Novum: Revelation: (Book 4) (2 page)

As Jane had guessed, it took very little effort to convince his crew to go with him. Dr. Wood was the lone exception, of course. He nearly laughed out loud when Jake proposed the trip to him, then returned to his hut without further comment.

The real problem was the rest of the villagers. They called an all-hands meeting at the fire pit that evening to discuss his idea.

Eleanor, the head cook, was the first to speak up. “You’re one of us now,” she pleaded. “You can’t just up and leave us.”

“Who will help me tend the fields?” Maxwell, the eldest member of the village, asked, genuine tears welling up in his tired eyes. At least they
looked
genuine.

“We’ll only be gone a few days,” he said, “a week at tops.” The truth was he had no idea how long they would be gone. The more he thought about it, the more determined he was to locate his ship at all cost. In fact, he would have started out that very evening if they had lights to carry.

As the rest of the villagers gave their own reasons for abandoning the trip, Jake noticed that his mother was not in the crowd. He excused himself, accepting a glare from his first mate, AJ, then walked the short distance to his mother’s hut.

“Mind if I come in?” he asked when he heard her moving around inside. When she didn’t answer, he pushed the cloth door aside and poked his head inside. “Mom?”

She was sitting on her bed with her face buried in her hands but looked up and wiped her face when she saw him. “You know, that’s the first time you’ve called me that since you arrived.”

“Seemed like a little kid’s word,” he admitted.

“You were a little kid the last time I saw you,” she said then wiped her eyes again.

“Why are you crying? Is it because I want to go look for my ship, or is it something else?”

“Isn’t that enough of a reason? I’m your mother. I don’t want to lose you again.”

“How can you lose me?” he asked as he walked over and sat beside her.

“If this is about us putting pressure on you to choose a mate, I can ask the others to give you a little breathing room.”

He stood up. “It’s not about that, but now that you mention it, I would appreciate it if everyone just left me alone.”

“If you leave the village, you could get hurt,” she said, as if she hadn’t been listening. “You could fall off a cliff.”

He patted her arm and smiled. “I plan to walk down the valley, but I promise to stay off steep ledges if I find any.”

She looked at him. “Don’t patronize me, Jacob Stone. You want to head off and look for your ship, and you have no idea where it might be or how to find it. I believe you would take any risk in order to locate it. Am I wrong?”

He stood up. “Look, I think I understand your concern—”

“No, you don’t,” she interrupted. “You’ve never been a parent, so you can’t know what it’s like. What are you going to tell Becca?”

“I…I wasn’t planning to tell her anything.”

“She’s your sister, Jake. I think you owe her—”

“I don’t even know her, Mom. We’ve hardly spoken.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Listen, Mom,” he said, trying to steer the conversation back to the original topic. “I may not have had children, but there have been people in my life that I cared for deeply—”

“Who is it?” she interrupted again. “Tell me about her. What’s her name? Is she one of your crewmates?” She patted him on the arm. “See? We still have so much to talk about. You can’t just leave me now.”

“It’s just a few days,” he pleaded. He hated that he felt like a child whenever he talked to her. It was true that it would be a while until things were
normal
between them. “Look, I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll promise to be back in four days—two days out and two days back. Maybe add an extra day to look around. We’ll call it a scouting mission, just to see what we see. Even if we find something, I promise I’ll come back before pursuing it. How does that sound? Five days tops.”

She frowned. “I don’t mean to doubt you, Jacob, but I think you have too much of your father in you.”

When she didn’t continue, he asked, “What does that mean?”

She shook her head then stood up. “Nothing. I guess that I have to accept the fact that you are a grown man now. If you want to leave, none of us can stop you.”

As she walked back to the door, he wanted to stop her, to clarify that he was not leaving, exactly, just going for a long walk. He didn’t, though, because she was finally accepting the fact that he wasn’t her little boy anymore. He was a ship’s captain, after all, something neither she nor his father had ever achieved.

He took a breath and started for the door but had a sudden flashback to his life in Capitol City, where walking from one side of the dome to the other in a straight line only took a few hours. If you felt the need for a longer hike, you could walk along the supply rail that circled the city at the very edge of the dome. That might take you most of a day if you walked slowly. Now he was planning a journey of several days—nearly a week if you counted the return trip. He realized that he had no experience in how to plan for it.

He sat back down on the bed and tried to work through some of the details. His crew would be able to help with planning, especially Norman Raines, but he wanted to have a few ideas of his own worked out before he spoke with them. Should they bring supplies, even though there was probably plenty to eat and drink along the way? What if there wasn’t? Wouldn’t he feel stupid returning to his mother and her friends after just one day, hungry and dying of thirst? How mature would she think he was then?

Then something else dawned on him; what if everything went according to plan and they walked for two to three days but found no sign of his ship? No passageway to some sort of lower level where a lockout chamber might be hidden. Nothing but more hills and lakes. Would he really just give up? Turn around and head back?

“Not likely,” he said aloud then looked around to see if he had been heard. Was this what his mother meant about being like his father? Michael Stone was just a stern-looking face in his memories. He knew next to nothing about the man, and since his mother refused to talk about him, that was probably all he would ever know. Except that he was apparently like his son, but in what way? Was she implying that they were both stubborn? Unwilling to compromise? Maybe it wasn’t so negative. Maybe his mother was trying to say that he inherited his perseverance, his need to “get the job done” from his father.

He shook his head, irritated by all of the internal dialogue, and headed out the door. The meeting had apparently ended, since only his crewmates were still standing near the fire pit. “Did they make you all feel as guilty as my mother made me?” he asked before realizing it probably wasn’t the most captain-like thing to say.
Drown it,
he cursed to himself. He wasn’t their captain anymore. At least, not until he found his ship. He refused to even think the word “if.” He would find the
Rogue Wave
, if not on this trip, then the next one, or the one after that.

“They were doing a pretty good job of it, actually,” Raines said, “until your mother asked them to stop.” He leaned in towards Jake. “Even though they claim to have a ‘pure democracy’ here, your mother has more power than most. One word from her, and they all just turned around and headed to their huts.”

“That wasn’t all,” Jessie said. “Remember what they said?”

Raines snapped his finger. “Oh, that’s right. After your mother spoke, one of them, I think it was Bettina the woodworker, said, ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be back,’ and then they all nodded in unison and left without another word.”

“Let them think what they want,” AJ said. “Whatever gets them off our backs.”

Jake was feeling impatient. “So, when can we leave? Has anyone else had a chance to work out the logistics?”

AJ smiled. “You could say that.”

Jake noticed the barely concealed grins passed between the crew. “What’s so funny?”

Vee answered first. “We’re basically fully packed and ready to go.”

Jake was taken aback. “Packed? Everyone?”

Jessie reached out and touched his arm. “We’ve all been dying to go explore outside of this valley for weeks. We were just waiting for you to get better to bring it up.”

“Better?”

“You know,” Jessie said. “The hypoxia.”

He nodded his head. There was a reason he liked these people. “So, I guess I just need to get ready now.”

AJ pulled a hand-sewn cloth bag from behind a log. “Already packed for you,” she said as she handed it to him. “Like Jessie said, we’ve been ready for some time.”

He took the pack and slung it over one shoulder. He didn’t know what was in it, but he was sure it contained everything he would need. “Okay, then. Looks like we can head out tomorrow morning.”

“As early as possible,” Raines said, patting him on the back.

Jake was startled awake by AJ’s voice in his ear. “Time to go, Captain.”

It was the first time she had used that title in months—perhaps a sign that things were returning to normal between them. Without a ship to link them as captain and first mate, and with all of the pressure in the village to start “pairing up,” things between them had become pretty awkward.

It was still dark, but since Jake had slept in his clothing, it was a simple matter to grab his boots and sneak out the door without waking anyone else. He didn’t have a hut of his own yet, since those were reserved for families—another “incentive” to find a partner and start having babies.

The rest of his crew stood around the smoking embers of the fire pit, warming their hands on the coals. In the faint glow, he counted one too many shapes. “Who’s that?” he asked, pointing to the extra figure.

“Who do you think,” Wood’s voice grumbled.

Jake almost laughed. “Don’t tell me you’ve been conscripted against your will again?” he asked.

“Conscription implies going against one’s will, so your question is redundant,” he replied. “However, to answer your query, I actually volunteered to come along this time.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Jake said. “Not that I don’t appreciate your willingness to help. I hope we won’t need a doctor, but it never hurts—”

“I didn’t volunteer to help you,” he interrupted, “although, of course, if my services are needed at some point, I would certainly provide whatever assistance was necessary.”

“So, why are you coming?”

“He hates bathing in the river,” Jessie said from the side of the pit. She could barely conceal a snicker.

“Hate is such a benign word,” Wood replied. “I
loathe
it, to be honest. And don’t even ask about the lack of a proper toilet. If there is any chance of finding our ship and its precious facilities, I will gladly walk for an entire week to find it.”

Jake took note of his use of the term “our ship.” During the entire journey from Civica to Eden, the doctor had spent all of his time complaining about everything, including the temperature of the water in the showers and the smell of the toilets. As with most people, it took losing everything to make him finally appreciate what he had.

“I feel good about this,” Vee said as she walked up to stand beside Jake. “Having the entire crew together again—well, it just makes me think we’ll find our ship after all.” AJ nudged her, and she turned to Jessie. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…I meant our whole crew minus Ash, of course.”

“It’s okay,” Jessie said. “I feel like he’s here with us. Here in Eden. It’s like he’s been here with us all along.”

Jake didn’t say anything, but the memory of seeing the Isopod carrying Ash’s body off came back to him. Once he found out that it was the same creatures who had rescued his crew and carried him unconscious to Eden, he spent the next few weeks half expecting to see Ash come walking out of the hills with a wild story of how he had been rescued and healed by the creatures. That was impossible, of course. He was right there and saw the fist-sized hole in his chest. Adding what the pressure would have done to the rest of his exposed body, there was no way that he could have survived. Even fantasies had limitations.

Remembering how he felt after Stacy died, he walked over and gave Jessie a gentle hug. They had something in common. Then again, every member of his crew had lost one or more close friends or relatives in their lives. Vee was traveling with her grandfather because her parents were killed in a power plant accident. Jessie probably had it worse; her parents hadn’t died, but they had abandoned her when she was young. Ash was actually her adopted brother. AJ’s mother had died in childbirth, and she had been forced to grow up on her father’s merchant ship. It had given her a head start in the Shippers Guild, but he knew she had led a hard life.

“Death and sorrow are a part of life,” his mother used to say. He wondered if she still thought that way, living there in paradise. Would his new little sister grow up with a more optimistic view of life?

“People are starting to stir,” Raines whispered. “Best we get moving.”

Talking about a journey was easier than actually starting it, he realized as they gathered their packs and then took the west path out of the village. His eyes had become more accustomed to the twilight, but he still felt like he was blind. As dark and gloomy as the lower levels of Capitol City had been, he now realized that he had never experienced true darkness in his life. Even the stars in Eden seemed to be more for show than purpose, since they cast no light that he could detect.

As they stepped past the low rock wall that marked the village boundary, he glanced back and saw a silhouette of one of the villagers heading to the fire pit. He guessed it was Saul, one of the oldest of the Eden-born children. As he recalled, it was his day to wake up early and stir the embers and start the day’s fire.

“Fire,” he almost yelled. “What are we going to do for fire tonight?”

“Relax,” Vee said as she showed him a small bowl she was carrying. In the darkness he could just make out a faint glow inside.

“What’s in that?”

“Embers from the fire pit, surrounded by wet moss,” she replied. “It should last all day, and we can use it to start a new fire tonight.”

He patted her on the back. “That’s very ingenious. How’d you think of it?”

“Your sister taught me,” she replied. “Becca knows a lot about living off the land. I wish we could have brought her along.”

He didn’t reply, which led to an awkward silence. Eventually she sped up a bit and started walking between Jane and Jessie. When they all reached the top of a knoll, he looked back and bid a silent farewell to the village. “They’ll be back,” the villagers had said.
Not anytime soon,
he thought.

The sky steadily brightened over the next few hours, but the mood of his crew began to darken quickly. “Why are we doing this again?” the doctor quipped, stopping in his tracks.

“You didn’t have to come,” AJ grumbled over her shoulder.

“Why
did
we come out here?” Jessie asked. Jake stopped and looked at her. “I’m not just agreeing with Dr. Wood, but I honestly can’t remember why we are out here.”

“We’re looking for…” Jake started to reply but then couldn’t remember what he was going to say. He looked around the group, but nothing came to him. “What are we doing?” he asked.

Raines looked like he was going to answer but then shook his head. “I…I think we were all just going for a short walk.”

AJ stepped up. “We all have backpacks,” she said, pulling hers off her shoulder. “Seems like a lot of preparation for a short walk.”

“I’m getting hungry,” Jessie said. “If we head back now, there might still be some leftover breakfast.”

“I’m with you,” Vee said as they turned and headed back in the direction they had come from.

As the rest followed, Jake stood there a moment, wondering why he felt like he was forgetting something important. Jane looked back then returned to him. “Coming, Jake?”

He pointed to the west. “We were walking that way for a reason,” he said. “Why can’t I remember it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, but if you want to return to the village, I’m happy to follow you back.”

He shrugged and followed the others back up the trail. Several hours later, when the sun was past the noon position, they finally came to the rock wall that bordered the village. His heart skipped a beat when he saw his mother walking towards him with a large steaming bowl in her hands.

“I’m glad you’re back,” she said as he approached.

He accepted the bowl from her reluctantly. “How did you know we would be coming back?”

She smiled. “I didn’t know, but I hoped.”

He shook his head. “But your people said we’d be back. How did you know?”

She pointed to the dirt beneath their feet. “This soil is ours, Jake. That stream. That lake. Those trees.” She clasped both of his shoulders. “This valley has been our home for many years, and it’s your home now. Everything you need is here. Everyone you know is here. Why would you want to leave it? Why would anyone want to leave?”

He didn’t have an answer. Why would he leave? What could some other part of Eden give him that this valley didn’t?

As he followed her back to the fire pit, other villagers brought food bowls for each of his crewmates.

Crewmates,
he thought.
Crew. Mates.
The words rang in his mind, over and over.
Crew. Crew to what?

As the afternoon turned to evening, Jake returned to his hut before anyone else and climbed into his bed. He felt exhausted, but it wasn’t just the lengthy walk. He felt like a failure, but a failure at what? He tossed and turned and finally woke to someone snoring. It was cold as he climbed quietly out of his bed and headed for the door.

The fire pit was still burning, so he decided to head over to warm himself. He stopped abruptly when he saw the silhouettes of two people sitting next to it. He was about to turn around when he overhead one of them say his father’s name.

“He’s just like Michael, isn’t he?” Jake recognized the voice. It was his mother’s new husband, Nate.

“I’d like to think he has more of me in him,” his mother’s voice replied.

“But, I mean, what you said he saw. His ship. Michael saw the same thing, remember. Right before he left.”

Whatever she said in response, Jake didn’t make out, because he was already running towards them. “Right before he left?” he yelled.

His mother nearly fell forward into the fire as she struggled to stand. “Jake! What are you doing up?”

Jake ignored her and faced her husband. “You said my father saw the same thing as me before he left. Left where? What do you mean?”

“Jacob Stone!” his mother yelled. “Stop screaming at us.”

He glared at her. “You told me that my father never made it inside,” he spat. His face felt like it was on fire. “You lied to me. You’re nothing but a liar.” He wanted nothing more than to keep screaming at her, but then something hit him square in the face, and he went down.

As he lay on his back, staring up at the cold, useless stars, he heard his mother say, “I’m sorry, Jake. Nathan was just defending me. As hard as it is for you to understand, he’s been my husband for over ten years now. We’ve been together almost as long as I was with your father.”

Jake rolled over to his side and felt warm blood running down his cheek. Nate’s hand reached down and handed him a cloth. “Sorry, sport. I didn’t mean to hit you so hard. I’m afraid your nose is bleeding pretty badly.”

Jake took the cloth and held it against his nose while he stood up. He looked at Nate, a short but well-muscled man in his fifties. He wondered just how much worse he would be feeling if the man had decided to hit him hard. “I deserved it,” he said, “and besides, I’ve taken a good number of punches in my life. It sort of feels…
familiar
.” He looked at his mother. “I’m sorry for yelling at you. I’m really sorry for calling you a liar.”

“But I did lie to you, Jake,” she said softly. “About your father. About a lot of things.”

Jake sat on one of the big logs that surrounded the fire pit. “So, if he came in here with the rest of you, where is he? What happened to him?”

She sat down beside him and took his hand in hers. Her skin felt cold and unfamiliar. “He saw a ship too,” she said. “Our ship.”

“Where?” he asked.

“In the lake, just like you did.” Her eyes seemed to glaze over, but maybe it was just an effect of the firelight. “None of the rest of us saw it, of course. Otherwise, we might have gone with him.”

“Gone with him?” The implications of what she was telling him made his head spin. “He went to go look for your ship, didn’t he? Just like we did. Just like I did.”

She nodded. “And just like you, he came back after a few hours.”

Jake looked at the fire. “But he didn’t give up, did he? He went back.” He looked at her. “That’s what you meant about me being like my father, wasn’t it? You know I’ll try again.” She just stared at him. “How many times did he go back?”

“Four times.”

He looked back at the fire. “And on the fourth attempt, he found his ship?”

“No. On the fourth trip, your father didn’t come back.”

He stared at her for a long time. “Now I understand why you didn’t want me to go. I also understand why you’re going to try to stop me again.”

“No, Jake,” she said then wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him close to her. “I’m not going to stop you. I actually want you to go out and find him. I want you to find your father.”