22
The summer storms came without warning or names. Lobby doors collapsed and the dark lake grew deeper. Stores of food grew thin. The sun’s heat entered the dome and did not leave. Its light was too bright off the water. Those in the upper decks descended because of the heat. Those on the lower decks rose because of the water. The club level became crowded, loud, filthy. The infirmary filled, expanded. The sick sat in cushioned seats or lay on thin sheets on the concrete. Through their dry lips, they cursed the electrician.
23
Beyond Dome History, after it, the dome was empty. A new stadium was built beside it. The dome was a problem. It could become something or nothing. It could be a shopping center, a parking garage, a museum. It could be demolished. It could implode, crumble in on itself. The pieces could be hauled away to make a parking lot. A monument could be erected there. Engineers worried that even the most cautious demolition might harm surrounding structures. It could be a movie studio, a luxury hotel.
24
The yacht salesman led six boats out on Fannin, steering a line beneath the thick wires strung between telephone poles. Their boats were made from conference tables and large blocks of Styrofoam. The world outside was still and flat and quiet. Faded pictures of food peeled away from half-submerged billboards. The sailors used long poles and makeshift oars to guide the boats along the street. On low rooftops they could see scattered clothes, plastic bags, suitcases. Some thought they saw faces from the second-story windows of stores and offices. They turned occasionally to look back at the dome behind them. It seemed to float or hover like a ghost ship. It was a Dome History that a press release in 1965 compared the dome to the Eiffel Tower. The yacht salesman stopped and pointed up at a telephone pole. The other boats kept their distance, spread out, kept watch. One sailor climbed up the pole. With a rope, he pulled up a rusty saw. He hesitated before cutting the wires. Zap, the sailors yelled, laughing. The sailor on the top of the pole did not laugh. His hand was shaking. He cut through the wires, lowered the saw, climbed down. Three sailors took turns swinging the axe at the telephone pole. The pole, when it fell, shattered a streetlight, nearly cleaved the yacht salesman’s boat. The waves rocked the boats, soaked the sailors. They cheered and slapped each other’s backs. They took down another, then tied ropes to the poles. The six boats turned back to the dome, dragging the lumber. There was a loud shot and a sailor fell, bleeding from the shoulder. The sound did not fade from the air. Leave the poles, the yacht salesman shouted. The sailors paddled back to the dome, their boats nearly full of water. The injured sailor was carried to the infirmary. The other sailors were concerned but not surprised. They had all felt, so recently, the impulse to unmake.
25
It was either a Fast Fact, Fun Trivia, or Dome History that a no-hitter was thrown on September 25, 1986. Only three balls were hit out of the infield. Only three players reached base. The yacht salesman had been there with his uncle. The old scoreboard, nearly five hundred feet wide, showed fireworks and six-shooters. The ticket stub was still in the yacht salesman’s wallet and his wallet was long lost.
26
The platform would require miles of telephone poles. The yacht salesman and the banker took the sailors back out. Each boat had a gun, each gun pointed at passing windows, rooftops. One morning, a sailor crawled through the second-floor window of a small office building. He was gone a long time. The yacht salesman considered whether to leave or to send someone after him. Then the man was at the window, beckoning the others to come in. They tied their boats to gargoyles and ducked through the window. The sailor led them down a hallway, through a smashed door, and into a large carpeted room with couches and chairs. On a bar, there were a dozen large bottles. They drank all day. They ate food from small plastic pouches. They saved nothing. They cleared a space in the middle of the room to dance and wrestle, then they fell asleep on the couches and carpet.
27
New people arrived at the dome daily, bringing ideas, guns, illness, strength, food, and hunger. The electrician rowed a small raft around the perimeter of the dome. He saw them coming. He saw them swimming or paddling their leaky boats. Go away, he thought. Please go. Often, they were injured. Often, their eyes did not work anymore except to see. He helped them into the lobbies and up the ramps to dry ground. The lobbies had become treacherous with water and flotsam. The electrician walked circles around the dome, ducking beneath the clotheslines. Frequently, his arms and cheeks brushed the hanging clothes, the cotton and polyester, cool and damp against his skin. The electrician stared up and back down. He opened his notebook. They could use domemade sledgehammers to smash holes on the second level of the external pedestrian walkways. The holes would need to be large enough to load in the wood, the soil. They could build floating docks for boats. The docks could rise with the water and so, for a time, could they. It was a Dome History that the original name was the Harris County Domed Stadium. The electrician admired that name for its modesty, its accuracy. It seemed to him a true and accommodating name.
28
Boys fished the dome lake. One of them caught a giant turtle. There was great commotion as they pulled it in, placed it on its back, argued about the best way to destroy it. With plywood scraps, the boys built a ramp down the stairs between Sections 259 and 260. They took turns riding the two bicycles down the ramp and into the water. The bicycles rusted, their tires went flat, the wheel rims bent. The translator watched the boys from a skybox. The boys were her problem. The lake had to be cleaned before the platform could be built. If you clear the lake, the translator said to the boys, I’ll get you another bike. The boys looked as if they might set upon her. They were barefoot, shirtless, and they dripped water on the concrete. A few had patchy beards. Five bikes, one said. Four, she said. The boys called and whistled as she walked away. They swam into the water and began to haul out the suitcases, tires, chairs, bottles, cans, knives, clothing, birds, stuffed animals, flashlights, books, programs, boxes, computers, phones, strollers, blankets, guns, dogs. Two boys swam down to tie a rope around a heavy wooden box resting on the turf. Five boys pulled the box up out of the lake. Inside the box were hundreds of little domes.
29
There once had been (Fun Trivia) shoeshine stands located on the lower level behind home plate. The children who heard the story could not understand. Shiny shoes. Shoeshine. The world before seemed strange to them. Snow in the dome, and grass, and men who walked on shoes that shone. They played games, kneeled at each other’s feet, pretended they had shoes, pretended their shoes were too bright to behold.
30
The yacht salesman’s dreams were horrors. He stayed awake for days, until his waking life was a dream, and then he swam away from the dome.
31
The banker went out at dawn with eight boats. He had grown up on a lake. He remembered the sudden plunge of the bobber, the dragonflies that settled on the ends of the rods. He lived in a skybox (19) and the sailors did not like him, but they did what he said. They brought down more telephone poles, cut 2×4s and 2×6s out of stores and houses, pulled plywood from storm-boarded offices. The lumber for the platform was stored in dry passageways above the lower level. Late at night, one of the guards would allow the insurance executive and his daughter to take pieces of wood to build coffins. The coffins were crude flat boats with small ornate boxes for candles, dried flowers, letters, toys, or jewelry. The coffins were stacked, large to small, several levels up in an external pedestrian walkway. The banker noticed the missing wood. One night, he hid in the passageways. He saw the insurance executive nod to the guard. He saw him select his pieces and carry them, with his daughter, back to the pedestrian walkway. They walked quickly through the dark. The banker followed them up the ramps. He lit a torch and walked along the long row of stacked coffins, touching them lightly. He kneeled down to look at some unfinished boxes. He picked up the woodworking tools and held them close to his face. The insurance executive and his daughter sat in the shado
ws. The banker stood and walked back down the ramps.
32
Whatever story the poets wanted to tell, the dome contained it. Nature was proven, and so was nurture. Altruism and selfishness were proven. Community and individual, chaos and order, art and shit, tool and weapon, freedom and gene, God and void—everything was proven and true, filling the dome like music. And every person was a dome too. But won’t the telephone poles float? asked the limousine driver. The electrician stared at him. I need you to figure that out, he said. The limousine driver sat and thought for days. Once the platform was built, the poles would be weighted down, but the problem was how to begin, how to plant and secure the poles on the turf, partially submerged in the water. When his son would not stop crying, the limousine driver held the infant up by his ankle and shook. He climbed to Section 909, high above the lake. His notebook was full of strange sketches, smudged by his sweat. He felt constrained by the elements and conditions of the dome, the physical laws of the planet. He stared across the dome at tattered clothes on taut lines. There was nothing, and then from nothing there was something, elegant and correct. He would need some kind of drill and great lengths of strong cable.
33
What are the rights of humans? One morning, the boys caught the librarian urinating in the lake. They had all urinated in the lake many times, occasionally as a contest. When they ran at him, he did not try to escape. They picked him up and threw him into the water. Broken-necked, he floated, and the boys swam in to pull his body out.
34
The platform was a large rectangle of plastic-wrapped plywood sheets resting on top of hundreds of telephone poles cut to the same length. It stood ten feet above the water, centered in the lake. The platform workers were vulnerable to objects dropped from the catwalks. In late fall and winter, the dome cooled. The platform workers erected tall, thick sides around the perimeter of the platform. The outside of the platform walls had painted messages from the city from long ago. HELP. NEED WATER. NEED INSULIN. TIMMY WAIT HERE. THIS BILDING PROTECTED BY GUN. GOD IS WATCHING. EAT ME. SAVE ME, NASA. There were three kinds of workers: those who deliberately concealed the writing by facing it inward, those who deliberately displayed the writing by facing it outward, and those who both concealed and displayed because they did not notice or care about the writing. There were arguments and all of the positions were sound. Wooden walkways spanned the water between the platform and the sections of the lower deck.
35
Twenty-one boats sailed northeast, over the Old Spanish Trail, past the medical center until they saw Sam Houston’s horse standing on the water. That was Hermann Park. Then it was slow and dangerous, diving to bring up soil in buckets, baskets, boxes, hands. At the end of the day, tiny piles dotted the enormous platform. How many days just to cover the platform floor. The carts, barrows, and chutes. The soccer coach didn’t believe in it. He dreamed of killing the electrician, burying him alive, but he kept sailing to the park, diving for dirt. When others complained, he talked them into believing in something foolish. He stood in his wobbly boat and exhorted. Let’s go, the soccer coach shouted. What’s your plan? That’s what I thought. It’s a bountiful planet. It gives and gives. Bring it out of the water. We’re soil men. Brown gold. Come on. Get the dirt.
36
It was a Fun Trivia that the dome was, at the millennial turn, the nation’s 134th favorite structure.
37
Even the pirates had given up. The soilers could work all day. They took dirt from the Japanese Gardens, the golf course. Twice a day, the soccer coach would take off his shirt and dive with the others. When he came back up, he tipped his small load into the dirt raft and sat on the edge of the boat with his feet in the water. He could not see his toes. He did not know what month it was. The sun dried his back and hair. If he had cigarettes, he would hand them out, one each. They would all sit, still breathing heavily, staring into the water. If the dirt raft was more than half full, someone might say something. The water’s warm. Like it is in the Gulf. Like it was. The soccer coach would nod. He had lain on a raft, his arm dangling over the edge. He had gotten stung by something. All he had seen was a dark ripple. Others nodded and pointed to places on their bodies. Most of them had been stung long ago by something in the Gulf.
38
The historian says, They brought soil to the dome, filled the platform. The sentence makes a bridge over time. Beneath the bridge are the minutes, the bodies, the glare off the water, the dead cranes floating. The golf balls and dark quarters the divers brought back for children. The aching lungs, flaking skin, the infections that never healed. Someone had painted the flank of Sam Houston’s horse. It said PTSD DADDY. One day, a soiler, catching his breath, pointed at the statue and said, He’s the only person ever to serve as governor of two different states. The soccer coach was up on the horse with Sam Houston like a lifeguard or emperor. Let’s go now, he said. Come on. Cut the small talk. Soil time.
39
The veterinarian, the florist, the animal researcher, the data enterer, the consultant, the editor, the lab technician, the classics professor, the actuary, the hotline volunteer, the sculptor, the traffic engineer, the detective, the door and window installer, the plumber, the landscaper, the gambler, the architect, the quilter, the taxidermist, the nurse, the accountant—none of them returned with seeds. The mechanic thought he had something, but it turned out he did not. The historian builds a bridge over a year, says, That was the worst time imaginable. The storms came, the food ran out, the heat increased, the water rose. Despair became violence. Many died and many swam away. The boys tore down the walls of the platform and soil slid into the lake. The coffin maker’s hands were swollen and splintered. His daughter died and he pushed her lightly from the floating dock. The violin stopped and did not start again. The historian knows how it turned out. The people in the dome did not know. This is the end of the story because they considered it the end, the very worst they could imagine.
40
They would eventually find seeds. Eventually, there would be vegetables, rice, cotton, but initially wheat and corn. They repaired the wooden walls of the farm, replaced the lost soil. They planted and waited. They gripped the sides of the platform, peeking over. The sunlight through the roof coated the soil, turned it gold. Then the tiny green stalks pushed through the dirt and into the dome. One morning, the electrician woke up early. He saw a sleeping guard, a deer in the corn. It looked like a dream, but it wasn’t. He watched it for some time. The electrician would have a life precisely bisected. The harvest would be meager, the corn salty. They would fry fish, dance, play music. They would have a feast beneath the blurry moon. They would plant again, rotate crops, trap rainwater on the roof. The electrician would walk circles around the dome, listening. His hand would be amputated. He would meet with the residents one section at a time. We could try to remove some of the ceiling panels to allow sunlight and rain, a woman in Section 433 would say. We could use gutters and spouts to funnel rainwater down into the dome, a man in Section 638 would say. We could plant saltbush to desalinate the soil, an elderly man in Section 928 would say. We’ll have to raise and extend the platform, a woman in Section 767 would say. We have to get air in here, a man in Section 722 would say. A boy in Section 600 would stand and speak quietly. Louder, son, people would say. Why can’t this whole dome float? the boy would repeat. The electrician would stare at the boy’s drawing. Some of the residents would laugh but many of the residents would not.
* * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHRIS BACHELDER is the author of the novels Bear v. Shark, U.S.!, and Abbott Awaits. He teaches writing at the University of Cincinnati.
EAGLE
GREGORY BENFORD
The long, fat freighter glided into the harbor at late morning—not the best time for a woman who had to keep out of sight.
The sun slowly slid up the sky as tugboats drew them into Anchorage. The tank ship, a big, sectioned VLCC, was like an elephant balle
rina on the stage of a slate-blue sea, attended by tiny, dancing tugs.
Now off duty, Elinor watched the pilot bring them in past the Nikiski Narrows and slip into a long pier with gantries like skeletal arms snaking down, the big pump pipes attached. They were ready for the hydrogen sulfide to flow. The ground crew looked anxious, scurrying around, hooting and shouting. They were behind schedule.
Inside, she felt steady, ready to destroy all this evil stupidity.
She picked up her duffel bag, banged a hatch shut, and walked down to the shore desk. Pier teams in gas workers’ masks were hooking up pumps to offload, and even the faint rotten egg stink of the hydrogen sulfide made her hold her breath. The Bursar checked her out, reminding her to be back within twenty-eight hours. She nodded respectfully, and her maritime ID worked at the gangplank checkpoint without a second glance. The burly guy there said something about hitting the bars and she wrinkled her nose. “For breakfast?”
“I seen it, ma’am,” he said, and winked.
She ignored the other crew, solid merchant marine types. She had only used her old engineer’s rating to get on this freighter, not to strike up the chords of the Seamen’s Association song.
Loosed Upon the World Page 38