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Right—I fucking bet,Sev thought. So it seemed that their best chance of seeing the Prophet up close was to make it to through their initiation period so they could enter the Inner Sanctum and have a Binding Ceremony. He wondered if he and Mia could make it that long in this place and decided they would just have to manage somehow.
Just as he was thinking that, the brilliant light at the top of the Dome began to dim and shimmer. Soon the whole Dome was plunged into a warm, orange glow that reminded Sev of sunset back on Earth.
“Oh—there goes the star—the Evening Dimming is upon us!” Brother Jonash remarked. “Come on—we’d better get you to your Smart Bungalow.”
They descended the path, which led them quite close to the vast, shimmering wall of the Dome at one point. Mia put out one curious finger but Brother Jonash exclaimed, “Don’t!” before she could touch it.
“Sorry!” Mia drew back at once.
“Would it hurt if we touched it?” Sev asked, frowning. “Do the walls of the Dome deliver some kind of a shock?”
“Well no, but the walls are one-way permeable,” Brother Jonash explained. “Meaning that anything you poke through the wall of the Dome cannot be pulled back. That’s why it’s shielded by high fences in most places—especially the children’s quarter,” he explained. “We don’t want anyone accidentally leaning on it—it only takes a second to be cast out into the outer darkness of the Endless Desert. And once that happens, it’s doubtful if anyone can get to you in time and bring you back in before you succumb to the intense cold or the thin atmosphere.” He shook his head. “Unfortunately, it’s not an uncommon accident here.”
“I see—no touching. Got it,” Sev murmured.
“Exactly.” Brother Jonash shot Mia a baleful look and continued to lead them down the path, away from the Dome wall and into the long rows of white domiciles.
Quite a few males—most of them with light blue skin and silver hair—were also walking along the path between the white dome houses. Some looked tired or dirty but no one looked exactly unhappy, Sev thought, scanning their faces. With few exceptions, their mates greeted them at the doorways of their houses. All of the females were wearing the loose, white dresses that fell to their calves which he’d noted in the PPP ads.
He saw something strange as they walked past one of the white domes. A husband and wife seemed to be having some kind of argument or problem. The man pointed at his wife and said something too low for Sev to catch. She gave him a mutinous look, but knelt at once at his feet with her head bowed.
The domestic tableau was easy to see, since the wife had come out into the little patch of green yard that surrounded their domicile to meet her husband. But no one walking by seemed to think there was anything unusual going on. Sev and Mia were the only ones who stared and Sev saw the startled expression on his partner’s face.
Before they could find out what was happening with the couple, however, Brother Jonash turned a corner and they found themselves walking down the path along a whole new row of white dome houses.
“Ah, here we are!” he said at last, leading them down the narrow walkway to a domicile that looked the same as any of the others to Sev. “Your new Smart Bungalow!” He threw open the door with a flourish. “You’ll never want to leave it.”
EIGHT
MIA
The men walked inside first—clearly there was no “ladies first” policy in the PPP, Mia thought dryly. She didn’t blame Sev though—her partner was just trying to fit in. Brother Jonash, however, was rude, misogynistic, and irritating in theextreme. The tall, gangly Elder with the beaky nose got on her nerves with his “piety” and his talk about “Rules of Conduct” which apparently only applied to women.
Well, rules like that would make excellent evidence for the World Council that the PPP was a cult. Mia intended to find the entire list of rules and study them so she could repeat them back to Commander Sylvan in detail.
Inside, the Smart Bungalow looked much like the interior shots they’d seen on the PPP Outernet ad, she thought. There was a sleek white loveseat, just big enough for two, and a small, rounded fireplace filled with pale blue stones that gave off a gentle glow. There was a flat screen on the wall over it and she wondered what kind of entertainment they had here—nothing secular, she was sure of that.
Against the back wall of the living room area was something Mia hadn’t seen in the ad. It appeared to be a kind of leather mat, a little shorter and thicker than a yoga mat. At one end there were two coils of tubing that had small metal cups attached to them. The tubing led down into the mat, which was about two inches thick.
“What’s this for?” she asked, walking over to it.
But Brother Jonash had already led Sev into the next part of the house, so there was no answer. Frowning, Mia leaned down and picked up one of the small cups. She looked inside and found that there was an opening at the end, leading down into the tubing. Were they some kind of suction cups? And if so, what the hell were they for?
“But where has your wife gotten to?” Brother Jonash’s voice, filled with disapproval, drifted from the other room. “She’s going to need to know how to work the food prep assembly since her work will be in your home.”
Sev stuck his head out of the rounded archway that led from the living area into the rest of the house.
“Mia?”
“Coming.” Swallowing down both her irritation and her curiosity, Mia put the metal suction cup and the tubing attached to it back on the leather mat and rose to join her partner.
“Ah, here you are, Sister Mia,” Brother Jonash exclaimed when she walked through the archway. “Good—I was saying to your husband that a good wife needs to know how to work the food prep assembly.”
He was standing beside a system of large, polished brass tubes as he spoke. There were three of them, Mia noted. Two were large and fat and curved around so that they rested on the counter itself with their dinner-plate-sized openings pointing outward but the one in the middle hung straight down from the ceiling and was much thinner and smaller than the other two.
“Well, I’ve never been much of a cook,” she said doubtfully. “And none of this looks remotely like what I have back home…”
“You’ll learn your duties soon enough,” Brother Jonash said shortly. “Now, see here—I’m programming in the food needs for two people.” He pointed to a touch screen on the side of the largest of the three tubes. “The instructions are simple enough—one man and one woman…” He glanced up at Sev. “I’ll be sure to make that oneextralarge man—you look like you have a good appetite, Brother.”
