Under the Dome

“Thank you, sir.” Although Barbie doubted Cox would actually spill everything. The Army never told everything it knew. Or thought it knew.

“We’re calling it the Dome,” Cox said, “but it’s not a Dome. At least, we don’t think it is. We think it’s a capsule whose edges conform exactly to the borders of the town. And I do mean exactly.”

“Do you know how high it goes?”

“It appears to top out at forty-seven thousand and change. We don’t know if the top is flat or rounded. At least not yet.”

Barbie said nothing. He was flabbergasted.

“As to how deep… who knows. All we can say now is more than a hundred feet. That’s the current depth of an excavation we’re making on the border between Chester’s Mill and the unincorporated township to the north.”

“TR-90.” To Barbie’s ears, his voice sounded dull and listless.

“Whatever. We started in a gravel pit that was already dug down to forty feet or so. I’ve seen spectrographic images that blow my mind. Long sheets of metamorphic rock that have been sheared in two. There’s no gap, but you can see a shift where the northern part of the sheet dropped a little. We’ve checked seismographic reports from the Portland meteorological station, and bingo. There was a bump at eleven forty-four AM. Two point one on the Richter. So that’s when it happened.”

“Great,” Barbie said. He supposed he was being sarcastic, but he was too amazed and perplexed to be sure.

“None of this is conclusive, but it’s persuasive. Of course the exploring has just started, but right now it does look as if the thing is down as well as up. And if it goes up five miles…”

“How do you know that? Radar?”

“Negative, this thing doesn’t show on radar. There’s no way of telling it’s there until you hit it, or until you’re so close you can’t stop. The human toll when the thing went up was remarkably low, but you’ve got one hell of a bird-kill around the edges. Inside and outside.”

“I know. I’ve seen them.” Julia was done with her pictures now. She was standing next to him, listening to Barbie’s end of the conversation. “So how do you know how high it is? Lasers?”

“No, they also shoot right through. We’ve been using missiles with dummy warheads. We’ve been flying F-15A sorties out of Bangor since four this afternoon. Surprised you didn’t hear them.”

“I might have heard something,” Barbie said. “But my mind was occupied with other things.” Like the airplane. And the pulp-truck. The dead people out on Route 117. Part of the remarkably low human toll.

“They kept bouncing off… and then, at forty-seven thousand plus, just zippity-zoom, up up and away. Between you and me, I’m surprised we didn’t lose any of those fighter-jocks.”

“Have you actually overflown it yet?”

“Less than two hours ago. Mission successful.”

“Who did it, Colonel?”

“We don’t know.”

“Was it us? Is this an experiment that went wrong? Or, God help us, some kind of test? You owe me the truth. You owe this town the truth. These people are goddam terrified.”

“Understood. But it wasn’t us.”

“Would you know if it was?”

Cox hesitated. When he next spoke, his voice was lower. “We have good sources in my department. When they fart in the NSA, we hear it. The same is true about Group Nine at Langley and a couple of other little deals you never heard of.”

It was possible that Cox was telling the truth. And it was possible he wasn’t. He was a creature of his calling, after all; if he had been drawing sentry duty out here in the chilly autumn dark with the rest of the pogeybait Marines, Cox too would have been standing with his back turned. He wouldn’t have liked it, but orders were orders.

“Any chance it’s some sort of natural phenomenon?” Barbie asked.

“One that conforms exactly to the man-made borders of a whole town? Every nook and fucking cranny? What do you think?”

“I had to ask. Is it permeable? Do you know?”

“Water goes through,” Cox said. “A little, anyway.”

“How is that possible?” Although he’d seen for himself the weird way water behaved; both he and Gendron had seen it.

“We don’t know, how could we?” Cox sounded exasperated. “We’ve been working on this less than twelve hours. People here are slapping themselves on the back just for figuring out how high it goes. We may figure it out, but for now we just don’t know.”

“Air?”

“Air goes through to a greater degree. We’ve set up a monitoring station where your town borders on… mmm…” Faintly, Barbie heard paper rustle. “Harlow. They’ve done what they call ‘puff tests.’ I guess that must measure outgoing air pressure against what bounces back. Anyway, air goes through, and a lot more freely than water does, but the scientists say still not completely. This is going to severely fuck up your weather, pal, but nobody can say how much or how bad. Hell, maybe it’ll turn Chester’s Mill into Palm Springs.” He laughed, rather feebly.

“Particulates?” Barbie thought he knew the answer to that one.