“And go where, the Stork Club?” Broben snorted. “Never mind, I got it.”
Farley stepped into the metal room.
Broben gave Grobe the stink eye as the man shut the heavy door and dogged it.
Wennda approached the panel by the inner door, but Grobe waved her off. “Your clearance was revoked,” he said. “Sorry.”
“I guess the old man’s pretty shanked at me.”
Grobe smirked. “You could say that.” He drew a pattern on the console’s glass plate and pressed his palm against the lighted square that appeared.
The air grille sighed. Farley yawned and felt his ears pop. A green dot appeared on the glass plate.
Wennda turned the inner door wheel and opened the door. She gestured for Farley to take a look. Farley stood in the doorway and looked out on a wide stone ramp that gently curved down and out of sight. Dim light beads shone near the floor.
“It leads to another access door,” Wennda said behind him.
“Where you keep the real smashy ceiling,” said Farley.
“I see why you’re the one in charge.”
Farley raised an eyebrow at her. “Okay, lieutenant,” he told Grobe. “Once more around the park.”
Broben was fascinated by the pinprick lights spaced along the downcurving ramp. “How do they make them so small?” he wanted to know.
“I swear if you were having brain surgery,” said Farley, “you’d want to know where the doctor got his watch.”
“If it was a good watch, sure.”
Farley shook his head. “Just keep your eyes peeled,” he said.
They marched down into the curving dark.
Another metal hatch. Another pattern drawn upon a glass panel. Grobe pulled open the hatch and sunlight flooded the rampway. Farley squinted and shook his head. He had a pilot’s sense of direction, and everything was telling him that this couldn’t be right, that they’d entered the chamber near the western rim and circled down a long and gradual quarter turn that ought to have placed them underground and almost directly beneath the rim wall.
He followed Grobe and Wennda through the hatchway and emerged blinking into a late summer day. The sky was pale clear blue, the sun was just past the horizon, the day was warm, the air was cool. A large cluster of adobe buildings rose ahead and to the right like some architecturally themed downtown. In the middle distance were patchwork fields. Beyond that, tall grass grew in a shallow marsh beside a rectangular reflecting lake that was the same size. Toward the horizon flat rock buttes emerged from a dense growth of enormous trees.
Then Farley’s other senses caught up to his vision. The air smelled stale and slightly funky. He felt no wind. No grass waved in any breeze. No insects sounded from the fields, no birds sang, no traffic noises came from the downtown cluster.
He saw a group of people working in a field, and his sense of scale changed radically. The neatly ordered geometry of crops became tiny, maybe a tenth of a mile square. The reflecting lake was smaller than a football field. The adobe buildings were not a downtown skyline but a cluster of what looked like apartments and offices. The distant buttes were suspiciously regular and no more than a hundred feet high, and their surrounding trees were not enormous but low and dense with foliage. Everything had looked larger than it really was because the horizon was not three or four miles away but half a mile.
Farley looked up again. The sky was cloudless and its blue was oddly uniform. The sun did not shimmer or show false motion around its edges. It glowed steady as a nightlight. And it was not perfectly round. More like a hexagon with rounded sides.
He shielded his eyes from the sun and made out a faint geometry across the sky, a regular tracework like giant chicken wire revealing hexagonal panels.
The Dome. Of course.
Wennda and Grobe were conversing in low tones. From their body language and gestures it was clear that they were unsure what to do with their new guests. The absence of established protocol was interesting.
Finally Grobe nodded, though he didn’t look happy about it, and Wennda turned away and collected Arshall and Sten. She pointed to Francis on his makeshift stretcher currently being carried by Garrett and Everett. “Get him to the Med Center and then report to the commander’s office,” she ordered.
Farley went to Francis as Arshall and Sten relieved Garrett and Everett. He bent down and put a hand on Francis’ good shoulder. Half the kid’s head and upper left torso looked like badly wrapped hamburger. The dressing stains had turned dark brown. The large red spot on the white wrapping where Francis’ left eye ought to be was unnerving. His breathing was shallow.
“We’re getting you to a doctor now, Francis,” Farley told him. “You’re going to be all right. I need you to hold on, okay?” He patted Francis’ shoulder and stood.
“We’ll take care of him,” said Arshall. “Dr. Manday will have him back on his feet in no time.”
Farley raised an eyebrow, but the man seemed sincere. “Thanks,” he said.
Arshall and Sten lifted Francis.
“Got him?” asked Garrett.
“Got him,” said Sten. Everett held up crossed fingers and the two men trotted away.
Farley watched them go and then saw Wennda watching him. He nodded his thanks and she nodded back and turned to lead them on.
They were herded along a narrow brick walkway between fields and marsh toward the pale brown buildings. Grass grew through the dark brown brick in places and the edges of the path were ragged, as if bricks had broken off and been removed.
Grobe and his squad resumed their guard formation. Wennda walked beside Grobe at point, followed by Farley and his crew. Yone walked beside Martin. They seemed to have struck up a friendship, which made sense when Farley thought about it. Martin had been through combat with the rest of the crew, and though he was their brother now they still hardly knew one another. Yone seemed to be a bit of an outsider as well, and like Martin he had risked his neck to help get Francis out of the line of fire. Farley noted the friendship without worry. He had enough sense of Martin to know the man was smart enough to keep his cards close. And maybe he’d find out some useful info in the meantime.
None of Wennda’s people looked around as they walked toward the cluster of drab buildings. This was home base for them. Farley’s crew, on the other hand, stared at their surroundings and nudged one another and pointed. They didn’t talk much. Among uncertain allies in unknown territory they were instinctively tight-lipped.
They were also punch-drunk and exhausted. Thirty hours ago they’d been sleeping in their bunks in southeast England and trying not to worry themselves sick about a bombing raid on a munitions factory.
They had not gone very far before Grobe called a halt. He turned to Farley with an expectant look, as if Farley should know why he’d stopped them. Farley just waited.
Grobe waved at Farley’s men. “Those have to be extinguished,” he said.
“Extinguished? You’re talking about my crew, you—”
“The things in their mouths,” Grobe interrupted. He mimed smoking.
“Their cigarettes?” Farley blinked.
“The filtration units are already strained,” said Grobe. “We can’t afford the extra burden.”
“Mister, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Wennda held a hand up to Grobe. “This is a self-contained environment,” she told Farley, gesturing around them. “Everything’s recycled. Food, water, air, waste. All of it’s filtered, reverted, reused.” She indicated Boney, who had raised his head to blow smoke while his pipe fumed in his hand. “Sustainability is our top priority. Everything we do affects the ecosystem.”