Guided by the bluebird that greeted her as she stepped from the lift, Deidre located today’s moth — startled into flight from where it rested in the wheatgrass, not far from where she had disembarked — and knew, the instant that the insect re-settled on the stem of a moisture probe, a mere metre or so before her freckled nose, that Sam had made for her, this time, a big Underwing. But honestly, never, never did it occur to Deidre that she’d confront catocola bianca until this grey moth shifted position and she glimpsed surprising white bands on the lower wings where she’d only begun to imagine red. Mouth gone suddenly dry, she found herself immobile with excitement, unable to move the collecting net any closer.
The moth was so perfect. All of Sam’s specimens were. Almost glistening, as if fresh out of the cocoon. As if a cocoon had once existed. No dust rubbed off the wings; no visible splits or ragged edges; firm, torpedo-shaped body covered in delicate hairs; two broad and beautiful antennae, intact, waving gently, tasting the warm morning. She knew by these fern-like antennae that the moth was a male —
Deidre also knew all too well of Underwings’ predilection to use their colour as a means of startling predators, yet she found herself succumbing to the simple trick, watching helplessly as the moth lifted off, a flurry of grey and white almost too fast for her to follow, insane trajectories taking the insect across the wheatgrass tops and into her father’s spindly citrus trees, where she finally did lose sight of it.
Zephyrs pushed hair back from her face. Dew burned off the foliage where the moth had been, steaming visibly. The air down here was so darn moist that when she took a deep breath it was as if a damp, cottony substance filled her lungs. She called out, “Sam! Sam, can you hear me?”
A soft rumbling, coming from the soil beneath her feet, almost as if the supervisor — her father’s trusted right arm, Deidre’s own best friend, the greatest machine ever designed — had laughed at her. Walking toward the nearby trees, she demanded, “Show me where it is, Sam,” and, passing a small vent poking up from the soil, she smacked the hoop of her collecting net against its smooth surface to demonstrate her intent.
Overhead, wisps of cloud passed slowly, just under the ceiling, gathering there for rain. Grass tickled Deidre’s shins as she scanned the branches for a second bluebird or other sign of response from the supervisor but when she approached the feed-stream that circled the grove of trees, the dead boy sat up suddenly, grinning, from the water. Deidre was startled; their gasps were simultaneous. The dripping boy pretended he was out of breath when probably he had been underwater, inert, for hours. Maybe all night long.
“You missed it, you missed it,” the dead boy chided, his voice barely loud enough for Deidre to hear. He appeared greatly amused. His wet skin, in this burgeoning light, looked whiter even than his tiny white teeth. He clambered up onto a mossy stone, in the middle of the stream, and sat there, rocking, shivering, arms folded tight around his knees. The dead boy always shivered. He’d probably been shivering since Sam had brought him back to life. Deidre averted her eyes from the pale naked body.
“Thought you were going to get it? I did too, D. But you didn’t move. Not for a long time. You had that far-away look on your face.”
“I choked, Sam. I was thinking about something else. But I do want that moth.” Suddenly, picturing the white she’d seen on the insect’s hind wings, Deidre became overwhelmed by a giddy wave of earnestness. She said, “Gee, Sam, you built me a White Underwing. It’s my favourite yet. You know I love Underwings. Thank you.”
Proud of what had been made, proud of the reaction elicited from his young, human companion, the dead boy turned his face away coyly. Unfortunately, in doing so, the wounds that had killed him were exposed: down the left side of his pale neck ran two parallel slits, gashes that had not healed over all the years and certainly never would now. These opened, like grey gills.
Looking upon the wounds caused a terrible sadness in Deidre; her euphoria evaporated. She clenched the collecting net tighter and swallowed a quick rise of bile, muttering, “Please show me where the moth is.”
Those dead eyes gleamed green, the colour of leaves, yet flat and lustreless. They stared at her, unreadable. “You won’t take it alive, you know. Those days are over. Ever since the Eastern Panthea got away I’ve built in timers.” But when he saw her expression, the boy added, “You know I can’t let the moths live, D. Your dad’ll be down here soon. His gardeners are already getting warmed up. Can you imagine what would happen if the Orchard Keeper came across the bianca in a day from now, or if it landed on his jacket?”
“Can you imagine, dead boy, what would happen if my dad found you lurking in his fruit trees?”
“Ho! That won’t ever transpire.”
“No?”
“No.”
The boy had died years before Deidre’s birth. Sam had found the blood-drained corpse facedown in one of the wooded gardens. After reanimation, the plantation supervisor had kept the undead child hidden from those who sought him, and who, eventually, gave up their search, grew older — healed somewhat from their loss but never fully — and finally died themselves. The dead boy had been hidden from the procession of Orchard Keepers down through the generations, including Deidre’s own father. He was Sam’s indulgence, his puppet, and one of his favorite mouthpieces.
Only Deidre knew about his existence.
Watching the passage of the net, which Deidre swept backwards and forwards in frustration, the dead boy said, “D, listen. I wanna tell you about another project we’re working on. Inspired by your moths, actually.”
“Another project?” She was bored by this digression; she only wanted the catacola bianca.
“What do you know about pheromones?”
“Oh boy. Pheromones. Leave me out of this one, Sam.”
“They’re scents that moths use to attract — ”
“I know what pheromones are,” Deidre said. “And for the record, not only moths use them. Really, though, I don’t want to know about this project. It sounds positively creepy.”
“But D, in just a few days — ”
“I’m serious. I don’t want to know. Just let me hunt the Underwing a bit more. My dad doesn’t have to know you made it. It could’ve survived here for hundreds of years, without being discovered. Or it might have come up from some level below — no one knows what goes on down there anyhow. Or maybe it could’ve escaped from a lab somewhere?”
The dead boy shook his head. “Your father doesn’t miss anything. He is a . . . profound Orchard Keeper.”
“That’s the wrong word, Sam. You’re losing what little mind you have left. And anyhow, if my dad doesn’t miss anything, how can you explain you going undetected all these years?”
The grin flashed again. “I’m more wily than a moth, D. Like I said, me being discovered will never happen.” He paused, as if listening. “The bianca is dead. It’s on its back, twitching one foreleg, over there.” When the boy stood on the rock, to point, the gashes on his neck opened again, making a wet, audible sigh; Deidre grit her teeth.
Sliding down from the rock, and into the water, he came wading toward the bank of the feed stream, shoulders straining. “I’ll take you to the body. You can still mount it — if you promise not to show it to your dad.”
“I’m not an idiot, Sam. You treat me like a kid. Every morning you make me promise the same damn thing.”
Stepping, dripping, to stand before her, the boy, of course, was much shorter; Deidre was fourteen, alive, and still growing. She marked her height on the doorjamb of her bedroom, up in Elegia. She had grown a lot since last summer.
She did not want to take the clammy hand, which was now held out: though she made a concerted effort to treat the many facets of Sam — scattered as they were, throughout her father’s plantation — as equals, she could not help being squeamish at the idea of touching this particular one. She much preferred the formalities of the main console, or the company of the bluebirds, who never said anything and dem
anded very little. The dead boy always wanted to be held, or hugged, or otherwise touched.
She did not approve of his nudity either, to say nothing of those ghastly gashes on his neck.
Still feeling somewhat angry at not being able to continue chasing the moth, Deidre folded her arms and produced her best pout; the boy, knowing better, did not press the matter any further. Instead, he shrugged, lowered his hand and, without another word, picked his way over the terrain ahead. His damp white feet always looked soft, almost bursting, like ripe fruit, the skin sensitive and thin, so he moved slowly, taking every precaution to avoid stepping on sharp stones or ancient things hidden in the soil — absurdly, thought Deidre, since he was already dead.
After a short while, the boy looked over his shoulder. He pointed up beyond the thin clouds with one finger, to the ceiling, toward Elegia, and asked, “How are things, D? Up there? Any issues? Because I just heard that parts of the sky were falling.”
“The sky?” Deidre scowled. This was more than an attempt to resume conversation and possibly ease tensions between the two: though the plantation supervisor and his incarnations could appear omnipotent, Sam actually knew little about life, and the conditions in which life existed, outside of his jurisdiction. Concerning the estates overhead, distant communities down here, and the mysterious levels beneath this one, he was virtually blind.
Previous to these mornings of big moths, as an experiment, Deidre had tried to get a bluebird to fly up the lift shaft so that Sam could see, through the bird’s little black eyes, visions of where Deidre lived: the vast lawns of Elegia, her father’s mansion, the suns themselves, hanging from their lattice, all arrayed beneath the arcing dome of the sky. Though the supervisor was keen about learning what he could, he assured her that the plan would fail. He was right: the bird ceased to function soon after leaving Deidre’s hands, folding its wings to plummet down the massive shaft, falling to the bottom of the world.
In the past, Deidre wondered, had Sam known more? He often complained to her about his failing memory, telling her that even at the best of times it was fragmented and unreliable. And, he would gripe, the network — which was something that once linked all supervisors together, supplying them with cohesiveness and access to common information — was damaged. Severely damaged. So, adrift now, isolated, bugs lived inside him, viruses broke him down, making him, he said, unsure of any conversations of chronology or facts.
Really, what could the network have possibly been? A machine? A brain of some kind? Had it even existed?
So many stories, tales, rumours. Did the world truly go down and down, layer after dark layer, getting more corrupt and perilous the farther one travelled? What kind of monstrous people could live there, if any?
Sam, when pressed, was not sure about any of these topics. He might have known once. But had Deidre heard any details? What did she know?
Just yesterday her parents and some of their associates had been talking over shandys in the garden — while Deidre played on the lawn and then listened, with brow furrowed, from the folds of her mother’s dress — about the creators. Perhaps inspired by Sam’s interest, Deidre had come to cherish these conversations like moths — though the details seldom helped her or the supervisor arrive at any sort of further understanding. In fact, the scattered references she gleaned from these discussions often baffled the pair all the more.
This conversation had been no different. About the ingenuity of the irrigation system, and how the suns transfer light and heat from the roof of the world on down.
Did nobody or no thing remember facts any more? Only those long-vanished creators had known everything. After all, they had built the lifts, the vents, the giant pumps. They had built the suns. They had built the workers and the supervisors, including Sam.
Now the dead boy said that the sky was falling? Like in a bedtime story? Deidre chuckled to herself and, still peeved, decided not to volunteer any insights.
One hand holding aside a branch, the dead boy said, “D, come on, have you heard anything? I think it’s real important. Don’t give me the silent treatment.”
“Catching that moth was important to me. I wanted to be the one to kill it.” Realizing how morbid that sounded, she added, “I wanted to catch it alive. Who told you about the sky falling anyhow?”
“The birds saw people discussing it, on the perimeter of the orchard. But look, I’ll make another White Underwing now that I’ve found the DNA. I will. We can’t risk your dad finding out. Seriously, what if they laid eggs and their larvae destroyed some food? We have enough trouble growing things as it is. This is a delicate ecosystem — ”
“Give me a break. Listen, will you make me a Luna one day? Or a big Sphinx?”
The dead boy shook his head; he had gone over this a hundred times. “I have nothing on them. Lunas are out of the question; they didn’t live long as adults. They never fed. Maybe a Sphinx. We’ll see. I’m already digging around.” Gingerly moving again — pulling himself over a fallen sapling — the dead boy stepped onto a forest floor composed of pine needles from last year’s aborted softwood experiments. (Trees here were strictly deciduous now: lemons, mostly, within which grew several species of treenuts.) Since the boy did not have to worry as much about hurting his feet, and was able to move more swiftly, he did a graceful little shuffle, to show off. “The moth didn’t get too far, Deidre. Chin up. All I wanted was to hear a few details, one little story . . .”
Deidre withdrew the killing jar from her satchel. Sulfuric ether, soaking cotton at the bottom, would swiftly dispatch any insect, keeping its body moist so she could mount it easily when she got to her sanctum. Sanctum was a word Sam had taught her. Meaning ‘special room.’ Not her bedroom, in the overhead estate, but a different room, a private room, down here. Where she kept her treasures. Another secret she and the plantation supervisor shared.
“Last night,” Deidre said, “father talked about an orange grove again. He said everyone used to drink delicious orange juice in the past so why should we drink this powdered garbage.”
“That’s got nothing to do with the sky. Is it the story I get?”
“Don’t you want it to be?”
“Of course not. Complaints about the crops we hear enough, direct from the Orchard Keeper.” Bent at the waist, the dead boy looked on the ground. The gashes on his neck lay open and Deidre saw within ridged gristle of exposed esophagus. “We’ve told your father so many times,” the boy said, indignant as he mulled over what Deidre had told him. “Amino sequences for all my citrus — except grapefruit and these lemons — are corrupt. What does he want, food poisoning?” He straightened. “When he contacts the console again, we’ll tell him. We will not sanction any edibles unless we are sure of their quality. That’s our mandate. It always has been and he can’t change it!”
“Good for you, Sam,” Deidre said, uninterested. “Okay, listen. Here’s a story. It’s not about your dumb roof falling in but one that my nanny used to tell me.”
“A real nanny?”
“Do you wanna hear this or not?” Taking a swipe at a small cloud of gnats that rose on a thermal jetting up from a tiny vent in the soil, she said, “What do you mean, anyhow?”
“I mean,” the dead boy said, “was your nanny a person or a machine?”
“Oh. A machine. She was like Lady.”
“From what you’ve told me, Lady isn’t exactly a machine.”
“She sure as heck isn’t a person either. Who ever heard of a nanny that was a person?”
“I’m convinced they had real women taking care of real kids once. I think my nanny was a real woman.”
“Well, she did a lousy job.”
Deidre instantly regretted her unkind words; it wasn’t often that the dead boy referred to details from his short life, and she hadn’t meant to stop him — Deidre suspected, at times, that he might even have lived when the world was very young and peopled by those who had built it, the vanished creators, but she had never felt right a
bout prompting him. Did remnants of that past flutter, she often wondered, tattered and forgotten in the breath that Sam had revived his corpse with? Did vague, infantile memories of another time blow through the boy’s veins?
Regardless, he would not elaborate now.
So Deidre said, “This story,” and cleared her throat, “is called The Engineer — ”
But the boy interrupted: “A single pod is descending from Elegia!”
They both turned toward the lift shaft, like an umbilicus stringing whitish and gnarled a few fields over, extending from the ceiling far overhead to the misty land below. Individual lifts were not visible from the outside but nonetheless the girl and the dead boy stared at the shaft for two beats of Deidre’s heart, and when she again looked at the boy, she saw that he held, cupped in his pale hands — as if he had just conjured it — the body of the bianca. He dropped the dead insect into the open killing jar and a whiff of ether rose between the two, poison on the warm air. The moth twitched on the cotton, curled in on itself, ugly for a moment, in final death.
Deidre clapped down the lid.
Cued by that sound, compartments and recesses throughout the plantation around them hissed and opened; workers emerged from where they rested overnight. In the nearby field, like ancient cicadas, several staff members crawled up to begin their shift. They rocked from side to side to clear the dirt from their carapaces. Elsewhere, machines and men and those creatures betwixt prepared to do their toil. A clatter and a moan from high above as a great gusty breath blew down through the lemon trees; the entire plantation sighed, perhaps at the idea of starting another day —
A frantic bluebird swooped down from a branch, to appear at Deidre’s side. Had the bird seen her father emerge from the lift, a mug of hot cocoa in his hands, his hair tousled from sleep? Flying low over the light-dappled plants before her, madly circling the trunks, it waited for her to follow. She crammed the jar back into her satchel. Turning to quickly say goodbye, but the dead boy had already vanished.
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