Fear (Gone 5)

She laughed. “You’re suggesting gossip actually moves at speeds that are impossible.”

“Gossip this juicy? The speed of light is nothing compared to the speed this will move at.”

“Move at?” she mocked. “Your preposition is dangling.”

Several bits and pieces of leering jokes came to Sam’s mind, but Astrid had gotten there quicker and she shook her head and said, “No. Don’t. That kind of joke would be beneath even you.”

It was good to have her back.

They climbed aboard and toweled off. They dressed and came out onto the top deck with breakfast: carrots, yesterday’s grilled fish, and water.

Astrid got down to business. “I came back because the dome is changing.”

“The stain?”

“You’ve seen it?”

“Yeah, but we thought maybe it was because of what Sinder’s doing.”

Astrid’s eyebrows rose. “What is Sinder doing?”

“She’s developed a power. She can make things grow at an accelerated rate. She has a little garden right up against the barrier. We’re experimenting a little, eating just a little of the vegetables, seeing if there’s any kind of … you know, effect.”

“Very scientific of you,” Astrid said.

He shrugged. “Well, my scientist girlfriend was off in the woods. I had to do my best.”

Had she just reacted to the word “girlfriend”?

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to…” He wasn’t sure what he hadn’t meant to do.

“It wasn’t the word ‘girlfriend,’” Astrid said. “It was the possessive. The ‘my.’ But I realized that was stupid of me. There’s no better way to say it. It’s just that I haven’t been thinking of myself as anyone’s anything.”

“No girl is an island.”

“Seriously? You’re misquoting John Donne? To me?”

“Hey, maybe I’ve spent the last four months reading poetry. You don’t know.”

Astrid laughed. He loved that laugh. Then she grew serious. “The stain is everywhere I looked, Sam. I traveled along the barrier. It’s everywhere, sometimes just a few inches visible, but I saw areas where it rose maybe twenty feet or so.”

“You think it’s growing?”

She shrugged. “I know it’s growing; I just don’t know how fast. I’d like to try to measure it.”

“What do you think it is?” he asked.

She shook her head slowly, side to side. “I don’t know.”

He felt as if a hand was squeezing his heart. The FAYZ punished happiness. He had made the mistake of being happy.

“Do you think…,” he began, but he couldn’t quite get the words out. He changed it to, “What if it keeps growing?”

“The barrier has always been a kind of optical illusion. Look straight at it in front of you and you see a blank, non-reflective gray surface. A nullity. Look higher up and you see an illusion of sky. Day sky, night sky—but never a plane. The moon waxes and wanes as it should. It’s an illusion but it’s also our only source of light.” She was thinking aloud. The way she sometimes did. The way he had missed.

“I don’t know, but this seems like some kind of breakdown. You know how sometimes a movie projector—like the one we had at school, remember?—will get dimmer and dimmer until pretty soon you’re squinting to see anything?”

“You’re talking about it going completely dark?” He was relieved that his voice did not betray him with a tremor.