After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall

2035

McAllister and Tommy McAllister were the only ones who believed Pete had been Outside. Tommy was angry because Pete hadn’t taken him along on the “adventure.” McAllister was tense with hope. “Tell me again,” she said.

They sat alone in her room. Pete avoided looking at the curve of her belly. Again he recited everything that had happened, too frightened at what he himself had done to leave anything out, not even the cause of the fight with Ravi. But that wasn’t what she was interested in.

“You saw bushes and grasses. Trees?”

“No.”

“Animals?”

“No.”

“And you could breathe.”

“It was a little hard.”

“Like you weren’t getting enough air?”

“Yeah. But not very bad.” How could that be? There had been air all around him, blowing gently as it never did inside the Shell.

She guessed the question he wasn’t asking. “You had trouble breathing because the air mix still isn’t right out there. Maybe there’s too much CO₂—the destruction of the Earth’s forests would have really screwed up the oxygen-carbon dioxide balance. Maybe too many volcanic particles still, maybe toxins, maybe too much methane. I don’t know. I wasn’t an ecologist. But I think the atmosphere was becoming unbreathable when the Tesslies put us into the Shell. And now you could breathe it.”

“Does that mean they’ll let us out soon?”

McAllister raised both hands, let them drop, screwed up her face. Her pregnancy had made her more emotional, which everyone had observed and Pete did not understand. Was that usual? “Pure foolishness, getting herself knocked up at her age,” Darlene had said. “Who does she think she is, Abraham’s Sarah?” Caity bit her lip and looked away every time McAllister waddled into a room. Pete was just glad he wasn’t female.

McAllister said, “How should I know what the Tesslies will do?”

Pete burst out, “I’ll kill them if I can!”

She didn’t answer that; they both knew it was too ridiculous. Instead she said yet again, “And you couldn’t tell if the Tesslie was a living being inside a space suit or a robot.”

“I don’t know.”

She smiled. “Neither did I, the one time I saw one.”

“How did it get here?”

“I don’t know, dear heart. Until the Grab machinery appeared, I assumed they’d all left Earth after putting us Survivors in the Shell. After all, nobody had seen one for twenty years. But either they returned or else they were observing us all along.”

Pete had known they watched him! Fucking bastards—

McAllister said, “Thank you, Pete. You can go now, but later I want to talk to you and Ravi together.”

“I’ve got Grab duty.”

“Do you want someone else to take it?”

“No.” He made himself ask, “Is Ravi all right?”

“He will be.”

She looked very tired. Pete said awkwardly, “Are you all right? With… everything?”

“I’m fine. I’m just a little old to be doing this.”

Well, you didn’t have to! But Pete didn’t say it. He blundered out and went to the Grab room.

Staring at the inert Grab machinery, which might brighten but probably wouldn’t, Pete thought about his own questions. The air outside was breathable. It wasn’t really good, but it was breathable enough. What was “enough”? There were bushes and grasses and—yes, he remembered now, wrenching the picture into his mind as if yanking up a pair of pants—berries. There had been red berries on some of the bushes. Almost he turned back to tell McAllister, but he didn’t want to face her again.

He had no choice. Somewhere during his Grab duty she came in with Ravi. Immediately Pete wanted to be somewhere else. He got to his feet, scowling to cover his confusion.

Ravi’s mouth was all swollen. His two top front teeth were broken off into jagged stumps. Pete had a moment of panic—how would Ravi eat? Well, he still had all his other teeth…. But his good looks were badly marred. Even without all the puffy swelling, Ravi was never again going to look like the handsome princes in the fairy-tale book.

McAllister said, “Both of you men were at fault in this fight, but—” For a minute Pete didn’t listen, caught by her referring to them as “men.” Had McAllister ever done that before? When he heard her again, it was clear she was blaming him more than Ravi, because “…violence. Not only is it never needed to settle disputes, it damages the good of all and sets a terrible example for the children. Pete, you wouldn’t want Tommy or Petra to someday behave as you did today, would you?”

Pete couldn’t imagine Petra behaving any way at all except smiling or wailing or kicking her fat little legs. Too far in the future. But he saw what McAllister meant, and hung his head.

She was talking to Ravi now. “What you were doing, looking to start a fight with Pete because you were angry with me, is something all humans have to struggle against all the time. Do you understand, Ravi? Winning that struggle with ourselves will be a huge part of what lets us successfully restart humanity. Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” Ravi said. Pete couldn’t tell if Ravi meant it or not. His voice came out mangled through the swollen mouth.

“You two are brothers,” McAllister said passionately, “and I know that your biological parents, Richard and Emily and Samir, would not have wanted you to act the way you did today. But even more than brothers, you are members of this colony, with a mission that others have already struggled and died for. You must work together no matter what for our survival, or all those other deaths are wasted.”

Ravi said something. McAllister didn’t understand the garbled words; she leaned forward and said, “What?” Ravi shook his head.

But Pete had heard. Ravi had said, “Kill Tesslies.” That was what Ravi thought was their “mission.” And Pete did, too! His head snapped up to look at Ravi, who gazed back. Something passed between them, and all Pete’s animosity vanished. They had a joint mission: revenge. That was more important than who had sex with McAllister, who anyway wasn’t looking very attractive with her belly swollen in pregnancy and all those tired lines around her eyes.

Ravi nodded. They understood each other. McAllister beamed.

“Good,” she said. “Now shake hands.”

They did, and Pete squeezed his brother’s hand. They were on the same side again. They would be killers together.

McAllister said, “I’m so happy.”

Both of them smiled at her.