Eve In Utopia

Chapter Eight

After Eve and Joy had left, it took Paul and Monica another hour before they could calm Grandfather down and then they ate a late and slightly coldd supper. Paul wanted to dismiss the old man's words as the ravings of someone in the early to middle stages of dementia, but he had also seen proof of the accuracy of the old man's visions too many times to do that comfortably. There was the time when Joe Miller's son Daniel hadn't come home from an afternoon of berry picking and a search by the entire village had not turned up a hint of what happened to him. Grandfather had woke from his nap and told them to look in the old well about a mile from the village, quite in the opposite direction from which everyone was looking. No one else even knew the old well was there, but sure enough they found Daniel half drowned and freezing at the bottom of that well. The boy had lived thanks to Grandfather's visions. That hadn't been the only example of Grandfather's visions coming true, so his wild talk about Eve and destruction worried Paul a lot more than he wanted to admit. The problem was that Paul also considered himself a good judge of character and he just couldn't see Eve being some evil spawn.

In the morning, Paul took the early catch of the fishermen to the restaurant, hoping he would run into Eve again. He wanted to apologize for the previous night and talk to her about Grandfather's visions. Maybe there was something bad coming, that storm Grandfather had mentioned and perhaps the storm also threatened Eve which was confounding the elder's visions. There was no sign of Eve in the kitchen even when Paul hung around longer than normal and he finally left when the old Japanese chef kept glancing from his very sharp carving knives to Paul and back again.

On the way back to the village, Paul abruptly decided to take a detour and stop at the caves. If everything did suddenly go to hell, they might make a good refuge for his people as Grandfather had suggested. There was no road that went all the way to the caves, so Paul had to walk the last kilometer or so over a rough foot path. As he neared the caves, Paul saw the signs warning people that the caves were dangerous and there was no cell phone signal past this point. In other words, if you were stupid enough to keep going and got into trouble then you shouldn't be expecting to be able to just call for help. Of course, that didn't stop a few idiots from the resort every year from seeking adventure in the caves. As long as you stayed near the entrance, they were safe enough, but the further back into the caves you went, the more of a maze they became with deep crevices hidden in the dark and the potential for rock slides that could trap you. At least two of the adventures that people had sought in the caves had turned out to be their final one.

Paul stepped into the outer cave and turned on the powerful flashlight that he kept for emergencies in the trunk of his car. He began to frown as he shone the beam around examining the cave floor. There were footprints here that hadn't been here the last time he had visited and these looked fresh. Paul hadn't heard about any of the tourists straying up this way recently and the people of his village kept a fairly close watch on this area. It was hardly an air tight security watch, but in the past, they had headed off or gently guided several groups of would be thrill seekers out of the caves before anything could happen to them. Paul crouched down on his haunches to study the tracks closer. It was hard to tell, but there seemed like about a half a dozen different people from the shape and sizes of the footprints. He also felt fairly sure they were less than a day old and more likely than not from last night. Who the hell would be stupid enough to come to these caves in the dark and why? An obvious answer seemed to be that the caves would be a great place to meet secretly, but what was there to be secret about. Well, there was the meeting of world leaders scheduled to start tomorrow with most of them flying in tonight. Paul wondered if he should let the security people know, but doubted they would take him seriously and would probably write the footprints off to a bunch of teenagers looking for a make-out spot, though Paul saw no evidence of such carnal activities. It looked like the people had just stood here and talked for a while and left. Maybe the caves would not be such a great refuge as he had thought if strangers were already meeting here. On the other hand, if trouble did start at the resort, the caves were a long way from it and anyone causing problems would likely be trying to get off the island and not hiding out in the caves. Paul just hoped the trouble wouldn't come as he shut off the flashlight and started back to his car, but he kept thinking of Grandfather's visions and his uneasiness grew.