TWENTY-TWO

She was trapped in some sort of gothic novel. And that was the least of her problems.

Allison Parker sat on an outcropping and looked off to the north. This far from the Dome the weather was as before, with maybe a bit more rain. If she looked neither right nor left, she could imagine that she was simply on a camping trip, taking her ease in the late morning coolness. Here she could imagine that Angus Quiller and Fred Torres were still alive, and that when she got back to Vandenberg, Paul Hoehler might be down from Livermore for a date.

But a glance to the left and she would see her rescuer's mansion, buried dark and deep in the trees. Even by day, there seemed something gloomy and alien about the building. Perhaps it was the owner. The old man, Naismith, seemed so furtive, so apparently gentle, yet still hiding some terrible secret or desire. And as in any gothic, his servants -themselves in their fifties - were equally furtive and closemouthed.

Of course, a lot of mysteries had been solved these last days, the greatest the first night. When she had brought the old man in, the servants had been very surprised. All they would say was that the "master will explain all that needs explaining." "The master" was nearly unconscious at the time, so that was little help. Otherwise they had treated her well, feeding her and giving her clean, though ill-fitting clothes. Her bedroom was almost a dormer, its windows half in and half out of the roof. The furniture was simple but elegant; the oiled burl dresser alone would have been worth

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thousands back... where she came from. She had sat on the bright patchwork quilt and thought darkly that there better be some explanations coming in the morning, or she was going to leg it back to the coast, unfriendly armies or no.

The huge house had been still and dead as the twilight deepened. Faint but clear against the silence, Allison could hear the sounds of applause and an audience laughing. It took her a second to realize that someone had turned on a television - though she hadn't seen a set during the day. Ha! Fifteen minutes of programming would probably tell her as much about this new universe as a month of talking to "Bill" and "Irma." She slid open her bedroom door and listened to the tiny, bright sounds:

The program was weirdly familiar, conjuring up memories of a time when she was barely tall enough to reach the "on" switch of her mother's TV "Saturday Night?" It was either that or something very similar. She listened a few moments more, heard references to actors, politicians who had died before she ever entered college. She walked down the stairs, and sat with the Moraleses through an evening of old TV shows.

They hadn't objected, and as the days passed they'd opened up about some things. This was the future, about a half-century forward of her present. They told her of the war and the plagues that ended her world, and the force fields, the "bobbles," that birthed the new one.

But while some things were explained, others became mysteries in themselves. The old man didn't socialize, though the Moraleses said that he was recovered. The house was big and there were many rooms whose doors stayed closed. He - and whoever else was in the house besides the servants - was avoiding her. Eerie. She wasn't welcome here. The Moraleses were not unfriendly and had let her take a good share of the chores, but behind them she sensed the old man wishing she would go away. At the same time, they couldn't afford to have her go. They feared the occupying armies, the "Peace Authority," as much as she did; if she were captured, their hiding place would be found. So they continued to be her uneasy hosts.

She had seen the old man scarcely a handful of times since the first afternoon, and never to talk to. He was in the mansion though. She heard his voice behind closed doors,

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