what Brigid’s discovery might mean in the seats beside her. Domi missed Brigid; she had been her friend, and Domi found friends hard to come by. But Brigid had disappeared during a raid on the Cerberus redoubt, and now she was numbered among the missing while the mountain headquarters itself had been abandoned until it could be rebuilt and made secure.
Domi peered around, watching the smiling faces of the passersby as they made their way to their destinations. Everyone was dressed in light clothes, simple but elegant, the women in long skirts or summer dresses, the men in loose cotton shirts and slacks and shorts. Many of the men wore flowers in their shirt pockets, and some of the younger women had flowers in their hair, here and there in a complete ring like a fairy’s crown.
As the crowd flowed all around her like the current of a stream, Domi halted, closing her eyes and taking in the sweet scents of the flowers. Flowers decorated so much of the ville: flowering creepers wound up the ornate streetlights that lined the main street; flowers peeked from their perches in the hanging baskets that decorated the lights; flowers grew from pots lining the center of the road.
Domi relied upon her other senses as much as her eyes, and she allowed her mind to go blank in that moment, letting her impressions take over. Domi was a unique figure among the hurrying populace of Luilekkerville. Her skin and hair were the chalk-white of an albino, the hair trimmed short in a pixie-ish cut that highlighted the sharp planes of her cheekbones. She was a petite woman, barely five feet in height with bird-thin arms and legs. The floaty sundress she wore was colored burnt umber, sleeveless with its hem brushing the tops of her white ankles above bare feet, the small swell of her breasts pushing at its simple bodice. A matching ribbon of material had been wound around Domi’s left wrist, its lengths dangling down as she swung her arms. Although small, Domi was wiry, her body muscular beneath the unrestrictive flow of the material. She had secreted her favored weapon beneath the masking lines of the dress, a hunting knife in a sheath just above her left ankle. The blade was well hidden from a casual search, but she had been surprised that the Magistrates hadn’t even frisked her. With hindsight she wondered if she might have sneaked a blaster in Luilekkerville, too, but that had seemed too much risk for what should be a simple surveillance mission. She was out in the field alone here, and the last thing she wanted to do was to attract any extra attention that her ghoulish appearance didn’t already demand.
Domi breathed deeply for a moment, scenting the air and listening to the contented buzzing of insects amid the fluttering petals. The whole settlement had been rebuilt, constructed from the ashes of Snakefishville at a furious rate. Even now, behind the buzz of the honeybees and the chattering of conversation, Domi could hear hammering and sawing as construction workers continued to build the towering edifices that would dominate the skyline of Luilekkerville out here close to the Pacific coastline.
With its fresh air and happy population, the change in the ville seemed almost a bewitchment.
As Domi stood there, one of the passersby stopped in front of her. When Domi lifted her eyelids, two scarlet orbs reappeared like glistening rubies in her elfin face as she turned her attention to the stranger. The stranger was a beautiful woman of indeterminate middle years, a golden tan to her skin and smile lines around her eyes with a long lustrous mane of blond framing her pretty face. A small wicker basket depended from its hard straps under the woman’s right arm, its open bowl filled with freshly picked flowers. Domi watched in surprise as the woman reached into the basket and handed her a flower, its trimmed stem just an inch or so in length.
“For you,” the woman said, smiling brightly as she offered Domi the flower.
Domi reached out and plucked the flower from the woman’s hands, nodding in gratitude. “Thank you,” she said, surprise clear in her tone.
“Our love is solid as rock,” the woman recited with a warm smile before stepping past Domi and moving on down the street.
It was not often that a stranger approached Domi in such joyous circumstances. She had grown up a wild child of the Outlands and she was used to being singled out as a freak thanks to the albinism that distinguished her from the people around her. As Domi watched, the blonde woman continued along the street, handing out more flowers to the people crowding there, offering her chanted words before moving on to the next.
Domi peered at the flower, sniffing at its rich scent for a moment as she twisted its stem around and around between her fingers, making it spin. There was something going on here, just beneath the surface—an all-pervading attitude that seemed to have affected the populace of the born-again ville. The nine villes had always acted as a sort of safe haven, a shelter from the ravages that man had brought upon himself with the advent of the nukecaust and the Deathlands era that followed. They had grown up as a part of the Program of Unification, and had brought a much-needed regimentation to the lives of their residents. In total, forty-five thousand people had been spread equally across nine walled cities, and they had lived a harmonious existence. Yet the happiness on show here, the undercurrent of joy, was something Domi had never seen before. It was a happiness that transcended logic, a primitive happiness at simply being alive. It was sinister somehow, as if a mass brainwashing had taken place.
Domi stepped out of the way as three gallivanting children came hurrying past, laughing as they threw a weighted cloth bag back and forth among themselves. The oldest of them was perhaps nine years old, and she wore a daisy chain in her flowing black hair, in unconscious imitation of many of the adults who wandered along the street.
Domi watched as the children hurried on, wrapped up in their game of mutie-in-the-middle. Then she turned her attention back to the other people on the street, looking for patterns of behavior. The vast majority seemed to be heading in the direction of the center of town, and Domi scanned the broad street ahead until her eyes met with the cathedral that towered above everything. Its red window seemed to glow like the evening sun, a single bloodshot eye observing the populace of the ville. Even as she watched, Domi became aware of the tolling as a bell was struck, and then it came again after a few seconds’ pause, and again.
As the bell tolled, the citizenry of Luilekkerville seemed to turn as one, making their way more determinedly down the street toward the looming cathedral in the town center. Casting the flower aside in a waste receptacle at the side of the road, Domi joined the crowd, keeping her head down in that most simplistic of disguises—hiding in plain sight—as she made her way toward the cathedral.
Up close, the cathedral looked rough, its walls hewn from hard rock of a miserable brown-gray mix. Shingles covered its facade in a swirling pattern, as if washed up by crashing waves on a beach. The basso bell continued tolling from within, its single note calling the locals to worship, and Domi walked with them, furtively looking around. The locals seemed happy enough, laughing and jolly as they continued their friendly conversations. There were adults and children, old folks who needed sticks to help them walk just shuffling to the open doors of the cathedral that waited in the center of the ville. Some of the children ran or skipped along, and several of the adults skipped, too, one young couple laughing as they skipped hand in hand through the wide archway into the structure of the building. Other than the central tower, the cathedral was just two stories high, and the archway dominated its frontage, almost two stories at its apex and wide enough to drive a Sandcat assault vehicle through without touching the sides. There were no doors, Domi noted—the doorway remained open day and night, allowing free passage for those seeking entry. Perhaps that was a throwback to the days when this settlement had been Snakefishville, as the Program of Unification allowed for no locks on doors, no privacy for the individual, for privacy showed a lack of trust in one’s fellow man and lack of trust had been the overriding rationale of the Deathlands, that terrible time that had preceded this.
With one last glance behind her, Domi padded beneath the towering archway and into the body of the cathedral itself, the distinct aroma of flowers coming to her nostrils even as she stepped beneath the arch. It was darker inside, away from the morning
