Inside the translucent dome, tall shapes showed as shadows, indistinct and strange. Between the edge of the cliff and the dome there was no cover, nor was there any other approach. Snake became painfully aware of her visibility, for she was standing silhouetted against the sky.
The crazy clambered up beside her. “We follow the path,” he said, pointing across the flat-leaves that no trail parted. In more than one place dark veins of crawlies cut the line he indicated.
Snake stepped forward and put her boot carefully on the edge of a flat-leaf. Nothing happened. It was no different from stepping on an ordinary leaf. Beneath it, the ground felt as solid as any other stone.
The crazy passed her, striding toward the dome. Snake grabbed his shoulder.
“The dreamsnakes!” he cried. “You promised!”
“Have you forgotten that North banished you? If you could just come back here, why did you look for me?”
The crazy stared at the ground. “He won’t like to see me,” he whispered.
“Stay behind me,” she said. “Everything will be all right.”
Snake started across the barely yielding leaves, placing her feet cautiously in case the wide red sheets hid a crack the blue creepers had not yet taken over. The crazy followed.
“North likes new people,” he said. “He likes it when they come and ask him to let them dream.” His voice grew wistful. “Maybe he’ll like me again.”
Snake’s boots left marks on the red flat-leaves, blazing her path across the outcropping that held the broken dome. She only looked back once: her footsteps lay in livid purple bruises against red all the way back to the cliff edge. The crazy’s trail was much fainter. He crept along behind her, a little to one side so he could always see the dome, not quite as frightened of this person North as he was attracted by the dreamsnakes.
The oblong bubble was even larger than it looked from the cliff. Its translucent flank rose in an immense and gentle curve to the highest point of the surface, many times Snake’s height. The side she approached was streaked with multicolored veins. They did not fade to the original gray until they reached the far end of the dome, a long way to Snake’s right. To her left, the streaks grew brighter as they approached the structure’s narrower end.
Snake reached the dome. The flat-leaves grew up along its sides to the level of her knees, but above that the plastic was clean. Snake put her face up close to the wall, peering between a stripe of orange and one of purple, cutting off the exterior light with her hands, but the shapes inside were still indistinct and strange. Nothing moved.
She followed the intensifying bands of color.
As she rounded the narrow end, she saw why it was called the broken dome. Whatever had melted the surface had a power Snake could not comprehend, for it had also blasted an opening in a material she believed indestructible. The rainbow streaks radiated from the hole along buckled plastic. The heat must have crystallized the substance, for the edges of the opening had broken away, leaving a huge, jagged entrance. Globs of plastic, fluorescent colors glowing between the leaves of alien plants, lay all over the ground.
Snake approached the entrance cautiously. The crazy began his half-humming moan again.
“Sh-h!” Snake did not turn back, but he subsided.
Fascinated, Snake climbed through the hole. She felt the sharp edges against her palms but did not really notice them. Beyond the opening, where the side wall, when intact, had curved inward to form the roof, an entire archway of plastic was slumped to barely more than Snake’s height. Here and there the plastic had run and dripped and formed ropes from ceiling to floor. Snake reached out and touched one gently. It thrummed like a giant harp string, and she grabbed it quickly to silence it.
The light inside was reddish and eerie; Snake kept blinking her eyes, trying to clear her vision. But nothing was wrong with her sight except that it could not become accustomed to the alien landscape. The dome had enclosed an alien jungle, now gone wild, and many more species than crawlies and flat-leaves crowded the ground. A great vine with a stem bigger around than the largest tree Snake had ever seen climbed up the wall, huge suckers probing the now brittle plastic, punching through to precarious holds in the dome. The vine spread a canopy across the ceiling, its bluish leaves tiny and delicate, its flowers tremendous but made up of thousands of white petals even smaller than the leaves.
Snake moved farther inside, to where the melting, less severe, had not collapsed the ceiling. Here and there a vine had crept up the edge, then, where the plastic was both too strong to break and too slick to grasp, dropped back to earth. After the vines, the trees took over, or what passed for trees inside the dome. One stood on a hummock nearby: a tangled mass of woody stalks, or limbs, piled and twisted far above Snake’s head, spreading slowly as it rose to shape the plant into a cone.
Recalling the crazy’s vague description, Snake pointed toward a central hill that rose almost to touch the plastic sky. “That way, hm?” She found herself whispering.
Crouched behind her, the crazy mumbled something that sounded affirmative. Snake set out, passing beneath the lacy shadows of the tangle-trees and through occasional areas of colored light where the dome’s rainbow wounds filtered sunlight. As Snake walked she listened carefully, for the sound of another human voice, for the faint hissing of nested serpents, for anything. But even the air was still.
The ground began to rise: they reached the foot of the hill. Here and there black volcanic rock pierced the topsoil, the alien earth for all Snake knew. It looked ordinary enough, but the plants growing from it did not. Here the ground cover looked like fine brown hair and had the same slick texture. The crazy led on, following a trail that was not there. Snake trudged after him. The hillside steepened and sweat beaded on her forehead. Her knee began to ache again. She cursed softly under her breath. A pebble rolled beneath the hair plants she stepped on and her boot slipped out from under her. Snake snatched at the grass to break her fall. It held long enough to steady her, but when she stood again she held a handful of the thin stalks. Each piece had its own delicate root, as if it really were hair.
They climbed higher, and still no one challenged them. The sweat on Snake’s forehead dried: the air was growing cooler. The crazy, grinning and mumbling to himself, climbed more eagerly. The coolness became a whisper of air running downhill like water. Snake had expected the hilltop, right up under the crown of the dome, to be warm with trapped heat. But the higher she climbed, the colder and stronger the breeze became.
They passed through the area of hill-hair and entered another stand of trees. These were similar to the ones below, formed of tangled branches and compact twisted roots, with tiny fluttering leaves. Here, though, they grew only a few meters high, and they clustered together in small groves of three or more, deforming each other’s symmetry. The forest thickened. Finally, winding between the twisted trunks, a pathway appeared. As the forest closed in over her, Snake caught up with the crazy and stopped him.
“From now on stay behind me, all right?”
He nodded without looking at her.
The dome diffused sunlight so nothing cast a shadow, and the light was barely bright enough to penetrate the twisting, knotted branches overhead. Tiny leaves shivered in the cold breeze blowing through the forest corridor. Snake moved forward. The rocks beneath her boots had given way to a soft trail of humus and fallen leaves.
To the right a tremendous chunk of rock rose up out of the hillside at a gentle slant, forming a ledge that would overlook the larger part of the dome. Snake considered climbing out on it, but it would put her in full view. She did not want North and his people to be able to accuse her of spying, nor did she want them to know of her presence until she walked into their camp. Pressing on, she shivered, for the breeze had become a cold wind.