“Nothing wrong, Ruthy? That big blob of meat has just barged in and disrupted our investigation. This creature invaded the dome. This is—”
“He is not a creature. He was talking to us. He knows Celeste. Royal, you tell him.”
Royal had moved to Stel and was examining him. He turned, shaking his head. “That was quite a stun, Dexter. I wish you had not done that, with his weakened system. Butto, unfortunately, was right. Why did it not occur to us to talk with him? I am amazed now. But he seemed so . . . different.”
“We still don’t know anything about him,” Eolyn said. “Dexter may be right. We know nothing of his motives. Look. He was armed. He did invade the dome. We don’t know if he is telling the truth. There are so few of us. We must be extremely careful.”
“He sounded friendly,” said Ruthan. “How long has he been here? Has it really been five full cycles? What if he has friends outside? They will be worried about him. What then?”
Outside, at the moment, Dailith was beating on the door. He had chipped away the concrete and peeled back a lead shield, but a heavy plastic layer had proved very difficult, and now a thick steel core entirely defied him. It had been nearly six days that Stel had been gone. Dailith sweat profusely. Looking up, he saw a thundercloud boiling up in the west again, tall and rolling, dark at the core, leaning out over the landscape, sun streaming around its edges. He wiped the sweat away from his forehead and cheeks. That would be a heavy storm, but at least it might bring relief from the heat.
He heard a call from the hill, and, turning, he saw Tor and Ahroe, and another guardsman, a young woman he didn’t know. He turned and trotted up the hill.
“Stel? Where is Stel?” said Ahroe.
“In there. He has been in there almost six days.”
“You can’t get in, then?”
“No. I’ve been trying. I’ve made progress, but there is a heavy metal plate I am unable even to dent.”
“Six days?”
“Almost. I didn’t know you could come.”
“Tor convinced me something was wrong. On the way we met the old woman on the river. She has led the guardsmen a merry time.”
“What do you mean?”
“The outside world is almost too much for her to bear. She was sleeping when they got her to the river. They were well out on it before she woke up, and when she finally saw it, she stared for a time, then screamed at them to take her back. Finally, they did, but when they touched the bank, she screamed at them to take her out on the river again. She is so flabbergasted with the ordinary earth, and so angry, that she is near dying.”
“Could we get on top?” Tor asked, speaking for the first time. “Look. The rod is rising again. Could we get a rope over it?”
“Look at that cloud,” said Dailith. “The rod will draw lightning. We have had some wild and grim storms around here lately.”
“We’ve got to get Stel out of there,” said Ahroe.
“A rope thrown from your ladder by the dome might snag it,” said Tor. The wind rose, and the first drops skittered on the ground. Tor turned to the guardsman. “Get that rope we saw at the ledge.” She turned and ran. “Dailith, we will have to use your ladder.”
Inside the dome, Comp 9, having raised the rod, said into his communicator, “Still no mistake, Principal Dexter. The radiation readings hold. I can see out the window. It is darkening, and water is falling.”
“Very well, Comp. Come to decontam. That is called rain. Take another look before you come.”
“Lights are flashing out there, Principal.”
“Lights? Are you sure?”
“Yes. They are lighting up the whole landscape.”
“Surely you mistake.”
“No, Principal.”
“Well, return now. Follow all procedures.”
“Yes, Principal.” As Comp 9 turned to lower the rod, a blast of lightning crashed down it, flaring the whole interior of the dome, blowing the small man off the high ladder to the floor, where he lay smoking. The lightning had also run down the side of the dome, on its wet surface, exploding into the earth at its foot. Tor was on the ladder with the rope, and felt a flash of electricity spring up his legs and hands.
“Come down,” Ahroe shouted up at him.
“No. Stay by the door. I will be all right.” He whirled the weighted rope and swung it out at the rod high above, missing.
“Tor, there is fire underneath,” Dailith yelled. Black smoke welled up from the great pool of oil ignited by the lightning. Tor didn’t answer, but coiled the rope and swung it out again, catching the rod.
“Stay by the door,” he shouted down at Ahroe, already swinging and skidding up the rope. He reached the rod, feeling his hair rise with the electricity, slipping on the surface in the pouring rain, but running on all fours to the dome end. There he leaned out over the curve and looked down, discovering the window. He could see nothing inside. Taking his axe, he swung hard at the glass, cracking it slightly. Swinging again and again, he eventually cracked and broke through the thick glass. Hanging on hard with his knees, he cleared the shards away, sheathed his axe, and swung over the edge, slipping, swaying there, hanging by his arms, and finally reaching in the window, cutting his hand on some glass, but gripping the inner edge of the concrete frame and sliding in.
Ahead stood a ladder. He climbed down it rapidly, blinking in the dimness. Stooping, he felt the body of the comp, noting its smallness with a strange fear. Crossing the dome, he located the door, solved its locking dogs, and swung it back. Black smoke billowed in.
“Ahroe, Ahroe,” he yelled, reaching out, as she caught his hand and leaped up into the opening. She saw a movement and dodged through the smoke behind the square structure that occupied the center of the room. Tor stood and turned, as Dexter stunned him with a pulser. The big Shumai collapsed by the door. Dexter ran across with a hand pulser, and behind him Ruthan and Eolyn with helmet weapons fitted to their heads looked on, the firing tweezers held between their lips. Heavy energy packs rode on their shoulders.
“Stay back,” Dexter called, arriving at Tor, who rolled slowly over as he got there, looking vaguely up at a figure aiming something at him, then whipping his legs around, knocking Dexter down, grappling with him, the two standing and struggling. Ruthan screamed and aimed as well as she could, firing a pulse at half-power at the giant man holding Dexter by the throat.
Tor felt a blinding shock as the pulse tore off his right forearm. A draining blow and sudden disbelief struck him. In the next instant, Dexter, falling toward him, was caught and blown apart by another pulse. Tor groaned and sank, as Ruthan, screaming and tearing off her helmet, ran across the dome to Dexter, who lay half under Tor.
Eolyn stood by the door to decontam, shouting, “Ruthan, get out of the way. That primitive is still alive. Get out of the way!” She didn’t see Ahroe move around the pile, rush her, slam her helmet off with the side of her short-sword, and dash into the levels, yelling, “Stel! Stel!”
At the dome entrance, Ruthan shrieked inconsolably, screaming and beating her knees with her arms. Beside her, Tor rolled over, got to his knees, and, taking the belt from his tunic, looped it over the stump of his right arm, cinched it tight, and at last cried out in pain. Ruthan turned to him, looked, and screamed again.
“You,” Tor said, vaguely. “You’ve got to get out of here. The whole dome is on fire. Lightning has started it.”
“No,” she screeched. “No. Get away. Look what you did!”
“I just—just came to get Stel. Now, come.” He rose, staggering, took Ruthan under his left arm, kicked the door open, and, turning, plunged down the ladder through the smoke.
Dailith met him at the bottom, hardly able to see. “Go inside and help,” Tor yelled, turning and scrabbling his way out of the smoke and up the causeway in the driving rain, still holding Ruthan like a sack, running and falling, slowing, stumbling, feeling the supporting hand of the other guardsman as he got to the steep part, with Ruthan still screaming
in terror, finally reaching the rim and the weeds and grass, as the world began to rush and tilt, dropping Ruthan, then sitting himself and slumping over. Skahie, the guardsman, supported him, then first noticed his arm and went weak, uttering a strange cry.
“Tor, Tor. What has happened? My Aven, Tor.” Ruthan seemed to awaken, sat up, and looked around. She was sitting in plants, tangled and wild. Water poured down. A giant, bearded man, his right arm all blood, leaned weakly against a woman, who looked levelly at her.
“What did you do to him?” Skahie asked.
Ruthan crawled toward them. “Lay him down,” she said. “Loosen his clothes. He will go into shock.”
As Dailith plunged through the smoke into the dome, he saw a figure by the open door across the room. She was putting on a strange helmetlike device. She stood thin and utterly lovely in a bodysuit. He ran toward her as she turned, her strange, masking helmet on.
“Stand back, go back, or I’ll kill you.”
“You’ve got to get out. You all do. The whole dome is on fire from underneath.”
“I mean it. Get away. Get back out.”
“Where is Stel? Where are all the others of you? You’ve got to get out. Look at the smoke. I mean it. I wish you no harm.”
She hesitated. Dailith, who had been edging sideways, ran through the door beyond her, finding another door and a long hall. He met a tiny man at the head of the stairs.
“You,” he said. “The whole dome is burning underneath. You’ve got to get out, you and the others.” Beyond him, down the long hall, Ahroe came out from a panel, with Stel, weak, leaning on her.
“Butto,” Stel said. “Get Butto. A man named Butto.”
Ahroe yelled out, “Butto, Butto.” The comp with Dailith ran down the hall and pressed a panel command. The door slid open, and he darted through, soon reappearing with Butto, stripping binding cords off him. Butto seemed bewildered, startled.
“Help me,” said Ahroe. “Get all your people. The dome is on fire. You’ve got to get out.”
“You,” he said. “You have—”
“Later,” she yelled. “Outside. I am Ahroe, Stel’s wife. Now. Get the other short ones.” She froze, looking ahead. Eolyn stood confronting them all, her pulser helmet on. “You must be Eolyn,” Ahroe said. “Celeste told me about you. You’d kill us all, wouldn’t you—yourself included. Please. We have to get out.”
“No. This has gone far enough,” said Eolyn. “Butto, get away.” A comp came behind her and, running, caved her knees forward. Ahroe stepped to her, lifted her, and propelled her down the hall.
“Thanks, small man,” she said.
“Thirteen,” he returned.
“Ahroe. Are there others?”
“The comps are coming. There is Principal Thornton. Ah, here he comes.” Turning, they saw a rumpled and bewildered Cohen-Davies lurching down the hall. Dailith grabbed his arm and urged him on toward the door, where Eolyn was again standing. They all poured by her, shoving, then raced across the cluttered dome floor toward the gout of smoke coming in the canted door. Royal came behind, led by a comp. Dailith helped them down through the smoke, and they emerged, amazed, into heavy rain and lightning, on the causeway. Several comps hesitated and turned, but when they saw the black smoke from the pool of oil under the dome, and the rising flames now, they turned again, in wild fear, and ran on up the stone path.
“Stay on the stones,” Ahroe called, as she and Butto led Stel up the hill.
At the top they found Tor lying, eyes open, breathing in shallow, quick inhalations. Skahie bent over him, and Ruthan, looking vaguely around, cried, “Dexter, oh Dexter.”
Ahroe gave Stel to Dailith. “Never mind Dexter,” she said. “Help us bring Tor to the ledge. At least we will get him out of the rain.”
“No,” Tor murmured, in a strange, light voice. “It is all right here. Look. The dog of darkness has come. He is shy as a fawn. He has laid his head on my knee. He looks gently up. His head is growing. The eyes glow, burning now, flames in the night. The weight of his head presses . . .”
Ahroe suddenly rushed over, pushed him down, put her fist in his mouth, yelling, “No, no, Tor. Don’t give up now. Where is the steel in your backbone? Stop, stop. Stop. Stop.” She took her hand back from his face.
He looked vaguely up at her, sitting astride him. “At least, at least,” he said, “let me die in peace. Stop shaking me.”
“Die? Hasn’t anyone ever lost an arm before? Stop it now. If we ever needed you, it is now.”
“Now?” He trembled a slight laugh. “A bloodless axeman without a right arm?”
Ruthan had been staring down at him. She took his head in her lap. Her face was gray, but she said, “You will be all right. Royal will help. Won’t you, Royal?” She looked up. He had on a pulser helmet, as did Eolyn.
“Get away from them, Ruthan,” she said, muffled by the helmet. “We cannot be at their mercy. We have lost almost everything, but not quite all.”
“Are you crazy?”
“We will wait out the fire here, then return to the dome. Then we will emerge, as it is clear we must, in our own time with our own equipment and protections.”
“The whole dome will be destroyed,” said Tor in a husky whisper.
“Ruthan, get away from that savage,” said Eolyn.
“No. Never.”
“I will stun you.” Ruthan shut her eyes against it. Then from far to the east, the faint sound of dogs barking came through the rain. Ahroe raised her horn and sounded a long blast, cut off when Eolyn turned and blew the end off her cow horn with a quick pulse.
“You, there. What is that?”
“The Shumai. You had better join us and stop this nonsense. We have to take Tor to the ledge and bind his arm. They won’t take your interference kindly.”
“I mean what I say. Look, now.” Eolyn turned and sent a full pulse out at a tall oak tree, exploding the whole top of it in a shower of fire.
“Thank you,” said Ahroe, calmly, as the others had scattered, running back.
“What?”
“For warning the Shumai.”
“It is Blu and the men,” said Tor, absently. “Someone is with them. Jestak, I imagine.”
“How do you know?”
As if in answer, a semicircle of horns sounded when the Shumai had spread out in the woods.
“Eolyn, take that helmet off. Someone will be killed,” said Ruthan.
“Please, Eo,” Butto added. “Look at what you’ve done to Stel—and that man. Let’s settle this thing. Now. Come on.”
Jestak came up the hill, running and slipping in the rain, a big dog next to him. It was Raran, who turned and loped over to Tor, whining, bristling as she saw Ruthan, who drew back with a shriek. Raran cowered down and put her head on Tor as Jestak stopped in the middle of the two groups.
“Which is Royal?” said Jestak abruptly.
“I.”
“I need help for Stantu, my friend. I see the dome is burning. Tell me how to get in and get the medicine for his radiation poisoning. Celeste says you can help.”
“It isn’t that easy,” said Royal. “It could be many things. A whole shelf of chemicals will be needed, and many tests.”
“Tell me, quick. Where? I will bring it all.”
“Don’t let him go,” said Tor from the ground. “He will die if he goes.”
Jestak turned angrily. “I have to go. If I don’t, Stan will die.”
“Blu,” Tor called out with sudden strength. “Don’t let Jestak go.”
Seven men seemed to appear from nowhere. Jestak turned, touched his short-sword, then ran toward the causeway. Two men caught him and wrestled him down. Blu came over to Tor.
“Good Sertine, Tor. What happened?”
“I did it,” said Ruthan.
Blu flashed her a look of pure hatred, then, seeing her in abject misery, found it melting away.
“And I killed Dexter,” said Ruthan, dissolving wholly into tears.
“No.
No you didn’t,” Tor murmured. “That other one did. She killed the other man.”
“What? She?” Ruthan looked up at Eolyn, still standing in her pulser helmet, back off, in a knot of dome people, aloof now and watchful.
Jestak was still wrestling, as they brought him over to Tor. He drew in his breath as he saw the axeman’s arm, but he was blind with anger. “You may be hurt, you fat piece of bull dung. But let me go. I have come all this way to save Stantu. Damn you, fish guts, let me—”
“You would be killed,” said Tor, absently, in a deep voice.
“I’d be in there by now, and out before—” The whole hill seemed to buck and heave as a great balloon of fire gushed upward from the dome and levels, the immense structure seeming to rise, float high, rest in the air, fragment, and then settle, in a terrific roaring, orange sphere. The two men dropped Jestak’s arms. He turned and ran to the hill rim, stood staring, then slumped to the ground, crying.
Blu went to him and squatted down. “Come,” he said. “We have to get Tor out of the rain. Come. See? Tor has a way of knowing. You would be dead now, and that wouldn’t help Stantu.” Jestak didn’t move, and Blu waved at the others, all of whom, dome people, Shumai, and Pelbar, left the hill, carrying Tor down toward the ledge, leaving Jestak and Blu sitting in the rain.
XI
THE rain slowed, and Jestak sat up, then looked at Blu as if seeing him for the first time. “I met Stantu in the eastern city of Innanigan,” he said. “We were both young. Our friendship has grown to be the friendship of all our people. There must be a way to save him.”
“I have seen him, Jestak. Will saving him restore his hair, his running, his laugh, the free movement of his limbs? I can’t think it. Now there are people down there to be organized, and Tor’s arm—Tor’s arm must be cared for. Come on down.”
“You go.”
“Jestak, you are the merger of peoples. I am only a substitute axeman. That savage woman and her gnomes may kill us all. You have to come.”
Jestak stood up. “Look at us,” he said. “We are soaking.” Blu laughed and wiped his hands on his thighs.
Below, the two groups still remained mostly separate, but Ruthan had convinced Royal to help Tor, and a small group bent over him in a rough shelter under the rocks. Stel had erected it for privacy early in the summer. Skahie held Tor’s head. Royal, frustrated at the dirt and the crude tools, gave orders to Bill, who shuttled out to a pot of boiling water, bringing whatever the old physician required. Ruthan held Tor’s arm and watched his expression.
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