The Dome in the Forest

by Paul O. Williams

  “Few? Did you dismantle the ancient computer banks for plastics?”

  “Dismantle them? Oh, no, Principal. Did you want us to do that?”

  “Yes, of course. Get on it right away. Have 3, 7, 8, 9, and 10 help. Where are you?”

  “On our level, awaiting orders, Principal.”

  “You were to call in when you finished.”

  “Were we? I am sorry, Principal. We will go.”

  Zeller switched off the caller, looked at Eolyn, shaking his head, and said, “I surmise that they have never even looked into level-six storage. They are still on their bunks, chanting Butto’s poems. He has infected them. All the efforts we have gone through to sort out the microorganisms in this structure, and Butto himself is an infection, even though he excludes many of the comps from his approval.”

  “Well, what do they have to hope for? What would you do as a sterile midget?”

  Zeller blushed. “We all have our places in the preservation of mankind on earth.”

  “You would have made a good politician in ancient times. The fact is, we have the better places. But the whole thing seems to be coming down on us now, and fast.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where is the next generation? Now our geneticists have been killed, Butto is running the Brat Shack. I was down there 1200 ago. Have you seen it? He is raising monsters. He hasn’t had a successful infant yet, comp or principal.”

  “Why hasn’t this been reported?”

  “Butto has shrouded the information, I assume. But truth to tell, the last geneticists weren’t doing very well, either. Celeste is our youngest, and she is fourteen. And look at her. She is a genius with the machines, but she can’t talk.”

  “She once did,” Zeller mused. “I wonder what happened. She certainly has responded to her environment.”

  “Don’t be bitter. None of us chose it.”

  “We will have to go back to ancient breeding.”

  Eolyn shuddered. “Not I. Who would there be? Ruthan, me, and soon Celeste. Can you save a race with three women, one unwilling, one a bit odd, and the other perhaps normal?”

  Zeller pondered. Then he laughed, held out his arms to her in mock pursuit, leered, and said, “Well, it would be worth a try!”

  She laughed but didn’t move. Zeller was disappointed. “By the way,” he remarked, “where is Celeste, anyhow?”

  “In her chamber, I think. She is often reclusive. She has called me now every once in a while for some time, just to print out little inconsequential remarks. She doesn’t even wait for a reply, or acknowledge my replies when I make them.”

  “All by caller?”

  “Of course. What is the matter?”

  Zeller frowned, then touched a code to Celeste’s chamber. “Celeste, this is Zeller,” he said. They looked up at the print monitor. Soon the letters began to appear.

  “Yes, Zeller. I am monitoring you while listening to a tape. This is important to me. Would you mind calling me later? Thank you.”

  “Celeste, Celeste,” he repeated.

  On the screen the words typed out, “I know you don’t want me for anything vital, Zel. Please let me try to work out this calculation from the tape. Thank you.”

  “We’d better go to her chamber, Zel. Those are the identical words she wrote out for me at least four cycles ago, with the name changed.”

  Zeller rose quickly and ran out of the control room and down the hall. Celeste’s chamber door had been uncoded and would not respond. He inserted the master code which he knew as levels engineer. The panel still didn’t slide. “Our electronic wizard has superceded the master code,” he said to Eolyn.

  “What will you do?”

  Zeller took his belt caller and touched the code for the duty comp. “Yes, Principal Zeller,” it said.

  “Report to level one, south sector. Bring Comp 28 and a complete tool kit.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  “Is it important?”

  “Yes, God rot you. I’ll give you about 25 to get here or I’ll decommission you with a pulser.”

  “Yes, Principal. I hope you can find one that works.”

  Zeller switched him off, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen them this way. The chemical balance fed them must be altered. It begins to include hostility. Who is in charge of that?”

  “Butto.”

  “Him again. We’d better get Royal to do it.”

  “Royal would feel it demeaning.”

  The comps came down the hall, trotting with their tool kits. “Open that slider,” said Zeller. His hand held a pulser. Eolyn had never seen him with one before, and she wondered what was happening.

  The two set to work, slow and fumbling. They could not seem to coordinate their hands and the tools, and dropped things constantly, but finally the door glided open. The room was empty. Zeller strode across it, his eyes quickly sweeping over Celeste’s complex reply system. He keyed a code on her table. Above, the monitor wrote out, “Yes, Royal, this is Celeste. I am indisposed now. Too much exercise, I think. I was in the pool for 300 with Dexter, swimming steadily.”

  “How did she expect to get away with that? Suppose Royal called her when Dexter was there?”

  “How often are we together? It is more of her irony. We depend on machines, and she has fooled us with her knowledge of them.”

  “What does this mean? Where is she?”

  “She could be anywhere—even out in the dome, knowing her.”

  Zeller called ten comps, equipped them with heat sensors, and sent them off to comb the dome and levels for Celeste. He also called the principals generally and announced her disappearance. They assembled in the control room.

  Zeller was nervous. He called the searchers. “Any luck? Where have you searched?”

  “All of levels four, five, and six, Principal. But we have not found her yet.”

  “They are all on their bunks in level five,” said Royal, checking a monitor on the wall.

  “Then they haven’t looked at all. Royal, you will have to take over their chemistry. Something is wrong. They won’t do anything. The whole dome and levels will break down.”

  Butto rose. “I resent that. That is my charge, and it has been done correctly.”

  “Then why are they in their bunks?”

  “I will see to them. You are not to touch their chemistry.”

  “Are not? That is not a statement in accord with our system of government, Butto.”

  “No, but neither is your interference. I will see to them at once.” He strode out. After a few moments, Zeller followed.

  “Royal, I suggest that you re-alter their chemistry without telling Butto,” Eolyn said. “Have you been down to the Brat Shack lately? He is growing nothing but mistakes. We will die out.”

  Royal shook his head. “After all these years, all the successes, all our own discoveries here in the levels, must it finally peter out like this? We will have to make some quick revisions. After the fall of the floor, the old laws of the dome founders do not hold true. We have lost too much skill, too much knowledge. It was foolish to invest certain branches of knowledge in only one or two individuals.”

  “Who would have thought, in this controlled environment, that they would meet with an unexpected accident?”

  “I suppose it was correct to lower the population to fifty. The levels would not have sustained the original 276. But that made things precarious. How did we lose our skill with drugs? They worked well for so long, even reconciling level members to learning skills they might have no native interest in.”

  “Perhaps the effect of the drugs changed.”

  “Perhaps. Well, we have two immediate problems. We have to find Celeste and restore the order of the comps.” Royal punctuated his remarks with two long fingers, dark and straight. Then he saw the odd look on Thornton’s face.

  “Well, what?”

  “I suppose you will laugh. But do you remember, Eolyn, when I called you about Cele
ste? You were angry, so I shut off the conversation?”

  “Yes. She has always been a trouble.”

  “It is a surmise. Remember the grotesque birds she drew?” He punched the code again, calling Celeste’s goose back on the screen. “That occurred during the cycle of our twice-annual check of radiation. Comps went out into the dome. I discovered that Celeste had been in the dome as well. I quietly decontaminated her, because I didn’t want her to get into any more trouble. She admitted she had been there, but communicated no more. This is what I surmise. Celeste saw the birds from the dome window. She assumed that since they flew over, they must have come from somewhere and gone to somewhere, and that somewhere was clean of radiation, since they existed. Thus we are in only an island of radiation. I suspect that she has left the dome, probably at least six cycles ago.”

  A short silence followed. “Well, Thornton,” said Royal, “they certainly picked the right person to garner the knowledge of the ancients. I always thought you had an imagination, but—”

  “Principals, this is Comp 3. An emergency.”

  Royal touched the code. “Yes, Comp 3, what is it?”

  “Zeller is dead. He has fallen on the stairway.”

  They all stood and rushed out into the hallway, then to the stairwell that connected the levels. All the way, Dexter was shouting, “Wait, wait,” fighting his way through them, finally blocking the stair panel. “Look, this is too odd. Let me go down alone with a pulser. I think they have done something to him. Three is one of Butto’s pet comps. Eolyn, you follow, armed, in about seventy counts.”

  “You are crazy.”

  “Yes, but let’s just do it my way.” He turned and slipped through the panel. He had his pulser with him. Eolyn went for hers. Ruthan looked anxiously down the stairs, and soon heard the thunk and saw the flash of pulsers firing. She screamed and ran for her hand weapon.

  Dexter had come down cautiously but rapidly. He saw the shadow on level four as Comp 3 stepped out through the panel to get him on the way down. But the comp was as wobbly as the two had been getting Celeste’s panel open. Dexter ducked flat, the pulser shattering the wall surface over his head. Then he rolled sideways and pumped a pulse into the comp, shattering his head. Dexter turned to the door panel below as another pulse flashed out, nicking his shoulder. He threw two more pulses through the opening, splattering another comp. Then he dashed through the open panel and into the first right chamber. A comp room; it was empty.

  A quick glance out into the hallways showed seven comps standing idly, staring like dolls, but one appeared to have four legs. Dexter saw a pulser come over the comp’s shoulder in time to duck back into the room as the pulse shattered the hinge, leaving the door canting out into the hallway. From a side room came the sudden whine of an ultrasonic pointer, cutting the comp in two. Dexter again stepped out into the hallway, moving from comp to comp there, patting them down for weapons. All of them stood staring with dilated eyes. He peered quickly into the room from which the ultrasonic pulse had come. Comp 14, Thornton’s friend, sat idly there, the pointer in his hands, pretending to be as vacant as the others. Dexter immediately saw his alertness, winked, and continued his inspection, as Eolyn came through the end panel.

  They found Zeller’s body at the far end of the hall, a hole burned through his chest. Dexter directed two comps to strip Zeller’s corpse, drag it to the recycle chute on that floor, and lift it through. It was too large to fit in. They would have to dismember it. Eolyn left, but Dexter stayed to command the process, his jaw set. The dead comps were also recycled, and even the blood vacuumed, the pinkish water from the recovery device pumped into organic short-processing. Dexter drew a brain sample from each dead comp.

  Now twenty-seven comps were left. Royal and Dexter rounded up all they could find and led them to level four, each one silent as a disconnected circuit. Comps 23, 24, and 25 were missing. Dexter put in a call for them and found them to be on level seven. They claimed to be looking for Celeste. He commanded their presence on level four, decontamination room.

  Royal mixed a new chemical preparation and injected each man, then got him to lie down on the floor. Soon each fell into a deep sleep. Finally the other three arrived, looking sweaty and excited. They resisted, but Dexter’s pulser convinced them to submit to Royal’s injection. Ruthan had dressed Dexter’s shoulder, where the comp’s pulser had grooved it. Her hands smoothed the dried spray dressing gently and solicitously, then rested around his neck.

  As the comps lay comatose, Thornton arrived. The old man was shocked to see the small men, including his friend, 14, lying in rows. Zeller’s death had sobered him further.

  “How long will they be unconscious?” he finally asked.

  “Another 800, at least.”

  “We need to go to control to discuss this.”

  “Action has been taken. What need is there to discuss it further? We are back on course now,” said Royal.

  “Except for the disappearance of Celeste, the difficulties that will arise from the death of Zeller, the loss of the oil, and the question as to whether there is a course.”

  Dexter interrupted, “All well and good, but we still ought to take care of our meditative friend first.”

  “You mean . . .”

  “Yes. The same. Haven’t his private influences and general gloom gone too far already?”

  “Take care?”

  “Confine him until his condition has been studied. Surely he has changed. He wasn’t always this way. I remember his games, his laugh, his long recitations of poetry, endurance tests, and beautiful control of the comps.”

  “It takes a balanced person to study the ancients,” Thornton said.

  “Old, too,” said Dexter, laughing. “His problems may have begun there, but the change in him may have led there, too. His study of that ancient poet—what was his name?”

  “Jeffers. Robinson Jeffers.”

  “Yes. That one. That didn’t help, nor did all that Oriental philosophy, whatever that is.”

  Royal sighed and threw up his hands. “Well, Dexter, suppose you and Eolyn take care of the matter. I will prepare an injection. We will see about talking afterward.”

  “Eolyn? Will you come?”

  “Be careful, Dex,” said Ruthan.

  Dexter laughed and pinched her cheek. “Ruthan Tromtrager, don’t worry. In the words of an ancient general, ‘I shall return.’”

  “Or of an ancient philosopher,” Thornton added, “‘We have met the enemy, and he is us.’”

  “Ours?”

  “Us.”

  “Yes. Well, let’s go then, Eolyn, and meet ourselves. I have the pulser set on stun. Have we a heat sensor? I think we should try the seventh level. He thinks he has been secretly hiding out there, but I guess everyone knows it.”

  The two set out, down the worn concrete stairs, slipping quickly by the landings, past the pulser damage, down to the lowest level, devoted to storage after the dome people lessened their population and activities to conserve resources. They moved silently, in their fabric slippers, through the dark level, casting the heat sensor around, finally detecting a response in a far corner. Coming closer, they heard Butto’s voice in a chant, slow and alone:

  Twisting purple, swelling vines,

  rising plants where tendril twines,

  hummingbirds on flashing wings,

  reddest skies where green wind sings,

  soon the snake will slide his scales

  across the streams and through the swales,

  alert, awake, his lovely head

  gracing meadows with its red.

  But now the sky has rushed with fire,

  the land is seared, the trees a pyre.

  Better man should die, should end

  than—

  At that point Dexter’s stun pulse hit him in the spine, and he sagged over with a grunt, staring at the floor. Dexter stooped and shut his eyelids.

  “Good rodents,” he said, “these levels have produced some of t
he worst poetry imaginable.”

  “Maybe he made it up himself. Do you need help?”

  Without answering, Dexter turned the naked Butto over, sat him up, and lifted him, straining, over his shoulders. Then he said, “Sorry about the display, Eo.”

  “It means nothing. Nothing but organic matter. I am well suppressed. Even my revulsion. Royal’s compound. He’s good at that.”

  “Let’s get him to his chamber. Royal should be waiting.”

  After Butto was laid out on his sleep pad, tranquilized for the time being, the two went to control. Royal was deep in thought, tapping his long fingers on the table. “The death of Zeller makes this whole business very serious,” he said. “We will need to ascertain what Butto’s connection with that was.”

  “I think it was the comps’ doing,” said Dexter. “Zeller and Butto were rivals for the approval of the comps in a sense. I can’t think that Butto would have set out to kill Zeller. Susan might know. I’ll ask her.”

  “Susan? That old crone again?”

  “She knew Butto better than anyone else. He used to visit her in her chamber. They would talk, and she would sing with that wooden thing of hers.”

  “The dulcimer.”

  “Yes. That. Eo, come on. Let’s drop in on Susan and inquire. The comps will be out for a while. Thor, you come, too. For comfortableness. After all, we want her to open up.”

  Thornton stood up and sighed, dusting his hands on his thighs. “Well, I suppose if I can’t be anything more auspicious, I shall be comfortable.”

  Susan’s chamber was tucked into the farthest corner of the level. As the three neared it, they heard strummed music, and a thin, quavering voice.

  Dexter sounded the tone. The reply tone hummed. The panel slid and they all entered. Susan sat curled on her sleep pad, her gray hair combed back and knotted as much as its intense curliness would allow.

  “What is it?” she asked quietly. “Is it come at last? Have you voted to recycle me?”

  “Sue,” said Eolyn. “Don’t be foolish. This is a serious thing. Did you know Zeller had been killed by the comps?”

  Susan gave a little cry, putting her hand to her mouth. “Killed,” she whispered.