see it from the air, where he could fully appreciate it as a landform, not via a hike through mosquito-infested forest, but Sylvain and the others might still be there, and the people in the animal skins who lived in this future had indicated they were heading there as well.

Of course the people in the animal skins hadn’t seemed entirely friendly. (In fact, it might be them watching him from the trees right now.) But if his future self was among them, perhaps they would feed him, and he could ask his future self what he had meant about losing Luanne, and Abbey’s baby, and the fifth map. But especially Luanne.

Mark had never entertained the prospect of a girlfriend. He was just too different, too solitary. Dealing with someone else’s emotions and having to constantly try to understand how someone else was feeling seemed impossible, exhausting. And yet, if he were to entertain the possibility of a girlfriend, he had to admit that that girlfriend might look an awful lot like Luanne, who might, just possibly, know just as much about maps as Mark did.

Mark’s legs were starting to go numb; he needed to act soon. He decided that heading to Four-Valley Gap was probably the best plan from a wide variety of angles. There might be food there, and if the others were going to Simon’s future, then perhaps he would be able to go there too and start looking for the fifth map, which he apparently needed to find. (He tried not to think about the significant problem that being near his future self made him very, very sick. The very bad man had also said something about people exploding when they got too close to themselves.)

The sun reemerged from a single puff of cloud on the horizon and began to drop behind the ridge of the Circle Mountains. The upper part of the dam glowed orange, and Mark turned to gaze at it; the massive edifice of human development seemed so out of place in this almost abandoned world. He ran his fingers along the rough cement, feeling the small bubble holes and indents where tiny pebbles had fallen away. He studied the holes and indents, looking for a pattern, a face, or a coastline, or an island. Something to guide him. But the markings on the dam seemed alarmingly random, and his brain could conjure no reassuring map lines.