The Color That Wasn't There

The blue gel had melted into a sticky puddle inside the delivery box.

Aunt Lila held up the plastic sleeve with two fingers. It sagged like a jellyfish. She was the director of the North Pier Science Center, which meant she could fix a jammed telescope, argue with a mayor, and carry four mugs of coffee at once. It did not mean she could make blue out of a puddle.

"The show starts in twenty-eight minutes," she said. "The title is Color Without Color. The audience will expect color. Preferably some."

Maya looked at the sign on the demo table. It showed a blue sky, a red sunset, and a glass of milk.

"Blue dye cheats," Maya said.

"Blue dye saves family night," Aunt Lila said.

Soren had already opened his notebook, which he was not supposed to bring near the demonstration tanks because last week it had absorbed saltwater and swollen like a sandwich. He wrote one line, then shut it when Aunt Lila looked at him.

"The sign says without color," he said.

Aunt Lila pressed her fingers against her forehead. "I have donors in the lobby and a fog machine making a noise like a goose. If you can make a sky by seven o'clock, do it. If not, use the dye and lie very charmingly."

She hurried away, talking into her wrist comm.

The table held a long clear tank, a flashlight as bright as a headlamp, three droppers, a stack of filters, and one emergency bottle of blue food coloring.

Maya picked up the food coloring and squeezed one drop into a beaker. It fell through the water in a royal blue ribbon.

"Pretty," Soren said.

"Wrong," Maya said.

He nodded. "All the water is blue from every side. Sky doesn't do that."

Maya put the beaker down. Blue had gone onto her list of things that looked right because they were wrong.

They tried the filters anyway. Red plastic made red light. Blue plastic made blue light. Yellow plastic made the room look like old soup. None of it felt like sky. It felt like putting a costume on a flashlight.

From the lobby came the squeak of wet shoes and the rising sound of families arriving. Someone laughed. Someone dropped a metal water bottle. The fog machine honked once.

Soren lifted the long tank and peered through it. "What if the color isn't in the light at the start?"

"Or in the water," Maya said.

They looked at the sign again.

Sky. Sunset. Milk.

Maya went still.

Soren saw her stop and did not ask her to explain yet. That was one of his best qualities. He waited while she moved backward through whatever she had leaped over.

"Milk is white," Maya said.

"Usually."

"But not because someone put white paint in cows."

Soren's eyes moved to the tiny staff refrigerator under the counter.

Inside were three lunches, a jar of pickles, and a carton of milk with Aunt Lila's name written on it in thick black marker. Under her name, someone had added, emergency coffee only.

Maya took the milk.

"This is probably an emergency," Soren said.

They filled the tank with clean water. Maya added one drop of milk. It vanished so completely that the tank looked the same as before.

Soren bent close. "Maybe too little."

"Maybe exactly little," Maya said.

They turned off the table lamp and pulled the black curtain around the demo corner. The room became narrow and dark, with only the exit sign glowing green at the bottom.

Soren clicked on the flashlight and shone it through the side of the tank.

Nothing happened.

Maya frowned, not at the tank, but at the air just above it, as if the answer might have missed and landed nearby.

"Again," she said. "Lengthwise."

Soren moved to the end of the tank and sent the beam down the long water path.

This time the beam appeared inside the water.

Not brightly. Not like dye. More like a ghost of a line, pale blue where it passed close to Maya's face. On the white card at the far end, the light was not white anymore. It had gone weak and warm, almost peach.

Soren did not write anything down. He just stared.

Maya put her hand into the blue haze beside the tank. Her fingers did not turn blue. The water did not turn blue. The beam did.

"There isn't any blue," she said softly.

Soren whispered back, "There it is anyway."

For a few seconds the little curtained corner was not a science center. It was morning and evening folded into one tank. The side of the beam held a tiny sky. The far card held the beginning of sunset. Between them was almost-clear water with one drop of milk hiding in it.

The curtain snapped open.

Aunt Lila stuck her head in. "Please tell me that is not my coffee milk becoming famous."

"It isn't famous yet," Maya said.

Aunt Lila looked at the tank. "Why is it blue? Did you use dye?"

Soren held up the unopened food coloring.

Aunt Lila's eyebrows rose, then she checked the time and became director-shaped again. "Eight minutes. Can families see it?"

"Not with the lobby lights on," Soren said. "And the card needs to be farther away."

"Theater two is dark," Maya said. "White projection screen. Long room."

Aunt Lila glanced toward the honking fog machine, then toward the lobby, then back at them. "You have seven minutes. Do not spill anything expensive, antique, or plugged in."

They carried the tank together, Soren at the end with the flashlight tucked under his arm, Maya walking backward to watch the water line. In theater two, the screen was blank and huge. Rows of folding chairs waited in the dark.

The tank went on a rolling cart. Soren set the flashlight at one end and propped it level with two coasters and a museum postcard. Maya taped a white card beside the tank so people could see the side glow before the beam reached the screen.

"More milk?" Soren asked.

Maya held the dropper above the tank. "One. Maybe two. If it's too cloudy, everything scatters everywhere."

"White," Soren said. "Like milk."

She added one drop. The water clouded, then cleared to almost clear. Soren switched on the flashlight.

The beam showed itself brighter now, blue along the tank. On the screen, the circle of light warmed toward orange.

Maya added one more drop.

The side glow thickened. The screen reddened at the edges.

"Stop," Soren said.

Maya stopped before he finished the word.

The families came in smelling like raincoats and popcorn. Aunt Lila stood at the front with her best welcome smile, the one that said nothing had ever melted, leaked, honked, or been stolen from the staff refrigerator.

"Tonight," she said, "Maya and Soren are going to show you a color that is not painted on anything."

A small boy in the front row said, "That tank is empty."

"Mostly," Soren said.

Maya clicked off the room lights.

In the dark, the flashlight beam entered the tank. A blue line appeared in the water, faint at first, then clear enough that people leaned forward. The white card beside it glowed like a piece of noon sky. At the far screen, the circle had turned sunset orange.

The front row boy stood up. "Where's the red thing?"

"There isn't one," Maya said.

Soren lifted the milk carton so the audience could see it. "Tiny bits are suspended in the water. Too small to see. They scatter light sideways. The bluer light scatters more. The light that gets all the way through has less blue left in it."

He stopped there, because everyone was looking at the tank, not at him.

Maya held the dropper over a second clear cup. "This one has plain water."

Soren shone the flashlight through it. The beam stayed invisible until it hit the screen, white and ordinary.

Maya added a drop of milk. The beam appeared.

Someone in the back said, "Oh."

It was not a loud oh. It was the kind that happened when a locked box opened and turned out to have windows.

A girl with silver beads in her braids raised her hand. "If the tiny stuff is different, is the sky different?"

Maya and Soren looked at each other.

On the side wall of theater two hung an old poster from the Mars rover exhibit. It showed rusty ground, a coppery sky, and near the setting sun, a small blue glow.

Aunt Lila did not answer. She looked at the poster too.

The girl lowered her hand slowly.

After the show, when the families had gone back into the bright lobby and Aunt Lila was explaining to a donor why her milk carton had applause stickers on it, Maya and Soren stayed in theater two.

Soren switched the flashlight back on. Maya slid the tank between the beam and the rover photograph. A small red circle crossed the glass, and beside it the printed Martian sunset glowed blue around the sun.