Sam Weller - Shadow Show

Lana nodded slightly but did not move at first. Instead, she looked up at him, staring seriously into his eyes. “If my father ever finds out we’re all the way out here… ,” and again did not finish her sentence, not because she couldn’t but because, this time, there was no need.

Lana’s father, Forrest Blau, was a man of rigid temperament with a wide face and striking gray beard. He had personally funded the Great Journey. On Earth, he had been the owner of a large factory farm. Now, as minister of this meager colony, he led prayer services and, in private, heard Quinn’s confession. His face was the face of God as Quinn could, at the moment, imagine it—harsh, immovable, a little like the gray features of the planet itself. There was also his long white switch—whittled to a sharp point, waxed to a gleaming shine, cut from a branch of the birch tree, the first living thing that had flourished here and which now filled most of Dome Three with its eager, ancient-looking branches. Forrest kept the white switch beside his place at the dining room table. He would sometimes use it during his sermons, pointing from family member to family member asking, “Who here among us is without sin?” and Quinn would always bow his head and look away. More than once the boy had felt the white switch cut across his hands or along his backside as he willed himself not to cry. Forrest, at these times, would seem displeased, deeply distraught, divinely eager for the boy to make amends. It was as though it hurt Forrest more to inflict punishment than it did for the condemned to receive it. Then the switch would fly back again and come down hard against Quinn’s knuckles, and whatever Forrest Blau was feeling would flee from the boy’s mind as the pain erupted along his hands, his knuckles. Then once more the switch would fly back. Then again.

There was also Forrest Blau’s bolt-action rifle—an ancient M1903 Springfield in perfect working order—which hung loaded, above the air lock leading from the colony to the outside world. Quinn had never seen it used before, had never even seen anyone hold it, except once a week, when Forrest would take it down for cleaning. This, too, was a religious act for the minister. There was a sense of sanctity as the gray-bearded man oiled the pins and checked the bore. Once the rifle was reassembled, Forrest would lift his wrinkled face skyward and close his eyes, saying a mysteriously short prayer, looking both penitent and elegantly severe.

Lana Blau was nothing like her father; Quinn often thought of her as a moss rose, the kind that flourished under Dome Two, unpredictable though beautiful, growing a little wilder each year, grappling its way amongst the angles and divides of the planet’s craggy rocks. Or maybe she was like one of those pink cherry trees, growing taller than anyone thought was possible from soil with remarkable levels of carbon dioxide. There was something about the dirt of this place, Quinn’s father, William, often said. William, on Earth, had worked for Forrest Blau’s food-manufacturing firm as a food geneticist. William claimed that there was something about the preponderance of unbreathable carbon dioxide that made everything grow and bloom in ways no one could have guessed. It was the reason the colonists had to wear the tank suits and helmets anywhere outside of the three-domed colony and why hiking so far from the compound was forbidden. Once the air in their air tanks was gone, or God forbid, if there ever was an accident… But nothing like that had ever happened, and this lone excursion, traversing the rises and hills with Lana, was the only way Quinn could devise to be alone with her. And even though he was still a boy and she was still a girl, Quinn had begun to catch himself staring at her forehead, at her neck, at her mouth, wondering what she was thinking. Did she have any idea what he was thinking? What if, on this hike, they should spot something like a long-tailed rodent, or some other animal, some small creature no one else had ever seen, and she was to jump back in fright and Quinn was to catch her? Then would she begin to understand some of the feelings he had been having?

“We better get moving,” Lana said, standing up. “If we want to make it back before prayers.”

Quinn nodded and off they went, scrambling over the loose red rocks again, their long, lithe shadows playing upon each other at the ends of their flat, dusty boots.

There was a beautiful pink tree, made of something like glimmering crystals, that Quinn had discovered while hiking alone a few weeks earlier. This was what he wanted Lana to see; this was what he thought might help begin to approximate the shape and depth of his feelings for her. Or not. Or, more likely, she would look at it and smile, and then shrug, and the two of them would walk back to the colony unspeaking, their breath going faster and faster as they struggled to return to Dome One by curfew, this breathlessness their only meaningful exchange.

But there was nothing else like it on the planet, the pink tree, nothing Mr. Blau or Quinn’s father had ever mentioned, and the way it grew there in sharp angles, glistening like it was covered in white and pink crystals, it was something Lana just had to see for herself. And it was a few more meters, just over the next low hill. Quinn saw Lana struggle as she climbed, and so placed his hand under her arm, helping her over a loose rise of gray gravel, his fingers lingering half a moment too long in the space between her underarm and her side. The girl paused just then, looking down at him suspiciously. She glared at his hand on her underarm, and he nodded, quickly withdrawing it. It was about as intimate a touch as the two had ever shared, and their space suits—with their layers of fabric, Mylar, and padding—did little to occlude the strange electrical charge Quinn felt throbbing in his fingers. His cheeks quickly flamed red. He let Lana walk on ahead, watching her stumble slightly once more, before she recovered her balance. She looked back to see if Quinn had noticed, and then she smiled the smile of someone who did not care whether anyone had noticed or not. It was confusing, and also exciting, to see how one moment Lana could seem like her old self, just like a child, and in another moment there would be some other gesture, the way she tilted her head, the softness in her eyes, that seemed like she was someone new, someone much older. It was hard to know which person the boy had been falling for.

He hurried up the incline, trying to ignore these new thoughts, and as he did, there was a landslide of red-gray gravel from above, and then Quinn was sliding backward, fumbling on his face, tumbling headlong down the rise. It took him longer than he would have thought to get back on his feet, and by that time Lana had disappeared. She was gone. There was only an enormous pile of loose red rocks, tilting and spilling everywhere, rising as high as his feet, and the unforgiving pale blue lights of the colony flashing back at him, somewhere from the hazy distance. Something terrible had happened. Lana was missing.

Quinn had never run as hard in his life, and still the three glass domes seemed so far away. He tripped once, pulling himself up, then again, and this time lay there in the dust, his forehead resting against the cold, inner contours of his glass helmet. What had he done? Where had Lana gone? What would happen when Forrest found out? How, if ever, would he be forgiven?

He had thought he was becoming a man. And here he was something so far from it. He had left Lana, had run off like a frightened child. How would he ever be able to look his mother, his father, Forrest Blau, in the face and tell them what had happened? And what would happen to him once he did?

The boy struggled back to his feet, thinking of Forrest Blau’s stern features, of the white switch lying beside the table, of the well-oiled rifle hanging above the air lock. He turned then, facing the way he had just come, his footprints still directing small cloud after small cloud of fine red dust in the air. He made a decision then, and checking to be sure there was still enough air in the tank, he sprinted back along the trail he had just made. The sound of his nervous heartbeat reverberating in his ears, of his feet clomping through the heavy dust, of his breath as it fogged up the front of his helmet, firmly carried him back up the incline of the rough, red rocks to where Lana had, only moments before, disappeared.