Under the Dome

Audrey wasn't asleep. She came to him at once, not bounding joyfully as she usually did—You're home! You're home! Oh, thank God, you're home!— but sidling, almost slinking, with her tail tucked down over her withers, as if expecting a blow (which she had never received) instead of a pat on the head. And yes, she was once more doing the Whining Thing. It had actually been going on since before the barrier. She'd stop for a couple of weeks, and Rusty would begin to hope it was over, and then it would start again, sometimes soft, sometimes loud. Tonight it was loud—or maybe it only seemed that way in the dark kitchen where the digital readouts on the stove and the microwave were out and the usual light Linda left on for him over the sink was dark.

'Stop it, girl,' he said. 'You'll wake the house.'

But Audrey wouldn't. She butted her head softly against his knee and looked up at him in the bright, narrow beam of light he held in his right hand. He would have sworn that was a pleading look.

'All right,' he said. 'All right, all right. Walkies.'

Her leash dangled from a peg beside the pantry door. As he went to get it (dropping the light around his neck to hang by the shoelace as he did), she skittered in front of him, more like a cat than a dog. If not for the flashlight, she might have tripped him up. That would have finished this whore of a day in grand fashion.

'Just a minute, just a minute, hold on.'

But she barked at him and backed away.

'Hush! Audrey, hush!'

Instead of hushing she barked again, the sound shockingly loud in the sleeping house. He jerked in surprise. Audrey darted forward and seized the leg of his pants in her teeth and began to back toward the hall, trying to pull him along.

Now intrigued, Rusty allowed himself to be led. When she saw he was coming, Audrey let go and ran to the stairs. She went up two, looked back, and barked again.

A light went on upstairs, in their bedroom. 'Rusty?' It was Lin, her voice muzzy.

'Yeah, it's me,' he called, keeping it as low as he could. 'Actually it's Audrey'

He followed the dog up the stairs. Instead of taking them at her usual all-out lope, Audrey kept pausing to look back. To dog-people, their animals' expressions are often perfectly readable, and what Rusty was seeing now was anxiety. Audrey's ears were laid flat, her tail still tucked. If this was the Whining Thing, it had been raised to a new level. Rusty suddenly wondered if there was a prowler in the house. The kitchen door had been locked, Lin was usually good about locking all the doors when she was alone with the girls, but—

Linda came to the head of the stairs, belting a white terry-cloth robe. Audrey saw her and barked again. A get-out-of-my-way bark.

'Audi, stop that!' she said, but Audrey ran past her, striking against Lin's right leg hard enough to knock her back against the wall. Then the golden ran down the hall toward the girls' room, where all was still quiet.

Lin fished her own mini-flashlight from a pocket of her robe. 'What in the name of heaven—'

'I think you better go back to the bedroom,' Rusty said.

'Like hell I will!' She ran down the hall ahead of him, the bright beam of the little light bouncing.

The girls were seven and five, and had recently entered what Lin called 'the feminine privacy phase.' Audrey reached their door, rose up, and began scratching on it with her front paws.

Rusty caught up with Lin just as she opened the door Audrey bounded in, not even giving Judy's bed a look. Their five-year-old was fast asleep, anyway.

Janelle wasn't asleep. Nor was she awake. Rusty understood everything the moment the two flashlight beams converged on her, and cursed himself for not realizing earlier what was happening, what must have been happening since August or maybe even July. Because the behavior Audrey had been exhibiting—the Whining Thing—was well documented. He just hadn't seen the truth when it was staring him in the face.

Janelle, eyes open but showing only whites, wasn't convulsing—thank God for that—but she was trembling all over. She had pushed the covers down with her feet, probably at onset, and in the double flashlight beams he could see a damp patch on her pajama bottoms. Her fingertips wiggled, as if she were loosening up to play the piano.

Audrey sat bv the bed, looking up at her little mistress with rapt attention.

'Vlltat's happening to her?' Linda screamed.

In the other bed Judy stirred and spoke. 'Mumma? Is it brefkus? Did I miss the bus?'

'She's having a seizure,' Rusty said.

' Well, help her!' Linda cried. 'Do something! Is she dying?'

'No,' Rusty said. The part of his brain that remained analytical knew this was almost certainly just petit mal—as the others must have been, or they would have known about this already, But it was different when it was one of your own.

Judy sat bolt upright in bed, spilling stuffed animals everywhere. Her eyes were wide and terrified, nor was she much comforted when Linda tore the child out of bed and clasped her in her arms.