Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism

Jason led her away from the door, taking care not to knock anything over. “But as dangerous as it is out there—we can’t wait here. They’ll come back!”

“We have to wait here,” said Jason. “No choice.”

“Jason is right,” said Louise weakly, in the dark. “No choice.”

A shiver went through Jason. “Hey Louise,” he said, “you remember what happened to you?”

Louise sniffled. “Yes. I took the material back to my room and was reading it by lamplight. Your—your aunt came in. She was accompanied by—”

“Say it,” said Ruth, acidly. “She was accompanied by Mr. Harris. The very fellow who had brought us her bag in the first place. What a traitor.”

“She didn’t say anything,” said Louise. “I tried to apologize, but she struck me. I woke up here.”

“You all right?” asked Jason.

“No,” said Louise, miserably. “No.”

“She hit Louise on the head,” said Ruth. “It’s a wonder she didn’t kill her.”

Jason didn’t think that Louise was being troubled by a sore skull right now. And he thought she knew that as well as any of them.

“Louise,” he said, “how far did you get in Germaine’s letters?”

“Not far,” she said, a little too quickly. In the dark, Jason nodded.

She knows, he thought. She knows that we’re locked in here with the Cave Germ. She knows what it did to Cracked Wheel; she knows what it is likely to do to both her and Ruth, and she’s probably figured out what it is already doing to her.

And for whatever reason, she’s not told Ruth a thing about it.

“That’s too bad,” he said to Louise. And to Ruth: “Let’s go sit down and rest a spell. You can tell me what happened to you.”

“Ah, of course,” she said as they settled down against the cool stone of a wall. “You must have so many questions.”

“Last I saw you, you were bustin’ into the quarantine,” he said. “Did you—hey!”

Jason rubbed his shoulder where she’d punched it.

“So many questions,” she repeated.

“Sorry,” said Jason, and she hit him again—not as hard this time, but still firmly.

“Stop apologizing. All right, then—let me set an example. This, Jason, is how one answers a question honestly put. I didn’t bust into the quarantine. I fled there. The forest—it seemed to me that it was filled with beasts. That thing that had attached itself to the girl in the woods… there were more of them. Countless…”

“I know.”

“I suppose that you do. My God, how did you escape them?”

I didn’t, he thought.

“Well. I bolted across the green, and as I fell against the wall, I was fortunate enough to see a crack with light coming through. So I tried my luck—and fell inside.”

After a moment, Jason asked her what she saw in there.

“Light,” she said. “Brilliant light.”

“And what else?”

“It—” she paused again. “It’s hard to say, because… sight was not a part of it. What I saw was—well, something larger.”

Jason decided to help her along: “Like a very tall man, with tiny creatures dancing around it in a circle?”

“Now you’re making fun,” she said. “No. No tall men. No tiny pixies. Just—a kind of brilliance. A kind of basking warmth. I felt as though I were—not vanishing, that’s not precisely the word… but—cut loose, perhaps.” She paused. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No ma’am,” said Jason.

“Then what do you mean, some tall fellow, with creatures dancing around it?”

“It’s only—that is what I saw, when I went—when Bergstrom locked me up in that quarantine. Don’t you remember? I thought I told you about them back in the orchard.”

“Did you?”

“I’m pretty sure of it.”

Ruth sat quietly for a moment. “Yes,” she said, “you did. I remember now. Why would I have forgotten that?”

“Maybe all that brightness shook you up.”

“Maybe. Things took a turn then. I felt—I felt as though in the midst of this, someone—something, perhaps—glimpsed me. That I stood naked before… something that was… vast. As big as a mountain. Perhaps that was your tall man?”

“That sounds a lot bigger—” Jason stopped himself. He remembered what Sam Green had told him: the Juke was growing. “No, no. It could well be.”

“And then…”

More quiet. Ruth leaned against him, rested her head on his shoulder. Finally, Jason prompted her to continue, but it wasn’t Ruth who answered.

“That’s all she remembers,” said Louise. Although she sounded weaker before, her tone was firm “If you are going to remain here, you should let her rest.”

“All right,” said Jason. He shifted so that she rested against his chest and not his shoulder. She snuggled close and wept quietly, her tears cooling on his shirt, and Jason struggled to control his own.

“Do you believe in fate, Jason?”

“We talked about this.” Jason was having a hard time keeping his eyes open; the air in here being as stale as it was, and with the sickly fumes from the pickled innards all around them, he wanted to pass right out. “Back at the party.”