The shock was overwhelming.
Together, the Four drifted in from the sea, searching for the radiation-blackened fields, the dead land. Instead they saw delicate greenness, carpets of untrodden grass, vaulting thick trees heavy with fruit. Animals grazed peacefully in the lush fields. In the distance, glimmering in the sun, low sloping mountains decked in green rose slowly from the horizon.
Birds sang. Wind whistled gently through the swaying trees. It was as if the hand of man had never approached this land.
Can the scars have healed so soon? Mary wondered. Hardly a century since the bombings destroyed the surface; could the wounds have been covered so rapidly? In wonder she guided the multiple mind down through the warm sky to the ground.
They came alight in a grassy field, sweet with the odor of springtime. Mary felt the tingle of awe. Beings were approaching, floating over the grass without crushing it—not the misshapen mutants some thought might have survived on the surface, but tall godlike beings, smiling their welcome.
A surge of joy rippled through Mary and through her into her three comrades. It would not be hard to teleport their bodies up from the depths. They could live here, in this pleasant land, quitting the confines of New Baltimore. She extended the range of her perception. In every direction lay beauty and peace, and never a sign of the destruction that had been.
Perhaps there was no war, she thought. The landside people sent our ancestors down into the depths and then hoaxed them.
And for a hundred years we thought the surface was deadly, radiation-seared, unlivable!
For the first time in her life Mary felt no rancor. Bitterness was impossible in this green world of landside. The sun warmed the fertile land, and all was well.
All-Sudden constricting impulses tugged at the thread of thought by which the four dreamers held contact with land-side.
“Mary, wake up! Come out of it.”
She struggled, but not even the combined strength of the Four could resist. Inexorably she found herself being dragged away, back down into the depths, into New Baltimore, into wakefulness.
She opened her eyes and sat up. On the other couches, Michael and Tom and Roger were groggily returning to awareness.
The room was crowded. Six members of the New Baltimore Control Force stood by the door, glaring grimly at her.
Mary tried to lash out, but she was outnumbered; they were six of the strongest Sensitives in New Baltimore, and the fierce grip they held on her mind was unbreakable.
“By what right do you come in here?” she asked, using her voice.
It was Norman Myrick of the Control Force who gave the reply: “Mary, we’ve been watching you for years. You’re under arrest on a charge of projecting beyond the boundaries of New Baltimore.”
The trial was a farce.
Henry Markell sat in judgment upon them, in the General Hall of the City of New Baltimore. Procedure was simple. Markell, a Sensitive, opened his mind to the accusing members of the Control Force long enough to receive the evidence against the Four.
Then he offered Mary and her three satellites the chance to assert their innocence by opening their minds to him. Sullenly, Mary refused on behalf of the Four. She knew the case was hopeless. If she allowed Markell to peer, their guilt was proven. If she refused, it was an equally tacit admission of guilt. Either way, the penalty loomed. But Mary hoped to retain the integrity of her mind. She had a plan, and a mind-probe would ruin it.
Decision was reached almost immediately after the trial had begun.
Markell said, “I have examined the evidence presented by the Control Force. They have shown that you, Mary, have repeatedly violated our security by making contact with other Domes, and now have inveigled three other Sensitives into joining you for a still bolder attempt. Will you speak now, Mary?”
“We have no defense.”
Markell sighed. “You certainly must be aware that our position under the Dome is a vulnerable one. We can never know when the madness that destroyed landside"—Mary smiled knowingly, saying nothing—"will return. We must therefore discourage unofficial contact between Domes by the most severe measures possible. We must retain our position of isolation.
“You, Mary, and your three confederates, have broken this law. The penalty is inevitable. Our borders are rigid here, our population fixed by inexorable boundaries. We cannot tolerate criminals here. The air and food you have consumed up to now is forfeit; four new individuals can be brought into being to replace you. I sentence you to death, you four. This evening you shall be conveyed to the West Aperture and cast through it into the sea.”
Mary glared in icy hatred as she heard the death sentence pronounced. Around her, members of the Control Force maintained constant check on her powers, keeping her from loosing a possibly fatal bolt of mental force at the judge or at anyone else. She was straitjacketed. She had no alternative but to submit.
But she had a plan.
They were taken to the West Aperture—a circular sphinctered opening in the framework of the Dome, used only for the purpose of execution. An airlock the size of a man served as the barrier between the pressing tons of the sea and the safety of New Baltimore.
The Four were placed in the airlock, one at a time.
The airlock opened—once, twice, thrice, a fourth time. Mary felt the coolness first, Michael next, then Roger, then Tom. Instantly her mind sought theirs.
“Listen to me! We can save ourselves yet!”
“How? The pressure—”
“Listen! We can link again; teleport ourselves to the surface. You’ve seen what it’s like up there. We can live there. Hurry, join with me!”
“The surface,” Roger said. “We can’t—”
“We can live there. Hurry!”
Michael objected, “Teleportation takes enormous energy. The backwash will smash the Dome. A whole section of the city will be flooded!”
“What do we care?” Mary demanded. “They condemned us to death, didn’t they? Well, I condemn them!”
There was no more time for arguing. Their interchange had taken but a microsecond. They were beginning to drift; in moments, the pressure would kill.
Mary made use of her superior Powers to gather the other three to her. Debating was impossible now. Ruthlessly she drew their minds into hers. She heard Roger’s faint protest, but swept it away. For the second time, the Four became One. Mary gathered strength for the giant leap, not even knowing if she could make it but not bothering to consider the possibility of failure now.
Upward.
The passage was instantaneous, as the four minds, linked in an exponential series, ripped upward through the boiling sea toward the surface. Toward the green, warm, fertile surface.
Toward the blackened, seared, radiation-roasted surface.
Mary had only an instant for surprise. The surface was not at all as her mind had viewed it. Congealed rivers of rock wound through the dark fields of ash. The sky hummed with radioactive particles. No life was visible.
Mary dropped to her knees in the blistering ash still warm from the 11 fires of a century before. The heavy particles lanced through her body. How can this be? she wondered. We saw green lands.
An impulse reached her from Roger, dying of radiation to her left:
. . . fooled you, Mary. Superior to you in one power, anyway. Imaginative projection. I blanked out real image, substituted phony one. You couldn’t tell the difference, could you? Happy dying, Mary . . .
She hissed her hatred and tried to reach him, to rip out his eyes with her nails, but strength failed her. She toppled face-forward, down against the terrible deadly soil of Mother Earth, and waited for the radiation death to overtake her.
Hoaxed, she thought bitterly.