The Wall Around Eden Read online

  “Breathe, breathe,” murmured Becca.

  Ruth’s breathing was good and regular, about every five seconds. It sounded like a mid-phase contraction.

  “Active labor, four centimeters.” Isabel’s mother, Dr. Marguerite Chase, spoke for the first time from behind the tray of instruments. “Looks like a hole in one.” She meant, the head had plenty of room to descend. Marguerite had Isabel’s dark complexion, her African features unusual in this town, with tight waves of black hair caught in a green surgical cap. Her busy hands were red and chafed from incessant hand-scrubbing; the doctor could not risk spreading infection when the nearest batch of ampicillin might be a continent away.

  Isabel crossed the room to bathe her own hands in disinfectant. Ruth’s breathing quieted as the contraction subsided, and she paced across the room to relax. Isabel nodded to the remaining two women seated in the corner: tall Liza Scattergood, and Grace Feltman, the orphaned “Special Child” whom the Scattergoods had taken in. Despite the heat, both Liza and Grace wore “plain dress,” a long skirt of gray home-spun with the hair pinned back in a white cap. Grace was the only survivor born during the Death Year. Two years older than Isabel, she had reached a mental age of five. As Daniel appeared in the doorway at last, Grace flashed a broad smile and clapped her hands. Daniel taught the children in Sunday School.

  What had possessed Liza to bring her, Isabel wondered. Grace’s presence would hardly be a comfort at a birth.

  “Good evening, Friends,” Liza spoke in a firm voice. “Grace was so anxious to come,” she added, as if answering Isabel’s unspoken question. “She loves the little babies.”

  “Good evening, Liza,” said Isabel. Liza’s remark troubled her. By age eighteen, they said, you had to start the babies since two out of four would not make it to adulthood. Even then, you would not live to see them grow up. That was the fate of those born since Doomsday.

  But Isabel had other plans. Isabel wanted to go to the Sydney Uni, to get a real education, as her mother had. For now, she studied physics with Teacher Matthew, and even Latin when the elders insisted.

  “Water,” Ruth asked hoarsely. Marguerite nodded, and Liza got up to pass her an ice chip.

  “Isabel, dear, please check the autoclave,” Marguerite called to her daughter. The buzzer had blown a couple of years ago and had not been replaced.

  Isabel dutifully went to check, passing Daniel, who followed her down the hall. “Ruth is okay,” she assured him. “You can go home now,” she added reluctantly.

  “That’s okay, I’ll stay and help.” His eyes were so wide and hopeful.

  “But tomorrow’s Sunday; you teach. You need your strength.”

  Daniel looked away, and the dim light from the birthing room cast jagged shadows over his face. “That is true. Good night, then.” He touched her arm, then left. She looked after, wishing she had let him stay.

  The autoclave had been installed in the bathroom several years before. Sparks of color played across its steel handle, reflected from the ghastly light show out the window. Isabel turned the handle; the cross bars pulled in and the steam hissed as it escaped. Gloves on, she reached inside for the contents, sterile linen and bottles of saline in case they needed an IV.

  The red indicator light went dark. Isabel blinked. “Mother?” she called, looking down the hall, which was dark.

  “The power’s gone,” Marguerite called back.

  Isabel flicked on her penlight and raced downstairs, trying not to stumble. In the cellar, the circuit breakers were still on. It was just as she feared; the autoclave had overdrawn the solar storage. She switched on the diesel generator, thinking at this rate Gwynwood would have to go without electricity for a month to save for the winter. Physics by candlelight.

  In the birthing room, now, Ruth lay on her back in the bed, taking rapid shallow breaths, with Becca on one side and Liza on the other. “Breathe, breathe, breathe,” murmured Becca, much faster now. Ruth was in transition now, the baby’s head entering the birth canal.

  “Oh,” Ruth sobbed, “I can’t go on, I—”

  “All right,” said Marguerite, “you can push now.”

  Ruth’s face went taut with strain as she pushed with each contraction. At the perineum a round patch of baby scalp appeared. As Ruth cried out, the head emerged.

  Isabel swallowed hard, and her stomach knotted with fear despite herself. The Wall that kept people in did not keep radioactive poisons out, even after twenty years. What if the baby was deformed, limbless like her best friend in school, or, worse, like Grace? Liza should not have brought Grace, she thought again.

  Then suddenly there was the wrinkled little creature hanging by its feet from Marguerite’s fingers: the one hundred forty-second citizen of Gwynwood. It let out a squeaking cry, and a stream of urine projected out from its tiny organ.

  “Well, at least that part’s okay.” Marguerite nodded to Isabel to take care of the umbilical cord. Isabel stripped the cord between her fingers back toward the baby, to save the extra blood, then she clamped it twice. Then Marguerite laid the little boy on Ruth’s chest, where he quieted and opened his eyes, staring.

  Isabel held up the pan for the afterbirth, a dark mass like a muddy fist within the pale torn sac of the amnion, the vessel that had enclosed its occupant for nine months. An amazing piece of engineering, insubstantial yet as sturdy as an airwall.

  “Just as I thought,” said Marguerite, “a hole in one.” She grinned and hugged Isabel around the shoulders.

  Everyone cheered, though they knew, of course, that faulty genes might not appear for years. The little bundle was passed from hand to hand, even Grace getting to hold him briefly above Liza’s protecting arms. Then he settled to nurse for just a minute before falling asleep.

  Liza opened a hamper of dinner for Ruth, lentil pie with corn on the cob, a thermos of goat’s milk, and fresh-picked raspberries for all. Marguerite told Isabel, “You did great. You’re getting to be a real baby-snatcher.”

  Isabel smiled, warm in her mother’s praise. Still, though, to become a real doctor she would have to go to the Uni. Somehow, someday. Isabel took up the mop and started to clean the floor. She glanced at the clock; four A.M., her father would be getting up to milk the goats and sheep.

  Teacher Becca caught her arm and gently tried to pull her close, as if to whisper in her ear. “Isabel. Do you see anything?”

  “What?”

  “Outside; out the window. What do you see?” Becca had only a trace of peripheral vision left, fleeting shadows around the grayness.

  “The sky is burning again,” Isabel told her. Liza and Marguerite, too, had turned to the window, where they murmured over the spectacle, their voices low.

  Becca paused, then nodded. “Yes. Anything else?”

  Isabel approached the windowsill, uneasy for some reason. She flicked on her penlight and aimed it out the window. To her surprise, a point of light reflected from something shiny hovering outside, the mirrorlike surface of an angelbee.

  “It’s an angelbee. There’s another one, I think.” Isabel remembered that angelbees liked to look in on a birthing.

  Becca said, “I thought so. Isabel, you should come and see me again. My screen window needs fixing; the mesh is loose, and the bugs come in.”

  Watching her, Isabel smiled slowly. The last time she had gone to Becca’s place to patch the leak in her roof, Becca had left an old electronics manual in the bottom of the basket of garden squash she sent in return. Radios were forbidden, everyone knew, but Isabel had been working at one on and off ever since. Becca was on her side, about the angelbees and the Wall. She had a good head for figuring, and she must have figured out something new.

  “Of course, Teacher Becca. First thing Monday, we’ll fix your window screen.”

  II

  ISABEL AWOKE WITH her father nudging her shoulder, first gently, then more playfully as he saw she was awake. She blinked in the sunlight and stretched groggily on her cot in the garage, where she slept
on nights that were too hot for upstairs.

  Andrés Garcia was standing over her, his black hair slicked down, dressed in his much-mended best suit, which he had had the foresight to wear when he was transported to Gwynwood. He had appeared one day at the Pylon, sent there somehow by the angelbees, from Valdivia, the Wall-town in Chile. Transport was the ultimate punishment for criminals; the angelbees no longer tolerated human executions, although they had caused several billion on Doomsday. Andrés said he deserved his fate, but he never told what he had done. A model citizen in Gwynwood, he had married Marguerite and taught the town a lot about farming.

  “Dad, what about the milking?”

  “It was done long ago. You were busy pulling lambs, Belita.”

  “Right.” She smiled as she dragged herself to stand, her nightdress damp with perspiration. Andrés was the one who really delivered the lambs, and trimmed the apple trees, and tended the corn.

  “I’ve hitched Jezebel,” he said. “We’re all set for Meeting.”

  “I’m going to Mass.”

  Andrés laughed. “A Mass in la ruca!” he exclaimed, his scornful term for the Meetinghouse. “I’ll join you, if you can find a real Mass. After so many years, I’ll have plenty to confess.” He gave her a quick, bone-crunching hug, then turned to go.

  Isabel picked her way out of the garage, between the sewing machine of Anna Tran’s that needed realignment somewhere, and the Scattergoods’ attic fan, and the forbidden radio receiver in progress. It was not much, so far, just three tuned amplifiers in series with a diode detector, a circuit copied from Teacher Becca’s electronics manual. But Isabel would get it working—why not? The angelbees need never know. Still, the Town Meeting would probably send a Committee of Concern to speak to her about it one of these days. What a disgrace. Why didn’t they send a Committee of Concern to the Pylon, about what those angelbees were doing to the sky?

  Outside the sun was beating down, and the blue sky hid the deadly work of the angelbees. Isabel drew a bucket of water up from the cistern, pulled off her nightdress, and sluiced herself down. Immediately she felt much better. Perhaps it would not get as hot as yesterday. After Meeting for Worship, she would have the afternoon to work on her receiver. The Underground had set up a powerful new transmitter somewhere, according to the Sydney Herald. The Herald appeared at the Pylon each month with the medicines and other goods from Sydney. Why newspapers were allowed, but not radio, no one could say.

  She reached for another bucket of water, then noticed that the level in the cistern was low, a good ten centimeters lower than she had seen before. She paused, then put down the bucket. They would have to tighten the water rations. There was something called ground water, many meters below; maybe it should be tested again.

  Despite her parents, Isabel refused to wear special clothes for Sunday, although she did pull on a clean set of overalls; her own version of “plain dress,” she said. With that, she jumped up to the driver’s seat of the carriage, Andrés and Marguerite seated behind, his arm around Marguerite’s shoulders, stroking her hair. They knew Isabel loved driving the horse. Horses, sheep, even the field mice in the barn; animals always made more sense to her than people, somehow. They used what brains they had and did not put on airs.

  The reins drooped loosely in hand, she clucked to Jezebel, who lifted her head and swished her tail at flies. The hooves tossed up dust from the road.

  “The baby had a heart murmur,” Marguerite was telling Andrés. “I warned Ruth, before she left, to watch for distress signs. Also the head circumference was on the small side; I didn’t tell her that. Nothing she could do about it, anyhow.”

  It was understood by both husband and daughter that Dr. Chase needed someone to talk with in confidence. They were her only colleagues.

  “At least it’s a boy,” said Andrés. “Another suitor for my Belita.”

  Isabel did not reply to this ridiculous remark.

  Marguerite added, “Our water’s critical. Another week and all use will be restricted to drinking.”

  “No.” Andrés’s voice changed. “Impossible. We’ll lose the vegetables.”

  “But otherwise, we’ll lose livestock.”

  And people, Isabel added silently. She turned her head back. “When did you last test the ground water?”

  “Last month,” said Marguerite. “The level is still far too high, by two orders of magnitude. The puzzling thing is, now it’s not only strontium-ninety, but cesium-one-thirty-seven. A new leak must have opened in the ground somewhere, probably around Philadelphia.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” said Andrés. “We drink radiation already.”

  “Not ten rads a week. In a year we’d all be dead.”

  The road passed the charred remains of a house that had burned down before Isabel was born. The woods at either side sang with cicadas, and a cardinal flitted across in a flash of scarlet. Isabel turned off onto a winding trail that skirted the marshland which the angelbees had generated to fuel themselves. The mud looked mostly dried up, but above the trees Isabel saw two angelbees, shimmering in rainbow colors, a patch of sun glinting off each one.

  The angelbees would have to pick a new Contact, it occurred to her, though she felt guilty to think about Alice dying. Who would the angelbees choose? Why they had chosen Alice in the first place remained a mystery.

  “Our population is shrinking, as it is,” Marguerite continued. “Even in Sydney it’s still in decline.”

  “But the rate of loss is slowing,” said Andrés. “They say it will turn around.”

  “So they say. But there goes our ozone, or whatever’s going on up there. The truth is, I’m bearish.”

  When Isabel had been small, Marguerite had used outdated phrases from before the Wall when she did not want the child to understand. She had never lost the habit, though Isabel knew well enough that “bearish” meant things were rather desperate. Her pulse quickened, and she gripped the reins hard; Jezebel snorted and had to be calmed down.

  Maybe now the Town Meeting would face it at last, would do something. But how? What could they do?

  The horse turned a bend, and there stood the Meeting-house. It was just inside the Wall, although thankfully a stand of pines obscured the view.

  The house of worship, which Quakers called a Meeting-house and Lutherans called a Church, was a log cabin with a dirt floor, built shortly after the Wall cut off access to regular churches. Andrés called it la ruca because to him a church meant stained glass and a statue of the Virgin. To be sure, there was a small bell tower, donated by a Sydney Bible society. When Carl Dreher wanted to put up a cross, the Quakers had been scandalized. They had compromised by putting up a Star of David next to it. That satisfied all but Nahum Scattergood, who maintained to this day that he would never worship in a “steeplehouse.” Whatever its name, the survivors of Doomsday agreed that there was room for but one place of worship behind the Wall.

  To Isabel’s surprise, another angelbee floated just past the window, close enough for her to see its black eyespot rotating slowly. A nosy little creature. Was it seeking a new Contact already?

  She cast down her eyes and reined the horse in. As she stepped down, her father put his arm around her and kneaded her shoulders. “You are a woman of few words this morning.”

  “I’m thinking about the sky.”

  Andrés shook his head. “It does not pay to think too hard. You could age a thousand years in a day.”

  Inside, there were rows of benches built of crossed logs. Isabel slid into the place saved for her by her best friend, Peace Hope Scattergood. Peace Hope’s blue eyes sparkled, and curls of blond hair strayed from beneath her Quaker cap. Beside Peace Hope sat her mother, Liza, without Nahum of course. Grandmother Alice, still critically ill, was absent too. Farther down the bench sat Daniel, who had lived with the Scattergoods since his parents died of typhoid, and next to Daniel sat Grace Feltman, well behaved so far.

  Worship opened with twenty minutes or so of Qua
ker silence. The silence began, silence unbroken but for the breathing of a hundred-odd souls, and the occasional click of Peace Hope’s metal gripper-hands. Isabel nudged her as usual, and the clicking stopped.

  Now was the time to center inward, to relax one’s will and catch the Spirit. Isabel herself had never felt particularly good at “catching the Spirit.” She found herself gazing over the familiar heads and shoulders and wondering who would the angelbees choose as Contact?

  Certainly not Sal or Deliverance Brown, Isabel’s classmates at school. Nor Jon Hubbard, who flashed Isabel a bright smile which she returned with polite disinterest. Behind them sat Anna Tran and her son and daughter, whose round faces and high cheekbones marked their descent from refugees of the war Isabel’s grandfather had fought in. Anna’s house stood within view of the Pylon, and she detested its dominion. She was unlikely to be chosen by the angelbees.

  Carl and Deborah Dreher, holding their well-worn Lutheran Bibles, sat with their three children. There was six-year-old Miracle Dreher, so named because he took two days to be born, and it seemed a miracle he had ever arrived. The brain damage was minimal. The girls, Faith and Charity, had done better, and with luck the fourth now growing in Debbie’s womb would turn out the same. Debbie would be a likely choice for Contact, if they did not pick Alice’s daughter-in-law, Liza.

  Somewhere a shoe scraped on the hard earth. The air rustled, and a breeze carried in a whiff of fresh-cut grass. In the light from the windows, shadows of maple leaves made a lively dance upon the backs of the benches. Her head nodded, exhausted from the night before.

  Then it happened. Isabel’s heart beat faster, and she could not escape the sense of being overcome, the sense that something, a presence of God, had entered the room, was pouring itself slowly in. If only she could last until it filled the room, there would be an answer—