Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury (20 page)

It was not quite a deer but something with a similar shape, the animal wearing a gray-blue coat of fur, and reddish-pink antlers that entangled themselves as the animal snuffled at a stream of clear water. There was water. Somehow there was actual water or something that looked like water down here. Quinn stood now, weak on his feet, dumbstruck. There was water, and there were plants and flowers of all kinds, some with petals as large as his face, growing all around. He had, in fact, landed in a pile of what appeared to be great pink poppies, in a small field full of them.

Quinn looked up, seeing the shape of the place he had fallen into. It was a cave, a cavern, and above, nearly ten meters up, was the opening. He could see the hole he had fallen through hanging there like a false black moon, and through it, the nighttime sky, still reeling. For a moment, all he could do was stare, and then something else, a bird—like a hummingbird, but much bigger, nearly the size of his face—darted past. It disappeared inside the trumpet of an otherworldly flower and then buzzed away. He watched the shape the bird made, amazed by the swift pattern of its thin purple wings, flitting from oversized flower to flower; he had never before seen a bird or anything move through the air under its own volition. The bird wound itself through a grove of waist-high vines and troubled a stand of reddish fruits. Following the bird’s turbulence with his eyes, he saw Lana, her body lying on a hillock of orange flowers. He began to panic again, rushing over to where she lay, on her side; the front of her helmet had been cracked, a slight silver spiderweb running the length of the convex glass. Quinn quickly checked the gauge on her air tank. It was empty, exhausted by the leak in the helmet. For a moment Quinn froze, then he scrambled to get the helmet off Lana’s neck, pulling at the small silver locks until they gave.

She was unconscious, her face looking passive, as peaceful an expression as she’d ever worn. He found the auxiliary mask and hose at the side of his own tank and placed it over Lana’s nose and mouth. Soon she began coughing, and then, her eyes wide and frightened, she tried to pull the apparatus away from her face. He did all he could to hold the mask against her face, but she was stronger than he would have guessed and pushed it away even more forcefully, her face turning red. Quinn shoved it back over her mouth, and finally she began to relax, starting to breathe once again. Moments later the air in his own tank had dwindled to emergency levels, and he could taste the nitrogen inside the helmet as the tank began to hiss, all but empty.

This accident, all of it had been his fault; he could admit that now. He had been led into temptation, and the consequences of his betrayal were going to be fatal for the both of them. He grasped Lana’s hand in his own, hoping to black out first, as he did not want to see the horrid expression Lana would make as she began gagging on the carbon-dioxide-flooded air. He waited, hoping for the world to quickly go dark.

But then nothing happened. Lana held his hand in her own and continued to breathe, looking up at him, first terrified, then confused, then at last—as his air tank ran dry and the emergency tone beeped faintly, warning of imminent failure—her face shifted to a kind of teary-eyed delirium. Somehow she was breathing. Somehow she could breathe. Carefully, uncertainly, she removed the auxiliary mask from her mouth and took a shallow breath from the air inside the cavern. And then—not coughing up blood—she began to smile. It was a smile Quinn had never seen on her face before, and though it only lasted a moment, it was enough to convince the boy to unclasp his own helmet and take in a short breath.

The air, the plants down here—somehow there was enough oxygen for both of them to breathe.

Quinn set the helmet by his feet and took in a gulp of air once more, the striking odors of ripe flowers filling his nostrils with a fragrant, almost corrupted smell. Lana sat up and did the same, the two of them breathing together, looking over at each other, quietly laughing.

It was what the two of them would later come to think of as a miracle. In this deep, forsaken cave, somehow there was enough air to breathe without wearing a helmet, and there were animals and birds and flowers and a world as colorful as it had been described in the first book of the Bible. The children stood then, hand in hand, making their way together along the foliage’s pink, rambling edge.

I
t was easier falling through the hole than climbing back out of it. And then there was the problem of their empty air tanks and the crack in Lana’s helmet. Quinn solved the question of their egress simply enough by finding a path up along the stony outcroppings of vines and dirt. The empty air tanks required a much more thoughtful solution. Here Lana decided to purge both of their tanks completely, then used a narrow twig to force the valves of both their tanks open again. Her coup de grâce was using the suits’ filters to create a vacuum, drawing in enough air from the cavern itself, before sealing the tanks again. The crack in her helmet held, leaking a little air whenever she took a heavy step, and as they climbed back up and out of the cave, Quinn stared at the fracture dividing the girl’s face, sensing, for the first time, that something for the two of them had begun to change.

O
ver dinner that evening—it was freeze-dried mashed potatoes and sickles of reddish soybeans, reconstituted to look like some nameless meat—Lana and Quinn stared at each other without speaking.
What are you thinking?
their wide eyes seemed to say. And then:
What we have seen should remain a secret.
Silently, without ever saying a word out loud, the two of them came to an agreement. And having never before in their lives had any reason to keep a secret, what followed then was their first lie. Lana, when questioned about the crack in her helmet, announced, without pause, without a single, doubtful blink, that she had cracked it on the sharp teeth of the disposal unit. Forrest Blau nodded, having said more than once that the exterior trash bin was no place for the children to play.

Later that night, as they lay in separate beds, their secret, along with their first, dreadful lie, occupied each of the children’s imaginations. It was as if—trying to coax themselves to sleep—they had already begun to dream of what else might happen, what other commandments they would have to soon outwit or try to evade.

I
t was seven days before they made their way back to the cave. It took that long for William, Quinn’s father and the colony’s only scientist, to repair Lana’s broken helmet and also for the children to finally accept that their lie had been believed. They took with them—in their gray side packs—a length of rope, a flashlight, and some MREs: things that were small enough to steal without their parents or any of their siblings noticing.

I
t took less time to find the cave than they had thought it would. Quinn tied the rope around a stack of heavy boulders and then, hand over hand, lowered himself down the hole into the glowing, verdant cave. The descent seemed to go on forever, and when finally his feet struck the grassy bottom, he pulled his helmet off, breathing the fragrant air with an urgent sense of relief. Lana followed, lowering herself with her long legs extended, falling the last few meters. She plucked her helmet from her shoulders, setting it down beside her pack, and then proceeded to unzip the thin outer lining of her silver space suit.

“What are you doing?” Quinn asked, but the girl did not answer. Instead, she stripped down to her yellow-and-white undergarments and then ran, barefoot, to the small pool of cerulean water, before gently climbing in.

“This is all I’ve been thinking about for the last several days,” Lana whispered, her head bobbing above the ripples he had made. “Come on. It’s warm!”

Quinn watched, mouth agape, and then quickly began to unzip his own space suit as well. There was a nervous throb in his chest and his hands. Everything felt like it was new, like they had somehow become some whole other species, some other kind of creatures—spectral animals emerging from centuries-old cocoons.

After they swam, they sat on the bank and shared a packet of partially dehydrated fruit. It was pink, the color of the palms of their hands. A bird as large as their heads landed near their discarded helmets. The children laughed, tossing the food pellets at the bird’s feet. Then they lay back in the grass, seeing the small world of the cave come alive—flowers unfolded, nameless insects whistled past, a lone, pinkish antelope hustled away after drinking at the water pool. Time passed slowly or not at all. There was the feeling within them that their lives—the world of the colony and the three domes in which they had always lived—could somehow be forgotten. Being here meant being adults, people who could think and do as they pleased. The place filled them with a sense of hope, a shadow world of entirely new possibilities, possibilities that the two of them could share, and that never needed to be spoken aloud.

B
ack at the colony, Lana had begun to answer her father back. At the dinner table that very evening, Forrest Blau asked where she had been; when she answered, whispering, “None of your business,” Forrest swung the white switch up and back and down across Lana’s hands so quickly that Quinn hadn’t had a chance to whisper a warning. Lana put her sore fingers against her chest, asked permission to leave the table, and spent the next few days silently pulling weeds from the rows of biologically modified corn. She would not make eye contact with Quinn no matter how hard he tried; back here, in the colony, outside of the cave, she hardly seemed like herself anymore.

O
ne evening Quinn had a dream that a small bird was trapped inside his chest. He woke up trembling and found he couldn’t get back to sleep. He climbed down from the top bunk, trying not to disturb his two younger sisters as he snuck from their living quarters and out into the dimly lit passageway. For some time he stared out the observation windows at the order of bleak stars twinkling above. And then he heard a sound, something small and high-pitched, like a soft-throated whisper, exactly the kind of sound the bird in his dream had been making. He followed it, down and around Dome One to the intersection near Dome Three, which led to the library. The door to the library was open, and poking his head inside, he saw the shape of a girl—it was Lana, of course—sitting in one of the chairs, rocking back and forth; before her, on the video screen, was some blurry footage of two birds, a gray one and a blue one, mating. Their wings fluttered violently as one of them sang a trilling song. On the opposite screen there was another video—this one of horses, and on a third screen, a pair of leopards, each of them engaged in the act of copulation. Lana’s hair looked darker than it was and hung in her eyes. She seemed to be making a kind of sound, too, something too soft for Quinn to hear. The boy hurried back to his room, his face on fire, hurtling himself into bed as quickly as he could. He lay there awake until the morning lights shuddered on, his thoughts as unsteady as the moons spiraling above.

A
t the morning meal, Lana’s blond hair hung limply in her face, nearly dangling into her bowl of cereal. She rudely slurped up her food. Later, there was something wild, animalistic about the way she sank her teeth into a runny, ripe grapefruit, something that was both attractive and terrifying.

B
ut surely Forrest Blau suspected something; each time Quinn passed him in one of the passageways, each time the older man gave him an order, each time their two glances happened to meet, it was tinged with a faint tension, a growing uncertainty. Later that morning, once the meal and dishes had been cleared, once the colonists had been assigned their tasks for the day—Quinn’s mother and father once more sent to pick pink apples in Dome Three, and then, as no less a commandment than from the pastor himself, to attempt another round of procreation or, as Forrest Blau put it, “to conjugate on behalf of all our futures”—Quinn knelt among the ripening soybeans, shuddering when Forrest Blau appeared, standing silent over his shoulder, watching the boy’s work with an air of serious interest. His long shadow made the back of Quinn’s neck go cold where it fell, just above his shoulder. The boy tried not to look up and so found himself gazing at the man’s large, gruesome-looking hands. The silence of the moment seemed to last forever, until, clearing his wide throat, Forrest spoke.

“It looks like the beans have finally come in.”

Quinn only nodded, then murmured, “Yes, Mr. Blau.”

Forrest Blau outstretched a wide, hairy hand, running his fingers along the length of a vine. He plucked a single bean, staring at it as if it were harboring some indefensible secret.

“God has a time for all things, my boy. It’s not for us to know or to question when or why.”

Quinn nodded once more and said, “No, Mr. Blau.”

Still the older man did not take his leave. Instead, he leaned in even closer, his gray beard brushing against the side of Quinn’s ear.

“Where were you and Lana the day before last?”

“Me and . . . Lana?”

The boy’s face went white at the sound of her name in his mouth.

“Yes. Seems to me, I remember you two were supposed to clear out the weeds in Dome Three. And this very morning, what do I see but a whole field still choked with weeds.”

“We did,” he lied. “Only . . . only, it took longer than we thought. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. There was more . . . I can finish it up today, if you like.”

“I would,” Forrest Blau said. “I would like it very much, Quinn. A sin of omission, of failure, is still a sin.” The elder man smiled, the smile forced, as tight and frightening as any frown. “That does remind me, though. When was the last time you made your confession?”