The Dome in the Forest

by Paul O. Williams

  “We have nothing to deaden the pain,” she said.

  “I have myself,” Tor said, his eyes glazed over.

  Farther down, under the overhang, Eolyn, still in her pulser helmet, said, “Look at them down there fussing over that walking anachronism. Look at these people. We are past the year 3000. Bows and axes. Good God, what has everything come to? People survived, but they have regressed. Devolved to the primitive.”

  No one replied. Butto and Cohen-Davies were too surprised and shaken, and too much in awe of the new world to listen. Each smell, each bird call, a cloud of gnats, astonished them. Finally, Butto said, “I wonder if there are snakes.”

  After a time, Blu and Jestak came down the hill. Jestak took off his tunic and wrung it out as he walked, then hung it on a rack near a fire the Shumai had built. In his wet pants only, he walked over to the dome group. “Who’s in charge here?”

  “I am,” said Eolyn. “I and Royal. And that’s close enough.”

  “Don’t be silly. I am Jestak. I am Chief Outside Planner of the City of Northwall. Look here. I will draw you a map and show you where you are.”

  “We know where we are—in southeastern Missouri not all that far from St. Louis.”

  “What? Saint what? You may know what this once was, I suppose. Now you are in the middle of Urstadge, about forty-four ayas west of the Heart.” Taking a stick, Jestak cut a rough map in the dirt. Cohen-Davies squatted down and watched closely.

  “St. Louis must be about there,” he said, “if that is north.”

  “Nothing is there. Nothing even grows. An empty place. And it is really there.”

  “But the river.”

  “It has moved. You can see when you are there. It flows as I have shown. I think you had better come to Pelbarigan—provided that you agree not to use those incredible weapons of yours.”

  “And if we don’t agree?” said Eolyn.

  “Then we will have to leave you here. We must agree in friendship.”

  “Suppose we force you? As you said, we have the incredible weapons.”

  Jestak stood and looked at her eyes through the helmet windows. “You wouldn’t get us all,” he said. “Soon the whole countryside would be aroused. You mustn’t exaggerate your power. Besides, what would you eat?”

  “Look at all this.” She waved her hands at the woods. “If we have eaten and recycled for over a thousand years, we can surely manage here.”

  Jestak turned to Butto. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Perhaps you can explain. I see no reason for hostility. All Stel did was to get into the dome to save you from its collapse. It was hanging out over the gully. There are so few of us left in the world, even now. We need to pool our knowledge. Clearly you have things to teach us. Already Celeste is building what she calls a microscope, and she has regular classes in chemistry and mathematics.”

  Eolyn snorted. “Her?”

  “She is a good little girl,” Stel said. He was propped against the rock wall. Ahroe was with him, holding water so he could sip it. He couldn’t seem to get enough.

  “If a little girl can teach you, then why should we do what you say? We should obviously be directing things.”

  “Your technological understanding is extensive. That’s clear enough. But your social development is decidedly primitive.”

  Eolyn snorted again. “Having the technology, we have all that’s important.”

  “Anybody who would make those men tiny is not fit to direct an outhouse,” said Blu, who had been standing silently by.

  “We are just fine. We don’t need any help,” said Comp 13.

  “Well, you are going to be better,” said Blu, reaching out and ruffling the small man’s hair. Comp 13 frowned.

  Cohen-Davies stood up and dusted himself off. “You, Jestak? Eolyn may do what she wants, but I am going with you. I suspect Bill will as well. I would like to see Celeste again and watch her teach her classes. I am the former resident expert on the ancient times. I would be pleased to pool my knowledge with yours. If this Pelbarigan is the only city remaining, clearly that is where we must start. All this is very strange to me, and I must confess I’m too old to sit around while water falls on me, then have all these creatures land on me and crawl around. It is too unnatural. Or perhaps it is too natural. So lead on, Jestak. I’ll follow. Butto—are you coming?”

  “I would like to. Come on, Eo.”

  She said nothing. Jestak waited, hands clasped behind him.

  Then she said, “Royal and I will talk when he is through with that genetic throwback over there.”

  “Good,” said Jestak, and held out his hand.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  “You are supposed to clasp his hand,” said Cohen-Davies. “It is an ancient custom that signifies agreement.”

  Eolyn sighed and shook Jestak’s hand. Then she took off her pulser helmet and smoothed her hair. She saw Jestak and Blu staring at her. “What? What’s the matter now?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” said Jestak, grinning. “Nothing at all. I had no idea so formidable a person would be so incredibly beautiful.”

  Shortly after, Tristal arrived, carrying a heavy pack of food. He was astonished at what had happened and unable to speak when he saw his uncle’s arm. Royal had finished suturing the wound, and Tor lay back. Ruthan still sat by him.

  Blu sent two men to Pelbarigan to bring more boats. Jestak and Butto viewed the dome from the hilltop, still burning, and wholly shattered, and decided that nothing worth saving remained. One white rat, its side singed naked, wandered on the empty ground in the mud. As they watched, a large gray hawk stooped and took it, flying heavily across the gully, banking north toward the trees. The Shumai brought a black yearling calf, butchered it, and roasted large chunks over a long fire. Stel eventually took out his flute, and as the sun set in broad red bands under the clouds, he played a slow series of Pelbar hymns, haunting and calming. The mixed group of people ate meat and twists of quickbread from Tristal’s new supplies, largely in silence. After a late-summer darkness fell, they slowly settled down to a strange and troubled night.

  As the darkness deepened, Eolyn finally went to the shelter where Tor lay and stood over him. “Ruthan, I would like to speak to this man alone,” she said.

  Tor looked at them both, and at Tristal, who sat in a corner sewing a running shoe, almost by feel in the darkness. Raran began a throaty growl, but Tor held out his left hand to the dog, and she stopped. “All right,” he said. “Tris, take Raran.”

  When they were alone, Tor said, “Well?”

  “I wanted to express our regrets that we have done this to you,” said Eolyn.

  “You didn’t do it. The other one, Ruthan, did. You killed the man—Dexter. I was luckier than he.” He laughed ruefully, holding up his arm stump.

  Eolyn ignored that remark. “Will you be at this city of Pelbarigan long?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to. We will see.”

  “I feel responsible. We will devise a prosthetic attachment so you can use your arm again. Of course you will have to live a more settled life.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, but I don’t think I will do that,” said Tor, quietly.

  “You could learn a great deal. You look like a person of intelligence. You could master the technology we will bring this society.”

  “Technology? I have no need of it. What I need is my arm, and I see I will have to learn to live without it. But look, Eolyn—is that your name? You didn’t come in here to say these things. What is it? I feel some unspoken thought in you fighting to get out. What is it?”

  “I don’t understand how you know things. You knew the dome would explode, you knew who was coming, you know . . .” She fell silent and sat still a long time.

  At last Tor said, “It doesn’t matter. Tris was right. You are extremely beautiful. I wish—something is missing in you, though, isn’t it? You don’t feel bad about that man, Dexter, and wonder why. And yet you do. It was
too bad that you had to live all that time shut up in that artificial cave.”

  She stood, angry. “You needn’t pity me. We did very nicely.” She turned to go.

  “Wait,” said Tor. “Please come back.” She did come, but remained standing. Tor reached out with his left hand and took hold of her ankle. “I sense a great regret. I think it is my regret more than yours. You think of me as a savage, don’t you? That’s all right, I suppose. The country is vast and open, and there is room enough for both of us in it. But still . . .”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about. Now, please let go of my ankle.”

  Tor held it nearly a full sunspan longer, Eolyn waiting impatiently. Then he released it. “I wonder if you would ask Stel and Ahroe to come in here when you go, please.” Eolyn left, without a further word, but soon Stel and Ahroe did enter the small enclosure.

  Ahroe knelt down by Tor and put her arms around him, pushing her face down into his shoulder. “I have you to thank for getting Stel back,” she said, her voice muffled against him. “And now this. This. What can we say?”

  Tor sighed. “It is more than that, isn’t it. Lean up now. You are embarrassing me. It is more than that. We all had to do this. If we didn’t, and they were lost, that would have been wrong. The time of the running hunters is drawing to an end, anyway. Even Blu feels it. I sense it in him. He’ll try to keep it up for a while. Then we will all quit. This stretching land, these lovely plains and hills, all stitched together for the Shumai by the passing and repassing of the young hunters. Soon it will be empty of them, and they will be plodding along, carrying burdens and messages, or following a horse in a furrow. It won’t be the same. But that’s not what I wanted to see you about. It’s that woman, Eolyn.”

  “Eolyn?”

  “I really fear her. It isn’t that she is independent in thought. That’s surely all right. She has no morality.”

  “Tor, give her a chance. You’ve barely met her.”

  “I feel it. Watch her. It isn’t that she’s wicked. There isn’t that much purpose in her. But she has a potential for wickedness. It radiates from her. She is groping, without boundaries to her possibilities. Stel, tell her. You must feel it.”

  “It’s true, my love. She did treat me like a piece of raw meat. But even so I gathered that she had more regard for me as a human being than did the dead one, Dexter. He wanted to vivisect me.”

  “Vivisect?”

  “I think it meant cut me up while I was still alive to see how I worked.”

  Tor shuddered, wincing as his arm pulled. “Ahroe, deal with them on wholly logical grounds if you can. They seem to understand only that—except Ruthan.”

  “And the old one, Cohen-Davies. And the fat one, Butto.”

  “They don’t count.”

  “I think they do,” said Stel. “Not in their own group. But they are the ones we’ll get the most from eventually.”

  “Don’t be too sure. They seem to have divided up their responsibilities. Each has something to offer. Now please give my impressions to Jestak. And let him do the negotiating, Ahroe, even if he is a man. Please? And thank you for shaking me out of my shock. I think I might have died.”

  “It was Hagen over again. I couldn’t stand it.”

  “Ahroe, I’m not sure yet I can stand it. What am I to do?”

  “Aven will tell you,” said Stel. “All things and people have a function if they give themselves to it. That may sound like nonsense, but I learned it.”

  “It’s my impression, Tor, that all along it’s been your mind that your men followed, not your right arm,” said Ahroe.

  “Without the right arm, out on the plains, the mind has no tool.”

  “There is the left,” said Stel. “I am left-handed myself. Now you are, too.”

  Ahroe embraced him again, and the couple stooped out of the shelter. Ruthan was standing with Blu, and the two joined them. “Blu, I am worried. He is concerned with us, surely, but profoundly depressed. I think someone should be with him all the time, especially tonight,” Stel said.

  “I will be with him,” Ruthan returned. “I did it. I will be with him.”

  Blu shot her a look. “He will need physical care,” he said.

  “I will give him any care he needs.”

  “That includes—”

  “I know. That is nothing. We had few ceremonies, you know, in the dome and levels. We even recycled . . . everything.”

  “Well,” said Blu. “I will come, too.”

  “No. I will. You just stay nearby. If he needs any special help, I will call you.”

  “I will—”

  “Blu,” said Stel. “She will be all right. Let her.”

  The Shumai was irritated, but saw Stel smiling at him whimsically. He seemed to catch a meaning but was not sure. He didn’t much like it. What did Stel know? Ahroe looked slightly scandalized. She shook her head. Ruthan covered her face, but went into the shelter.

  “I—but—all this is no way to—It—”

  “I am sure that Tor won’t knowingly assault her, Blu,” said Ahroe, turning away. “He wouldn’t anyway, even if he were well. Let her make her peace.”

  Late that night, with two fires flickering outside, and only the two Shumai guards and a comp talking in low tones, Tor felt the pressure of his loss coming on him again, weighing him down, as if he spiraled through water, a slowly settling rock, inert and helpless. It was the dog of darkness come again. He cried out in his dream, a light moan. Then something was pulling him, lifting him up. A struggle ensued, long and strange, between the weight and the lifting force, as if two arms held him, becoming bird’s talons, lifting him up through the deep water, out into the night, where he could see the star-circle and the hunter group wheeling slowly above him. Strong hands bore him up, and the pulsing of wings, beating and beating, into a blinding light. He shut his eyes against it, squeezing them. The light seemed to grow and burst out from inside. Then he was soaring, still in pain, still held, still high and free, gliding, out, far away from the dog of darkness, gliding to a hilltop on the prairies, gravelly with eroded outcrop, flowers nodding in the dawn. Eventually it all faded and he was back again, in Stel’s shelter, a weight on his chest. Feeling, he found it was Ruthan’s head. She was sleeping. He didn’t understand, but she was no burden. Her hair was as fine as brook water. He felt it with his fingers and watched the faint flickering of the firelight across the brush wall.

  He grew drowsy. His dream seemed to recall one of the rolls of Pell. “Aven,” he whispered to himself, “Aven, Mother of all life, protect us all, lift us over these barriers. Let us ride free on the wings of Your thought, guiding us in the trackless air over the river, with Your surety, gently and safely.” The Haframa had read that one to Celeste, but the girl gave no sign of understanding it. Tor liked it, but he too had no idea what it meant. Then he slept, for the first time since his wound, gaining some sense of peace.

  The morning rose clear, promising to renew the recent heat. The dome people had spent a fitful and uncomfortable night. Jestak and Blu had not gone out of their way to provide comforts, and had seen to it that the fires lay downwind from them, encouraging mosquitoes. They hoped to “use the tiny swords of insects to point out the logic of going to Pelbarigan,” as Jestak had put it.

  Much of the morning was taken up with formal agreement, which Royal and Eolyn insisted upon, proposing several points. They would be free to go anywhere at any time. They would receive no opposition to their departure. In exchange for supplies, protection, and direction, they would agree to teach their knowledge at a fixed rate of exchange until either side terminated the agreement. The exchange would involve real estate, supplies of various kinds, and defense. It would also include access to such information as was available from the Pelbar.

  At one juncture, Jestak said, imitating Eolyn’s manner wryly, “Several points ought to be made here. First, what you feel you have to bargain for the Pelbar have always freely given to anyone who asked. Hen
ce you are incurring obligations you need not incur. Second, unlike the eastern cities, we have no medium of exchange, nothing of what you call a monetary system, and it would be too cumbersome to devise one here under this rock in the heat. Third, you are in nearly total ignorance of the nature of the world as it is today. In this regard, I might point out several things: (a) We will be giving you at least as much knowledge of the nature of things today as you will be giving us about ancient learning. That too has a value. (b) You seem to anticipate supplies and materials will be available as they used to be. That is not true. You will experience the same steep drop in abilities that the surviving ancients did because of their interdependence, their need of transportation to supply their economy, their near-complete reliance on the skills of others for basic aspects of their lives. (c) It has not really sunk in on you, I feel, that nearly everyone died. After all these years, the land is still almost empty of people. You will need to depend on those people who did survive, that is, on us, their descendants, for our mutual advancement if it is to be rapid.

  “A fourth point is that we are a functioning economy. While we would be grateful for your knowledge as a contribution to our goal of reuniting the scattered societies into one again, we are progressing without it. What you offer is an aid, not an essence. Fifth, evidently your group in the dome anticipated emerging onto a blasted earth as its first men. Through our help you will be advanced many generations beyond that, and it ought to be a cause for gratitude.”

  “Bravo. Well outlined, Jestak,” said Butto.

  Eolyn looked at him narrowly. “We are not interested in gratitude but in fair exchange. We—”

  “I am interested in gratitude,” said Bill.

  Eolyn whirled on the little man, who looked mildly up at her. So he regarded himself a free agent now. That complicated things.