Perfect Flaw (21 page)

THE BIRD BELOW GROUND

BY S.C. LANGGLE

Subland, Year 220 P.E. (Post Explosionum)

Liam knew he should have given the photograph to his mother the moment he found it. Photos were rare in Subland, and his mother could sell it to the Preservation Room for a good price, or the black market for a better one. They needed the money—Liam couldn’t deny that when he heard his baby sister Tessa wailing, even though she’d been given the largest portion of the tipiog porridge, or when he felt the twinge of empty space in his own belly. And his mother had barely taken a single bite for herself all day. How long had it been since they’d had one of Subland’s delicacies, the rare narancia fruits or
karoton
roots, which danced on your tongue and filled your stomach with warmth the way
tipiog
never could? The money from this photo could buy an entire bushel of
karotons,
and some new clothes and blankets besides. They didn’t
need
the extra food—a few bites of
tipiog,
along with one of the huge vitamin pills distributed for free by the Leaders, would fulfill all their nutritional requirements for the day. But it was hard to trick a stomach that longed for grains and proteins to digest, a tongue that craved new flavors and textures. Sometimes, Liam had decided, you could have everything you
needed
—and still want more.

Like the photograph. Liam didn’t need it—not the way Tessa would need an entire new wardrobe in a few months, if she kept growing the way she was—but in the few days he’d kept it hidden in his pocket, it had seemed to become a part of him, and now he couldn’t imagine going on without it. Whenever he was alone, he would slip it out and look at it: the picture of a yellow canary, wings outstretched, flying against a blindingly blue sky. The colors alone, so different from the dull grays and browns of Subland, were enough to entrance him for days. And the wings… Liam had seen pictures of birds before in school, had learned how they once flew through that blue, blue sky in Aboveland, somewhere far past the dark rocky ceiling of Subland. But despite the photographs, despite the written records of long-dead Abovelanders, the existence of birds had always seemed more myth than reality, too miraculous and impossible to believe—as impossible as the sky itself.

Now, though, since he’d spied that sparkle of yellow and blue hiding between two rocks in the corner of the schoolyard—since he’d picked up the paper, so thin and fragile it threatened to dissolve into dust, and unfolded it to discover the strange creature within—it seemed more real. Not just a dream, but a possibility. Almost like he could reach into the paper, into that blue blue sky, and stroke the outstretched feathers. Would they feel smooth and cold, he wondered, like the rocks that littered so much of Subland’s surface? Would they be warm and fleshy, like Tessa’s tiny fingers when they clutched his hand? Or would the wings be made of an entirely new material, something Liam couldn’t even imagine? The possibilities kept him occupied for hours.

For once, too, Liam was actually glad he didn’t fit in with the other middle school students, the crowd of boys and girls who spoke so loudly and quickly their words sounded to Liam like a foreign language. If Liam had spent his school break playing kickball with the boys, or watching the girls jump rope, he never would have found the photo. If anyone had come to talk to him in his deserted corner, had even dared to approach him, he might have been forced to share his discovery. So what if the girls said Liam had a weird look on his face, like he was staring at something that wasn’t there? So what if the boys said he asked too many questions in class, and odd ones besides? Liam had a secret, a miraculous secret, and none of them could touch it.

There was writing below the photograph, too, and while some of it was illegible, marred by a water stain, Liam could make out enough to guess the page had come from a textbook or an informational guide of some kind. “Canary, or
Serinus canaria,
” it read, “a small passerine bird of the genus Serinus in the finch family.” Imagine that—there had once been whole families, even genuses (whatever that was) of birds in the world Aboveland. Were they all so colorful, so bold and so bright? Liam could barely believe it, yet he couldn’t stop trying to picture it—a place and time where color existed in excess, in motion, spinning and whirling in an endless expanse of space above his head.

At the bottom of the page, a larger piece of writing had escaped the stain, but Liam wanted to wait till he had a good chunk of time to himself to read it. Between school, homework, and helping his mother cook the
tipiog,
feed Tessa and clean her and play with her and sing her to sleep, his chance didn’t come for nearly a week. Even when his opportunity came, he had to fight the sleep bearing down on his eyelids—the night before, Tessa had fussed till the early hours of morning again, and their house was too small to escape her cries—as he huddled under his covers with his flashlight. Tessa and his mother had fallen asleep together in the rocking chair a half hour ago, and Liam had covered them with the thickest blanket and turned out the weak overhead light. Now he aimed the even weaker beam of the flashlight on the photograph, illuminating the canary. That thin, anemic electric light was the only thing you could possibly call “yellow” in Subland, but it certainly didn’t compare to the canary. People told stories about the sun that had hung in the blue sky in Aboveland, a brilliant ball of orange and yellow fire that must have outshone even the canary’s feathers, that had illuminated and warmed the entire world.
Fire
—that was another thing that might be yellow. But like birds, Liam had seen fire only in ancient photographs. He didn’t know how it was created or what it was made of; he knew only that it was very dangerous, and thus it was forbidden in Subland. Better to be a bit cold than to risk more destruction.

Now, moving the electric beam from the canary to the words below, Liam read:

Canaries were famously used by miners as a sort of life insurance policy…

Liam had only a vague idea of what a “miner” was, from some Aboveland history book he’d read: they were Abovelanders who’d dug tunnels into the ground, long before Subland existed. Why, Liam couldn’t remember. For now, he read on:

Carried below ground in cages, the birds’ highly sensitive metabolism detected methane and carbon monoxide gas traces that signaled potential explosions, poisoned air or both.
As long as the air remained high in oxygen, the canaries would chirp and sing in their cages—

Sing? The birds sang too? Liam didn’t remember learning about that in school. They’d learned about other animals that made noise—dogs, which had once been human companions and made a rough sound called “barking,” and wolves, who had let out a high wailing like the sirens that sometimes rang through Subland, signaling an emergency. But singing—Liam had thought that talent belonged to humans alone. To possess such bright colors, and the ability to make music as well… It seemed almost too much. The words continued:

But if carbon monoxide levels grew too high, the canaries would have trouble breathing. Once the canaries were no longer singing, miners would know the gas levels were rising, and they needed to return to the surface. As the gas levels increased, the canaries would display noticeable signs of distress, swaying on their perches and falling, and many would even die.

At the last word, Liam felt something knot up in his throat, like a lump of undercooked
tipiog
. Die? They would take the canaries underground to
die
?
If there were just one canary in Subland, one bright yellow, winged, singing creature, Liam imagined the entire community would band together to protect it. But those Abovelanders…they had something so extraordinary before them, in their very hands, and what did they do? They led the creature to its death.

Liam tried in vain to read on, but it was useless—all the other words on the page were stained beyond recognition. Finally he gave up, clicked off the flashlight, and fell into darkness, still holding the photograph in one hand.

Liam was trapped. Ahead and to both sides of him were craggy rock walls, so close he couldn’t extend his arms. When he turned around, tried to move back the way he’d come, he saw a cloud of swirling dark smoke moving toward him. He tried to breathe in, and gritty particles flew into his mouth, choking and burning him. Far away, he heard a low, keening cry, like the sound he imagined a bird might make in distress…

Liam sat up in bed, covered in sweat despite the cold air. Tessa was wailing, but when he peeked into the next room, his mother had woken and was rocking her. Already her cries were growing softer. Liam gulped in huge breaths of air; at least it was fresh and clear, if very cold. His mother finally noticed him, and she smiled. A tired smile. “The morning bell hasn’t rung yet,” she whispered. “You should try to get some more sleep.”

Liam nodded and crept back to his room, which now felt smaller and more closed-in than ever. It wasn’t until he was back under the covers, on the edge of sleep once more, that the real significance of his dream occurred to him:

It wasn’t just the canaries who died. The miners died too.

***

All through the next day at school, while they studied new techniques for plant growth underground in Science class and new methods of preparing
tipiog
—the only plant growth that had proved successful for the Sublanders so far—in Life Skills, Liam thought about the miners. He already knew that the Abovelanders had been careless with life, human and otherwise. In Abovelander history class, they’d learned about the wars in which Abovelanders slaughtered each other, the diseases they spread while denying medical care to those who couldn’t afford it. Even the disaster that had destroyed Aboveland entirely, replacing the air with poison gas and killing all living things other than the original Sublanders, who’d escaped underground in time, had been caused by dangerous human experiments.

But somehow, what had happened to the miners and the canaries seemed even worse to Liam. He didn’t remember much about the miners—he was going to the Preservation Room as soon as possible to try to learn more—but he did know mining was a job, something certain Abovelanders did almost every day for most of their adult lives. And that was what Liam found so hard to understand: why would anyone who lived in a world of warmth and light, of blue sky and colorful winged creatures, choose to leave that all behind, to risk his life in the darkness beneath the earth?

***

In Subland, nothing was more important than preserving human life. They heard it every day at school in the Subland motto,
vita carissima
—life is precious—repeated at the beginning and end of morning announcements. They read the same words inscribed over the threshold of every official building in the community, from the school to the Preservation Room to the Leaders’ Meetinghouse. But really, the message began much earlier, before the new citizens of Subland had learned to read or even to speak. All newborns were kept in incubators for at least the first six weeks of life, where they were monitored every second of the day until the doctors had determined they were healthy enough to go home. Children under the age of six visited the doctors every week; from the age of six on, the mandatory doctors’ appointments were biweekly until adulthood, when they decreased to once per month. The doctors had shots for everything, for diseases with names so odd, they sounded to Liam like a child’s nursery rhyme—
mumps, measles, malaria
—and sometimes Liam felt his left arm was no more than a human pincushion.

There were no weapons in Subland—none of the strange guns, or bombs, or toxic chemicals Liam had learned about in Aboveland history class—and fighting was unheard of. Even harmless physical activities, like the kickball games and jump rope most of Liam’s classmates loved, were strictly monitored: they were to take place only under adult supervision, in the center of the schoolyard with its soft foam floor. In fact, injuries were so rare in Subland that Liam had seen blood only once, when he was seven and he’d tripped over his own two feet and landed on a pebble. He was so stunned by the vivid red color—almost as vibrant as the yellow of the canary—that the pain didn’t even register. His knee was barely scratched, but his mother rushed him to the hospital anyway, where they cleaned the wound with stinging antiseptics and covered it with layers of bandages, forbidding him to remove them himself. When the doctor finally took the bandages off a week later, Liam’s disappointment at finding the last traces of blood had faded to a dull, muddy brown hurt far more than any cut or scrape ever could.

***

Nearly a week passed before Liam found time to visit the Preservation Room. The photograph was growing wrinkled and more fragile than ever in his pocket, but he couldn’t bear to leave it at home all day. He’d gotten in the habit of rubbing the paper between his fingers every time another student glowered at him, then turned and whispered to a group of giggling friends, or simply came right out and called Liam “freak” or “mutant.” The photo had become a bit of a good-luck charm, and he’d examined it so thoroughly that all he had to do now was close his eyes, and the canary would appear in his vision, wings stretched in flight.

Despite its name, the Preservation Room was much more than a single room. It descended far below the rest of Subland—kids in Liam’s class placed bets on how many floors there were—and held the thousands of books and artifacts the Sublanders had managed to gather before the final disaster. But most of those treasures were strictly off-limits, far too delicate and precious for the Sublanders to touch or examine. So for the average person, the Preservation Room consisted of the small lending library—copies of the most important Abovelander books, as well as the textbooks and other guides written by Sublanders—and the computers with their huge database of information.