Seeking Eden Read online

  Reb Ephraim chuckled. He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a thickly folded sheet of paper. With practiced motions he unfolded about one third of it, laying it out on the desk for Tobin to see.

  “To them,” he said with another laugh, pointing, “this is California.”

  Tobin looked at the paper and the professionally drawn map on it. It looked like his maps, but where his Atlas of The United States showed an entire continent, the Reb’s paper showed only what Tobin recognized as New York City. The areas all around were marked, but not in detail, and where Colorado began on Tobin’s map, the Reb’s showed only the edge of land, the beginning of the sea.

  “You’ve erased nearly an entire country!”

  The Reb shrugged, refolding the map. “And what difference does that make? There might as well be nothing there, Tobin. If there are settlements, we’ll never meet them. Never have contact with them. All of that is lost to us, so why offer it to people who would be better off just staying here, with the Tribe?”

  “They should be able to make that choice,” Tobin said stubbornly. “It should be up to them.”

  “Really,” said Reb Ephraim somewhat condescendingly. “Why would anyone want to leave a comfortable life here and risk their lives to maybe, only maybe, find something else? Because despite our hardships, Tobin, we do have a comfortable life here. It’s not a luxurious life, not like it was in the days when this city was overflowing with people. No. But we have food and shelter and each other. Why would anyone want to leave?”

  “I want to leave.”

  Reb Ephraim sighed as though he were talking to a very tiresome child. “I don’t understand. I explained to you that all the things you claimed you wanted to find in California, you could find here.”

  Tobin frowned. “No. Not exactly.”

  “You said you wanted to have children,” Reb Ephraim said finally. “Why do you think I sent you Elanna?”

  At the sound of her name, Tobin’s stomach flip-flopped. She was so beautiful, that girl, the most beautiful he’d ever dreamed of. And he’d turned her away.

  Tobin thought of all the books he’d read. Mother. Father. Husband. Wife. Son. Daughter. Family. Those were words he knew. He’d had Old Ma and Old Pa to learn from, and books, and that was all. Descriptions of how families were long ago, and maybe they had nothing to do with the way things were now.

  “I’m sorry,” Tobin said finally.

  He thought of Elanna again, her smooth perfect features and smoky blue eyes. The curls, the same color as an ocean sunset, tumbling over her shoulders. How she had smelled like nothing he’d ever smelled before, but he knew all the same it was the scent of a woman. How he’d ached for her to touch him as he’d read of and dreamed about. He thought about her making love to him only because it was her job, and he shuddered. Impossible. He couldn’t do it.

  Reb Ephraim seemed barely appeased. “We honored you by giving you an appointment with Elanna.”

  Tobin thought of the stricken look on Elanna’s face as she’d fled the room. He’d insulted and embarrassed her. “I told her to leave. I didn’t sleep with her.”

  Reb Ephraim shook his head slowly. “Why not?

  “When I said I wanted to find a woman, I meant one just for me,” Tobin said. Only after he spoke did he realize how foolish and selfish that sounded.

  “A wife,” Reb Ephraim said.

  “Well, yeah.”

  The Reb tapped his fingers together. “I can’t give you that. Love can’t be given by someone else. If you find love with one of our women and she agrees to stand beneath the chuppah as your bride, then we’ll all rejoice. But I can’t make that happen. I can, however, almost guarantee that you can father a child. And with a child, almost any of the women here would be eager to wed you.”

  It still didn’t sound like what Tobin had dreamed about back in Eastport, but he didn’t have time to protest. Reb Ephraim got up and went around the desk past Tobin, jerking open the door to the hall. “Yavin!”

  A small boy, about seven years old, appeared as if by magic. “Yes, Reb Ephraim?”

  “Go and find Elanna. Bring her to me immediately.”

  The boy nodded and then grinned, showing an endearingly gap-toothed smile. He held out a hand for the candy Reb Ephraim was already pulling from his pocket before tearing off down the hall. The clatter of his shoes against the concrete floor was very loud.

  “Don’t,” Tobin said as the Reb passed by him to sit back at the desk. “Don’t embarrass her.”

  “More than you’ve embarrassed her already, you mean?” Reb Ephraim said gruffly. He looked around as though he wanted something to occupy his hands, but found nothing. Instead, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out another candy. He offered one to Tobin.

  It was sweeter than anything he’d ever tasted, and more sour, fruitier, tangier, all at once. It puckered his mouth and blasted his tongue with sensation. His eyes watered.

  Reb Ephraim popped one into his own mouth. “Starburst. Last month the gatherers found an entire case in the back bedroom closet of a twelfth-floor apartment in Queens. One of them was nearly killed when his rappelling rope broke. Is it worth it, Tobin?”

  Tobin swallowed the candy square. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Is it worth the lives of our people to have something like this?” the Reb asked, leaning forward. “Is it worth that risk, when if the place you told us of exists, we can supply ourselves with better, more worthy items at half the danger?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What I’m asking you, Tobin, is if you’d consider becoming a gatherer.”

  Tobin eyed the other man, saying nothing for a long moment. “Why me?”

  “You’re fit. You’re young. And you seem to have a knack for finding things. You’re...bold, Tobin. Bolder than we are. And if we’re going to grow, survive, continue, we need fresh and bold young men to join us. And we need you to lead us to the warehouse. You know where it is.”

  “I said I’d draw a map --”

  The Reb looked down at the map on his desk, then back at Tobin. “You would have us trust a map?”

  The man had a point. Tobin’s maps were accurate, so far as he could tell. But they were outdated.

  Tobin looked around the Reb’s office. Just a few weeks ago he’d have given anything just to find a community as big as this one, as well-established. A chance to find friends, make a family. Work at something important.

  “I don’t think so,” Tobin said.

  “I’ll change your mind,”

  Reb Ephraim replied.

  -14-

  “Ah, Elanna,” Reb Ephraim said, and sent the child out of the room with two sweets for his troubles.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  Elanna looked at the young man who’d refused her so rudely. Did she imagine that his face was nearly as red as her own? She met his eyes, wanting to challenge him. Didn’t he know what he’d passed up?

  But of course he did, she thought, only half-hearing the Reb as he scolded Tobin for not keeping the appointment. She could see the way he looked at her; it was a look she’d seen dozens of times before. So why had he sent her away?

  The Reb was saying something to her now, but Elanna hadn’t been paying attention. “I’m sorry?”

  The Reb sighed. “I told you to take Tobin and show him around. You are to be his constant companion. You’re excused from making other appointments, and cancel the ones you’ve made for the next few days.”

  “But why?” Elanna asked, stunned. She’d never been ordered to stop keeping appointments, unless she was carrying or nursing. Never. Others had been restricted for one reason or another, but never her. Not even when she’d miscarried for the third time in as many months!

  “Because,” Reb Ephraim said, “That is how I want it.”

  “For how long?”

  “Until he,” the Reb said, pointing to Tobin, “agrees to keep an appointment with you.”

  “Wha