Moon Mirror (14 page)

Her walk became a trot. She jogged along between the tempting windows, not allowing herself to examine too closely what they held. There was an echo from the thud of her feet which she did not like to hear. The sounds were strange, almost like those of the bam drum Fred liked to pound. As if something back behind those walls were drumming.

Kristie reached the second branching she must follow and stood staring ahead. There was no wiggle-walk such as threaded through the rest of the city. No, the pavement was solid, as if part of the buildings had flowed out to form it.

Also, there was no real wall to her right, just a line of narrow rods taller than she, with spaces left between them. All were locked together, top and bottom, by bars. Beyond them spread a wide-open space covered with strange, dead stuff, some of it standing tall, some matted on the ground. All was grey-brown.

Kristie approached the fenced place cautiously, wanting to see the matted stuff more closely. Perhaps these had once been growing things. She could trace trunks, branches, and long dead, dried grass.

Outside!

Then her first wild excitement quickly died. No, there was
another way beyond. This was nothing but a small piece of open space in the city itself. There was nothing green and growing as the reading tapes had shown. All was dead.

Kristie pushed her hand between the rods and reached in as far as she could to touch a tuft of grass. The blades powdered in her grasp. She jerked back and wiped her fingers on her jeans, wanting to get rid of the queer gritty stuff clinging to her skin.

Once the Olds must have tried to bring some of the Outside in. Then the growing things died. Maybe they just could not live Inside. Kristie ran her hand along the fence as she walked on. Trees and grass and bushes. She knew their names from the reading tapes and was able to distinguish each one. But all were long dead.

Seeing them dead made her feel queer. She had a hurting in her throat and her eyes smarted. What was the matter with her? Crying just like a Little because of some old dead things? She would not look at them anymore, she just would not!

Kristie focused her eyes straight ahead and moved out into the center of the solid way.

However, before she reached the end of the fence guarding the dead place, Kristie heard a sound. She swung around and looked back at the mass of dead plants and trees. There was a rustling. The noise came from the railed place and was moving towards her.

Kristie uttered a small cry of fright. She did not know exactly what she feared might be hiding in that wasteland;
she only knew that she did not want to see it! Turning, she ran over the hard surface of the solid road.

She gasped as she made a last turn to the left, rounding the end of the fence. It seemed hard to get full breaths. The blood pounded so heavily in her ears that Kristie was not sure she could hear the sighing of the breathers. She slowed to listen for the puff-puff of renewed air. Also—for the sound behind her.

There—she caught the hiss of breather air but it did not sound too even. Kristie frowned. She did not dare go on if the breathers were not good. But to go back was to fail.

Also, she thought grimly, to go back meant that she would have to repass the place of dead things. Perhaps she would even have to face what had been crawling towards her.

Kristie rubbed her hands across her sweating face. On or back? She could not just stand here forever.

The breathers were still going. They sounded slow, as if they were running down, but they were going. And right now it was easier for Kristie to head on than to turn back and see what had been moving from the dead place.

All the past experience of the Crowd cautioned her to go slowly, so that she would not use up any more air than she had to. Even if the breathers were to quit right now, she would still have enough air to get back to a safer position in the city.

She listened for any sound above the regular swish-swish which had always been a part of her life. No, nothing.
Perhaps whatever hid in that dead place would not come into the open.

By now she should be close to the gate. Kristie walked on. She listened and watched for signs that showed she was nearing her goal.

Yes!

The buildings ended. Before her was just a black greyness where the city dome curved down to meet the ground. However, breaking that curve was what must have once been an opening that was far taller than Lew and wider than the street.

But—

Kristie's vast disappointment was like being suddenly plunged into a black dark room. Across the door were wide lengths of metal welded to the frame on the top and bottom. None of the Crowd, not even Lew with his knowledge of machines, could ever hope to break through.

And there was no window in the dome so that she could see what lay on the other side of the sealed gate. Outside was gone forever.

It was only when Kristie realized this that she knew how much she had counted on there being a way out, some way of proving that the reader tapes were true. The truth must be just as Lew said. Outside was dead, killed as dead as the things she had seen only moments before. There was really no world left except Inside. The reading tapes were now all lies!

Kristie made herself go to the tall, wide gate. She put her hands on the bars that sealed it. They were real; her hopes were not.

The lump in her throat and the smarting in her eyes grew stronger. No! She was
not
going to cry. And she must never, never let anyone know how silly she had been. If Fred, Sally, Kate and that horrid Bill ever knew she believed the tapes and thought she could get Outside, they would all laugh at her.

Kristie scowled. She made a fist and pounded once against the sealing bar. Her gesture was answered by a faint hollow ring. And then came another sound which was not an echo.

She whirled about, her eyes wide with a fear which made her shiver. Her back was now to the gate. She could see clearly what was coming towards her, moving in short determined rushes. Kristie screamed.

For a long moment she was frozen in sheer terror; then she made herself move. If only she had a stunner, a bar, anything with which to face this enemy!

They were wary, approaching along shadowy places, spreading out from the dead plants. There were so many that Kristie could not count them. Grey, their teeth exposed in grins of hunger, their eyes showing red. Rats!

“No!” Kristie screamed again.

She dared not run through the lines drawing in around her. There were too many of them and they were so large! She dared not even take her eyes from them long enough to find a refuge. If she did, they might rush her.

“Lew!” Even as she screamed his name Kristie knew her voice could not reach across all the ways and buildings. Still, in the past Lew had always been there, standing between her and any danger.

She slipped along the dome's side until she came up, with a jar, against a building. Because she had nowhere else to go, Kristie now set her shoulders against it and slid along. Perhaps there was a doorway. She dared to flash a glance away from the vicious enemy and looked to her right.

Yes! There was a break in the wall. Not the door she had hoped for, but a window at the height of her shoulder. Kristie leaped for it. She had to turn her back on the rats to scramble up to whatever safety the window might offer.

There was a sharp pain in her leg. Kristie screamed again. But with a last frantic effort she pulled herself up, slamming against a slightly recessed pane of glass. It cracked and splintered. She clung, kicking at it, unmindful of any cuts. The rats squealed so wildly she could hear them as she fought against the glass barrier.

Pieces of the glass dropped from the frame. But Kristie could not enter the room beyond because there was a second smooth barrier behind the glass. She beat against it in vain. She had a narrow ledge on which to crouch and that was all.

Sobbing, Kristie edged around. The rats gathered thickly below, their heads upturned, their red eyes fixed on her. Now and then one made a determined leap. Some came near to reaching her perch.

She had blood on her cut hands and more streamed from the bite on her leg. How long could she continue to balance on the window ledge? And if she fell—

For the second time Kristie shouted “Lew!” knowing at the same time that her call would never be heard.

“Hold on!”

Kristie, unbelieving, looked away from the wave of rats fighting to reach her. Lew was coming!

He had halted on the road and was taking aim with his stunner. Below her the frantic rats began to drop and lie still. Some turned to run and were caught in the beam of Lew's weapon. They curled up limply on the stone.

When they were all still, he came swiftly forward, though he did not slip his weapon back into the loop on his belt. Kicking the unconscious rats out of his path, he held out his left hand to Kristie.

“Catch hold!” he ordered. “Jump!”

Kristie had gripped the frame of the window so tightly that her fingers were stiff and she had trouble loosening them. Somehow she scrambled down. As Lew caught her she felt very sick and queer. The buildings and even the dome wall seemed to ripple. She cried out and could not stay on her feet.

Kristie remembered very little of how they got back to their own street. Lew must have carried her most of the way while she continued to feel sick and giddy. Then, later, she lay on her bed and Fanna came to bandage her cut hands and the bite on her leg.

She awoke, finally, feeling lightheaded but no longer sick. Her leg was very sore when she moved it and her hands were wound about with strips of white bandage.

When she turned her head on the pillow she saw Lew. He was sprawled out in the big chair, his head forward on his chest and his eyes closed as if he were asleep.

“Lew?” Kristie spoke his name.

At the sound of her voice his eyes opened. He looked at her. His face was tired, as if he had been hurt, too. Kristie pulled herself higher on her pillow. Had the rats come after them? Hurt Lew? She could not see any bandages on him.

“Lew—?”

He frowned at her. Now he sat up straight and leaned a little forward.

“Why, Kristie—why did you run away?” His voice sounded as if he were really mad at her.

Kristie shivered. Lew was not usually like this; he made her feel so alone now.

“Why, Kristie?” he repeated, his voice louder and sharper.

“The gate,” she said, knowing that she must answer, even if she could not make him understand. “I wanted to find the gate—Outside.”

“What about the gate?”

“I wanted to see—to know—what was Outside.”

Lew shook his head as if he could not understand. “But you do know, Kristie. I've told you over and over. There's nothing Outside. The world is dead. I guess I've been to blame. I should never have let you use the readers. You
believed those tapes. And they aren't true—now they're just stories, Kristie, made-up stories.” He thumped his knee with his fist at every word, as if by such hammering he could make her believe him. “All stories, Kristie.”

“Not in the old days,” she held to her small dream. “And nobody really knows even now. Nobody's been Outside for a long time.”

“Nobody will ever be again,” Lew got up. “And you—Kristie, you could have been—” he stopped abruptly. Then he continued, “You must stay in the street here and never go away without me or Fanna or some other Big with you. Not again.”

“All right,” Kristie agreed in a small voice. She knew he was right. She had gone by herself and there had been nothing to discover after all, nothing but a sealed gate and a dead place full of rats. Kristie shivered.

She must do as Lew said. Lew was always right.

3

Reddy

K
ristie had bad dreams. Then, too, there was the day Meg came to see her and brought the fur pillow
which was Meg's comfort in times of trouble. Only when Kristie touched it, she could see one of the rats jumping at her. She screamed and Fanna came running.

Kristie felt very ashamed of herself when she tried to explain. She was almost a Big and should not be afraid of any old pillow just because it felt soft and furry. Meg had gotten mad at her. She had marched away holding her pillow close and saying that it was not a rat, and if Kristie called it that she was crazy!

“Maybe I am crazy,” Kristie hiccupped to Fanna. “Of course the pillow is not a rat. But it is furry and black, which makes me think, even see in my mind, the rats slipping in and out of shadows.”

As she choked out her words, Kristie began to shake, her hands clutching tightly at the covers. Fanna gathered her close and held her until she felt warm again inside.

That evening Lew brought her Reddy. Perhaps Fanna had asked him to find something to make the dreams go away. Or maybe he knew what Kristie needed without being told.

The ever-glow lights were turned up when he came in holding a full shoulder tote as if he had been looting. Eagerly Kristie sat up in bed, hoping he had some treat for her.

However, when he shook the tote and the object it held fell on the bed, she shrank back.

Lew did not reach out to comfort her as Fanna had done. He stood still and watched Kristie stare at what he had brought. She began to shiver again and pulled herself up higher on the pillows to get away from that—that thing!

Then Lew moved. He took her hand in his. Though Kristie struggled, she did not have the strength to pull away from him. Then he drew her fingers down to touch the animal that sat there watching her with knowing black eyes.

“This is Reddy,” Lew said with authority in his voice. “You remember Reddy from the story tapes.”

Kristie's mouth felt dry, making it hard for her to answer. Lew continued to hold her hand firmly down on the head of the stuffed toy. It was hard for her to believe it was not alive, since Reddy looked exactly like those animals she had seen on one of her favorite story tapes.

“Reddy—” she repeated the name in a very low voice, which quavered a little. “Reddy, the fox.”

Foxes once lived Outside, just as did all the other animals she so longed to see: the deer, bears, cats, dogs, and rabbits. Why,
she could sit right here and name maybe fifty animals she had learned about from the tapes.