by Kij Johnson
Eduardo said in his musical voice, “As for man, his days are like grass. As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.” That was what he always said at funerals, and Pete always hated it. It sounded sad, and anyway it was stupid. Xiaobo wasn’t grass—people were made of skin and bones and blood. There was no wind inside the Shell. And this place certainly would remember Xiaobo. Pete would, and so would the other Six and Darlene and Eduardo and, of course, McAllister.
Her words made more sense. “To the Earth we commit the body of our friend and family, Lung Xiaobo. His bones and tissues and heart will enrich the land and help to make it one to which humanity will, someday, return. Go with our gratitude, Xiaobo, and our love.”
Darlene began to sing, another of her awful scratchy songs with words Pete didn’t understand. There were so many things he didn’t understand, starting with how McAllister could bear to have sex with Ravi. He hated him, he hated her, he hated everything. He clutched his DIGITAL FOTO FRAME tighter.
Darlene howled, “Abide with me, ’tis eventide. . . .”
When the song was finished, McAllister pressed the funeral button. A section of the wall opened, a slot near the floor three feet wide and two high. Xiaobo didn’t need that much room. Some unseen force pulled him into the wall. Tommy squatted to peer inside, just as Pete had done when he was little. Now, after being present at three funerals for Survivors and six for miscarriages, Pete knew there was nothing to see. The slot opened into a small bare featureless space, and the other side wouldn’t open to deposit Xiaobo’s body Outside until the first wall closed up.
Darlene bawled another song, this one about the land being beautiful with spacious skies and a lot of grain, but Pete wasn’t listening. He watched Ravi, who had turned his gaze to McAllister. Ravi looked the way he used to when there was a treat Grabbed from a store—oh, those Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!—and Ravi had tried to figure a way to get a bite of another child’s share. Pete’s hand tightened on the DIGITAL FOTO FRAME. He wanted to throw it at Ravi, to get his hands around Ravi’s neck and squeeze. . . . No, he didn’t. Ravi was his half-brother. Yes, he did—Ravi had sex with McAllister, he was going to have more sex with McAllister, Pete wanted to kill him—
Ravi caught Pete’s look and glared back.
The funeral was over. People moved away, returning to their duties. Caity stomped off, covering whatever softer feelings she had with vague bad temper. Pete lingered, and Tommy stayed with him. When they were the only two left in the funeral room, Tommy demanded, “How does McAllister know that the fucking bastard Tesslies will really put Xiaobo’s body outside to help grass to come back?”
Tommy must have been listening to Darlene. “McAllister knows.”
“But how?”
Pete looked down at the intense little face. “Well, you didn’t see any other bodies in there, did you? We’ve had a lot of funerals—you know that from learning circles. If the bodies weren’t dumped out, they would just pile up in there.”
Tommy considered. “Maybe the Tesslies just put them in a fertilizer machine. Like shit. And then we spread them on the farm.”
Pete had never thought of this. He could see that Tommy wished he hadn’t thought of it, either. He knelt beside Tommy and said firmly, “No, that doesn’t happen. The Tesslies told McAllister.”
“I thought she never talked to them.”
“Well, then they got her to understand some other way, like they got her to understand to press the funeral button, and how the fertilizer machine works and the Grab machinery and everything else.” Actually, Pete wasn’t sure how any of that had happened. Maybe the Survivors just figured everything out by themselves.
“All right,” Tommy said. “But why do we believe the Tesslies?”
A good question. But not one that Pete wanted troubling Tommy. “We believe McAllister. You know how smart she is, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then there you have it, laddie.” One of Bridget’s favorite expressions.
“Okay.” And then, “But I have another question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why are you and Ravi mad at each other?”
Pete stood. This he was not going to discuss with Tommy.
“It’s because Ravi had sex with McAllister, right? But you have sex with Caity. And when he wasn’t sick, Terrell tried to have sex with Jenna, only she said he was still too young. And—”
Was there anything the kid didn’t know? Pete said, “I want privacy on this.” Those were words they all learned young, and learned to respect. A necessity in such a small, closed family, McAllister often said.
Tommy said, “Can I see the DIGITAL FOTO FRAME? Please, Pete, please please please?”
“All right.” He turned it on, let the pictures move through the frame once each. Tommy watched, rapt. He reached out one finger to touch the mountain range. When Pete turned off the DIGITAL FOTO FRAME, Tommy sighed the same way he did right after Jenna finished reading aloud a fairy tale.
“Now go back to the children’s room,” Pete said.
Tommy said importantly, “I have farm duty.”
“Oh. Then go do that.”
Tommy left the funeral room, said “Oh, hi,” to someone in the corridor, and ran off. Pete tensed. If that was Ravi out there, waiting for him . . .
It was McAllister. “Pete, I want to talk with you.”
“I want privacy on this,” Pete said, with as much coldness as he could.
She smiled. “You don’t even know what ‘this’ is yet, so how can you want privacy on it?”
He gazed sullenly at the wall behind her.
“What I wanted to say was thank you for being so good with Tommy. He’s more unsure inside than he shows. Jenna says sometimes in bed he still cries for his mother. But he adores you and looks up to you, and you’re such a good influence on him.”
Pete glared at her. “I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to make me feel good so I won’t fight Ravi. Well, he’s the one who wants to fight me. Didn’t you see him smirk at me during the funeral?”
“I saw you smirking and glaring at each other. That has to stop. Pete, there is a statement from Before, said by a very smart and wise man, that the biggest threat to any society is its own young males between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four. Do you understand what that means?”
“No.”
“It means—”
“I want privacy on this,” Pete said and walked away. Whether or not the words fit—who the fuck cared, anyway?
APRIL 2014
In the complex network of faults in the Pacific Seismic Network, a thrust fault two hundred miles off the shore of Japan abruptly moved, as had happened before. The seabed deformed, vertically displacing an enormous volume of water. A huge wave rose on the ocean, long and low enough that an oil tanker barely noticed when it passed beneath its hull. As the wave raced toward shore, the shallower water both slowed and raised it. By the time the tsunami broke on Tokyo, the highest wave crested at ninety-four feet of water, smashing and inundating the city as well as the country far inland.
This had been predicted for a long time as a possibility for Tokyo. Only a few years earlier, it had happened north of that ancient city, with devastating results. Not the prediction, not the unfairness of being struck twice within a few years, not Japan’s excellent tsunami-warning system—none of it lessened the horrific destruction.
2035
Pete sat cross-legged in his secret room by the Shell wall, gazing out. The room wasn’t all that secret anymore; McAllister knew where it was, and Tommy had followed him here. Since Xiaobo’s funeral, Pete had had unhappy sex with Caity here. Twice. The second time she’d bitten his ear; she was always rougher than he was. He wasn’t going to do it with her anymore. He’d just masturbate.
The DIGITAL FOTO FRAME was in his hand, but Pete wasn’t looking at it. He was looking at a miracle.
Crouc
hed against the clear impenetrable wall, head wobbling as he craned his neck as far left as it would go, Pete saw a flash of green. A piece of grass. Several blades of grass, or something like grass, pushed out of the ground. “Volcanic rock,” McAllister had once called it: “I think we’re on the collapsed lip of a caldera.” Pete didn’t know what that meant, but he knew what the grasses meant.
The Earth was coming back. And he was the first to see it.
He didn’t want to tell anyone. Or rather he did, he wanted to speak the incredible words out loud, but he also didn’t want anyone else to know the secret. Maybe Darlene was right: he was “a wild one.” But that’s what he wanted. He crept from the room, through the maze of tiny rooms at this end of the Shell, and along the corridor to the children’s room.
It was so early that the kids lay asleep on blankets, some in diapers and some in little clothes that happened to fit at the moment. Karim, who didn’t like clothes, slept naked, clutching a stuffed toy. The non-walking babies lay behind their bucket wall, with Jenna on duty. She was asleep, too. Pete knelt beside Petra and scooped her up with his good arm.
Petra didn’t wake. Pete started around the bucket wall, then turned back. He didn’t want to worry Jenna if she woke and found Petra gone. So he laid the DIGITAL FOTO FRAME on Petra’s nest of blankets.
In the larger area, Tommy woke. Instantly he was on his feet, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. His hair stood up in all directions. “Where are you going? Can I come, too?”
“Ssshhhh! No. You stay here.”
The boy’s face, still puffy with sleep, went sad. Pete whispered, “You stay here now, Tommy, and later I’ll take you on a big adventure.”
“Really? What?”
Pete had no idea. But he couldn’t think of anything else to deter Tommy. So he just shook his head and repeated, “You’ll see. Stay here.”
Tommy stayed. Pete carried Petra, who grew heavier with each step, to the secret room. She woke when he put her on the floor by the window.
“See, Petra—see the grass? The Earth is coming back!”
The baby screwed up her face and whimpered.
Ridiculously disappointed, Pete gazed alone at the grasses, jiggling Petra to quiet her. This didn’t work. She whimpered louder, wailed a few times, and worked herself up to full, hungry screaming. Why were babies so much trouble? There should be a better way to restart humanity!
Since there wasn’t, Pete crossly scooped up Petra to return her to Jenna, who would probably want him to stay to help with the children. At least he could get his DIGITAL FOTO FRAME back. He could trust Jenna not to touch it, but maybe not Tommy.
He had just left the maze, carrying the wailing Petra, when Tommy ran toward him. “Pete, you gotta come—McAllister’s sick!”
His blood froze. McAllister. One by one the Survivors had sickened and died—“badly weakened immune systems, slow-growing cancers, and a fresh influx of micro-organisms with each Grab,” McAllister had said, but only Paolo and Jenna understood the words. If it was now McAllister’s turn . . . They could not do without McAllister.
“She’s in the farm,” Tommy said. He added, “You didn’t say I couldn’t go there, only that I couldn’t follow you!”
Pete didn’t care where Tommy went. He put Petra down in the middle of the corridor and ran.
She was beside the fertilizer machine, puking into a bucket. There shouldn’t have been a bucket there, unless one was being rinsed out in the disinfectant stream. McAllister must have brought a shit bucket with her and rinsed it out, but why? Today Caity was on shit-bucket duty. McAllister straightened and raised the hem of her loose homemade dress to wipe her mouth. She saw Tommy and Pete staring at her.
Tommy blurted, “Are you going to die? Like Bridget and Xiaobo?”
“No,” McAllister said. She closed her eyes briefly.
“Then why are you—”
“Tommy, go to the children’s room. Now.”
All the children obeyed McAllister, without bribes or arguments. Tommy went, although he muttered and scowled. Pete said nothing. But when she’d raised her dress he had seen, and she knew it. As the oldest of the Six he’d seen enough bellies curved like that: Bridget’s, Sarah’s, Jessica’s, Hannah’s. But not for a long, long time.
“Pete—”
“You’re pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“From sex with Ravi.”
McAllister didn’t answer; no need.
Pete said the first ugly thing that popped up from his foul-tasting hatred. “It’ll die. Like all the other babies.”
Something painful passed behind McAllister’s eyes, but she said only, “Maybe not. You Six survived, including my Jenna. Pete, you are going to have to come to grips with this. It’s reality, and not only that, it’s a joyful reality for the good of all. Every additional soul expands our gene pool, gives us one more chance to restart humanity. You know that, and you’re no longer a child. You must accept this. If you can, be happy for all of us as a group.”
“I can’t.”
“I think you can. I’ve observed you your whole life, you know, and I’ve always found you strong enough to accept this life we have to live. Strong enough to make positive contributions to it. As you must now.”
“But I love you!”
“And I love you. Just as I love all of you. And I’m doing the best I can to ensure a future for all of—” She turned and threw up again into the bucket.
Pete left her there. He thought of waking Jenna to help her, but Jenna was with the babies and anyway McAllister never needed help. She was that stone in Darlene’s otherwise baffling song, “Rock of Ages.” It was Pete who needed help, but nobody was going to give him any, that was for sure.
He thought of volunteering for the next Grab, which was supposed to be Terrell’s if he wasn’t sick again, and deliberately getting himself killed. Then they’d be sorry! He thought of hitting Ravi over the head with the DIGITAL FOTO FRAME until Ravi was dead and then sending his body outside through the funeral slot before anyone even knew he was missing. They’d never suspect Pete. He thought of taking water and a shit bucket and going to live in his secret room, refusing to talk to anybody, just sneaking out at night to the farm to eat raw soy.
“Pete!” Caity yelled at him. “You left Petra on the floor in the middle of the corridor! What were you doing?”
She held Petra, whose screaming had woken everyone. Kids cried or peered through the archway of the children’s room. Terrell looked out from the Grab room, on duty to watch for brightening. Darlene bustled from her room, her bitter mouth turned down, her eyes still puffy from sleep. “You know them babies don’t leave the children’s room, Pete! What the hell were you doing?”
Tommy darted through the archway and wordlessly held out the DIGITAL FOTO FRAME. “Keep it,” Pete snarled. Why not? Everything was shit, anyway.
Tommy looked incredulous with joy. Caity stared. Petra yelled. Darlene scolded. Pete’s heart hurt so bad he thought it would burst right there in his chest, like some rotten protein-rich soy nut too spoiled to eat.
From down the hall Terrell cried, “The Grab is brightening! I’m going, everybody!”
APRIL 2014
Julie grunted and screamed on her living room floor. She lay in a pool of her waters. Her insides were trying to burst free of her body. The pain was incredible.
Jake, kneeling helplessly beside her, said, “I still think we should go to the hospital.”
Between contractions, she glared at him; almost she spat at him. The hospital! She couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but push. She gasped, “I’m shitting a pumpkin here!”
“But at the hospital—”
She screamed again and he shut up.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Last night Jake had flown in from Wyoming, arriving a full week before she was supposed to go into labor. He would drive her to the hospital and then wait decorously in the waiting room. Linda would coach Julie in the labor room.
The first baby, her OB had assured her, always took a long time to come; Julie might even have false labor pains, similar to Braxton-Hicks contractions but “a little bit more intense,” for several days. The baby nurse would come every day for two weeks after Julie came home from the hospital. It was all meticulously planned.
Then came these sudden, wrenching pains that woke her in the middle of the night, apparently already many more centimeters dilated than she should be because now the pumpkin was moving inexorably through her body, trying to kill her. Julie writhed and screamed, Jacob’s terrified face looming over her. She would die, the baby would die, nobody could do this, nobody—
A final scream that brought neighbors pounding on the wall and a terrified oath from Jake. Linda, in a coat thrown over leopard-print pajamas, threw open the door and burst into the room. The pumpkin slid out and stopped torturing her, although everything on her still hurt and apparently always would. Julie burst into tears. The neighbor pounded harder. Jake cried, “What do I do now?” And the answering machine burst into life.
If the phone had been ringing, she hadn’t heard it. But now she heard Gordon’s voice, almost as if the relative cessation of pain had somehow created a pool of silence.
“Julie, this is Gordon. We’ve had another kidnapping. Three-year-old boy disappeared from his bed in southern Vermont. I remember that was on one of the projections you—”
Julie wasn’t listening. Her baby had started to cry, and the sound filled the entire world, joyous and alive, leaving no room for anything else at all.
2035
Pete tried. McAllister had asked him to, so he did. He tried to be happy about her pregnancy. He tried to remember the good of all. He tried to be happy that Terrell’s first Grab had brought back another child, even though it was a boy and not a girl. He tried to be pleasant to Caity while not having any more sex with her. He succeeded in none of these things, and both efforts and failure turned him very quiet.
“I like you better like this,” Caity said after sex. “You don’t talk.”
Pete said nothing, turning his face away from her. They lay not in his secret room but in her bedroom at the other end of the Shell. Caity had taped to the wall another picture, this one torn from the box that had contained a toy. The actual toy, a doll, had been broken by some rambunctious child but the picture remained perfect: long body, tiny waist, big breasts, feet made in a permanent tip-toe. It looked nothing like any real woman Pete had ever seen, neither in the Shell nor on a Grab. Why had the Before people made dolls like that?
