The Fox Inheritance (19 page)

"You lived in a greenhouse?"

She laughs. "No. The house burned down forty years ago. That's when I moved here. This place actually suits me better."

I look out at the pond and then back at her house, which almost looks like it's growing out of the landscape too. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Kara was all over Whitman like he was the one who invented words, but you were always more about Thoreau. Looks like you've found your own Walden here."

She grins. "You remember that?"

"I remember a lot. There was Dickinson. Millay. You and Kara had a long list of favorites." I look into her eyes for a second or two longer than I should, and she looks away.

"The house was left to me by the man whose art you saw on the wall, but I've continued to maintain the greenhouse over on the other side. That used to be Lily's. Come on. I'll take you over. There's something you need to see." She grabs my hand and pulls me down a gentle incline toward some woods. "There's a bridge this way we can use to cross." At the edge of the woods is a large wooden bridge that spans a small waterfall where the pond overflows into a briskly running creek. "This creek was just a trickle when I moved here--I could walk across on the stones--but construction upstream channeled more runoff into the stream that feeds it. It's especially bad after storms like the one we just had."

"Is this the pond where you..."

"Yes. I threw all three uploads right about there." She points to the center of the pond.

"You must have had quite an arm to get them out that far."

"I was desperate and determined. I wanted to make sure I threw them where my parents couldn't get to them, at least until..." She hesitates. "Until they were no longer viable. My father said that once they were removed from their battery docks, it would take about thirty minutes for the environments to stop spinning."

I stare at the glassy surface, trying to see it the way Jenna did.
It was a different time
. Trying to see it as a way out instead of as an ending. Thirty minutes was all it took. That's barely a blink compared to all the time I spent on a warehouse shelf. What did the other me think during those last minutes? Was he glad? Was I glad? Which one was,
is
, the real me? Both? A shiver runs down my arms, and I look away, which Jenna takes as a signal to move on.

We cross the bridge to the other side, and I get a closer glimpse of the remains of the house. "How did it burn down?"

She looks sideways at me and then at the ground. "A wildfire." I can dissect a quick glance with Jenna as well as I can with Miesha. Jenna's natural state was always reserved and calm--and careful. Like me, she grew up as a pleaser. But in a two-second glance beneath all her serenity, I see fury. It passes quickly. She probably doesn't even know I saw it. I doubt that her Bio Gel has all the abilities of my BioPerfect. I'm just beginning to realize I need to tap into its strengths more often. I can't ever be just who I was. I may as well make the most of whatever I am now.

I look at the rubble of what must have been an amazing house at one time. "With all the Fox fortune, I'm surprised you didn't rebuild."

She frowns. "There is no Fox fortune. At least not anymore." Her steps hesitate for just a second. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I still have both of these properties and a lot of adjoining acreage that I acquired over the years. That's more than many people have, plus I have a small income from some investments I've managed to hang on to. And with the money from the herbs and vegetables we sell, we get by."

I didn't see that coming in her glance. The Fox fortune was in the tens of billions. Maybe by today's standards, trillions. Where could it all have gone?

I guess I underestimated her Bio Gel, or maybe it is just old-fashioned perceptiveness, but she seems to have read my thoughts. "That's why I brought you over here. To explain a few things." We're almost at the greenhouse when the girl I saw at the market yesterday with Jenna emerges with a flat of seedlings in her hands. The small child who pried my eye open this morning bounces out right behind her with a smaller container of seedlings of her own. They spot us and walk over.

"Allys and Kayla, I'd like you to officially meet my friend Locke."

Allys grins. "We met last night, unofficially, though you wouldn't remember. You were a little woozy. Glad to see you're feeling better."

Did she help Jenna undress and bathe me? With my size and weight, Jenna couldn't have done it all by herself. My neck flashes with heat. "Nice to meet you. Officially. Thanks, for, uh--" I turn my attention to the little girl. "Nice to see you again too, Kayla. As you can see, I'm not dead."

"Good. You can help us with these."

Jenna exchanges a glance with Allys. "Not right now, Angel. Maybe later."

"Come on, Sweet Pea," Allys says, and begins walking away. "This lettuce needs your special touch."

Kayla chases after her, and Jenna looks after them both, smiling.

"How do you know them?" I ask.

Jenna turns, and we continue toward the greenhouse. "Allys is an old friend. A very old friend. She lives here with me now. And Kayla"--she reaches for the greenhouse door and pulls it open--"she's my daughter."

I stop halfway through the door. I can't hide my shock, and she smiles. "Come on, Locke, it's not that unusual. I may still look like the sixteen-year-old that you knew, but I
have
been around for a while. I haven't been sitting gazing at my navel all this time."

I nod like an idiot and then blurt out a question before I can even think about it myself. "Are you married?"

"I was. Ethan's been dead now for a hundred and ninety years, but we were married for seventy. He was a good man."

The numbers aren't adding up in my head. "But Kayla's only--"

"I was illegal the entire time Ethan and I were married. It didn't seem right to bring a child into our way of life. But we had saved everything that was necessary for a child if either of us ever felt the time was right. I had to use a surrogate for obvious reasons, but Kayla is one hundred percent ours."

"You've been alone for a hundred and ninety years? You never married again?"

She shakes her head. "It's hard enough to lose one husband. There have been a couple of people over the years...." She leans back against the door. "The thing is, Allys is just as old as I am. She was saved with Bio Gel about the same time I was. I've watched her outlive six husbands and what she's gone through each time. That's not for me. When you're like us, saying good-bye becomes a way of life, but I couldn't deliberately do that to myself over and over again like she does. She says she's done for good with love now, but it's only been six years since her last husband died. Give her time." She walks through the door, and I follow.

"So you're done for good?" I say to her back.

She pauses mid-step and shakes her head, then turns to face me. "I've learned never to say never about anything. The world proves me a liar every time I do. But I know I'm done with saying good-bye." She throws out her hands, sweeping them toward the plants. "So, what do you think?"

Nice change of subject, Jenna. That's what I think. I look around the greenhouse. Lots of plants. Green. Warm and wet. Woven hemp mats down neat rows of green stuff. All nice, but hardly important to me right now. I look back at her. She isn't getting it. The clock is ticking. I don't have time for tours or to admire her hobby. There's a madman after me and Kara. Not to mention, I haven't even begun to scrape the surface on all I need to say. One short conversation doesn't wipe out decades of wondering. I can't pretend enthusiasm. Not right now. Not even for Jenna. "It's a greenhouse, all right."

"Exactly. That's just what I wanted to hear." She grabs my hand. "Come on." She pulls me toward two rows of thick palms. Fronds whip at my face as we make our way down the path between them. Halfway down, she stops and faces me. "If you need to hide for some reason, this will be a safe place to come."

I look at the palms. They provide some camouflage, but I think I could do better in the woods past the bridge.

"Lift," she says, pointing to a corner of a hemp mat.

"Here?" I lift a corner and see that the ground beneath the mat is not dirt. There's a metal plate with a recessed latch. I pull on the latch, and a three-foot square of floor swings away, revealing a staircase.

"Before the Fox fortune was all gone, I did manage to make a few improvements around here. Let me show you."

She leads and I follow her down the dark stairwell.

Chapter 47

The room below is about a quarter the size of the greenhouse. On one side are three cots and some shelves that are dusty and empty. On the other side is a Net Center with two stations, neither of them operating. Covering it all is a thick layer of dust, like the room hasn't been used in a long time. I learn it hasn't.

"For years, Ethan and I worked down here to help others like me obtain new identities and find some semblance of a life. After Ethan died, I became braver. Maybe I just felt I had nothing to lose. I showed up at a Congressional hearing on the FSEB and announced who I was." She tells me about the Federal Science and Ethics Board, some government agency I probably learned about in school but never paid attention to. I should have. They were the ones who had decided she was illegal based on a point system of replacement parts.

"I was taken into custody and spent a year in what they called detainment. Same thing as jail, but with none of the rights. But I already had all the groundwork in place before I made my move. I felt the time was ripe, and I had given all of my information to a Congressman Peck, who championed my cause. And I had plenty of hired guns ready--publicists--who were armed with enough video--all the good of me, all the bad of the FSEB, and press releases that never quit--that the FSEB hardly knew what hit them. They never could catch up. I have to say it was probably the best campaign in history. Of course, like I said, the time was ripe, the public was ready. It was the beginning of the personal privacy era. Other than public space ID, all personal tracking information and devices were being outlawed. The heavy hand of the FSEB was already crumbling--this just brought them down faster. In the end, the campaign came together in a moment that would have made my mother proud. It was as dramatic and well-choreographed as the climax of a ballet. At the height of the hearings, Allys walked in leading forty other Bio Gel recipients who had gone over the FSEB's quota system, all fine, upstanding citizens of the country. That did it. The FSEB came tumbling down, and new standards were adopted."

"And you were the new standard. Ten percent." I try to keep my voice flat, but the strain comes through just the same. I step over to a dusty Net Center and draw a smiling face on one of the tables with my finger.

"
Locke
--"

I whip around to face her. I want to walk over to her. I want to take her face in my hands. I want to kiss her the way I always wanted to back then but was too afraid to try. I want her to feel my lips pressing against hers and then hear her say that Locke Jenkins isn't human.

But I'm good at changing subjects too. "So that's when you abandoned all this?"

She peers sideways at me, looking just like the sixteen-year-old Jenna that I used to trail after like I was a lost puppy. She is so much the same, but so different too.
She's been married. She has a child. For God's sake, she's not a freaking virgin like me.

She had been living while I was waiting to live.

"Yes, that's when I abandoned it," she finally answers, but I know there's more to her hesitant reply. Not quite a lie, not quite the truth. Something she is not willing to tell me. Silence and stale air hang between us. I nod awkwardly for no reason at all, just to fill the space.

Her hands drop to her sides, and she bites her lower lip. She looks at me like something is knotting inside of her. "I was up all night last night," she says. Her hand shakes as she reaches up to brush hair away from her face. "Once I got you settled, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. I couldn't get it out of my mind. What's been done to you, it's my fault. The way my parents worshipped me--I never thought--" She shakes her head. "My father never meant to hurt you and Kara. Maybe he should have known, but he had no idea about Ash." She begins pacing, and word after breathless word races out of her. She is looking at the ceiling, her feet, everywhere but at me. "It was my mother's idea. They had already scanned my brain, because you know my parents, they would never let me go, but day after day, my mother saw your parents at the hospital, and she couldn't bear to see what they were going through, and she begged my father to scan your brains too just in case--"

"
Jenna
--"

She spins around to face me, her blue eyes fixed on mine, and whispers, "How did you do it, Locke? How did you survive for two hundred sixty years? I was only there for eighteen months, and it haunted me for years. It still--" She stops abruptly, shaking her head like it is too painful for her to imagine. Now she looks like the Jenna I knew. The Jenna who was sometimes frightened. The Jenna who held my hand and was as uncertain about life as I was. The Jenna who had more questions than answers.

That's something I'm still short on. Answers.

How did I do it?

She stares at me, unblinking, waiting.

I don't know how I survived. I'm not sure I did. I'm not the Locke I was.

I went where I had to go ... I survived on gulps of memory ... scraps of touch ... a good kind of quiet ... a peace. I went to be with my memories....

"Kara. And you. That's how I survived. You were with me."

Her head tilts slightly like she's confused.

"My memories, Jenna. I heard you once. You cried out to me before you left. I knew you were there. I looked for you, and when I couldn't find you, I remembered. You walked with me. You talked to me. '
My eyes, Locke, look into my eyes, and you will see the sky
.' That's what you told me when I couldn't remember its color anymore. You, Jenna. That's how I survived."