Some Fine Day (4 page)

There are tiki torches burning all along the shore, and about a dozen tables with white tablecloths and elegant flowery centerpieces. Most of the adults have gathered at the open bar in the welcome center. My mother is chatting animatedly with René, or maybe Rebekah, and my father, as predicted, has gravitated towards the chief of security, a stocky man in his late forties with dreadlocks and an amiable expression. They appear to be hitting it off.

I notice a couple of guys with earplugs and bulges under their sports coats hovering in the background. The rest are probably in the trenches, looking at girly mags and eating synth spam.

The sun is low, and the color of the sea has changed to a darker blue streaked with copper and gold. My first sunset.

I suddenly don’t want to go back down, not ever, and the feeling is so strong that my heart starts to beat really fast and my chest hurts. I know we can’t stay. It’s impossible. The storms terrify me. But still, I want to, I want to so bad. We’re not supposed to live down there, I think. We’re supposed to live up here.

“Hi gorgeous,” Jake says, handing me a glass of juice with a little umbrella sticking out of the top. He makes a show of looking me up and down. “Very alluring, though I’ve always been partial to a woman in uniform.”

I think about confiding in him. Reject that idea immediately. He’s not built to think outside the box.

“Especially when she drop-kicks you like a can of beans,” I say instead.

He laughs. “Yeah, especially then.”

We hold hands and watch the sun sink below the horizon.

“Jan, do you ever think about when training is over?”

“All the time.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

I keep quiet. I’m not sure where he’s going with this. Everyone knows we have no control over our cell assignments, and they’re kept secret until after graduation. Once we’re in the field, contact with family and friends is minimal.

“What if we could work together?” Jake says. He’s wearing a white button-up shirt with a navy blazer slung over one shoulder. His skin glows caramel in the twilight.

“You know that’s not going to happen.”

“But what if we could?”

“I don’t know. Why are you asking me this?”

He shrugs. “Just wondering.”

“That would be great,” I say.

The truth is, he’s my protector, and we both know it. Before Jake came along and took an inexplicable interest in me, the bullying by other cadets was merciless. Now it’s tolerable. I’m grateful and all, but I wonder if maybe he’s as infatuated with my father as he is with me. He seems to take my devotion perfectly for granted too, like I’ve won the lottery or something. And now that my eight years of hazing are almost over, I just want to move on. Leave the Academy – and maybe Jake, too – behind and start fresh. Part of me feels disloyal. But another, bigger part is ready for something different. Not just ready, if I’m being honest.
Craves
something different.

“You don’t sound like you mean it,” he persists.

“OK, fine.” I turn to him, suddenly annoyed. I didn’t want to do this now, but I’ve thought about it a lot lately and he needs to hear it. “The reality is, we’re going to get our teams, and go do our jobs, and someday you’ll marry a very nice lady and have lots of kids and you’ll be bringing them on nice vacations like this one.”

He lets go of my hand.

“That’s bull.”

“I’m not the one you want to end up with, Jake. Trust me.”

“Why not?” His eyes narrow, and I know I’m wounding him, but I can’t stop. “Just tell me why not.”

“Because you’re a dog and I’m a cat,” I say.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

We’re the elite of the elite, Jake and I. He’ll make a fine field agent someday. He has a perfectly rigid value system and plays by the rules, always. I can’t imagine him refusing a direct order to do anything. Anything at all. That’s one way we’re different.

“It means that as much as I appreciate what you’ve done for me, we’re about to graduate and go our separate ways. I didn’t make the plan. That’s just how it is.”

“Wait a second.” He shakes his head. “Appreciate what you’ve done for me? And what is
that
supposed to mean? I thought you cared about me. I thought. . .” He trails off. “I don’t know what I thought. But it sure wasn’t that you think I’m doing you some kind of favor.”

“I didn’t say that. It came out wrong. Look, can we not fight about this?”

I like Jake. I do. He’s smart and handsome and loyal. But there’s something missing. He never seems to suffer from a single shred of self-doubt, for one thing. He’s like one of those lizards I read about in biology that change color to blend with whatever they’re standing next to. Jake lives in a world of absolutes, black and white, us and them. I envy him that sometimes. It must make life a lot simpler.

“I go out with you because I like you, Jan. I thought you felt the same way.”

“I do,” I snap, suddenly tired of the whole conversation. The truth is, my feelings for him are so conflicted and mixed-up that I can hardly make sense of them myself. “I just have a lot more on my mind than our relationship at the moment.”

He looks at me long and hard and walks away.

In retrospect, I probably could have handled that better.

Jake is polite but cool to me at dinner. We’re sharing a table with Dr Rebekah and her assistant Miles, a strapping lad of about twenty-five who keeps sneaking glances at me underneath his long dark eyelashes, which doesn’t escape the notice of Jake. Rebekah has a dual degree in biology and weather sciences, mainly so she could get on the surface trips, and she’s captivating the table with factoids about the hypercanes.

After a while, even Jake stops pouting and gets into the conversation. It’s his favorite subject, after all.

“So how close have you ever gotten to one? I mean, personally?” he asks, sawing into a steak like it's his last meal on earth. I watch him chew his meat and wish I wasn’t sitting right across the table from him. It’s amazing how physical attraction can do a one-eighty under the right circumstances. Did I seriously used to let this guy put his tongue in my mouth?

I’m greasy and stuffed, and it’s only the second course. The new sandals are chafing my feet, so I kick them off under the table and plunge my toes into the cool sand. After living in combat boots for the last eight years, it’s pure heaven.

“Once we took a mole up into Megaera’s eye,” Rebekah says. “It’s about two hundred miles across, but still a tricky operation since she’s travelling fast.”

Jake almost pees himself. “You were in the eye?”

Rebekah smiles. “I saw the wall. It’s so high, it actually punches through the stratosphere.”

“That’s badass.” He looks at my father. “I mean, very cool.”

“It was,” Rebekah agrees.

“What about Tisiphone? I never really understood why she doesn’t move like the others.”

“That’s a good question. Tisiphone is the smallest, of course, and the only one located in the northwestern hemisphere. No prefectures below, no islands above, just open ocean. She’s pinned down by opposing jet streams that let her rotate but hold her more or less in place.”

Waiters arrive, replacing the steak with a creamy bisque and sautéed asparagus with lemon. Wine glasses are refilled. I stick with ice water. The rich food and gentle surf sounds are making me sleepy. It feels like a hundred years since I carried my bags to the car this morning.

“Have you ever considered a career in private security? Plenty of surface time,” Rebekah says.

“We’ve invested too much training and money in this kid to let him go,” my father interjects. “Besides, Jake’s a company man, right?”

I don’t like the look that passes between them. It’s conspiratorial.

“So Miles, what’s your specialty?” I ask, and he blushes furiously.

“Biosciences,” he says. “Animal genetics. Cross-breeding.”

“I hear that’s a hot field right now.”

Jake scowls and takes a big sip of red wine. He’s still a year below the drinking age, but no one seems to care tonight. I just hope he doesn’t get drunk and do something stupid.

“Yeah, it is,” Miles says. “I work mostly with sheep and pigs. Modifying the genome for optimal survival in subterranean conditions. We’ve made some progress with fruit bat DNA, but it’s still in the early stages.”

It turned out farm animals don’t do very well underground. In fact, the majority of them die before reaching adulthood. No one’s exactly sure why.

“Sounds fascinating,” I murmur.

He blushes again.

“We brought Miles along in case we run across any interesting life forms,” Rebekah says. “Not many big mammals left, but there are some avian and insect species that appear to have adapted.”

And the toads, I think. They’ve adapted.

“I bet there’s more we don’t know about. Ecosystems are more resilient than you’d think,” Miles says. “Of course, the food chain was radically disrupted. But look at the gulls. They’re still here.”

I remember their sharp eyes, watching us. Tough little buggers.

Later that night, Jake stumbles tipsily up to my tent. He looks lost and sad, so far from his normal cocky self that I feel guilty and let him in against my better judgment.

“Why are you acting this way?” he says, collapsing onto my bed and staring up at the canopy.

“What way?”

“You know.”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” I say, already regretting my decision.

“Like you don’t care.”

“You’re drunk, Jake,” I say. “And if my dad catches you in here, he’ll kill us both.”

I’m really starting to wish he hadn’t been invited on this trip. At school, there’s no time for reflection. We’re too busy training in black ops and hostage extractions and how to kill a man with our bare hands in a hundred different ways. Jake and I have our routine – eating together in the mess hall, spending the one hour of evening downtime watching the storms in the rec room (his idea of a perfect date), sneaking kisses between class – and I don’t really question it. But spending entire days with him up here. . . I’m having major second thoughts about our relationship.

“Your dad loves me,” he slurs.

“And vice versa, I’m sure,” I say tartly. “But you still need to go back to your own tent.” I peek out the flap. “Oh my God, someone’s coming. Move! Hurry!”

I grab him by the arm and drag him to the door.

“Can I at least get a–” he says, lips puckering, as I give him a mighty shove between the shoulder blades.

I listen to his muttering fade into the distance, until I’m sure he’s not coming back.

The rest of this vacation is going to be seriously awkward, I think as I crawl under the covers.

After breakfast, I go swimming again, and this time I figure out the rhythm of the waves and don’t get bashed around so much. My eyes are adjusting well without the contacts. The weather is perfect, bright sun and puffy white clouds. I find a patch of smooth sand and lie there for a while, just watching them drift overhead. The sky is so
huge
.

“I’m glad you’re getting a chance to see the real world,” my mom says, dragging a plastic chair up beside me and settling in. She’s wearing a plain white one-piece bathing suit and big straw hat and looks about a decade younger than her thirty-eight years. It’s easy to see why my dad’s still madly in love with her.

“God, the last time I was on the surface I was only four,” she says. “The thing I remember the best is my dog, Jimmy. He was a Shepherd-Rottweiler mix. My father would take us to the park on Sunday afternoons. Once we got caught in a big lightning storm – they seemed to come more and more frequently, sometimes out of a clear blue sky. Poor Jimmy was so scared, whining and hiding between my father’s legs. But not me. I thought it was the most exciting thing. Like a fireworks display.” She closes her eyes and sighs. “We packed up and moved below a week later.”

“What happened to Jimmy?” I ask.

“My parents said he couldn’t come. No room. I cried for a month.” She smiles wistfully. “I still think about that dog sometimes. I wonder what happened to him. If he found a way to survive.”

Most often when I hear about the Transition, it’s just this big abstract thing that happened. It hardly even seems real that people once lived up here. My father’s never spoken of it to me, not about himself personally, and this is the first time I can recall my mother telling a story about it. I always figured they were too little to remember much. But now I think about Mom’s dog, imagine him wandering the streets, alone and scared, and it suddenly makes it real in a way that years of dry history lessons never did.

“Hey, let’s go into the jungle tomorrow and gather some samples to take back,” she says, noticing my troubled expression. “I’m dying to see what kinds of plants have migrated to this latitude.”

“Plants migrate?” I reapply sunscreen and flip over onto my stomach.

“Of course. Most thrive within a narrow temperature range. When it gets too hot, they seek out cooler climates, just like animals. But as their territories shift, they encounter new species, so it can get complicated. We scientists call it ecosystem reshuffling.” She sees my eyes glazing over and laughs. “Call it a mother-daughter hike, OK? We need to catch up.”

“Sure, mom, Sounds fun.”

I glance past the beach volleyball net to where Jake is napping in the shade of a palm tree. He looked a little green at breakfast and I’m relieved he’s keeping his distance.

Five days left. I try not to think about it, because the thought of getting back into the mole, this time with my seat at a slight
downward
tilt, makes me deeply depressed.

I lift one strap of my bikini and see a faint line. By God, I’m starting to get a tan.

Jake is already brown, but he was born that way. I wonder how many generations it will take before the melanin is leached out of all of us for lack of any evolutionary purpose, and we all look the same, a bunch of pasty cave-dwellers. That thought, too, is depressing.

“What’s with the long face?” my father booms, leaning down to kiss my mother on the forehead. He’s a big, energetic man with thick, still black hair, crinkly blue eyes and a square jaw. At home, I’m used to seeing him either in uniform or dark, conservative clothing. Today, he’s wearing mirrored sunglasses and a garish floral-patterned shirt. It’s a completely surreal image.