After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall

2035

All at once the Grab machinery went crazy.

Ravi was on duty. He and Pete had been talked to by McAllister, a talk that left both of them near tears. She wasn’t angry, she was disappointed. Angry would have been better. Not even Ravi’s sighting of the not-cat outside had deterred McAllister from her disappointment. Pete wasn’t sure that McAllister even believed Ravi. Pete wasn’t sure he did, either. When McAllister was finished with them, Pete and Ravi avoided each other for a week—until Ravi was restored to puffed-up triumph by his amazing Grab.

“I was all ready,” he later told everyone, although Pete had his doubts about that—why even bother to repeat it over and over unless it wasn’t true? And Ravi had a history of falling asleep during Grab-room duty. But whether he had leaped onto the platform at first brightening, or had just barely caught the Grab before it went away, it was irrefutable that Ravi had gone. He had gone close-mouthed both because of McAllister’s scolding and because he was embarrassed by the lack of the teeth that Pete had knocked out, but he returned smiling wide. His shout had reached both the children’s room and the farm. Pete, on crop duty with Darlene, had run toward the Grab room, along with everyone else.

Ravi stood on the platform behind the biggest pile of stuff that Pete had ever seen. It almost hid Ravi; it spilled off the edges of the platform; it clanked and clattered as it fell. Pete couldn’t even identify half of it. How could even Ravi, the strongest of them all, load all this in ten minutes? And onto what?

McAllister, running clumsily behind the bulk of her pregnancy, stopped in the doorway. She went still and white.

“Look what I got!” Ravi shouted. “Look!”

“What is it all?” Caity said. She held a child in each arm. “How did you bring it all?”

“The Grab stayed open for more than ten minutes—for twenty-two minutes! It was a store Grab and I got this big rolling thing—see, it’s under all this—and just piled things on. There only was this kind of stuff, so that’s what I took. But look how much of it!” Ravi practically swelled with pride. Bloated, Pete thought. Like when someone was diseased in their belly.

Why couldn’t Pete have been the one to bring back the big haul? Whatever it was.

McAllister finally spoke. “Twenty-two minutes?”

“I timed it,” Ravi said proudly.

Caity repeated, “What is it all? What’s that thing with the skinny metal spikes coming out of it?”

“A rake,” McAllister said. Then it seemed that once she started talking, she couldn’t stop. “A rake, several hoes, bags of seed and fertilizer, trowels, flower seeds, hoses, flower pots, wind chimes—wind chimes!”

Pete had never seen McAllister like this—wild-eyed, hysterical—not even when he and Ravi had gotten trapped in the funeral slot. Fear pricked him. But the next moment she had recovered herself.

“You were in a garden store, Ravi. And you did well. Let’s get this stuff off the rolling cart so we can get the cart down off the platform. Caity, take Karim and Tina back to the children’s room, and on your way get Darlene to help Jenna with the children. She’ll have to do it because we need you here. Tommy, go wake up Eduardo. Terrell, you and Ravi and Pete start moving this stuff. We need that platform clear right away.”

“Why?” Pete said.

“I don’t know yet. Let’s just do it.”

Caity ran down the corridor with the kids. Pete leaped forward to help unload the platform. If McAllister was ordering Darlene to help with the children, then something important was going on.

They got all the stuff off the platform, including the long, heavy rolling cart. Immediately Terrell jumped on it and Ravi pushed him out the room and down the corridor. Terrell laughed delightedly. “I want a ride, too!” Caity cried, running after the cart.

The platform glowed.

Pete gaped at it. It never brightened again so soon after a Grab—never!

McAllister said, in a voice somehow not her own, “Go.” She handed Pete the wrister that Ravi had turned over to her.

Pete hopped onto the platform, the laughter from the corridor still ringing in his ears.