Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury (21 page)

Quinn began to panic, searching among the spiny, green leaves for an answer, any answer. In the end, all he could think of was to shake his head and then shrug weakly.

“Surely you’ve got a few things you’d like to confess,” Forrest added, the false smile giving over to an even falser grin.

Quinn nodded, afraid that if he made any noise, he would blurt out everything, the distracted mutter of all the terrible things he had been hiding coming out in one galloping, terrified rush.

“You know, Quinn, if there’s anything you’d like to tell me, anything big, or
small
”—and here Forrest crushed the bean in his grimy-looking hand—“I am always here for you. I like to think of myself as a kind of father to you. Your spiritual father.”

Quinn nodded again, knowing that if the man stood over him for one more minute, one more second, all would be lost. But he didn’t. Forrest Blau slipped the raw bean into his mouth, crushing it, and then turned, disappeared among the hedgerows of silver leaves. For a long moment afterward, it seemed his shadow remained, drawing gooseflesh along Quinn’s skinny neck.

W
ithout ever agreeing to do so out loud, without ever needing to voice their thoughts, the two children ended up stealing away from their chores in Dome Two once again that afternoon, leaving their rakes and hoes in a row of modified corn, sneaking into their tank suits and through the air lock, back out into the red, shapeless world. Before stepping through the pneumatic door, Quinn glanced up and saw the forbidding shape of Forrest Blau’s bolt-action rifle—its shadow falling against his helmet like a condemnation, an accusation of sorts. He ignored this feeling of doubt, of damnation, and trailed behind Lana’s silver figure as she made her way silently back to the light-filled cave.

T
oday there was a severity to Lana’s face, in its expressions, in the shape of her mouth as they lowered themselves down the rope. Once among the tall silver and pink stands of flowers, Lana immediately doffed her helmet, setting it down in the dirt as if she intended to never wear it again. Then she unzipped her outer tank suit and removed it. Before Quinn managed to rid himself of his own helmet, she had knelt down before him, dirtying her bare knees in the mud.

“What are you doing?” Quinn asked as she placed her hands inside the turgid confines of his space suit. “What are you doing?” he asked again and again, her mouth, her fingers exploring the innocuous curve of his body, until he was kneeling in the grassy open, too. There was a moment, lying there, his suit unzipped, his helmet still halfway on, that he became afraid that she was going to devour him alive, that her teeth, making themselves known somewhere along the lower hemisphere of his body, would betray them both. But no, all became a lazy, light-washed moment with unfamiliar birds cooing, and the delicious panic of human bodies doing what human bodies had always been meant to do. As they lay together, entangled there, Quinn began to quietly believe that the cave had become a kind of garden of Eden, and that God was somewhere among all this splendor, among these impossible, crystalline leaves.

O
n their return, the children were once again silent. Treading over the arid red rocks, Quinn reached out to touch Lana’s hand, but she seemed shy, inexplicably embarrassed. Fifty meters from Dome One, he tried once more to say something, to take her fingers in his own, but she pulled away from him, shouting something that he could not hear. It was then that they both caught sight of something glinting among the shadows of zigzagging pylons that marked the border of the colony. First it flashed, then it disappeared for a moment, and then it flashed again. Quinn paused, stepping before Lana, holding up a hand. Before he could decipher the shape picking its way along the silver boundary markers, a shot rang out, then another, then another. The first round glanced hard against the side of Quinn’s helmet, knocking him from his feet. The second kicked up a clod of dirt a half meter from his right leg, and the third seemed to disappear entirely. But before the third report was done ringing in his ears, he turned and caught sight of Lana slumping forward, tilting to her left, and Quinn—getting his footing once again—caught her as she fell to her side. The girl was like a sack of diaphanous dirt, loose-necked, spreading out in strange ways as he tried to set her down. When Quinn glanced up, he could see the glare of Forrest Blau’s glassy helmet, the butt of the bolt-action rifle held up against the crook of his arm. The pastor fired once more, the weapon jerking against his shoulder, the report like a whip, cracking sharply through the heavy, carbon-rich air. The bullet struck the front dome of Quinn’s helmet, bifurcating the shield, lodging itself in the dense, pixilated glass. Slowly the air in the tank suit began to whoosh out in a loud hush. The boy did not fall over, only watched as Forrest Blau began to unzip the utility pocket of his space suit, searching for more ammunition. The boy knew then that he did not have much time—there was the leak in his helmet and Lana looked defenseless lying in the dirt—so he grabbed the girl under her bony arms and began to drag her back up the hill, dodging behind the rocky outcroppings as Forrest Blau fired again, then again.

The pastor’s weapon was loud, somewhat accurate, but a misery to try and reload with the bulky silver gloves.

Quinn watched as the elder man tore off his tank gloves and dug amongst his suit’s pockets again, searching for another handful of bullets. Quinn took a deep breath and, shifting Lana upon his left shoulder, began to scale the uneven trail back up the rise. A report boomed from somewhere behind him, a cloud of dust zipping several meters to his right, then a second, this time the shot arcing even closer, sniping at the heels of his black boots. But he was close to the cave’s opening now—the glowing, light-filled hole—and before a third shot ricocheted off a pile of craggy, red rocks, Quinn had begun to lower Lana inside. Together they slid awkwardly down the rope, and then, giving over to exhaustion, the two of them fell into a mound of blossoming pink and white flowers.

A
ll he could think to do was to hide, and so, dragging Lana through the underbrush, the boy found a patch of brambles where the two of them could wait. He carefully lifted Lana’s helmet off, hoping the air would revive her. Her eyes were closed and her lips had turned white. He had a feeling that what was happening to them was not part of God’s plan. Before him was a large stone, which he grasped in his hands as some sort of weapon. He looked up, watching, breathing sharply through the bullet hole in his helmet. There was the long rope hanging in the air, unmoving, untouched—and then, soon enough, the shape of Forrest Blau’s feet, then his middle, then his glassy helmet appeared, as he lowered himself down, half meter by half meter. The bolt-action rifle was slung over his shoulder as he descended. As the pastor reached the leafy stalks and gilded flowers, there was a faint puzzlement, a bleary confusion that passed over the older man’s face, fitted for a moment, as it was, into something akin to religious ecstasy. Then that particular expression was gone, and all that was left was rage, rage at having been misled, of having been lied to, of having not been the first to discover the miracle of such a place. He yanked the rifle from his shoulder, fit several rounds inside, jerked the bolt back, and then marched cautiously through the waist-high grasses, raising the rifle’s sight up to his eye.

“Now what, dear children?” the pastor murmured. “Dear children? Would you hide from your own father? Would you hide like that villain Cain who cast the first sin against his brother, Abel? Come out now, my dear children, and forget your temptation. Come out now, and I promise you, all will be forgiven.”

The children were huddled only a few meters from where Forrest Blau was now standing, his boots roughly parting the damp foliage. Quinn sobbed a muffled cry where he lay, and began to consider their surrender. Surely, if he confessed now, if they both came clean, the pastor, his father, his mother, the colony, would find a way to forgive them both for what they had done. But then—only a few meters away from where they were huddled—there was the sound of nervous movement rising through the underbrush. Forrest Blau paused, brought the rifle’s sight up to his eye, and fired twice. Something fell and then died in the grass. It was a small, nearly wingless bird. As the pastor saw what he had killed, his face fell into a nettle of confusion. The reddish-purple animal lay split in two before him, its gaunt wings still flapping. Forrest Blau knelt, prodding the creature with his bare finger, as it rasped and twitched.

Quinn watched from where he lay, trembling. There would be no confession, no forgiveness; this much was clear now. Forrest Blau meant to kill them both. His expression, his anger was as terrifying as the God of the Old Testament’s.

Quinn held the heavy rock in his hand, his right fist shaking with fright.

The pastor was now pensively holding the bird in the palm of his hand, muttering, “Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather, yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye any better than they?’ ” Then answering his own question, Forrest Blau murmured, “Neh, neh, neh.”

Suspecting that this was his only chance, Quinn slowly raised himself up from the ground and, once he was standing, brought the angular rock down hard against the pastor’s helmet once, then again, knocking it off. The pastor roared with pain—like a lion having been cut in two—falling forward to his knees. The boy brought down the rock against the back of Forrest Blau’s head once, twice, then a third time, and the older man fell limply to his side. Taking advantage of the pastor’s pain, the boy pried the rifle loose from the pastor’s grip. Awkwardly, he set the butt of the gun against the inside of his shoulder and took aim, finding it hard to maneuver the finger of his glove along the edge of the trigger. Finally he found it and prepared to fire.

But Forrest Blau lifted his head first, his silver beard glistening with drool and sweat. His bare hands pawed the dirt where he had fallen. He pulled himself achingly to his knees, glancing up at the boy and rifle with a glare that was both dull and unafraid. Quinn shuddered, seized with the sudden recognition that he could not pull the trigger. And then, just as soon as this recognition passed among the boy’s other senses, the pastor collapsed, falling forward into the mud, his body shaking with a violent paroxysm. For many moments the boy held the rifle there, aimed at the pastor’s body, waiting for it to move again. When it did not, when he began to hear Lana coughing alone in the weeds, the boy lowered the rifle and took a step closer to where Forrest Blau lay. The pastor was still trying to breathe, though his body was crippled, stricken. Something was wrong with the left side of his face. Finally his expression became tightened and his eyes went wide, wider still; there was no mistaking the sudden, bared, grimace of death. The pastor looked to be smiling, and for the first time in as long as the boy could remember, the smile seemed somewhat human, the grimace of someone at peace.

I
n the weeds Lana was alive though disoriented, bleeding from a spot near her right shoulder; she was whispering something again and again, a song or prayer perhaps. He fitted her helmet back in place, set a tourniquet along her upper arm where she had been shot, and tied the long yellow rope around her waist. She did not seem to notice her father lying there, dead, on a pyre of pink and yellow flowers.

R
eturning to the surface, Quinn hoisted the girl up through the light-filled opening. Once she was close enough to touch, he reached for her, catching her beneath her arms, and gently laid her in the dust. Then he untied the rope, dropping it down into the cavern with an air of finality, before he began to cover the entrance to the hole, dragging loose rocks into place, disguising the opening with dirt and an odd mound of gravel. The girl was still breathing quickly, talking wildly to herself. Finally he realized it was a song. Something from chapel. “Rise up, all you unbelievers,” she whispered, though the way she was singing it sounded hopeful, true. He lifted one of the girl’s arms over his shoulder, while his own arm rested behind her back, gripping her side tightly. Together, like that, moving step by step, they wandered toward the pale glow of the three domes, the world echoless before them. Hand in hand, through the endless dust, they made their way back.

About “Young Pilgrims”

The first Ray Bradbury story I ever read was “The Veldt.” I was eleven or twelve years old, and the story was put in front of me by an older cousin who had a deeper wisdom about such things. I had heard of science fiction, had seen it in comic books, but had never read it in prose. Reading that one particular story, like encountering a number of Mr. Bradbury’s works, has gone on to live in a particularly vivid and nearly unconscious part of my imagination, as have most important childhood discoveries, an image that gets replayed as I’m sleeping, or thought about at odd moments in the day, whenever something drifts out of the corner of my eye.

“The Veldt,” like the best science fiction, seems purposely derived from the myth or folktale in its youthful characters, its ruthlessness, and its life-or-death stakes. There is something interesting and dramatic for me in children negotiating the unknown. “The Veldt” also seems heavily moral, like some of my other favorite sci-fi tales, which connects to another older literary form, the Bible. Following those two inspirations, I decided to set my story on an unknown planet, peopling it with religious missionaries and their curious, adolescent children. Living in modern-day America, it’s sometimes easy to forget how so many generations ago, our unknown territory was colonized by religious missionaries as well. Out of those characters and that setting, I started developing the notion that Quinn and Lana were a future Adam and Eve, borrowing ideas and events from the Bible and Milton’s
Paradise Lost
. The last line of the story is a re-conceptualization of one of Milton’s ending lines. Writing this piece was one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had writing. It was a pleasure to live in Mr. Bradbury’s world even for an hour, a few minutes.