Gabe
The Compound, perched like an aerie on the edge of La Mesa de Los Muerto, overlooked Ciudad Esparanza with its red adobe houses aligned along radiating arterials and an ever-widening grid of streets like a spider web spreading out from the river on either side, slightly larger to the west and north with their giant industrial complexes. La Mesa—which wasn’t really a mesa at all, but a geological shelf about 350 meters up the face of El Pared Magnifica—retreated beneath the pounding rain of La Cascada and emerged again, smaller, on the other side of the great falls. Gabe Proctor gazed out the cafeteria window at the tumbling water and idly wondered if it might be possible to traverse behind the falls, from one side to another—a more tangible puzzle than the theoretical one he had spent most of his morning trying to solve. Since joining the cloister twelve years ago at the precocious age of nine, he had often imagined jumping the railing and exploring, but courage always fled before the act. It wasn’t the physical danger that held him back, but the social ostracism of breaking the rules.
His thoughts shifted subtly from a vague fear to guilt over his many evasions—work, correspondence with his mother, Arkady’s insistence that he ‘grow up’, and this morning’s more palpable object of retreat, the imminent arrival of the Sofias. The Sofias reminded him of the hypocrisy behind his own privileged existence. It insulted his humble origins, somehow, in a way he didn’t fully understand. Gabe’s view of the Sisters was no secret to his colleagues, many of whom shared it, but avoiding the benefactors was frowned upon by some of these same peers, who viewed schmoozing as a public duty.
Gabe slid open the glass doors to the veranda and casually strolled out to the south gardens, as far as possible from the Compound proper, where he could feel the thunder of the falls and the promise of its cool spray on his face. Without further consideration, lest he change his mind, he grabbed the rail and swung himself over, landing on firm ground. Only fifty meters to the falls, but each step he took toward the edge felt like a step toward himself, toward some sort of independence.
Once there, however, he was unprepared for the sheer power of the water and the incredible distance to the basin floor. His stomach reeled, his balance shifted, and he stumbled back from the abyss. He waited for the vertigo to pass and for his knees to stop shaking. He now saw the water-eroded contour of the shelf where it disappeared behind the spray, and the path, wide enough to walk upon. Now, it had become a challenge, and he moved forward cautiously. Behind the falls, centuries of water carved out an indentation deep into the soft cliff, leaving a small, muddy ledge dangerously sloping toward the precipice. The narrow passage, a half meter wide, hugged the wall, and Gabe edged along in small, prudent steps, keeping his eyes on his goal until the ground felt safe again beneath his feet. A brief moment of triumph.
Beyond the falls, the shelf widened out once again to fifteen meters or so, and extended another hundred meters before narrowing and vanishing back into the face of the cliff.
The ledge was flat and grassy, with a few small pines and scrub oaks clumped near the wall. He located a comfortable spot, pushed aside the accumulated acorns and small pine cones, and laid back in the grass. He decided to call his new hideaway Ugatayi, seed place. For the first time in years, Gabe thought about his childhood in the hills of eastern Oklahoma. They had been hard but happy days with his parents and extended family, Keetowah Cherokees, a tradition going back all the way to his famous outlaw ancestor, Zeke Proctor. His parents were academics and cultural traditionalists, not in the least bit religious; for them, as for the scientists who had educated him, the scientific method was all the religion they needed. It was all the religion Gabe needed.
In many respects, his childhood was a normal one. Tramping the fields and hills of the western Ozarks, his uncles had taught him to hunt and honor his prey, to bathe in the river, and to fend for himself in the woods—what little was left of the forest. He learned to play soccer and stick ball and run with the boys from the neighboring farms, but these hours were strictly limited, and his parents expected him to spend much of his time studying.
“You have been given a gift, Son,” his mother would tell him. “It is your responsibility to develop it and use it for the good of the people.”
Gabe’s gift was math. At four years old he had an uncanny ability to solve complex mathematical formulas. By the time he was six, his extraordinary intelligence could no longer be hidden from the world, and he had attracted the attention of important government and academic players, intent on using the child’s talent to further this or that cause. A tug of war began for Gabe’s soul, but his parents, sympathetic to the Bolivarian Alliance and its call for indigenous ascendancy, had discovered the Temple of New Life and another option for their son’s future—the utopian experiment called Sweetland.
The memory of his arrival on Sweetland had a bitter taste for Gabe. His father, Nathan Proctor, had died crossing over. Gabe and his mother, Carla, eventually settled in Echota with several other Cherokee families. Carla taught Earth History and tried to keep alive the Tsalagi language at the University of the South. But Gabe became a lost, lonely child. He made the University library his home, and spent every waking moment hiding behind a book. So, it was no surprise that he first said ‘no’ when the scientists came from Esparanza to offer him an elite education at The Compound. But Carla had been insistent.
“This is your chance to develop your gift, Gabe.”
“I can do it here in Echota, Mom.”
“You can do better than that, Son.” And so it went, around and around until he relented and, swallowing his tears, left with a guide for the long river journey to Esparanza. Gabe received a letter from Mom every Primerdía, without fail, but he missed her terribly, and he missed his father, and he missed the Cherokee hills of Oklahoma.
In his quarters that evening, Gabe began writing a proposal. It had little chance of success—return to Earth was essentially limited to the Sofias and the inner circle of senior scientists—but the more he considered it, the more important it became in his mind. The difficulty would be in convincing the Directorate that a junior quantum neurophysicist had a legitimate reason to cross over.
One thing might get their attention, he thought, and that was his work on neuro-entanglement and his theory about the origins of the mysterious disease, popularly called the saudades. A number of suicides over the past several months were believed triggered by this condition, named by the Galician immigrants, who described it as a sort of heart sickness. Saudades was approaching pandemic dimensions in The Communities. It was a long shot. The theory wasn’t much more than a postulation at this stage, but if he could conduct tests on some of the tiny number of permanent returnees, then perhaps he could learn something.
There were so many buts and ifs, and late in the night Gabe nearly gave up on the whole idea. He knew the proposal was dishonest on its face, that his true motive was a desire to return to his childhood home. He could almost here Arkady’s scolding voice: “Grow up, Gabe, it’s not about you.”
His mentor and substitute father, department head, Dr. Arkady Zharkov, had not been easy on him over the years. Gabe had a lot of trouble with this growing up thing. He was a twenty-two year old who had been denied his childhood, and he wasn’t ready for the responsibility entailed in that whole concept. It wasn’t that he didn’t hear the constant voice of his mother insisting that he had a duty to use his gift. It wasn’t like he was running away. Couldn’t he go home to Indian Country and do useful research at the same time?
Finally, in frustration, he put down his pen and climbed into bed. He could decide all of this tomorrow.
©2010–2011, Duane Poncy
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