called it Mount Vandenberg. The old man Naismith ў the one who even now was
whistling aimlessly as his servant drove their wagon into the hills ў he had
called it the Vandenberg Bobble. But whatever they called it, it transcended the
name.
In its size and perfection it seemed to transcend nature itself. From Santa
Barbara he had seen it. It was a hemisphere at least twenty kilometers across.
Where it fell into the Pacific, Wili could see multiple lines of moonlit surf
breaking soundlessly against its curving arc. On its inland side, the lake they
called Lompoc was still and dark.
Perfect, perfect. The shape was an abstraction beyond reality. Its
mirror-perfect surface caught the moon and held it in a second image, just as
clear as the first. And so the night had two moons, one very high in the sky,
the other shining from the dome. Out in the sea, the more normal reflection was
a faint silver bar lying straight to the ocean's horizon. Three moon's worth of
light in all! During the day, the vast mirror captured the sun in a similar way.
Larry Faulk claimed the farmers planted their lands to take advantage of the
double sunlight.
Who had made Vandenberg Dome? The One True God? Some Jonque or Anglo god? And if
made by man, how? What could be inside? Wili dozed, imagining the burglary of
all burglaries ў to get inside and steal what treasures would be hidden by a
treasure so great as that Dome...
When he woke, they were in the forest, rolling upward still, the trees deep and
dark around them. The taller pines moved and spoke unsettlingly in the wind.
This was more of a forest than he had ever seen. The real moon was low now; an
occasional splash of silver shouldered past the branches and lay upon further
trees, glistening on their needles. Over his head, a band of night, brighter
than the trees, was visible. The stars were there.
The Anglo's servant had slowed the horse. The ancient concrete road was gone;
the path was scarcely wide enough for the cart. Wili tried to face forward, but
the blankets and remaining effects of the cop's stunner prevented this. Now the
old man spoke quietly into the darkness. Password! Wili doubled forward to see
if the cops had discovered his other knife. No. It was still there, strapped to
the inside of his calf. Old men running labor camps were something he knew a lot
about from L.A. He was one slave this old man was not going to own.
After a moment, a woman's voice came back, cheerfully telling them to come
ahead. The horse took up its former pace. Wili saw no sign of the speaker.
The cart turned through the next switchback, its tires nearly soundless in the
carpet of pine needles that layered the road. Another hundred meters, another
turn, and ў
It was a palace! Trees and vines closed in on all sides of the structure, but it
was clearly a palace, though more open than the fortresses of the Jonque jefes
in Los Angeles. Those lords usually rebuilt pre-Crash mansions, installed
electrified fences and machine gun nests for security. This place was old, too,
but in other ways strange. There was no outward sign of defenses ў which could
only mean that the owner must control the land for kilometers all around. But
Wili had seen no guardian forts on their trip up here. These northerners could
not be as stupid and defenseless as they seemed.
The cart drove the length of the mansion. The trail broadened into a clearing
before the entrance, and Wili had the best view yet. It was smaller than the
palaces of L.A. If the inner court was a reasonable size, then it couldn't house
