Yula’s Ark - Chapter 11

Deputy Steadman parked the patrol car on the old logging road at the back of Tilson’s Ridge. Much of the mountain was bare now, a victim of clear-cutting. Steadman followed what used to be Tilson’s Creek, now a dried mixture of dirt and memories. He’d come here with Susan, when it was a forest, before the cut. The smell of pine had been overwhelming. Small animals had made scurrying sounds along the forest floor. Even now, Steadman could taste Susan’s lips on his. Steadman’s son Jim had been conceived here, as perhaps Steadman himself had been thirty-six years before.

Scrub grass grew in patches between the stumps. The soil blew in the breeze. Tiny streams were formed in the earth. The lumber company had promised to replant, but they’d never done it.

That was a joke anyway, Steadman knew. Forest soil isn’t all that good, most of the nutrients coming from rotting trees and plants. Strip that away and you have nothing. Sounds good–renewable resource and all that–but Nature doesn’t work that way.

“This isn’t Iowa,” Steadman said out loud, sitting on a rock, trying to make himself comfortable before he did what he had to do.

Steadman peered through his binoculars. They were back all right. One woman, twenty years old. Pretty. A middle-aged man. A young man, strong, a fighter. Just as Scott had reported.

When Steadman returned to his office, he sat at his desk and pulled open the drawer. He wiped away pens, pencils, keys, antacid tablets and a set of broken handcuffs. Underneath, phone numbers were scrawled on a yellowed sheet of notebook paper. Steadman dialed the phone and pressed it hard to his ear to hear over the shouts of protesters and townspeople outside on the street.

“FBI,” a voice answered at the other end.

Scott had never heard of most of the electronic components that Xavier named. Xavier explained their function and Scott wrote down equivalents. It was a difficult task, taxing Scott’s knowledge, putting his brain back into concepts not visited since college physics, propelling him forward into technical arenas not discovered for a hundred years. When Xavier realized Scott’s patience was wearing thin, they stopped and sat on the porch.

“The list will do for now,” Xavier said. “It’ll get me started.”

“How’d you get into this mess?” Scott asked.

Xavier shrugged.

“The usual,” he said. “Greed, incompetence, greed again.”

“Who the hell came up with this scheme to get out of it?”

Xavier sat patiently. He knew the universe he’d presented to Scott couldn’t be digested in a few short hours.

“You’re an engineer, right?” Xavier began.

“Yes.”

“Then you work with materials. Different kinds of materials?” Xavier asked.

“Sure.”

“And some material, if you bend it, you can’t bend it straight again. Not so it’s absolutely true.”

“Yeah.”

Xavier gestured to the entire world surrounding him.

“That’s this planet. That’s the kind of material this planet is made of.”

What’s he trying to tell you? It’s worse than you think? Scott shivered. Preaching to the converted.

“You’ve dealt with material that once it breaks, can’t be repaired?” Xavier went on.

“Okay, I get the point,” Scott said. Xavier was getting tedious and depressing.

“You’re a religious man?” Xavier asked.

“Not particularly.”

“You know innocence, sin and death?”

“Two out of three,” Scott joked.

“Once innocence is gone, can you return to it?”

“No, I guess not,” Scott agreed.

“But you can recall what it was like–to be innocent,” Xavier stated sadly.

“That’s where the pain comes in,” Scott realized.

Xavier nodded. A tear rolled down his cheek.

He’s crying. He’s human. He can feel.

“Of course I feel,” Xavier stated simply. “I’m human like you, though different.”

“I’ll say,” Scott muttered.

Later that day, when Yula, Tenner and Scott were back in the woods looking for specimens, Scott tried desperately to pull Yula away from Tenner’s vigilant gaze to question her further. But Tenner was tenacious and it wasn’t until late at night, after Tenner and Xavier had gone to sleep, that Scott managed a moment alone with her.

“I want to talk to you,” Scott whispered into her sleeping ear.

Yula’s eyes popped open. After making sure the others were asleep, she quickly crept to the door of the cabin. They walked outside and Yula marched swiftly to the woods, with Scott right behind.

“Tenner will kill us if he sees us alone like this,” Yula whispered when she was sure they were out of earshot of the cabin.

Scott could see by the expression on Yula’s face that she wasn’t kidding. He stepped up the pace into the woods.

“Okay,” Scott said when they were far enough away from the cabin. “Tell me.”

“I explained it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What do you want to know?” Yula asked.

“Don’t you have anything? Squirrels, dogs, rabbits, roses?”

“We have all those things,” Yula replied. “Domestic versions. And many wild species artificially recreated. Actually, not many. Few experiments worked. We saved DNA. And some sperm. Recombining was accomplished. With larger animals, endangered species, exotic animals like elephants, rhinos, jaguars and monkeys. But without any habitat…” Yula trailed off, shrugged and shook her head. “Zoo animals, that’s all. Our zoos are like yours, I imagine. But none of our animals exist wild anymore. Still, it was a good idea–to save genetic material. Without that we would have nothing.”

An idea, a fear, crept into Scott’s mind.

“Are you the only ones?” Scott asked.

Yula looked puzzled.

“Are you the only ones who’ve come back?” Scott tried.

Yula shook her head.

“One team to the Sahara Desert, one team to the African jungle and one team to the Amazon Desert,” Yula said.

Scott looked up in shock.

“Amazon Desert?”

“Yes.”

“Amazon jungle, you mean,” Scott said hopefully. “The rain forest.”

Yula swallowed. She didn’t want to correct him. She stood and stumbled off.

Scott caught up with her.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, taking her arm and turning her to him. The tears rolled down her cheeks. Scott wiped them away with the palm of his hand. “I forget this is as hard on you as it is on me.”

“We dedicate our lives to this!” Yula said passionately. “This is foolishness to solve what shouldn’t have happened!”

That’s the ticket. Turn fear to anger, sorrow to action. Get angry. Get even.

“I don’t like to be this way,” Yula said, taking a deep breath. “It’s a waste of energy.”

Scott wanted to hold her right then. Softly, protectively. She sensed it, held his hand and touched his palm to her cheek.

“I’m not used to talking to a man this way,” she said.

“Why not?” Scott asked.

“Someone decided a long time ago it was improper,” Yula explained. “It was a dumb idea but it caught on for some reason. A lot of people thought it would cut down on domestic violence…the war between the sexes and all that. But it was just one more way to keep women in their place. It’s dying out, of course. People have to talk. But women are still supposed to speak into thin air instead of directly to a man.”

You can talk to me. All you want. Forget Tenner. Forget them all. This is our time.

Yula touched Scott’s palm to her face again.

“Tell me about the ark,” she whispered as she released his hand. She sat on a fallen log and patted the space next to her. “I want to know why I’ve come all this way.”

“I’ll try to get this right,” Scott said, sitting next to her. He listened to the woods. You can’t forget Tenner.

“Okay,” Scott began, “so God was angry at the people he had created. They were doing all kinds of horrible things and God decided he’d made a great, big mistake inventing them.”

Yula stared straight into the forest, her mind focused, her sorrow inconsolable.

Wish I had a Bible. Should try to get this right. Vaguely remember it. Told it to Kathy once.

“So God decided to destroy them all with a great flood,” Scott went on boldly. “But he wanted to save the animals. He spoke to a man named Noah. ‘Build a boat,’ he told Noah. ‘And put the animals on it, two by two.’ So Noah built a big boat–an ark–and began to gather animals. Everybody thought he was nuts.”

“Nuts?”

“Crazy,” Scott answered and twirled his finger around his ear. Yula copied the gesture.

“That means crazy?”

“Yes,” Scott told her. Can’t even tell a story. Speaking different languages here. “But Noah had the word from God,” Scott continued, “and wouldn’t listen to anybody else. And then it started to rain. For forty days and forty nights, so the seas swelled, covering all the land. Only Noah, his wife and the animals on the ark survived. And then the seas subsided. God made a deal with Noah. A covenant. He wouldn’t flood the earth ever again if man behaved. He put a giant rainbow in the sky to seal the deal.”

“A rainbow?” Yula asked.

“You know,” Scott said and described an arc with his hand. “Red, blue, green…after it rains.”

“Refraction of light through water particles,” Yula recited.

“Well, that’s the scientific explanation.”

“I’ve seen a picture in a book,” Yula told Scott.

“You don’t have them anymore?” Scott asked in shock.

“No.”

“Man!” Scott exclaimed.

“We don’t have God anymore either,” Yula told him.

“Neither do we,” Scott admitted.

“You know so much,” Yula said. “We thought…” She trailed off diplomatically.

“You thought we were all ignorant barbarians.”

“Xavier still thinks so,” Yula giggled.

Scott laughed too.

“During the Middle Ages…” Scott started to say.

“What?”

“Middle Ages. Trust me. They wandered through the ruins of the great civilizations of Greece and Rome. They had no idea where these grand buildings came from. They didn’t have the faintest idea how they were built.”

“What are you saying?” Yula asked.

“I’m just saying…civilization doesn’t necessarily progress, that’s all.”

“Tell me about it,” Yula said, looking out at the brown trees, the star-lit sky and the green forest. “Tell me.”

copyright 2007 Brenda H all rights reserved.

[tags]brenda h, sci-fi, novel, thriller, book, fiction, science-fiction[/tags]