فصل 22

Chapter 22

“You’re Ivan the dinosaur hunter’s granddaughter?” Todd said in awe as he looked at me with newfound respect.

“I am?” I felt stunned and disconnected, as though maybe Ivan was telling this to someone else. This couldn’t possibly be real. Could it? My hands shook, sending the soup sloshing over the sides of my bowl. I set it down and pushed it aside.

“You are,” Ivan confirmed. “My Clara had the same wild hair and birdlike build. Your eyes are your father’s, though.” He frowned. “A pity. Your mother’s were prettier.” “How in the world,” Shawn asked, “would your daughter, Sky’s mom, have come to live in a compound?”

“What interest is it to you?” Ivan asked sharply.

“Sky’s my friend,” Shawn said stiffly. “What concerns her concerns me.”

Ivan looked at me. “Do you trust the compound boy?”

“I’d trust Shawn with my life,” I said automatically, my brain still trying to process everything.

Ivan harrumphed into his beard, looking unconvinced. “My daughter wanted a more formal education. She was into books, read everything she could get her hands on. When she turned eighteen, I helped her enter the East Compound, posing as a voluntary transfer from the South Compound so she could attend the university.” “But how—” Shawn began, but stopped when Ivan glared at him.

“I have my ways, and they do not concern you,” Ivan said. “She was supposed to come back once she’d had her fill of formal schooling. She wanted to teach some of the children in the surrounding tree villages math and science and that kind of rot.” Ivan sniffed and took another bite of stew. “But she didn’t come back. She fell in love with that idiot father of yours.” My jaw clench defensively. “My father was brilliant.”

“That’s what Clara said. He might have been compound smart, but he had absolutely no common sense when it came to survival. I told your mother that, but she insisted on marrying him anyway. And then she died.” He sniffed. “I always thought I’d die first, my line of work and all.” “But why didn’t I know about you?” I asked. My dad would have mentioned if I had a grandfather. Wouldn’t he? Maybe Ivan was mistaken.

“Because last I checked, children are no good at keeping secrets from a government with eyes and ears everywhere,” Ivan said. “I always assumed your father would tell you about me when you were old enough.” He scrutinized me a moment, and I squirmed. “You do look like my Clara, though. Although she had the sense not to let her skin fry in the sun. Us redheaded folk must take extra precautions.” Ivan’s close-cropped hair and beard where white, but on closer inspection, I saw a few stray hairs that had retained their red color. “Didn’t they teach you anything useful in that compound school of yours?” he asked disapprovingly.

I frowned. “Not really.”

“It wasn’t completely useless,” Shawn protested.

“Shawn, it was, and you know it,” I snapped. “Stop pretending it wasn’t.”

“Hmmm,” Ivan said. “You have Clara’s temper too.”

“Sorry,” I muttered to Shawn, not feeling very sorry at all. Turning back to Ivan, I thrust my dad’s note and map at him. “If you haven’t seen my dad in years, why did he ask me to find you?” Ivan picked up the pieces of paper and read them before laying them down on his table. “These were hidden in Jack’s compass?” he asked as he pulled another compass out of the front of his shirt.

“You have a direction whatchadinger too?” Todd asked.

“Whatchadinger?” Ivan snorted. “It’s called a compass.” He shook his head and mumbled something that sounded like “village kids these days,” but I couldn’t be sure.

“Can I see it?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the gleaming brass circle in his hand. When Ivan handed it to me, I held it up next to my father’s. They were almost identical. “Why do you have this?” “Every member of the secret society of the Colombe had one,” Ivan said.

“What’s the Colombe?” Shawn asked.

“Idiotic name, isn’t it,” Ivan said. “It was your father’s idea, Sky. It’s the word dove in Italian or French or some such nonsense.”

“My dad loved languages,” I murmured, remembering a long-ago life where languages were woven into the fabric of every day. “But why dove?” Ivan ignored me as he reread the note from my dad. He set it down sharply on the table. “Your father was an idiot,” he said after a moment. Before I could protest, Ivan went on, muttering more to himself than us as he scowled down at the bowl. “Sending you aboveground with no training and the barest of clues to go off. Jack Mundy, what were you thinking?” I sat up, my spine straightening. “He was thinking that I could handle it.” When Ivan didn’t say anything, I scowled. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

“You are,” Shawn agreed.

“Of course she is,” Ivan snapped. “She’s my granddaughter, isn’t she?” He frowned down at my untouched supper. “Eat the rest of that. I don’t let food go to waste.” I grimaced. My hunger from moments before had disappeared, but I picked up my spoon anyway and forced myself to take a bite.

“The Colombe.” Ivan sighed. “I guess I better start at the beginning. I met your father fifteen years ago. I relocated east when Clara insisted on going to that compound university.” I could tell by his expression that he hadn’t agreed with her decision. Ivan took a big bite of stew and continued. “While she was at that university, she met a few other students who didn’t buy into all the dinosaur dung the Noah was flinging about.” “What dinosaur dung?” I prompted.

“The dung about humans only being safe in underground bomb shelters,” Ivan said. “Last I checked, there hasn’t been any bomb. The dinosaurs haven’t made our planet uninhabitable; people panicked after the pandemic when they realized they were outnumbered and chose not to inhabit it.” “Not all the humans,” I pointed out with a glance at Todd.

“Correct,” Ivan said. “There are thirty-five villages spread across North America that I know of, at least. I’d venture to say there are more than that, but the majority of humanity is still cowering under concrete. My daughter met others who believed that humans and dinosaurs can share this massive planet of ours. Of course,” he said, turning to me, his eyes softening, “your mother knew that it was possible. I’d raised her to hunt and trap with the best of them.” Ivan cleared his throat, and I saw a flash of pain in his eyes. I hated to admit it, but that look made me jealous. I would have given anything to have a memory of my mother.

Ivan cleared his throat and went on. “Once she felt like she could trust them, she told them about me, about life in the sunshine, about the villages in the trees. Your father named their little group the Colombe.” “I still don’t get the dove reference,” I frowned.

“Why does the Noah call himself the Noah?” Ivan prompted. “Why do they call the compound-living system his Ark Plan?”

“It’s based off an ancient biblical story,” Shawn said. “About a guy named Noah who brought a bunch of animals into a big boat called an ark to save them from a flood. So a hundred and fifty years ago, when William Brown saved the human race by bringing them underground, he called himself the Noah.” “Good to know they taught you something in that school,” Ivan said begrudgingly. “But what about the rest of the story?”

“What do you mean?” Shawn asked. “That’s it.”

“No.” Ivan shook his head. “The story didn’t end with that Noah man stuck on the boat forever with all those animals. After forty days and nights, Noah sent out a dove to look for land. That dove came back with an olive branch, so Noah knew it was safe to come off the ark. So he parked that huge behemoth of a boat and let everybody out. Taking them into the boat didn’t save them; it was letting them back off that did that.” “I get it,” I said. “The dove symbolizes that it’s time to go topside again.”

“Very good.” Ivan nodded approvingly. “I was beginning to worry that you didn’t have much in the way of brains. That is exactly right. The group consisted of your mother and father, and a few other scientists and biologists that attended the university with them. I even snuck into East Compound to meet with them a few times to discuss their ideas. Your mother was so happy,” he said. “She believed that she was changing the world.” “Wasn’t she?” I asked.

Ivan shook his head sadly. “She never got the chance. Shortly after she had you, the Noah caught wind of the group. We aren’t sure how, but I have my suspicions that one of the group members got nervous and turned on them.” “I bet that didn’t go well,” Todd said.

“It did not,” Ivan agreed. “The Noah was unsure who exactly was involved. This created a problem, as he couldn’t very well execute every student in the university. So he came up with another solution. He scattered the entire university population to the four compounds, cutting off any opportunity they had to communicate. Your father was sent to North Compound. A few, including your mother, tried to escape into the wild before the transfer.” Ivan’s face clouded over. “Some got away, but your mother was killed.” “Killed?” I repeated, stunned.

“But the Noah values human life too much to kill anyone,” Shawn spluttered.

“Were you not at my village yesterday?” Todd asked.

“I just don’t understand,” Shawn said, putting his head in his hands. “How can everything we learned be a lie?”

“It wasn’t all a lie,” Ivan said gently. “The man we are talking about believes wholeheartedly in what he preached to you. He believes that what he does, he does to save the human race. History has shown us over and over again that there is nothing more dangerous than a man who believes so completely in his own convictions that he can’t see the truth, even when it’s right in front of him.” “Lies,” I repeated, feeling numb. “My dad always said my mom died giving birth to me. That was a lie too?”

“It was.” Ivan nodded. “I can’t think of anything more dangerous than telling his young daughter a secret that could get them both killed.” I shut my eyes, trying to make myself understand what Ivan was telling me. My mom had been murdered? I waited to feel pain, sorrow, or horror, but instead I felt betrayed. I thought back to those fuzzy years when my dad and I lived in our little apartment. How much of our life had been a lie? There was nothing solid I could hold on to, nothing true to keep me balanced in all of this. Willing myself not to cry, I opened my eyes to find Ivan watching me. I swallowed. He wasn’t just Ivan, though, was he? If what he said was true, he was my grandfather. I couldn’t think about that right now, though. It was too much on top of everything else.

“Why didn’t she take me with her?” I asked him, feeling the sting of abandonment. What kind of mother left her baby behind?

“I can only assume it was because she thought you’d be safer underground,” Ivan said.

“You still haven’t explained the whatcha, um, compass things,” Todd corrected himself, his face flushing red.

Ivan waved his hand dismissively. “I provided those. I’d found a box of the things during one of my trapping trips, buried in the rubble. Clara wanted the group to have some kind of unifying symbol, and I liked to make Clara happy.” “You loved her,” I said, knowing it was true. He had the same warm gleam in his eyes my dad used to have. I’d forgotten what that look was like until just now.

“She was my sun, moon, and stars,” Ivan said. “And if I’d known her daughter, my granddaughter, was living as an orphan in one of those horrid compounds, you better believe I would have come for you.” I didn’t say anything for a minute as I studied him. It was obvious in his tanned and wrinkled face that he felt guilty for leaving me in the compound. I looked away and out the window as tears threatened again. I swallowed hard and blinked them away. No one except Shawn had cared about what happened to me ever since my dad left. I glanced back at those level blue eyes and nodded. “Thank you,” I said. I knew it wasn’t much, but it was all I had at the moment.

“So mission accomplished, right?” Shawn asked, clapping his hands together, his voice forcefully cheerful. “You brought the plug to Ivan. You succeeded!” I looked at Ivan. “Do you know what’s on the plug? What my dad found out?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” Ivan said.

“Do you have a port screen?” Shawn asked. “One that will fit the plug?”

“I did have one of those infernal contraptions,” Ivan said. “Your dad gave it to me, but it was ruined when my pack fell into a pond about two years ago.” “So this isn’t over,” I breathed. “We still need to get to Lake Michigan.”

Shawn groaned and flopped his head down on the wooden table dramatically.

“Sure looks that way,” Ivan agreed. “And we need to get there fast.”