The Traveler fr-1 Page 29

  Maya was used to vague directions that led to safe houses or access points, but guarding a possible Traveler like Gabriel changed everything. Ever since the fight at the Paradise Diner, he had kept his distance from her, saying only a few words when they stopped for gasoline and looked at the map. He acted like a man who had agreed to climb a dangerous mountain and was prepared to tolerate obstacles along the way.

  She rolled down the window of the van and the desert air dried the sweat on her skin. Blue sky. A hawk riding a thermal. Gabriel was a mile in front of her and suddenly he turned and raced back down the road. He pointed to the left and signaled with the palm of his hand. Found it.

  Maya saw a length of green ribbon tied around the steel base of a mileage marker. A dirt road-no wider than two wheel ruts-touched the highway at that point, but there was no sign indicating where it would lead them. Gabriel pulled off his motorcycle helmet and it dangled from the bike’s handlebars as they followed the road. They were passing through the high desert-a flat, arid land with cactus, clumps of dead grass, and cat’s-claw acacia that scraped against the sides of the van. There were two junctions in the dirt road, but Gabriel found the green ribbons that guided them east. As they gained elevation, mesquite and gray oak trees began to appear and there were holly-green bushes with little yellow flowers that attracted honeybees.

  Gabriel led them to the top of a low hill and stopped for a minute. What had looked like a line of mountains from the highway was actually a plateau that extended two enormous arms around a sheltered valley. Even from a distance you could see a few box-shaped houses half hidden in the pine trees. Far above this community, at the edge of the plateau, were three wind turbines. Each steel tower supported a rotor with three blades that was spinning like a massive airplane propeller.

  Gabriel wiped the dust off his face with a bandanna, and then continued up the dirt road. He traveled slowly, glancing from side to side, as if he expected someone to jump out of the undergrowth and surprise them.

  The combat shotgun was lying on the floor of the van, covered with an old blanket. Maya picked up the weapon, pumped a round into the firing chamber, and placed it on the passenger seat beside her. She wondered if a Pathfinder were really living in this place or if he had been hunted down and killed by the Tabula.

  The road turned directly toward the valley and crossed a stone bridge that arched over a narrow stream. On the other side of the stream, she saw figures moving in the undergrowth and slowed down.

  Four-no, five-children were carrying large stones down the path to the stream. Perhaps they were building some kind of dam or swimming hole. Maya couldn’t be sure. But they all stopped and stared at the motorcycle and the van. A thousand feet up the road, they passed a small boy carrying a plastic bucket and he waved at them. They still hadn’t seen any adults, but the children appeared quite happy to be on their own. For a few seconds, Maya envisioned a kingdom of children growing up without the constant influence of the Vast Machine.

  As they got closer to the valley, the road became paved with brownish-red brick, slightly darker than the surrounding soil. They passed three long greenhouses with glazed windows, and then Gabriel pulled into the courtyard of a vehicle maintenance area. Four dusty pickup trucks were parked inside an open pavilion that was used as a repair garage. A bulldozer, two jeeps, and an ancient school bus were lined up near a wooden shed filled with tools. Brick steps led up the slope to a large pen filled with white chickens.

  Maya left the shotgun concealed beneath the blanket, but slung the sword carrier over her shoulder. When she shut the door of the van, she saw a ten-year-old girl sitting on top of a brick retaining wall. The girl was Asian and had long black hair that touched her narrow shoulders. Like the other children, she wore jeans, a T-shirt, and a solid pair of work boots. A large hunting knife with a horn handle and a sheath was hanging from her belt. The weapon and long hair made the girl look like a knight’s squire, ready to grab their horses as they arrived at a castle.

  “Hello there!” the girl said. “Are you the people from Spain?”

  “No, we’re from Los Angeles.” Gabriel introduced himself and Maya. “And who are you?”

  “Alice Chen.”

  “Does this place have a name?”

  “New Harmony,” Alice said. “We picked that name two years ago. Everyone had a vote. Even the kids.”

  The girl jumped down from the wall and went over to inspect Gabriel’s dusty motorcycle. “We’re waiting for two possibles from Spain. Possibles live here for three months and then we can vote them in.” She turned away from the motorcycle and stared at Maya. “If you’re not possibles, then what are you doing here?”

  “We’re looking for someone named Martin,” Maya explained. “Do you know where he is?”

  “I think you better talk to my mom first.”

  “That’s not necessary-”

  “Follow me. She’s in the community center.”

  The little girl led them across another bridge where the stream tumbled over red rocks and swirled around in pools. Large houses built in the Southwestern style were on both sides of the road. The houses had stucco outer walls, small windows, and flat roofs that could be used as patios on hot nights. Most of the houses were quite large, and Maya wondered how the builders had trucked in tons of brick and concrete over the narrow dirt road.

  Alice Chen kept glancing over her shoulder as if she expected the visitors to run away from her. As they walked past a house painted pastel green, Gabriel caught up with Maya. “Weren’t these people expecting us?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Who is Martin? The Pathfinder?”

  “I don’t know, Gabriel. We’ll find out soon enough.”

  They walked through a grove of pine trees and reached a compound of four white buildings around a courtyard with a stone fountain placed in the center. “This is the community center,” Alice told them as she pulled open a heavy wooden door.

  They followed her down a short hallway to a schoolroom filled with toys. A young teacher sat on a throw rug with five children and read from a picture book. She nodded at Alice, then stared at the strangers as they walked past the doorway.

  “Little kids have school all day long,” Alice explained. “But I get out at two o’clock in afternoon.”

  They left the school, passed through the courtyard, and entered the second building. This contained three windowless offices filled with computers. In one of the rooms, people sat in separate cubicles, studying the images on computer screens while they talked on phone headsets. “Turn the mouse over,” said a young man. “Can you see a red light? That means…” He stopped for a few seconds and stared at Maya and Gabriel.

  They kept moving, passing back through the courtyard and into a third building with more desks and computers. A Chinese woman wearing a white physician’s jacket came out of a back room. Alice ran up to the woman and whispered to her.

  “Good afternoon,” the woman said. “I’m Alice’s mother, Dr. Joan Chen.”

  “She’s Maya and that’s Gabriel. They’re not from Spain.”

  “We’re looking for-”

  “Yes. I know why you’re here,” Joan said. “Martin mentioned you at the council meeting. But there was no agreement. We didn’t vote on the issue.”

  “We just want to talk to Martin,” Gabriel said.

  “Yes. Of course.” Joan touched her daughter’s shoulder. “Take them up the hill to see Mr. Greenwald. He’s helping build the new house for the Wilkins family.”

  Alice ran ahead of them as they left the clinic and continued up the road. “I wasn’t expecting a welcome committee when we showed up here,” Gabriel said. “But your friends don’t seem to be very hospitable.”

  “Harlequins don’t have friends,” Maya said. “We have obligations and alliances. Don’t say anything until I can evaluate the situation.”

  Bits of straw littered the road. A few hundred yards later, they reached a stack of straw bales placed next t
o a busy construction site. Steel rods had been embedded into the concrete foundation of a new house and the bales were being skewered on the rods like giant yellow bricks. About twenty people of all ages were working on the house at the same time. Teenagers wearing sweat-stained T-shirts were hammering rods into the bales with sledgehammers while three older people pinned a galvanized steel mesh to the outer walls. Two carpenters wearing tool belts were building a wood frame to support the home’s roof beams. Maya realized that all the buildings in the valley had been built in the same simple way. The community didn’t need massive amounts of brick and concrete, just plywood boards, wood beams, waterproof plaster, and a few hundred bales of straw.

  A muscular Latino man in his forties was kneeling in the dirt, measuring a piece of plywood. He wore shorts, a stained T-shirt, and a well-worn tool belt. When he saw the two strangers, he stood up and approached them.

  “Can I help you?” he asked. “Are you looking for someone?”

  Before Maya could come up with an answer, Alice stepped through the doorway of the house with a stocky older man who wore thick eyeglasses. The man hurried over to them and forced a smile.

  “Welcome to New Harmony. I’m Martin Greenwald. And this is my friend, Antonio Cardenas.” He turned to the Latino man. “These are the visitors we discussed at the council meeting. I was contacted by our friends in Europe.”

  Antonio didn’t look happy to see them. His shoulders tensed up and he spread his legs slightly as if he was getting ready to fight. “Do you see what’s hanging from her shoulder? Know what that means?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Martin said.

  “She’s a goddamn Harlequin. The Tabula wouldn’t be happy if they knew she was here.”

  “These people are my guests,” Martin said firmly. “Alice will take them down to the Blue House. Around seven o’clock, they can come over to the Yellow House and we’ll have dinner.” He turned to Antonio. “And you’re invited too, my friend. We’ll talk about it over a glass of wine.”

  Antonio hesitated for a few seconds, then returned to the construction site. Acting as tour guide, Alice Chen escorted her visitors back to the parking area. Maya wrapped her weapons in the blanket and Gabriel slung the jade sword over his shoulder. They followed Alice back up the valley to a blue house on a side road near the stream. It was fairly small-a kitchen, one bedroom, a living room with a sleeping loft. A pair of French doors opened onto a walled garden with rosemary bushes and wild mustard.

  The bathroom had a high ceiling and an old-fashioned claw-foot tub with green stains on the faucets. Maya stripped off her dirty clothes and took a bath. The water smelled faintly like iron, as if it came from deep in the earth. When the tub was half full, she lay back and tried to relax. Someone had placed a wild rose in a dark blue bottle above the sink. For a moment she forgot about the dangers around them and concentrated on this single point of beauty in the world.

  If Gabriel turned out to be a Traveler, then she could continue to protect him. If the Pathfinder decided that Gabriel was just another ordinary soul, then she would have to leave him forever. Sliding beneath the surface of the water, she pictured Gabriel remaining at New Harmony, falling in love with a pleasant young woman who liked to bake bread. Gradually, her imagination pulled her down a darker path and she saw herself standing outside a house at night, staring through a window while Gabriel and his wife prepared dinner. Harlequin. Blood on your hands. Stay away.

  She washed and rinsed her hair, found a bathrobe in the cabinet, and slipped down the hallway to the bedroom. Gabriel was sitting on the bed in the sleeping loft that occupied a half ledge in the living room. A few minutes later he got up quickly and she heard him swear to himself. More time passed and then the wooden ladder creaked as he climbed down to take a bath.

  ***

  AT SUNSET, SHE rummaged through her travel bag and found a blue tank top and an ankle-length cotton skirt. When she looked in the mirror, she was pleased to see how ordinary she looked-just like any young woman Gabriel might have known in Los Angeles. Then she pulled up the skirt and strapped the two knives onto her legs. The other weapons were hidden under the quilt that covered the bed.

  She came out into the living room and found Gabriel standing in the shadows. He was peering through a crack in the curtains. “Someone is hiding in the bushes about twenty yards up the hill,” he said. “They’re watching the house.”

  “It’s probably Antonio Cardenas or one of his friends.”

  “So what are we supposed to do about it?”

  “Nothing. Let’s go find a yellow house.”

  Maya tried to look relaxed as they walked back down the road, but she couldn’t be sure if someone was following them. The air was still warm and the pine trees seemed to have captured little patches of darkness. A large yellow house was near one of the bridges. Oil lamps glowed from the roof patio and they heard people talking.

  They entered the house and found eight children of different ages eating dinner at a long table. A short woman with frizzy red hair was working in the kitchen. She wore a denim skirt and a T-shirt with the cartoon image of a surveillance camera and a red bar slashed across it. This was a resistance symbol against the Vast Machine. Maya had seen the symbol on the floor of a Berlin dance club and spray-painted on a wall in the Malasaña district of Madrid.

  Still holding her spoon, the woman stepped forward to greet them. “I’m Rebecca Greenwald. Welcome to our home.”

  Gabriel smiled and gestured to the children. “You got a lot of kids here.”

  “Only two of them are ours. Antonio’s three children are eating with us plus Joan’s daughter, Alice, plus two friends from other families. The children in this community are constantly eating dinner at someone else’s house. After the first year, we had to make a rule: the child has to tell at least two adults by four o’clock in the afternoon. I mean, that’s the rule, but it can get a little frantic. Last week, we were making road bricks so we had seven muddy kids here plus three teenage boys who eat double. I cooked a lot of spaghetti.”

  “Is Martin…?”

  “My husband is up on the roof patio with the others. Just climb the stairs. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  They walked through the dining room to a walled-in garden. As they climbed the outer staircase to the roof, Maya heard voices arguing.

  “Don’t forget about the children in this community, Martin. We’ve got to protect our children.”

  “I’m thinking about kids growing up all over the world. They’re taught fear and greed and hatred by the Vast Machine…”

  The conversation stopped the moment Maya and Gabriel appeared. A wooden table had been placed on the roof patio and lit with vegetable-oil lamps. Martin, Antonio, and Joan sat around the table drinking wine.

  “Welcome again,” Martin said. “Sit down. Please.”

  Maya made a quick assessment of the logical direction of an attack and sat next to Joan Chen. From that position, she could see whoever was coming up the staircase. Martin bustled around them, making sure they had silverware and pouring two glasses of wine from a bottle with no label.

  “This is a Merlot that we buy directly from a winery,” he explained. “When we were first thinking about New Harmony, Rebecca asked me what my vision was and I said that I wanted to drink a decent glass of wine in the evening with good friends.”

  “Sounds like a modest goal,” Gabriel said.

  Martin smiled and sat down. “Yes, but even a small wish like that has implications. It means a community with free time, a group with enough income to buy the Merlot, and a general desire to enjoy the small pleasures of life.” He smiled and raised his glass. “In this context, a glass of wine becomes a revolutionary statement.”

  Maya knew nothing about wine, but it had a pleasant taste that reminded her of cherries. A light breeze came down the canyon and the flames on the three lamp wicks fluttered slightly. Thousands of stars were above them in the clear desert sky.

  “I
want to apologize to both of you for the inhospitable welcome,” Martin said. “And I also want to apologize to Antonio. I mentioned you at the council meeting, but we never voted. I didn’t think you’d arrive so soon.”

  “Just tell us where the Pathfinder is,” Maya said, “and we’ll leave right now.”

  “Maybe the Pathfinder doesn’t exist,” Antonio growled. “And maybe you’re spies sent by the Tabula.”

  “This afternoon, you were angry that she was a Harlequin,” Martin said. “And now you’re accusing her of being a spy.”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  Martin smiled as his wife came up the staircase carrying a tray of food. “Even if they are spies, they’re our guests and they deserve a good meal. I say, eat first. Let’s talk on a full stomach.”

  Platters and bowls of food were passed around the table. Salad. Lasagna. A crusty wheat bread cooked in the community oven. As they ate dinner, the four members of New Harmony began to relax and talk freely about their responsibilities. A water pipe was leaking. One of the trucks needed an oil change. A convoy was going to San Lucas in a few days and they needed to leave very early because one of the teenagers was taking a college entrance exam.

  Past the age of thirteen, the children were guided by a teacher in the community center, but their instructors were from all over the world-mostly university graduate students who taught on the Internet. Several colleges had offered full scholarships to a girl who had graduated last year from the New Harmony school. They were impressed by a student who had studied calculus and could translate Molière’s plays, but was also capable of digging a water well and fixing a broken diesel engine.

  “What’s the biggest problem here?” Gabriel asked.

  “There’s always something, but then we deal with it,” Rebecca explained. “For example, most homes have at least one fireplace, but the smoke used to hang over the valley. Children were coughing. You could barely see the sky. So we met and decided that no one could have a wood fire unless a blue flag was flying at the community center.”