There’s a plumped pillow beside him. He punches it softly, his fist sinking into feathers. A feather pillow? It’s too real to be a dream.
He wonders if this is some version of heaven. If so, will Lyda meet him here? This could be their bedroom, with a tall wardrobe, a bedside table, a lamp, and a real bed. Attached to the ceiling is a slow fan with wide blades made of wicker, churning air.
He looks out the window—it’s open and screenless, but windows in the Dome are only for show. They never open; it’s the same temperature outside as it is inside—except during the winter when they reduce the outside temperature by ten degrees to give the impression of a season change.
Outside the window, there’s a crystal-blue ocean. Small waves are rolling up on golden sand. It’s empty except for an old man with a metal detector. He remembers old men with metal detectors on the beach from his childhood. They wore black socks and thick rubber shoes, just like this one. This beach is like an advertisement for a Caribbean vacation.
But there’s his fiberglass cast on his pinky. He wedges it off, revealing a stub—three-quarters of the way formed, sealed with his own skin.
He’s in the Dome.
Something chafes the soft skin under his chin. He touches a strange collar, locked around his throat. It’s made of thin metal, slightly malleable. A box of about two square inches is attached to it, vibrating with electricity. He feels a grooved pattern on the box—a keyhole?
He’s a prisoner here.
There’s a knock at the door, and for a second, he wonders if it’s Lyda. Anything could happen.
“Come in,” he says.
The door opens. Like the bed, it’s ornately designed. A woman in a pink skirt and white blouse appears. She’s wearing a beaded necklace. Partridge remembers the mother with a beaded necklace grown over with skin so it looked like a fleshy tumor.
She walks over to him and sets a tray of food on the bedside table. Bacon, eggs, a stout glass of orange juice clouded with pulp. A piece of toast is glazed with what seems to be butter and honey. He’s hungry yet his stomach feels weak.
She leans over him with familiarity and puts a cool hand on his forehead. “Partridge,” she says, “you seem to be feeling better!” She smiles as if she’s been missing him and he’s finally arrived.
There’s something vaguely familiar about her face. Has he seen her at functions he was dragged to as a kid back when his father gave more public addresses?
“Yeah.” He swallows and his throat aches. “How do we know each other again?”
“I knew you’d know me. He said no and I said, ‘Wait and see!’” She tilts her head. “We go way back, Partridge. But we’ve never met—not formally. I’m Mimi,” she says. “I’ve been taking care of you here.” She sits on the edge of the bed. “My daughter has helped too. She’s downstairs, practicing the piano.”
Partridge has no idea what Mimi is talking about. She’s said a lot of words, but somehow he understands less than before. “Where am I?”
She smiles. “Where do you want to be?”
He rubs his eyes. He’s tired. “I want to know where I am.”
Mimi gets up and takes little steps to the door—her hands dance around her head, her skirt swishes around her calves. “Listen,” she says. “A Beethoven sonata. Hear it?” Partridge hears a classical tune. “She’s taken lessons for years. She doesn’t have the most natural ear for it, but she’s a perfectionist. That makes up for just about everything, doesn’t it?”
He’s not sure if that’s true or not, so he doesn’t answer. “Where’s my father?”
“He’s at work. He works so hard. Hours and hours.”
“How do you know him?”
“I’ve known him for years, Partridge. By gosh, I’ve watched you grow up—from afar, of course. My daughter and I have been on the outskirts of your life, so to speak; you know how it is.”
He has no idea how it is. He needs to focus. He needs to find Arvin Weed and Glassings—people who were on his mother’s list as those he can trust.
“Haven’t you felt it?” she says. “A set of maternal eyes, keeping watch? I’ve begged him to let you in. Begged and begged. But he said that it would be too disruptive. But here you are!” Mimi takes her mincing steps to the edge of his bed and kneels. She grips the bedspread and looks like she might cry.
With great exertion, he sits up, his back to the headboard. At first, her face doubles. But he squints, concentrates, and her face is pretty, in an angular way, and strangely ageless. She looks to be ten years younger than his parents, but at the same time she seems older. Is it her gestures? Her speech? She has no wrinkles, even now that she’s smiling at him expectantly. Her face is taut.
Now it hits him that Mimi might assume some intimacy with him because she has established intimacy with his father. She and her daughter have had to live on the outskirts. She’s been an extra set of maternal eyes on him—for years? He says, “Are you . . .” He doesn’t know how to put it. “Are you my father’s . . .” Mistress? Is that the word he’s looking for?
“I’m his wife,” Mimi says, beaming.
“What?”
“We’re newlyweds, technically, but we’ve been together all these years. He loves me, and I love him. I hope you can accept that.”
Partridge feels sick. “He killed my mother and then he turned around and married you?” He kicks off the blanket and sheets, his leg muscles burning. He pushes himself to the other side of the bed, swinging his legs to the floor. “Was that an added bonus to exploding her head? That he’d be a free man?”
“He’s not a murderer,” Mimi says softly. “You’re confusing the facts.”
“He had me tortured! Do you know that? I’m lucky to be alive.” He still feels close to death, as if it has burrowed deep into his body.
“You could have a father who doesn’t care about you at all. You could have a father who abandoned you—like my daughter. Your father took me in when no one else would have. He saved our lives.” Mimi is still smiling at him—the smile is nearly exhausted but expresses grave patience.
“I have a father who’s a mass murderer.” He pulls on the collar around his neck.
She shakes her head and clucks her tongue. Is she scolding him? Does she really think that she’s his mother? He wants to slap her. “You’ve been out there too long,” she says. “We were hoping you’d have seen the light.” She gets up and brushes her skirt. “I won’t tell your father that you’ve said these things. It would only upset him and get you into more trouble.” She walks to the window and looks out. He despises her, but he knows that whatever is broken and twisted in Mimi is likely his father’s fault.
Patridge looks out past her. The old man is on the beach again, walking in the same direction he was before, waving the metal detector back and forth. “Watch this,” Mimi says, and she leans out the window and calls, “Hello! How are you doing this morning?”
The old man stops, takes off his small cap, and gives a big wave.
Mimi says, “He used to just ignore me. But I told your father how much this upset me and Iralene, my daughter, and your father fixed it. One little mention and in a few days, that stupid old man was waving. I hate him, actually. But now he stops and waves. It’s better this way, isn’t it?” Mimi is terrifying. She seethes with love, hurt, fury—flipping between emotions in a matter of seconds. She turns and looks at Partridge. “You know, I made this trip in person. I didn’t have to, but I asked permission and your father allowed it because meeting you was very important to me. I hope it wasn’t a waste of time. I hate to waste real time.”
He can’t help but be smart-mouthed. “How do you feel about wasting fake time?”
“You mean suspended time?”
He shrugs and says, “Yeah, suspended time.”
“I have all the suspended time I want. There’s no such thing as wasting it, is there? I mean, this might sound too philosophical for you to really comprehend—”
“Try me.”<
br />
“Suspended time is, by definition, time not spent. It exists alongside time as we know it. So it can’t be wasted, can it?”
“I guess not.”
She smiles at Partridge and walks to the door.
Partridge remembers Pressia’s story of being poisoned in the farmhouse. He says, “This food isn’t going to make me sick, is it?”
“Are you crazy?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“Don’t be rude.”
“You know what’s rude? Putting an electrical collar on someone you’re supposedly feeling all maternal about. How far can I go without being zapped?”
“I wouldn’t wander far. It’s for your own protection.”
“Well, in that case, thank you. Thank you so very, very much.”
“I hope you enjoy your breakfast, Partridge. If I were you, I’d be thankful for everything. Every little handmade detail.” It sounds like a warning. She winks, nods, and walks out the door, leaving it open enough for Partridge to hear her daughter, Iralene, playing the sonata.
Partridge falls back into the bed, his arms and legs leaden. He closes his eyes; the music picks into his brain, but he can’t tell if the music is being played or if it’s recorded. Does Iralene exist? Is there even a piano at all?
EL CAPITAN
STITCHES
MOST OF THE OPERATIONS are much more complex than Helmud digging spider legs out with a penknife. El Capitan is lucky that his robotic spider was lodged in the meatier part of his calf, not actually digging into and splintering bone. Most of all, he’s lucky that he had only one spider lodged in him—the record now stands at thirteen in one body alone. Just shy of a month, and there are still hundreds of people to tend to.
Between studying and copying Fignan’s sedative bullets and the information that El Capitan has gathered over the years about different plants he’s found in the woods—ones he tested on fresh recruits—they’ve created ways to put people under for surgery, more or less.
Helmud shoots serum into patients’ bloodstreams and assists. El Capitan asks for alcohol, swabs, tweezers, scalpels, needles, and thin, clean spools of wire used to noose the gaping holes. Helmud delivers. For the first time in their lives, they work like one man with four arms. Another soldier swabs the instruments with alcohol and stands by in case a patient comes to in the middle, in which case the soldier and El Capitan hold the patient down until another shot is injected.
Helmud is fascinated by the surgeries. He leans so far over El Capitan’s shoulder that El Capitan sometimes has to tell him to back off.
“Stop breathing on me,” El Capitan says now during a surgery.
“Stop breathing,” Helmud says.
The rusty smell of blood hits El Capitan so hard he feels sick. He finishes up with this patient quickly. “I’ve got to see if any more children have gone missing,” he tells the soldier. Twelve kids have disappeared and been returned since Wilda, with rumors of a new one found in the early-morning hours in an abandoned lean-to at the edge of the Rubble Fields.
As they step out of the tent, Helmud shivers in the brisk air. El Capitan swings his rifle around to his chest and walks to the market. There’s the normal bustle, some shoving, hawkers shouting about their wares, their meat, their strange vegetation—edible? Maybe, maybe not. He walks past a number of lit oil drums, people huddled around them, warming their hands. Everyone eyes him as he passes. Some bow their heads.
Special Forces haven’t returned to the city. Now that Partridge is back in the Dome, perhaps they see no need. El Capitan has seen a few in the woods, though, and he always hopes to come across Hastings again. Partridge said he was trustworthy. El Capitan has even thought of trying to set a trap for him. But how on earth would you trap a Special Forces soldier? Not even a bear trap would hold one.
El Capitan comes across a little boy handing out sheets of paper. Is your soul worthy of Purification? Prepare! “What’s this about?” El Capitan asks.
A metal splint holds up one side of the boy’s face. He says, “The Dome is all-good and all-knowing.”
“No. The Dome’s been exploding people. Did you miss that part?”
The boy shrugs and hands out more of the papers to people walking by.
“What do you want? A chance to be mute except for the words that get programmed into your skull? A chance to get pumped with their Purification only to get eaten alive by it?”
“Purity comes with a price! They’re martyrs in the eyes of our Watchers!”
“They got you pretty thoroughly brainwashed, don’t they?”
The boy looks at him, his face bright with hope. “It’s more than just kids, now. Even you have a chance!”
“What do you mean, more than just kids?”
“Mother and daughter. Father and son. Always from the same family. Three pairs so far. All taken in the broad sunshine.”
“In daylight?”
“We light the pyres and hope and pray to be chosen.”
“Are you kidding me? You line up and let Special Forces take you? Just like that?” He growls, “What the hell?”
“Hell!” Helmud says.
El Capitan snatches the papers from the boy’s hands. “Where did you get these?”
“The Dome had a son,” the boy says. “He made it to earth. He was our redeemer. The Dome wanted him back. We were held hostage, and when he was returned to the Dome—where he sits with his righteous father—we were shown mercy, set free.”
“I get it. I get it. Very old-world.” El Capitan knows enough about biblical stuff to catch the references. “Children weren’t enough? Now they want families? Have any of them been sent back yet?”
“Only one pairing,” the boy says. “The others are staying in paradise!” His eyes gleam.
“And the one pairing? How are they? Are they programmed only to spout Dome propaganda?”
“They’re dead. They were unworthy. We’re writing a new gospel. We’re adding on to the Word. We’ll have all-new prophets.”
“That’s lovely,” El Capitan says. “Where are the bodies?”
“The pyre,” the boy says. “We sacrificed them, and they made their way on the ash winds.”
“How were they killed?”
“Found by the pyre one morning. They were perfect, like God intended, but for a ring of scars around their heads—like a crown of thorns.”
“Scars? What kinds of scars?”
“Tidy,” he says. “Stitched up good. You know God made clothes for Adam and Eve in the garden? God’s seamstress.”
“God’s seamstress lives in the Dome? Yeah, that makes perfect sense!”
“Perfect sense!” Helmud says.
“Where’s Margit and her blind friend? They still alive?”
The boy nods.
“Does Margit still have a spider in her arm?”
“Yes, a gift from God.”
“Tell her it’s a gift from God that’s going to get infected.”
El Capitan walks off, pushing his way through the crowd, and the boy yells, “When they come for me, I will be ready. Pure within. Will you? That’s the question. Will you?”
El Capitan makes it back to the tent quickly. He pulls open a fluttering flap, yanks it closed behind him. “Enough for today. Send the rest home.”
The soldier is cleaning up.
El Capitan picks up the bag of sedative vials. “Let’s pack.” He notices the pile of dead robotic spiders—some whole, most in parts. El Capitan picks one. It feels heavy and dense in his hand, like a grenade. He says to the soldier, “Collect all these parts. Bag ’em.”
“Why’s that, sir?”
“Metal and explosives,” he says. “They might make a nice gift.”
PARTRIDGE
SOUL
PARTRIDGE STARTLES AWAKE. He’s still in the large oak bed, somewhere in the Dome. There’s moonlight coming in the window. He’s not alone.
He turns his head, the collar cutting into his skin. A thin figure is st
anding beside the bed. He sees the outline of a skirt, two pale legs, and high heels. “Mimi?” he whispers. “What the hell are you doing here?” Has she been watching him sleep?
“It’s not Mimi.” The voice is soft, almost childlike. The figure takes a step into the moonlight. It’s a girl about Partridge’s age, maybe a little younger. A few inches shorter than Partridge, she holds a piece of fruit, red like an apple but the size of a melon. She’s pretty and looks a little like Mimi, except her face is softer, her lips fuller. Her skin seems thin, so frail that Partridge can see a pale blue vein etched across her temple. She’s nervous, maybe even scared. “I’m Iralene.”
Mimi’s daughter, the pianist. “Is that for me?” He points at the fruit.
“Kind of.”
“It is the middle of the night, right? Or is that fake too?”
“I think it’s night.”
“Why are you here?”
She straightens up and says, in a rehearsed way, “I’ve heard you aren’t completely happy here. I can help remedy that. You can be anywhere you want while you recuperate, Partridge. Anywhere in the world.”
“Well, that’s great, Iralene. Thank you so much,” he says sarcastically.
“Maybe you don’t understand,” Iralene says. “Anywhere in the world!”
“I’ve got it. I’ve seen the old man on the beach wave at your mother. I’m impressed, okay? You can tell my father that this is a really fantastic magic trick. Good stuff.”
Iralene looks a little panic-stricken. “I can’t tell your father that.”
“When I was little, we got new industrial-strength carpet padding, and the advertising said you could bounce an egg on it. My dad did and the egg bounced. So just tell him that this is even better. Okay? Even better than bouncing an egg.”
“I don’t know anything about bouncing eggs,” Iralene says, looking teary.
“How is my old man these days?”
Her eyes dart around nervously, as if she’s expecting him to appear. “He’s not well. He had bouts of illnesses. I’m sure he’ll get better!” She pauses as if trying to decide whether to say more. Partridge lets the silence hang awkwardly, hoping she’ll want to fill it, and she does. “His skin is dry. His voice is . . .” She stops herself as if the memory of his voice is chilling. “One hand has started to curl inward.” She lightly twists her hand until it looks misshapen, pulling it toward her collarbones. “Some of the fingertips are turning bluish.”
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