The Dome in the Forest

by Paul O. Williams

  “It is practiced by all the peoples I know, though in different forms. It seems to work fairly well, though there is some trouble.”

  “Then they practice sexual loyalty?”

  “Absolutely. The Heart River peoples are all extremely strict about that.”

  “Poor Ruthan.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I am pleased we all speak enough alike to be understood. I am tired as a dog, as we have always said. But that’s only the second dog I’ve ever seen. I’m amazed how he lives with the people.”

  “Dusk? He is Blu’s dog. The south Shumai train their dogs strictly.”

  “Blu’s dog? Why isn’t he with the other group? Isn’t that Blu with them?”

  “At least two reasons that I know of. For protection. They have Raran. This is wild-hog country. Hogs will attack without warning, and the dog senses them first.”

  “And the other reason?”

  “Well, forget that one. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  “No. What is it?”

  “You will be angry. See? You are already.”

  “No. That is too irrational. I sometimes get frustrated, I admit. Tell me.”

  “Dogs sense things about people that people miss. The Shumai are using Dusk to size you all up.”

  “To size us up?”

  “Dogs respond to fear, love, coldness, kindness, indifference. It would not hurt to reach toward him with your inner warmth.”

  “I reached toward him, but he growled. He seems to like Butto well enough. Perhaps bumblers are more his type.”

  Dailith didn’t answer. They settled down, though the Shumai, being still fresh, had removed themselves a little way to play the star game. Eolyn lay awake in her fatigue, feeling surreal, listening to them laughing and calling their strange names for the stars. Eventually, two of them came to put fresh smudge on the fire to discourage the mosquitoes.

  One said, “I saw how polite you were. You washed your arm before you retrieved the stones from the stew.”

  “What about you? You made a bark dish for Dusk so he wouldn’t eat out of the pot.” Both men laughed quietly and returned to the star game. Eolyn shuddered a little. This was all so strange. Looking up the hill she saw the dim outline of a Shumai guard. He stood very still, leaning on a long spear with a short crosspiece tied on it. Something shifted in her mind, and she felt safe. Reaching out, she touched Dailith on the one side and Comp 12 on the other. Eventually she went to sleep. Dailith lay very still, staring up at the stars.

  By the time Eolyn’s party reached the river, two days later, they were footsore, filthy, and scratched. One of the Shumai sounded a horn as they trudged through sodden bottomland, and a long answer came from ahead. Offshore, out of the shallows, they saw an old Tantal ship, manned by a large body of Pelbar guardsmen. Oet stood on the deck by the ladder to greet each small boatload as they came up over the side. Cohen-Davies was charmed, since the ship, wooden, with lateen sails and oars, and a high prow shaped like a mythical animal head, reminded him of the tapes of the ancient medieval period. Only after peering all around the ship did he turn and look out across the great stretch of river. He caught his breath. There, rolling placid and muddy, draining the whole upper continent, lay a stretch of water he hadn’t imagined possible.

  Dailith nudged his elbow. “Like it? It’s the Heart. We are about nine hundred ayas from its mouth, so I’m told, and several major rivers have yet to empty into it. Look there. The teal and woodies are flying south already.” He pointed out three small flocks of ducks, far and tiny, out over the water. “Down there are fish as big as a man,” the guardsman added. Far out, a whole tree floated downstream, slowly, its branches leading, the disk of its big roots standing high out of the water behind. A small, black bird rode on the highest root.

  Before the introductions were completed, another horn sounded from the bottoms. It was answered from the ship, and soon Tor’s party arrived. The axeman seemed stronger, but moved in a deep gloom.

  After they came aboard, Ruthan whispered to Ahroe, “He has hardly said anything today. He seems far off.”

  “He might well, Ruthan. He feels lost. Let him alone. But not too alone.”

  As the ship got underway, Stel moved over to Tor, nudged him, and held out his left hand, palm up. The axeman slapped it down gently. Stel caught a ghost of a smile. “If I’m not mistaken, Stel, you’re going to be a father again,” he murmured, then moved off to stare at the river.

  Stel, whirled. Ahroe? Pregnant? Did she tell Tor before him? She had been close enough to hear and came over. “How did he know? I didn’t tell him.”

  “When did you know?”

  “About six weeks ago I was sure.”

  “You had no business coming. Don’t you know—”

  Ahroe put a finger across his lips. “I wanted him—or her—to have a father after all.”

  Stel grinned and put his arm around her, Ruthan watching, quizzical and downcast.

  “Is it that easy, then?”

  “I haven’t observed that—”

  “Stel!”

  Stel laughed, and Ahroe walked to where Tor looked out at the water. She took his arm. He didn’t move or turn. She held it for some time, as Oet commanded the ship out into the water and turned north, and the shipmen set the bellying, striped sails. They began to glide upriver, the guardsmen at the oars chanting, sunset catching the sail, glorifying it with ruddy light, Ahroe holding Tor’s arm, until finally, at twilight, food was brought from the cooking fire aft, and the axeman turned, reaching first with his bound right arm, then with his left hand, taking the bowl.

  “Stel,” he said, “can you make me an axe sheath for the left side?”

  “I had been designing one,” Stel said. “Yes, of course. I have been thinking of a new axe as well. I think you will like it.”

  The big Shumai looked at him silently, then sat on the deck to eat.

  Near midnight they tied up to the foot of a small island, and everyone but four guardsmen bedded down. And Tor. He sat in the bow watching the night.

  Eventually, Ruthan reached over Dusk and nudged Blu. He stirred. “Look at Tor,” she whispered. “What is wrong? What can we do?”

  “Go to sleep. He is doing it. Don’t worry. He is thinking it all out. You can’t do anything. He is far away from us all now.”

  Ruthan didn’t sleep. Eventually, she nudged Blu again. “How can you be sure?” she asked.

  Dusk sighed deeply, then slowly got up, stretched, walked around to the other side of Blu, and flopped noisily down against him. Blu chuckled lightly. He reached for Ruthan’s hand. She pulled it away, then put it back and slowly went to sleep. When she awoke at dawn, Blu and Tor stood together in the bow talking in low tones. The guardsmen had cast off, and the shipmen hauled on the big lines, raising the sail again.

  It was near sunset again when the guardhorns from Pelbarigan’s towers sounded, and much of the city came down to the bank to greet them. Ruthan could see Celeste, standing with an older woman on a platform. She looked filled out, tanned, and healthy. Then Ruthan saw her hands go to her face and heard her shriek above the crowd. She had seen Tor. Ruthan watched the girl turn and run but quickly was herself caught up in the tumult and novelty of welcome, and looked up at the pennons hanging from the high walls of the great stone city, its windows and towers crowded with people, almost all dark-haired, with maroon tunics. In the middle of the whirl, the old woman on the platform stood calm and still, flanked by four guardsmen. Ruthan could see that she too looked grave. Following her gaze, she saw that the old woman was also looking at Tor.

  XII

  PELBARIGAN staged a welcome ceremony for the dome people in the great chapel. Ruthan noted with interest that Celeste sang in the choir, her mouth moving in perfect unison with the others. Once when Celeste caught Ruthan watching, she faltered in her singing and sent the older woman a look of metal coldness. She knew about Tor. Ruthan felt the steel point of her own remorse glide into her ag
ain. Would she never be rid of it? Where was Tor? Inexplicably, he came beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. The Shumai running band stood together to one side, under the row of columns. Ruthan saw Blu watching. She couldn’t read his expression. Tor kept his arm around her for the rest of the ceremony, until the newcomers were introduced and asked to step forward. As she turned back, she saw Tor’s face still hollow and haunted, but as she turned, his arm came around her shoulder again. So that was it. He was saying to everyone that he would not desire any ill will directed toward her on his account. Looking again, Ruthan saw Celeste’s face still cold.

  “Ruthan,” Tor said. “That is her problem, not yours.”

  How did he know? “It will always be mine,” she said.

  “It is not mine. Less and less. The one puzzle for me is why Eolyn killed Dexter.”

  “You are absolutely sure it was Eolyn, then.”

  “Of course. I have been in enough fights to know where the missiles are coming from.”

  “It was an accident, then. She was aiming at you.” Somehow the thought of Dexter had lost its anguish, though she missed his openness, his humor, his resourceful and quirky behavior.

  “An accident. Perhaps. Everything happened so fast. But then I saw her shoot the end off Ahroe’s horn.”

  That was true. But Ruthan’s thoughts were caught up in a new Pelbar hymn, with instruments, flutes and pellutes. She saw Susan Ward rapt with the music. The old woman’s dulcimer sat idle in her lap.

  The ceremony was followed by a meeting with the council. Eolyn’s sense of an agreement was presented. The council, Ruthan could see, was puzzled and taken aback, though eased when she, Butto, and Cohen-Davies simply volunteered their services as a matter of joining the community. Royal would have as well, but Eolyn insisted, as the price of his instruction in chemistry and medicine, that she and the comps be housed in a new facility, outside the city, high on the bluffs to the north. She would set up a school for the study of mathematics, electricity, electronics, and mechanical design.

  Unsure of what all that meant, the Protector agreed, to the limit of the contribution Pelbarigan’s economy could make at harvest season, when all were preparing for winter. Eolyn was unsatisfied by what seemed to Ruthan to be generosity. For the time being, the whole group from the dome would be housed together in a family complex, with their own common room. The comps would serve the principals. It seemed agreeable.

  Almost a week later, as organization and adjustment were still taking place, a general session for information was held in the chapel rather than the judgment room, so as many of the city as desired could listen in. The session was protracted.

  One subject that the Jestana brought up was the nature of the time of fire. “We know it involved terrible weapons, fire, and meteors,” she said. “Or so we would gather from evidence here and Ahroe’s trip to the west. But beyond that we know little or nothing. What can you tell us about it, Thornton?”

  “Our knowledge may add something, but it is also incomplete. Apparently it began with a catastrophic shower of meteors, not only as large as or larger than the biggest in ancient record, those that landed in Arizona and Siberia, but these came in large numbers, accompanied by innumerable small ones. Their sudden arrival convinced some nations that they were under nuclear attack.”

  “Nuclear attack?”

  “Yes. Attack by the weapons that made what you call the empty places, at their worst, weapons which explode with a heat more than that on the surface of the sun. They could destroy a large city almost instantly, and the whole region around it.”

  A general murmur rippled through the crowd.

  “The two principal nations with many such weapons, the United States, which was where we are, and the U.S.S.R., knew, of course, of the approaching meteors. They had been tracking them. They made a hasty agreement not to take advantage of the catastrophe. But smaller nations, more volatile nations, also possessed many such weapons and what they called delivery systems, and they were of course sure that they were being attacked. Especially in the Middle East, which lies far across what Jestak calls the Eastern Sea, they began hurling nuclear weapons at each other, over hundreds of kilometers, using great rockets. Soon the hostile exchange spread.

  “That’s about all we know because the dome was sealed and the area hit by a nuclear device. Oh, yes. A few other things. The U.S.S.R., commonly called the Russians, had lofted enormous laser satellites, devices much larger than this city, which circled the earth like low moons in space, and they had the capacity of lighting fires below by carefully calculated bursts of concentrated energy. At the time they were threatening the United States with them.”

  “What did the United States do about that?”

  “Nothing. At the time they were in great disarray. During the twentieth century, the United States was a great industrial power, but one basic source of its wealth lay in a very efficient agricultural system. However, pressure from the industrial sector, both from workers and management, for greater and greater rewards for less and less production, coupled with a concerted attack on the traditional agricultural systems, by a refusal to reward agriculture adequately, and some incredibly poor, chemically disastrous farming methods, crippled the system. The loss of the best agricultural lands to spreading housing, and to salinity from unwise irrigation methods, helped. A collapse in agriculture occurred, with some famine, from which the nation had not fully recovered at the time of fire.

  “The government, too, had become incredibly top-heavy, with a bureaucracy absolutely insistent on great rewards for few services. This included earlier and earlier retirement, and all sorts of benefits not available to the other citizens. The bureaucrats were able to retire at age fifty, with large pensions. This finally took so much of the tax money, with a grinding national debt, that the national defense faltered badly. The social security system, which was a tax pool to provide for elderly private citizens, ceased altogether, all funds being absorbed by the bureaucracy and the enormous number of its projects and regulations. The citizenry revolted, but they were put down by the army.”

  “Why didn’t these Russians take advantage of this situation.”

  “They might have, but they also had deep internal troubles. Central control of their economy, and disaffection among the populace, grew steadily worse until they were very unsure that they could take advantage of their towering military superiority. Apparently they feared that any move on the part of the government, despite despotic control over the people, would touch off forces they couldn’t control.

  “Besides that, by the time of the disaster, new nations of real power had arisen, including the Central South American Republic and Panafrica, which took in everything on that continent south of the Sahara Desert.”

  “Thornton, we have no idea about where those places are.”

  “We will have to write it all out and draw maps at our leisure. At any rate, judging by the small fragments of reports I have been given, including Stal’s account of the record of Ozar, it would appear that the Russians did indeed activate their laser satellites. The curious thing is that they are not over here. Something must have gone wrong.”

  “Protector,” said Ahroe. “Something has puzzled me. Thornton has said that the dome was originally a drug-manufacturing facility which demanded a sealed-off environment. I just cannot imagine, though, that it would have been so well-equipped for such a long survival. Eolyn said that the rod for testing for radiation had been added later, but Stel affirmed that he was sure it was built into the original structure. I don’t understand.”

  “As far as I know,” said Cohen-Davies, “it was indeed a drug-manufacturing firm that needed a sterile or controlled environment to manage its tests. The Brimer-McKenny Corporation, to be exact.”

  “Wait,” said Susan Ward. “I know that is the official history. I hope you will forgive my breaking in. To explain to you Pelbar, I have been compiling an unofficial but more accurate history of the dome and levels
for some time. What I learned about that is that it was indeed apparently a drug-manufacturing company, but it was really constructed to withstand just the sort of event that occurred. It was designed to shelter federal government officials in the central region. When the catastrophe came, though, none of them ever made it to the shelter.”

  “You mean they made secret shelters to protect themselves while providing none for the populace?”

  “That is correct. Documents I found showed that it was the brainchild of Senator Daniel Dresser-Choate of Missouri, put in his state near his own home. Dresser-Choate had investments in a nearby military manufacturing facility, so he was rather worried about his own safety.”

  “Amazing. Thornton, I am sure that most of us have only the foggiest notion of what you have been talking about. I trust the secretaries have been busy. We will have to question you in detail and annotate this material, and then add to it your other recollections. Now, does anyone know what has happened to the rest of the world?”

  “Only that our early generations were unable to receive radio messages on any frequency from anywhere and after a century gave up.”

  “Radio messages? Another wonder?”

  “Perhaps I can explain,” said Eolyn. “We have several miniature transceivers with us, two built into the pulser helmets. Comp 6 is working on my new facility. See this device on my wrist? I shall talk to him.” She touched a switch. “Comp 6? Comp 6? Are you awake?”

  A tiny voice came from Eolyn’s wrist. “Comp 6 awake, Principal Eolyn. What do you wish?” The audience stirred and murmured.

  “Just testing the system, Comp 6. Thank you. Asleep now.” Eolyn then said, to the general audience, “If we can get the materials, we can be building simple devices like this very quickly.” The audience murmur rose to a running exclamation.

  The Protector’s guardsmen rapped for quiet, and rising, the Protector said, “Thank you very much, all, and I believe that will be enough wonders for now. We need to digest and sort these things. Now it is time for a closed council meeting.” The gathering broke up, with the Protector greeting all the dome people individually. It was plain she and Cohen-Davies already were fond of each other.