Under the Dome

“No!” Barbie shouted. Julia was looking at him with concern, but he was hardly aware of it. “No, I don’t want it!”

“Yeah, but you’ve got it,” Cox said calmly. “I’m going to e-mail a copy of the essential paperwork to your editor friend before we shut down your unfortunate little town’s Internet capacity.”

“Shut it down? You can’t shut it down!”

“The paperwork is signed by the President himself. Are you going to say no to him? I understand he can be a tad grumpy when he’s crossed.”

Barbie didn’t reply. His mind was whirling.

“You need to visit the Selectmen and the Police Chief,” Cox said. “You need to tell them the President has invoked martial law in Chester’s Mill, and you’re the officer in charge. I’m sure you’ll encounter some initial resistance, but the information I’ve just given you should help establish you as the town’s conduit to the outside world. And I know your powers of persuasion. Saw them firsthand in Iraq.”

“Sir,” he said. “You have so misread the situation here.” He ran a hand through his hair. His ear was throbbing from the goddamned cell phone. “It’s as if you can comprehend the idea of the Dome, but not what’s happening in this town as a result of it. And it’s been less than thirty hours.”

“Help me understand, then.”

“You say the President wants me to do this. Suppose I were to call him up and tell him he can kiss my rosy red ass?”

Julia was looking at him, horrified, and this actually inspired him.

“Suppose, in fact, I said I was a sleeper Al Qaeda agent, and I was planning to kill him—pow, one to the head. How about that?”

“Lieutenant Barbara—Colonel Barbara, I mean—you’ve said enough.”

Barbie did not feel this was so. “Could he send the FBI to come and grab me? The Secret Service? The goddam Red Army? No, sir. He could not.”

“We have plans to change that, as I have just explained.” Cox no longer sounded loose and good-humored, jest one ole grunt talkin to another.

“And if it works, feel free to have the federal agency of your choice come and arrest me. But if we stay cut off, who in here’s going to listen to me? Get it through your head: this town has seceded. Not just from America but from the whole world. There’s nothing we can do about it, and nothing you can do about it either.”

Quietly, Cox said: “We’re trying to help you guys.”

“You say that and I almost believe you. Will anybody else around here? When they look to see what kind of help their taxes are buying them, they see soldiers standing guard with their backs turned. That sends a hell of a message.”

“You’re talking a whole lot for someone who’s saying no.”

“I’m not saying no. But I’m only about nine feet from being arrested, and proclaiming myself the commandant pro tem won’t help.”

“Suppose I were to call the First Selectman… what’s his name… Sanders… and tell him…”

“That’s what I mean about how little you know. It’s like Iraq all over again, only this time you’re in Washington instead of boots on the ground, and you seem as clueless as the rest of the desk soldiers. Read my lips, sir: some intelligence is worse than no intelligence at all.”

“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” Julia said dreamily.

“If not Sanders, then who?”

“James Rennie. The Second Selectman. He’s the Boss Hog around here.”

There was a pause. Then Cox said, “Maybe we can give you the Internet. Some of us are of the opinion that cutting it off’s just a knee-jerk reaction, anyway.”

“Why would you think that?” Barbie asked. “Don’t you guys know that if you let us stay on the Net, Aunt Sarah’s cranberry bread recipe is sure to get out sooner or later?”

Julia sat up straight and mouthed, They’re trying to cut the Internet? Barbie raised one finger toward her—Wait.

“Just hear me out, Barbie. Suppose we call this Rennie and tell him the Internet’s got to go, so sorry, crisis situation, extreme measures, et cetera, et cetera. Then you can convince him of your usefulness by changing our minds.”

Barbie considered. It might work. For a while, anyway. Or it might not.

“Plus,” Cox said brightly, “you’ll be giving them this other information. Maybe saving some lives, but saving people the scare of their lives, for sure.”

Barbie said, “Phones stay up as well as Internet.”

“That’s hard. I might be able to keep the Net for you, but… listen, man. There are at least five Curtis LeMay types sitting on the committee presiding over this mess, and as far as they’re concerned, everyone in Chester’s Mill is a terrorist until proved otherwise.”

“What can these hypothetical terrorists do to harm America? Suicide-bomb the Congo Church?”

“Barbie, you’re preaching to the choir.”

Of course that was probably the truth.

“Will you do it?”

“I’ll have to get back to you on that. Wait for my call before you do anything. I have to talk to the late Police Chief’s widow first.”

Cox persisted. “Will you keep the horse-trading part of this conversation to yourself?”