The Dome in the Forest

by Paul O. Williams

  III

  TOR had not run south. He waited near the dome, being troubled and feeling a need for thought. Two days after the others had gone, he lay at ease by the fire. The running band had been angry with him, though they were silent and subdued, knowing his need as an uncle to care for his orphaned nephew. But Tor was an axeman, and one of the best. They felt his staying behind was a betrayal, somehow, despite the circumstances. Yet they always had been a loose and voluntary organization, and he knew where his primary duty lay, in spite of his own desires. The band would be passing the great south curve of the Isso by now, Blu leading them. Tor tried to take life as it came, though he was uncertain of his next moves. He knew he couldn’t bear to stay at Pelbarigan with Tristal. He would go on alone, perhaps finding his band. He loved the open, the shock of hunting, even the endurance of hunger, so long as it didn’t get too bad.

  But everything was in flux. All but the old Shumai had given up spears now—since the fight at Northwall over a decade ago. Now they all carried bows—mostly modeled after the Pelbar longbow. Perhaps he would have to learn that, too. It was clear that he would be no match for one, even though it seemed somehow unmanly to stand way off and kill with something like that.

  Still he had another reason for not going—a nameless sense of something he could not pin down. It seemed to hang about this place like a vapor. Tor was always thrown off balance by his own peculiar way of simply knowing things, or sensing them, and waiting for them to grow in his mind into some semblance of clarity. He would fall into silences even with his men. Ideas would emerge from him without forethought. He suspected his men had left with Blu as willingly as they had because they saw that mood on him. More than once it had saved them, when he made some quick discernment—as it did with the best axemen—and they knew they had to value Tor even though his mysteries frustrated them.

  Late in the afternoon, Tor heard a far, faint quavering yell. He stood and returned it, filling the near woods with his half-human wail. They were finally coming, then. He would have meat for them anyway, seven chucks, all axe-killed. It was far from a useless weapon if you could throw it well.

  Soon a row of figures appeared, trotting very slowly. It was Legon, with his wife and three others from the family—two young men and an older woman—and last of all Tristal. The boy looked faint. Beneath his weakness, though, Tor could see a quiet Shumai determination. Perhaps all was not bad with him.

  Tristal sank unashamedly down by the fire without spreading his furroll as Tor greeted them all. “Don’t mind Tris,” Legon said. “He has been sick. Still is. A fever. Chuck, huh? Well, I could use some of that. Frey, can you serve us some? Ama, would you serve Tristal?”

  “I will take care of him,” said Tor. He sat by the boy. Yes, there still was fever. Tor gave him a tarred wicker cup of warm broth, with fat pieces of meat and wild onions. Tristal had trouble swallowing it, but seemed eager for it anyway. He clung to Tor’s leg, and the axeman could see he didn’t even know he was doing it. Cutting off chunks of chuck, Tor fed the boy, piece by piece, as the others settled down for the evening. Then he put the boy into his furroll and fed the fire, smoothing out his own roll next to Tristal’s. Ama was disappointed.

  As the fire died down, Tristal stirred restlessly. “Where is Raran?” Tor said.

  “She will come. She was off hunting when we left. She will find us all right.” Before long, as Tristal said, the great dog glided into the firelight and sat by the boy, who reached out his hand to her. Raran then touched her nose to Tor, then to Legon and Frey, and finally returned to Tristal and thumped down with a sigh on the other side from Tor. Soon Tristal faded into sleep. Tor lay awake a long time thinking. Three times high flocks of geese went over in the night, their barking honks coming down from the darkness.

  “Tor,” said Legon.

  “Yes.”

  “He is a good boy, Tor. You will be proud of him. He learns things. I have never seen anything like it. You tell him once and he not only knows, but he thinks out beyond you. He is quiet, but you will see. He will be there when you need him.”

  “Good. I am glad. Thank you, Leg.”

  “Let him rest here awhile. He has been very sick. He will be all right. We will go in the morning.”

  “Yes. All right. I am in no hurry. I am going to take him to Pelbarigan.”

  “There?”

  “Yes. For the summer. A Pelbar couple has agreed. They were here to see the rod. An old Shumai named Hagen lives with them. Old friends.”

  “Stel and Ahroe.”

  “You know them?”

  “Only their story. They have been west beyond the great mountains, far beyond Shumai country.”

  “They?”

  “Yes. They are Pelbar, but there is some steel in both of them. I am glad for Tristal. That will be good.”

  No more was said, and soon Legon was asleep. There it was again, in Tor’s thought. Something impending. Well, he would be ready for it, whatever it was.

  In the morning, Legon and his party left, running north around the empty place, eager to head west. Tor and his nephew waved, with Raran undecided as to what to do. Soon she returned to Tristal and sat down by him, curling her rump against his leg.

  Resting, Tristal recovered rapidly. Tor built a brush screen under the outcrop to help hold the warmth, and watched the boy with a yawning nonchalance. He wanted no anxiety to show. He knew Tristal felt bad about keeping his uncle from the run westward. The first night cleared, and the two played a leisurely star-naming game, but it was hard to play with only two. Soon, Tor asked the boy to name the stars he knew. They climbed to the ridge above the outcrop, and Tristal pointed and named half the heaven.

  “Enough,” said Tor. “I think you know them all.”

  “Not the dim ones.”

  The next night, Tristal was restless. He asked his uncle if it would be all right if he took a walk. Tor shrugged, glad to see him recovering.

  In her chamber, Celeste keyed the code for structure, then followed the sequence until she was calling up on the screen details of the dome that were not open information. What was that, then? Another door? It ought to open into earth—but perhaps not now, with all the erosion. Tracing the path to it on the screen, she calculated then nullified the alarms, all for only a few time units, determined by the moments she planned to pass each point. Then she took one look around her chamber and left.

  When she arrived at the door, she seared the seal away with her ultrasonic pointer. The door swung outward. Unlike the last one, this portal was low in the dome, quite near the dimly seen earth outside. She would not need a rope. Looking down, Celeste squeezed through the door, holding it so it would swing shut. Then she dropped to the ground, hitting with a faint thud. It was mud. She had felt nothing like that before—a cold grime. She was the first, then, of all the people to leave the dome and levels after the ancient blast. A surge of pride fought against her fear.

  Ahead of her a hill stretched up, and she labored, slipping and struggling, to climb it. She soon grew filthy and regretful. No, she would not return, not with Butto presiding over his monsters. Somehow she would manage to live—at least for a while—out here, where there were no sounds of the discarded sacks of flesh. Nor was there Dexter, fumbling and ironic, coldly personal. She could always go back later.

  As she neared the hill crown, her hand grasped something. She stared. A plant. She scrabbled up farther. Soon she came over the lip of the hill and into many plants, dimly visible, wet for some reason. She swished her hands through them, washing herself. So this is what it was like to be out on the earth. What was ahead? It looked like a forest on the audi-visi tapes. All this, then, lay outside? Celeste laughed bitterly. A whole world grew out here, just out of their vision, out of the range of their sensing equipment. What of the radiation? What if it killed her? What would she do, anyhow? If so many plants lived, if the strange birds flew, could she not make a place for herself? She stumbled ahead, feeling her way, falling occasion
ally over rocks, once skinning her knee. High overhead, she heard the birds calling down. So they were there. She was in the world of real birds.

  After a while she realized she was lost. She had no idea which way the dome lay. She knelt down. What would she do? Well, the sun would come, and she would find her way. What was that? A sound ahead. She set her ultrasonic pointer low and unleashed a brief pulse. She heard a strange cry, shrill and pained, then a voice.

  “What is it, Raran? Are you all right? Here, lie down. Let me look at you.” Celeste heard a slight whining, then a growl. Perhaps an animal growl, she thought. An animal? But the voice was a human voice, one she could understand though the speech was thick and different. The growling continued. Celeste felt a wave of fear. She turned to run, started to thrash through the bushes. Suddenly she heard a rush, and something hit her hard in the back. She went down sprawling. Turning over, she saw, dimly, a snarling animal face, and felt its warm breath. She shrieked and covered her face as she heard running footsteps.

  “Raran, Raran! What is it? Here. A person. Raran, get back, go on now. Now!” The dog reluctantly pulled back, but sat alertly looking.

  “Who are you?” Tristal asked, drawing his knife.

  Celeste opened her hands and saw him dimly over her, then shrieked again and covered her face. Tristal sheathed his knife and knelt down by her. “What is the matter? Come now. No one is going to hurt you. Sit up here and let me look at you. Are you all right?” He lifted Celeste up against him and patted her back, then, feeling her strange cloth mantle, added, “Are you Pelbar?”

  Celeste opened her mouth, trying, trying again to speak. Nothing came.

  “Don’t be afraid. Raran won’t hurt you. Come here, Raran. Shake hands.” Tristal patted the dog’s leg. “Shake. Come on, now, shake.” Raran lifted a paw and gestured repeatedly forward with it, and Tristal took Celeste’s hand away from her face and placed it around the dog’s paw. She shuddered.

  “You are all bones. Please come now. You can’t be left alone. Come back to the fire and meet my uncle. Come.” He hauled her upright. She slumped against him, feeling helpless, crying to herself soundlessly.

  “What is your name?” Tristal asked, kneeling again. “You will have to walk yourself. I have been sick and am not strong enough to carry you. Besides, you are nearly as tall as I am. Can’t you walk?”

  Celeste stood again. She opened her mouth, but nothing would come out. Nothing. She tried and strained. Nothing. She leaned on the strange boy with the thin, hard arms. He supported her until she recovered her composure, then he took her hand, and the three figures moved ahead through the darkness. She wondered how he saw, how he made his way. She lurched against a tree as they walked and stumbled down the hill. She stopped and felt the bark, then freed her hand from Tristal’s and felt it all around.

  “What is the matter?” he asked. “You can see, can’t you?”

  Celeste took his hand again. Yes, it was clear to him she could see. They moved forward again, through branches that slapped at her face. The great dog brushed and bumped against her side as she walked, and she could hear its puffing breath. Good God, why had she come out here? Was this what people had outside? How could they stand it—the danger, the wet, the cold, in company with beasts?

  Far off she could see a flickering light. Tristal paused. “Now,” he said, “Night Girl—I shall call you Night Girl since you won’t talk—I’m going to yell for my uncle. I will be loud, but don’t be frightened.” Celeste only partly understood. Tristal cupped his hands and sent out a long, quavering Shumai yell, rising and holding, followed by a short one. Celeste felt her hair rise in terror. She clung to Tristal.

  From the distance a similar yell was returned, almost an echo, but deeper. Again, Celeste felt a chill of fear. But Tristal merely remarked, “He will meet us. Come on again.” Another yell came, nearer, and Tristal answered. Soon footsteps swished in the brush, and a great body surged dimly through the dark. A broad-shouldered man towered over her.

  “What on earth?”

  “I found her in the brush. She will not or can not talk. She is all mud and wet. She has strange clothes on. What’ll we do?”

  “Hello,” said Tor, stooping close to her and speaking very slowly. “Do you understand? Raise your hand if you understand.” Celeste raised her hand slowly. She could make it out, though his talk seemed thick and twangy.

  “Come with us, then. I am Tor. This is Tristal, my nephew. What’s your name?”

  Celeste tried to open her mouth, then opened it wide, but nothing would come out. Tor stooped very close, looking into her face. She saw his blond beard and drew back, then reached out and touched it gently. Tor laughed.

  “I’m going to carry you to the fire,” he said, again very slowly, and swept her up and walked off toward the distant light, Tristal following. Soon the dog trotted ahead of him, and Tor had to chide her to keep out from under his feet. Celeste put her head against his shoulder. He was wearing a sort of hairy covering. She buried her nose in it. It smelled sour. Or was that the man? She could not remember that anyone had ever picked her up this way before, though as a child she had been soothed often enough by the rocking machine. It was a pleasant sensation, though his nearness was frightening. Soon she clung to Tor, finding she enjoyed his bulk and solidity.

  As Tor carried Celeste into the circle of firelight, she became aware of a new sensation—the acrid smell of woodsmoke, which she had first whiffed on Tristal. The axeman set her down gently in a pile of leaves near the outcrop, where the reflected heat of the steaming and blazing logs formed an island of domesticity in the great, cold night.

  Celeste looked at the fire, astonished. What was it? The flames, like the light from the pool of water in the dome and levels, flicked up and down, rose, throwing heat, consuming the round cylinders into blackness, then crumbling away. Tor tossed a few more small logs on, sending a rush of sparks upward, swimming the air like motes in the eyes, then disappearing. Celeste blocked her face, then looked again, feeling added heat.

  “Strange,” said Tristal.

  “What?”

  “It seems as if she has never seen a fire before. It is a fire, Night Girl, a fire. Move your head like this if you know about it.” Tristal nodded.

  Celeste looked at him, not moving her head, but with an expression of slight contempt.

  “She thinks you are patronizing her, Tris,” said Tor. “Of course she has seen a fire. What strange clothes. What is she doing in Shumai country? Maybe she is a Pelbar from Threerivers. I’ve never been there, except to go by.”

  “No. They dress like the others. She is entirely new. Perhaps she came from some real distance, like the mouth of the Heart, and separated from her people. Perhaps it is warm there, and that is why she has no proper coat.” Tristal felt her ankles, above her doubled dome slippers. “She is cold and wet, as well as muddy. We have to wash her and give her clothing.”

  Celeste drew back, frowning.

  “Don’t offend her, Tris. Look, Night Girl, nod your head if you understand. Do you?” Tor towered over her, bearded and furred, his long-handled axe on his hip. She looked up with wide eyes, then nodded, slowly.

  “All right. See that skin of water near the fire? It will be warm. We will sit with our backs to you. I want you to take off your clothes, wash yourself from it by unfixing the stopper, then get into that furroll. Then make some sound—here, knock with that stick—and we will wash and dry your clothes. Then we will go away again, and you can put them on. Do you understand?”

  Celeste nodded again, slowly. She desperately didn’t want to do what he suggested, but he clearly wished it. He was by far the biggest person she had ever seen. Even Dexter seemed small and thin by comparison. She had dropped her pointer somewhere and had no way of disagreeing. Tor and Tristal walked over to the edge of the outcrop and sat down, backs to her. Celeste saw rocks and sticks she could use for weapons, but shivering with cold and fright, she did as Tor said and stripped off her dome clo
thes. Her white, thin body gleamed in the firelight as she watched the two conversing quietly, backs to her. She saw Tristal hold up the knife blade he was whittling with, and saw Tor move it aside so the boy could catch no reflection of her in it. She washed in the warm water, amazed that they simply let it fall on the ground and soak in, then realizing that, of course, an endless supply of water fell as rain and flowed in the streams outside the dome and levels.

  No one had purified this water. What of the radiation? Well, it seemed not to harm them. Running to Tor’s furroll, Celeste put her long, thin feet down into it, then wormed down herself until only her head protruded. It was soft and smelled unclean. Then she reached out and knocked on the rock with a stick. Tor strode over and looked down at her, hands on his hips, and laughed.

  “You look like a mouse in his little hole, all right,” he said. Then he quickly knelt down, took her head, and kissed her on the forehead. She felt his rough beard brush into her face, then leave. Her heart surged with the shock of his sudden face. A kiss. No one kissed in the levels, but she had seen it on the tapes. Cohen-Davies had given her a disquisition on kissing once, and offered, laughingly, to show her how the ancients did it, but when she expressed willingness, he explained that it was an antisocial habit not suitable to their survival in the dome and levels. The geneticists were against it, as it led to the emotional interrelationships that complicated their attempts to purify and preserve the human strain for the future.

  But Tor had stood up immediately and watched Tristal go down to the stream below to rinse the mud from her bodysuit and exercise robe. The boy had dropped a fabric shoe, and Tor took it after him, leaving Celeste alone by the fire.

  What a marvel—right outside her lifelong home. She could hear the fire rumbling and snapping, and the wind in the bare branches above made a hollow sound she had never heard. A few plants had started to sprout from the cold earth, and below the fire she saw a small, white flower with many petals and dark, broad, scalloped leaves. She wanted to go to it, but she was naked in the furroll. She never remembered seeing anything so simply beautiful. Below it she saw more blooms, but they were very dim in the night. As Celeste thought of the implications of where she was, and what it was like, her emotions of wonder and terror nearly overcame her. She cried into the edge of the fur, trembling and hunched, looking up to see the man and boy near her. Her clothes were draped over a branch propped near the fire. A misty rain had started and beaded Tor’s hair and beard, gathering the fur coat on his shoulders into points at the hair tips.