Perfect Flaw

by Robin Blankenship

  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.

  The Preservation staff member on duty, Jeremy, recognized Liam and waved him in, telling him to just ask for help
if he needed it. That was convenient; Liam didn’t even have to explain what he was looking for or why. He went right over to one of the many empty computers—the Preservation Room wasn’t exactly the most popular place in Subland—logged on, and began searching.

  A half hour later, Liam had determined that miners had indeed died while doing their job—and far too often. More than 100,000 killed in the United States alone; that was more than 100 times the population of Subland. It made Liam dizzy just thinking about it.

  Next, Liam wondered what could possibly make this coal so valuable, that it was worth so much more than human lives. He found coal could generate electricity—but there were other ways to do that. They used the underground river here. The Abovelanders had also used coal to heat buildings. And…to power steam engines. Liam had heard of trains that crossed the vast Aboveland, great mechanical beasts that carried humans from one end of the country to the other, past the varied landscapes he could only imagine: forests full of towering plants called trees, mountains where the earth rose in immense humps, cities of human-made buildings standing tall against the blue sky. Yes, the trains did seem wonderful—but not nearly as wonderful as being alive in Aboveland, able to walk through all of (or just one of) those many strange landscapes. Not as wonderful as a gleaming, singing yellow bird, soaring through the sky.

  ***

  The days passed, blurring one into the next just as the grays and browns of Subland all smudged together into one dull shade. Liam choked down more tipiog and tried to ignore the hole in his stomach. He listened to his teachers drone on and tried to tune out the whispers aimed in his direction. He lay in bed at night and tried to pretend Tessa’s cries were actually a beautiful song. And as the days passed, Liam thought. According to the several articles he’d read, the miners’ canaries died because they didn’t have enough oxygen to breathe. Liam knew about oxygen—they’d learned in Health class that all humans took in oxygen from the air, that every cell inside their bodies needed it to survive. But it had never occurred to him that oxygen could run out. Liam understood that some aspects of the mining process had been especially dangerous, had caused explosions and buildup of dangerous gases. But, still… Miners died because of lack of oxygen. Oxygen came from the fresh air above ground. Subland existed far below the earth’s surface, without any opening that Liam knew of. So why, in over two hundred years, had their oxygen never run out?

  No one knew how far below the earth’s surface Subland was located. Well, the Leaders and some of the scientists must know, Liam supposed, but it certainly wasn’t common knowledge. And it wasn’t the type of thing you could research in the Preservation Room, either—the databases there held information only on Aboveland society. Liam, like most of the other kids, had always imagined Subland located miles and miles beneath the surface. There were even rhymes about it, written to match the rhythm of the jump rope:

  Down and down and down they ran

  to escape the poisoned men.

  Down and down and down we’ll stay.

  Miles below, we’re always safe.

  But now, Liam thought maybe the rhymes and stories were wrong. There had to be an opening somewhere, a way for fresh, oxygen-filled air to travel down to them. And if there was an opening, maybe they weren’t so far below the earth that the surface was little more than a dream, a fantasy. Maybe…maybe there was a way out of Subland. Maybe there was still a world above, a world of sky and sun and birds that flew.

  There was no point waiting for Liam’s science teacher to bring up Aboveland or oxygen or how many miles Subland extended beneath the earth. It wasn’t going to happen. So one day in school, when Mr. Abithen followed yet another lecture on subterranean soil with the words, “Any questions?”, Liam decided to take him literally. He might have chosen a more tactful method, might have approached Mr. Abithen alone after class, but Liam was beyond that now. His curiosity had grown so strong, it seemed to have developed wings of its own, and now it was soaring beyond Liam’s control.

  “Mr. Abithen,” Liam began when the teacher called on him, “we all breathe oxygen, right?” He could already hear the titters from either side of him.

  Mr. Abithen cleared his throat. “Yes, Liam, but I don’t see what—”

  “And the oxygen has to come from somewhere, right?” he went on before he could lose his courage.

  “Well, yes, but let’s get back on—”

  “The oxygen must come from the surface.” Liam let the words out in one long rush. “There must be an opening to the surface somewhere in Subland, or else we’d all be—”

  Mr. Abithen’s face turned hard, then, as hard as the stone ceiling that hovered high above Subland. “There is no opening. The air in Aboveland is poisoned, and if any of it was seeping down here, we’d all be dead.”

  “But the disaster was more than two hundred years ago,” Liam protested. Unconsciously his hand went to the photo in his pocket, gripping it for support. “Things might have changed since—”

  “Nothing has changed. Aboveland is destroyed, and we can never go back. Indulging in silly daydreams is not only pointless, it’s dangerous. We need to focus on our life down here.”

  Around Liam, the other students’ whispers and giggles had faded in the wake of Mr. Abithen’s booming voice. None of them had ever seen the teacher so angry.

  “Do you understand, Liam?”

  For a moment, Liam couldn’t speak. His mouth didn’t seem to work.

  “Liam?”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.”

  ***

  That evening, Liam took the photograph from his pocket and examined it one more time. He memorized every detail of the picture: the spot where the bird’s yellow surface shone even brighter, he supposed because the sun was hitting it; the little wisps at the edge of each wing, tugged at by an invisible breeze; the piercing black eyes that stared straight ahead, into the endless blue. Then he gave the photo to his mother, as he should have done all those weeks ago. He didn’t need it anymore. The bird was inside him now.

  All evening long, as they ate tipiog and Liam did his homework and his mother played with Tessa, talking all the while about the new clothes and luxuries they’d buy, Liam thought about the opening hidden somewhere in Subland, leading to the surface. Despite what Mr. Abithen had said, Liam was as sure as ever that it existed. And maybe in Aboveland, there was life again. Maybe there were towering trees and rolling mountains, dogs that barked and wolves that howled. Maybe right this very moment, far above Liam’s head, a bird the color of the sun was flying on outstretched wings.

  And maybe one day, Liam would find his way to the surface and see for himself.

  That night, when his mother was ready to put Tessa to bed, Liam said, “Let me.” He laid Tessa in her crib and watched as she reached her chubby arms up, up, grasping instinctively for something just beyond her reach. Finally he extended his own arm, just far enough for her to grab one of his fingers and clasp it tight. Her grip was warm and surprisingly strong; she let out a gurgling sound of pure pleasure and gave a big, toothless smile.

  And Liam smiled back.

  THE CHOOSING

  BY MICHAEL O’CONNOR

  Ninah sat in the hollow she had scooped out for herself and stared unblinkingly ahead at the expanse of lilac sand. The Copses were close behind her, and the tight-knit collection of thirty variously sized residence-domes and other buildings known as Gamma Town was a little to her left. But despite this proximity, she knew that as long as she kept her eyes fixed in one direction she would eventually be able to convince herself that she was alone and safe from the obstructiveness of other people.

  She had been brought to Graal as an infant, fourteen years earlier. “We fled the noxious ball of pollution which the over-industrialised Earth had become to seek the riches buried within a brave new world,” her father had once told her in an uncharacteristic moment of verbosity. Though i
t was hot and dry and the Copses sighed poison at night, Ninah loved the tiny planet which was the only home she knew.

  The yellow sun had already dipped below the horizon and the more distant red one would soon follow. Automatically, she put out her hand and let it fall onto her night-hood. Once it became dark, all the plants on Graal would start to draw in the breathable air and exhale a noisome gas which humans could not tolerate without transmutation. The gas was rendered harmless at red sun rise. Night-hoods contained the necessary filters and chemical devices that make it possible to breathe outside after dark, but they were expensive to buy and to maintain, and Ninah would get into serious trouble if she lost hers. Satisfied that the hood was safe, she ran her fingers through her short, carrot-red hair. She had asked her mother to cut it that way because the long ringlets she used to have were taking up too much room in the child’s night-hood she used, and her parents would not buy her a new one until after her Choosing. Just in case they did not need to.

  She picked up the night-hood and stared at her reflection in the black visor, angling it up and down to take in her whole body. Her slight build and spiky hair had not worried her before. She had never really cared what she looked like. But that was before Trum came, trekking across the desert by day and night on a sand-scooter from Kappa Town which lay in one of the further segments of Graal. His parents had died in a mining accident and he had an uncle in Gamma Town who had invited the youth to share his home. Trum was tall and bony with dark brown hair which was always falling into his green eyes, and he had a way of smiling slowly as he spoke to her which made Ninah think he could read her mind. She had grown up with all the other boys in her Town and viewed them like brothers. Trum, three years older than her and with a slight drawl in his voice, seemed almost mythic. It frightened her how quickly and how powerfully she had fallen in love with him.