Don't Tempt the Sky

Not again.

Many sharp rocks are lying guiltily on the path behind my bike, too many to accurately identify the culprit responsible for the hole in my front tire. 

Some shortcut that was. Making the practical choice is not in your DNA, you say. Well, this is good evidence. Yet how is it that your mother’s impractical choices led to heroism, and yours just lead to inconvenience?

I take off my helmet and pull up the hood of my coat. At least my ears won’t freeze now. I straighten up my bike and start walking it towards the observatory.

The train leaving the oasis sounds its parting whistle, as if to remind me that I could have taken it and saved myself a lot of trouble. But I love biking across the dryland, even on a brisk April day such as this. Clear blue sky, dry brown ground. Empty, to be sure, and not exactly hospitable. Disconcerting to most adults in the oasis, who still remember what it used to be like more than 20 years ago, when it still rained here. But I’ve never known the dryland as anything else.

As I walk past a large rock, something beside it catches my eye. I set down my bike and crouch down to look closer.

It’s a small glass tube held up by a wire frame, with markings like those of a ruler on the side. It’s dusty, but not very, so it can’t have been here long. It’s not uncommon to find some random object or another in the dryland, but this isn’t laying around, it’s stuck quite purposefully in the ground. I stare at it, perplexed.

Then I realize what it is. But only because I happened to see one in the observatory supply closet years ago, and ask my mother about it.

I glance around, half wondering if someone stuck it here as some ironic prank. But it’s a weird choice of location if so. This is off the main path, as my bike tire can attest to. There’s nothing else here but the ground, the rocks, and the sky. 

I voice my confusion aloud anyway. “That shouldn’t be there.”

Because what purpose could it possibly serve?

It’s a rain gauge.

***

The meeting is already in progress when I arrive at the observatory. But I only need to be here for the end, anyway.

My mother gives me a glance and nod of acknowledgement as I enter the broadcast room, but turns her attention quickly back to the voice coming from the radio console. 

“...reports of rain breakouts near three more oases in Northern Europe, one in East Africa, one on the Atlantic seafloor. At least twelve others report uncontrolled evaporation and/or cloudbuilding…”

“Hi Fern!” Clem stage whispers from the floor next to me, where she’s lying on her stomach playing chess against herself. I sit down next to her. 

“Who’s winning?”

“That depends. Which is worse, losing two pawns or a knight?”

“Beats me. Wanna play?”

“Sure!” Clem sweeps the pieces off the chess board with a clatter, earning a stern glance from her father that she returns with a sheepish grin. It’s not easy being an energetic ten-year-old at a meeting, even with the promise of talking to your brother at the end.

“...any pattern in the water leakage?” My mother leans forward to speak clearly into the radio console. She sounds worried, and the others sitting around the console look it. She’s been concerned about the potential for water loss for a long time, but only recently has it begun to actually happen.

“You go first.” Clem has set up the board. I absentmindedly move a pawn.

The observatory, like the dryland, is a far emptier version of what it once was, but in this case no one’s sad about it. Since the meteor was successfully diverted, observing the sky simply hasn’t been top priority, and the “observatory” is mainly valued for its other technology. Such as the radio console.

“...of course, places prone to higher winds or other atmospheric…”

My mother listens intently to the technical monologue of the Erie Station scientist, taking notes on the computer in front of her. She probably would have spent a few months at the station herself, were she not mayor of the oasis. As it was, my father went instead.

“...concerned it’s becoming a worldwide trend…”

“Hah!” Clem has captured one of my weird frowning thingies. Apparently I’ve been too distracted by discussions of more serious impending disasters to pay attention to this one. I make my move; Clem captures one of my pawns.

Okay, maybe I’m just bad at this.

“...still find it hard to believe they couldn’t’ve left us just 50% more water. Was the Earth’s water supply really in such tenuous balance, that 0.1% more of it couldn’t stay?”

My mother has said similar things in a similar frustrated tone to me many times. I never know what to say back. More water would be wonderful, of course, but I’m too stuck trying to imagine what Earth could possibly look like with billions of people and quintillions of liters of water on it to form a strong opinion on exactly how many quintillions of liters those billions of people should have taken with them when they left.

“...hard to know, since it wasn’t just humans involved in the decision. There’s no readable transcripts of the interspecies meetings…”

The interspecies meetings are another thing I never know how to gauge my reaction to. Why it was such a surprise to humans that they wouldn’t be the only ones the Andromedans would talk to, I don’t understand. I’d never met a member of any of the other species the Andromedans had talked with; humans proved to be the exception in having a statistically significant portion of their population refuse to evacuate. But many of them sounded pretty smart.

“...offered free passage to another planet when your own is at an 85% chance of destruction by meteor strike, taking the water and running is the practical choice. But 15% isn’t nothing. They acted like they were doing us a favor by leaving us any at all.” My mother sighs and pushes back her chair. “But there’s nothing to be done about it now, so we’ll just have to live with the consequences. Anyway, I think that’s it for today. Thank you.”

“Hey! Don’t forget you’re talking to us!” My father’s voice crackles through the radio. My mother smiles faintly.

“I wouldn’t. Is Artie there too?”

“Right here.”

It’s weird, hearing Artie’s voice on the other side of the radio. I’m still getting used to the fact that my friend is a genuine scientist.

Clem jumps up and runs over to talk to her brother, and I follow close behind. We only have a few minutes to chat before the console at the station is needed for another meeting.

Only as I collect my bike for the train ride home do I remember the rain gauge again. But I don’t say anything about it. Compared to the solemn conversations of my mother and the other meeting attendees reflecting on what they learned, it hardly seems important.

***

“Hand me those last two, Fern.”

I pick up the final rocks, lying next to the jacket I tossed off when I began to feel the effects of the hard work and May sunshine. “Here you go.”

“This one’ll look nice rinsed.” Rae holds up the triangular rock with a red stripe down the middle.”

“It will,” I agree. “But I don’t know if it’ll look better. The dust has a cool effect, kinda.”

“You think so?” Rae sounds pleasantly surprised to hear me say so. “I agree. But I don’t think most people want the communal herb garden to remind them of the dryland, so washed they’ll be.”

They rinse off the last two rocks and set them in one wheelbarrow. I grab the other, and together we start pushing them off towards the herb garden. But I’m intrigued by their response.

“Rae, do you like spending time in the dryland?”

“Yes.” Rae sighs. “Yes, but it’s complicated. I miss what it used to be like too. But…” They set down their wheelbarrow and I follow suit. “I grew up in a desert. Not as dry as this. It rained sometimes. We loved it when it did. New plants sprouted and old ones blossomed. But then there would be times when it didn’t rain, and the desert was beautiful then as well.”

We begin adding rocks to the wall around the garden. Rae adds with a thoughtful look “Also, I was younger than most of the people here when the rain stopped. Maybe that makes a difference.”

I grab another rock. “How old were you?”

“Nineteen.”

Only two years older than me. “What made you decide to stay?”

“Well.” Rae pauses and straightens up. “That’s the question, isn’t it. You know I was a student of your mother’s?”

“Yeah.”

“I looked up to her a lot. So when she said she was staying on Earth, made this beautiful speech about how she felt she had to give our planetary home a chance, I naturally wanted to join her.” Rae adds a green heart-shaped rock to the wall. “She tried to talk me out of it. Said she didn’t want me to make a decision like that on her example. But you can’t really set yourself up as a heroic last resort for the Earth and expect your doting underlings to listen to you telling them to give up on it.” 

It’s weird to think of Rae as my mother’s doting underling. “Do you ever wish you hadn’t stayed?”

Rae is quiet for a while before answering. “I don’t think so. I wonder from time to time what it’s like on the ship, you know. How everyone’s doing, hurtling off to a new world. Maybe in an alternate universe I went with them, and made a good life for myself there. But if I’d done that, I wouldn’t have this life. And it’s a pretty interesting one.” Rae sets another rock on the wall. “Do you wish you were on the ship.?”

“I guess I haven’t really thought about it. I mean, I couldn’t be. My parents would probably never have met if they hadn’t stayed.”

As we continue working on the wall, it occurs to me that I could mention the rain gauge to Rae, see if they know anything about it. But as the weeks have gone by, it’s only felt more and more trivial. Even with Rae, I feel a bit silly bringing it up. After all, there’s probably a perfectly reasonable and boring explanation for it. Maybe it’s more fun to just let it be a mystery.

***

June cleaning in the observatory has been a tradition for as long as I can remember. Most people even loosely affiliated with the observatory come and help. It’s a good thing. We need all the celebratory atmosphere we can get to make the task anything approaching fun. But at last, the final corners are cleaned and we can head home. The train is getting an inspection today, so we all have to bike. 

We leave from a different exit than usual, so for once, everyone is biking off the trail. We’re almost back to the usual path when my mother suddenly screeches to a halt. We all screech in behind her, some of us narrowly avoiding collision. 

“What is that?” She crouches down by a large rock. Some members of the convoy lean in closer to see, but I don’t need to. I know what it is.

My mother holds up the rain gauge and stares back at us, confuzzlement and suspicion seeping out of her. “Do any of you know what this is about?”

I don’t, but my conscience prickles me anyway. I’m just opening my mouth to speak when Rae beats me to it. “I do.”

We all turn to look at them.

“It’s not anything important.” But Rae nonetheless looks sheepish. “I just… I found it in some garage in one of our expeditions years ago. Reminded me of the one my family had as a child, so I kept it. Then we heard about the water leakage, and I thought…” Rae trails off, then continues with renewed confidence “Look, I don’t want breakout rain. None of us do. But I just thought it’d be nice to have something here as a reminder of the time when rain in the desert was an occasion for celebration. In case it happens.”

My mother looks at Rae for a long moment, then she gazes past them to the building clouds on the horizon. The worry of the past few weeks is plain in her expression. At last, she simply stands up and hands Rae the rain gauge, shaking her head. “That time is long past, Rae,” she says. “Don’t tempt the sky.” Then she climbs on her bike and pedals off in one smooth motion, leaving us standing in the dust.

***

There they are. 

I screech my bike to a halt and pick up the gloves. Sure enough, they must have fallen out of my pocket at our abrupt stop at the rain gauge yesterday.

There’s another rumble off in the distance. I look up at the sky as I catch my breath. It’s hard to believe it’s midday. I never knew clouds could be so dark gray. Not auspicious biking weather, to be sure. I could’ve gotten the gloves another day, but as I watched the clouds build and darken from the safely of the oasis, I somehow felt I needed to see them out here, up close.

Then I hear it. The rushing sound behind me. It’s so different from the gentle pattering of rain in the oasis that it takes me a moment to realize that’s what it is. 

Rain.

I turn around to look. I see a hazy sheet, like there is over the aquifer when the clouds are being drained there. But this one is coming toward me.

And then, it’s here. It’s happening.

The rain has broken out.

I ought to be horrified. These drops represent food we could have grown, showers we could have taken, fresh water we could have drunk.

I open my mouth and turn my face up, catching some of the water pelting down from the sky, and find I have to close my eyes.

I should be afraid. And I am. But there’s something else here too. A feeling of awe, maybe. Something… alive.

Maybe I don’t truly understand what this means, and that’s why I don’t fear it as much as I should. Or maybe it’s just that something inside me, encoded more deeply even than irrationality in my DNA, still knows the feeling that rain on dry land means life. 

Maybe I’m the rain gauge.

And it’s not just me. I know there are seeds in this soil. Perhaps not many of them have survived 20 years without water. But any that have can now sprout, for a brief time come to life until, hopefully for us, they have no more rain.

Thunder sounds again, closer this time, and I climb back on my bike. I’ll try to pedal back quickly. My mother has enough to worry about besides me getting electrocuted. And I don’t much fancy it myself. I’ll return to the oasis, where we together can commiserate and worry over the rain.

But as I begin my soggy ride home, raindrops pelting my face, I know that if I can, I’m going to come back out here in the days and weeks ahead, see what has sprouted in this newly dampened ground. Since I cannot stop the rain, I want to watch the dryland come to life.