Farley shook his head. Two days ago his men had been fighting Messerschmitts and enduring the worst flak he’d ever seen. Today they were in a huge dome city on another world, cracking jokes and teaching the natives to play stickball.
But that’s what we do, thought Farley. We put down our comic books and go to England and fight the Germans and drink warm beer and fix the tractors of the farmers whose fields are runways now.
“That’s what we do,” he said aloud.
*
“Okay, here’s the situation,” said Farley.
The crew sat on the ingeniously unfolded sofas, dangled their feet from the recessed bunks, sat at pullout tables, sprawled on the floor. All of them were smoking. The air vents worked harder to compensate, but the crewmen didn’t notice it.
Farley looked them over before continuing. “This place is basically one big lifeboat,” he said. “It was built to keep people alive after a war wiped out the entire planet. It’s been doing that for a couple hundred years.”
Shorty whistled. The rest of them looked at each other.
“These people have been locked up in here like a castle under siege longer than America’s been a country,” Farley continued. “They’re alive because of strict rationing and some pretty tough laws about wasting resources, and their enemies are on the other side of the crater, twenty miles away. The CO of this operation doesn’t like the idea of them having our bomber, and he can’t afford to put us up here.”
Plavitz raised a hand. “So we get our ride back and get out,” he said. “Birds, meet stone.”
Farley nodded. “I’ve been working with the commander to figure out how they can help us do just that.”
The men cheered. Farley held up a hand. “So here’s the thinking,” he said. “If we shoot our way to the bomber right now, chances are what we’ll find is a lame duck. But if we give them two more days, odds are they’ll have done a lot of our repair work for us, and we’ll have a bomber that’s a lot closer to being airworthy.”
Broben shook his head and whistled low. “That’s a hell of a gamble, Joe.”
“I don’t think so. The Morgana was pretty worked over. Wen said it’d take him a couple of days. These people have never seen an airplane before, much less a radial engine. They aren’t likely to fix three of them—along with the tail section and god knows what else—and take her out for a spin in two days.”
“So that’s the plan?” asked Plavitz. “Wait two days and then go get the Morgana back?”
“If it was that simple,” said Broben, “the captain wouldn’t be making a speech.”
Farley nodded. “Here’s the catch,” he said. “We can really use these people’s help. Their guns, their gizmos, their armor. More eyes, more ears, and more trigger fingers. The whole ball of wax. They’ve got about a thousand people in this bubble of theirs, and we’re asking them to risk six or eight of them. We’ll have a lot better chance of getting their help if we help them. There’s a lot around here that needs fixing.” He blinked. “Make them love us.”
“In two days?” asked Everett.
“You got them playing stickball in twenty minutes.” Farley looked them over. “Sure, this place was built by some pretty smart cookies—”
“That picture phone’s sure a killer diller,” agreed Shorty.
“Picture phone?” said Boney. “They have a fake sun.”
“Not at eleven a.m., they don’t,” said Martin.
“That’s my point,” Farley told him. “This whole place is like one big clock, and a lot of it’s broken. So we’re going to find out what needs fixing, and we’re going to fix it. Wennda’s been handed TDY as our den mother here. She’ll help us figure out where we can do some good.”
“Is she gonna figure out where you can do some good, Joseph?” Broben asked.
“I do not seek the nomination, but if elected, I will serve.”
Broben leered. “God and country, pal. That’ll get you through these dark times.”
Farley ignored him. “Garrett, Everett—you’re farm boys.”
“I am,” said Garrett. “He’s from one of those combines.”
“Yep,” agreed Everett. “I’m a big-farm boy.”
“You two visit with those toy farmers they’ve got here,” said Farley. “They’ve been growing crops in this cake dish so long, maybe they’ve forgotten some things.”
“Will do, cap,” said Everett.
“Plavitz, I want you to find what passes for a library here and study some maps. I want you to know how to get through those canyons in your sleep. On foot and in the air.”
“If they have them,” said Plavitz, “I’ll tattoo them in my brain.”
“Boney, you’re pretty mechanical,” said Farley.
“Like a robot,” Shorty chimed in.
“And Mr. Dubuque,” said Farley. “You’ve got the electronics background.”
“Fat lotta good that does,” said Shorty. “I haven’t seen a single vacuum tube in this dump.”
“So learn what they use in their place and get to work with Boney.”
“What are we working on, skipper?” asked Boney.
“I want you to fix the sun.”
sixteen
Garrett had his hands on his hips and Everett had his arms folded as they stood amid the squares of crops beneath the rounded hexagon of bright afternoon sun. Both men were warm in their uniforms as they looked in mild consternation at plots of trellised vines, neat lines of plastic sheeting sprouting bushy growths, even rows of stalks, orderly orchards of big-leafed trees. The arrangement was too big to be called a garden and too small to be called a farm, as they understood the word. Behind the fields were the dun-colored administration and housing complexes.
“You feed a thousand people with this?” said Everett.
Their guide nodded proudly. Her name was Evna and she was distractingly pretty, though privately both Americans thought she could use a little more curve. They grew them small and thin and pale here in the Dome. Evna had boyishly short brown hair and wore the standard-issue jumpsuit and slippers, though her jumpsuit had been expertly decorated—by Wennda, who apparently had a talent for such things—with drawn-on stripes and swirls and intricate designs.
“One thousand one hundred thirty-five,” she replied to Everett. “Not with crops alone, of course. Fats and protein that aren’t provided by the reverter are vat-grown from cloned tissue. Much more efficient.”
Garrett nudged Everett. “Much more efficient,” he said.
“We get fats and oils from peanuts,” Evna continued, heedless. “Soap, soil conditioner, paper fabrics—there’s so much you can do with peanuts beyond eating them.”
“Sure,” said Garrett. “Me and this monkey work for ’em.”
“We have eighteen crops in intensive cultivation,” Evna continued blithely, pointing at the little fields. “Wheat, barley, white potatoes—”
“Don’t read me the whole menu, sweetheart,” said Garrett. “Just tell me what’s for dessert.”
Everett looked skyward.
“Did you bring your own food with you?” Evna asked. “The bioprinters can reproduce almost anything they can sample, as long as we’ve got the raw materials for fabrication.”
Everett looked away from the artificial sky. “Trust me, no one’s gonna give us a medal for showing you how to make Vienna sausages.”
“Well, I’d still be very eager to sample what you have. Anything new is extremely welcome.”
“Who wouldn’t get tired of having the same thing over and over again?” said Garrett.
Everett made a pained face. “Maybe you should switch off full auto, Romeo,” he said.
Evna was pointing at the large rectangle of water surrounded by grass in the near distance. “In the marshes around the ocean we grow rice,” she said.
“Ocean?” said Garrett.
“Ocean biome,” she elaborated, unhelpfully. “Sea plants, algae, tide machine. It filters to fresh water on this end. W
e get water filtration, clean oxygen, nutrient yield for crop soil, humidification. There used to be fish stock for protein, but it died out a long time ago.”
“Can we get back to the farm?” asked Garrett. “I’m kinda getting seasick.”
Evna frowned but nodded. “Of course,” she said. “What would you like to know?”
“What’s giving you a pain?” said Everett.
She turned toward a field of plants a few feet high. “It’s my legumes,” she said mournfully.
“Gee,” Garrett said behind her, “your legumes look pretty good to me.”
Everett punched him on the shoulder. “Let’s take a look at them,” he told Evna when she looked back.
Garrett nodded eagerly, and Evna led them to the plot. Well before they got there the two men could see something was wrong. The majority of the bean crop was vibrant green and lush, but about twenty percent of the plants were a pale yellow-green. Stalks were desiccated and straw-like, leaves were drooping, bean pods were chalky and brittle-looking.
Evna knelt before one such plant and turned a leaf up. Everett and Garrett knelt beside her.
“These are pintos,” Garrett said.
Evna nodded. “High-yield pinto beans in dry-bred cultivation,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of genetic variation, so they’ve lost a lot of resistance over the years. We try to keep the Dome as closed and filtered as we can, but we still get problems from outside.”
“Present company excluded,” said Everett.
She flushed. “I didn’t mean to imply anything,” she said.
“He’s just ribbing you,” said Garrett.
Everett frowned at the sickly leaves. “I know rust is a problem with these,” he said. “But that’s not what it looks like.” He dug into the rich soil with his fingers and pulled up a wriggling purplish earthworm. He showed it to Garrett, who nodded.
“I haven’t seen any birds in here,” Garrett said.
“There haven’t been any for a very long time,” said Evna. “We use manual seed dispersion and some bee pollination.”
“A world with no birds,” said Garrett.
She shrugged. “They were gone before I was born.”
Everett held up the wriggling worm. “No early birds for you,” he told it. He put it back in the soil and covered it back over. Then he rubbed his fingers and sniffed them. He frowned and broke off a leaf and rubbed it and sniffed it. He asked Evna about watering, humidity, crop rotation, sun cycles, pests, temperature.
Evna told him how the rain forest biome, where the miniature cliffs were, generated water vapor to maintain humidity, how the ocean algae scrubbed the air and filtered water. Garrett managed to put the brakes on his blunt flirting, and both men listened and asked questions and did not wise off.
At one point Evna excused herself to make her rounds. She told them she’d be back in half an hour and left the two strange men kneeling among the diseased bean plants.
They watched her go, then Garrett turned to Everett.
“Did you understand a thing she said?” he asked.
“Some of it.”
“Brother, you’re one up on me. Genetic biome hydroponic cost-benefit cloned ecosystem molecular I don’t know what else.” He shook himself like a dog. “I’m just a dirt mechanic; I don’t know if these people are farming or making rockets.”
“At least you know you can love her for her brain, too,” said Everett.
“She never saw a cow. What kind of farmer never saw a cow?”
Everett grinned. “The farmer in the Dome, the farmer in the Dome,” he sang.
“Aren’t you the comedian.”
“Hi ho, the derry-oh.”
“Give it a rest already.”
Everett grinned. “The farmer takes a wife,” he half-sang.
“Yeah, yeah, and the wife cuts the cheese.” He didn’t laugh, which made Everett laugh.
Garrett broke off a withered seed pod. “This isn’t white mold,” he said. “But it’s still some kind of fungus. It’s powdery.”
“What would you do if this was happening back home?”
“For starters, I wouldn’t grow pinto beans.”
“Say, that’s helpful. Thanks for solving the problem, bud.”
“I already know how to fix the problem,” Garrett said. “You’d know, too, if you’d grown up on a real farm instead of that cabbage factory your dad works for.”
“He’s a general manager and it’s a combine.”
“Don’t get a run in your stocking. Now listen and learn.”
*
When Evna returned she saw both men propped up on their elbows between rows of bean plants, staring at the sky and passing a cigarette between them. Her face went hard and she quickened her pace. Garrett hastily stubbed out the butt and got up with his hands out as if he thought he’d have to ward off a tackle by a woman more than a foot shorter than him and half his weight.
“It helps us think,” he said before she could lay into him.
“How exciting that must be. What has it helped you think of?”
Everett stood up beside Garrett and brushed dirt from his hands. “What kind of soap do you people wash dishes with?” he asked.
seventeen
Broben and Martin trudged behind Farley and Wennda as they headed toward one of the larger buildings in the central cluster. The captain was engaged in animated conversation with the tall woman as they walked, both of them intent on each other, laughing sometimes, curious and questioning.
Broben frowned. Dreamgirl or not, he’d seen this movie a hundred times, and it rarely had a happy ending.
He glanced at Martin and waved at their surroundings. “I feel like I’m in one of those snow globes people put out at Christmas,” he said.
“It’s not exactly what the recruiting posters said I’d see when I joined up,” Martin said. “Where is it we’re going, again?”
“Fabrication.”
“Sounds like we’re gonna sew clothes.”
“They’re trying to find a use for us,” Broben replied. “I don’t know about you, brother, but I drive a truck when I’m not bombing Germans.”
“I push a pretty good idiot stick,” Martin said.
“Maybe we’re gonna turn screwdrivers. Shame we couldn’t bring Wen. That hillbilly’d be running this burg inside of a week.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to know him better,” said Martin.
Broben shrugged. “Truth is, he was like sandpaper when he didn’t agree with you. But I swear there’s nothing that damn yokel couldn’t fix. Wen didn’t repair things, he healed them.”
“My uncle Dan is like that with horses,” said Martin. “He just kind of talks them into feeling better.”
“So you really grew up with all that? Riding horses and everything?”
“Hell no. Horses scare the daylights out of me. Never shot a bow, either.”
“I think it’s the arrows you shoot.”
“Like I said.”
The cluster of tan-colored dwellings and administration offices was a thick-stemmed, narrow-armed T. The stem divided ordered plots of crops, and the miniature environments they called biomes ran parallel to the arms of the T. There was a tiny rain forest, a savannah surrounding a rectangular ocean the size of a football field, a shallow spill of marshland. A narrow C of grassland ran along the left rim.
Fabrication took up most of a building near the base of the T. Many of the interior walls had been removed to turn the conjoined space into a warehouse. Seemingly random stacks and heaps of material formed confusing paths through the building. The sound was oddly muffled, baffled by the dense variety of materials. People scurried to and fro, a few of them hauling materials on little upright gizmos that looked like drivable handtrucks. There was a steady muted patter and a constant background thrum of machinery.
Wennda was leading them down one meandering row when they had to step aside to let a vehicle pass. It was the size of a motor scooter, rectangular and b
right yellow with a little revolving yellow light, and silent on four odd tires that were a series of angled rubber cones set around a hub. A lift-loader in front made Broben realize he was looking at the smallest forklift he had ever seen. A woman stood on a little footstand at the back, staring at them as she glided by. In fact everybody stared.
Broben whistled at the retreating vehicle and gave a Scout salute. “Man, that was something,” he said.
“How can you tell, with those outfits?” asked Martin.
“Huh?” Broben felt oddly embarrassed. “I was talking about that little forklift. I want one for my dollhouse.”
Martin’s look showed that he wasn’t sure if he was being kidded, which made Broben flush even more. “My first summer job was driving towmotor for a ship-to-rail outfit,” he explained. “I’da traded an organ for a little rig like that.”
The noise level rose as they entered an area where the original floor plan had been preserved, smaller rooms crowded with machinery—pipe benders, stampers, things that looked like caulking guns that seemed to fuse materials, something that looked like a woodchipper that shredded garments and fabric remnants to powder that was deposited in plastic tubs, other things that made no sense to the airmen.
“I was expecting flashing lights and super-duper televisions,” Farley told Wennda. “This looks like my high school shop class.”
“Fabrication wasn’t built into the original plan,” Wennda replied. “This is all repurposed, refitted.”
“So Fabrication is fabricated.”
She grinned. “Exactly.”
Broben tried not to roll his eyes.
They came to a series of conjoined suites where workers dumped the tubs of powdered fabric into a hopper on the side of a machine a little bigger than a phone booth. It looked like a still put together by a madman, with piping of plastic and various metals, condensers, release valves, dial gauges and digital meters. A sheet of oatmeal-colored fabric slowly extruded out the other side into a bin and was automatically cut to length.
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