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He couldn't, of course the skydome was still at least twenty feet above him but it would be easy
enough to shoot up an arrow, to watch it clatter against the invisible roof.
The sky was unchanged. The stars were a thin, irregular sprinkling, hardly disturbing the sky's deep
emptiness. Most of the stars were dull red points of light, like drops of blood, that were often difficult to
see.
Uvarov had never shown interest in the stars before; now, suddenly, he'd ordered Arrow Maker to
climb the trees, telling him to expect a sky blazing with stars, white, yellow and blue. Well, he'd been
quite wrong.
Maker felt that old Uvarov was important: precious, like a talisman. But, as the years wore by, his
words and imperatives seemed increasingly irrational.
Maker looked for the sky patterns he'd grown to know since his boyhood. There were the three stars,
of a uniform brightness, in a neat row; there the familiar circle of stars dominated by a bright, scarlet
gleam.
Nothing had changed in the sky above him, in the stars beyond the dome. Arrow Maker didn't even
know what Uvarov was expecting him to find.
He clambered down into the bulk of the kapok treetop, so that there was a comforting layer of greenery
between himself and the bare sky. Then he tied himself to the trunk with a loop of rope, laid his head
against a pillowing arm and waited for sleep.
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The klaxon's oscillating wail echoed off the houses, the empty streets, the walls of the sky.
Morrow woke immediately.
For a moment he lay in bed, staring into the sourceless illumination which bathed the ceiling above him.
Waking, at least, was easy. Some mornings the klaxon failed to sound it was as imperfect and liable to
failure as every other bit of equipment in the world but on those mornings Morrow found his eyes
opening on time, just as usual. He pictured his brain as a worn, ancient thing, with grooves of habit
ground into its surface. He woke at the same time, every day.
Just as he had for the last five centuries.
Stiffly he swung his legs from his pallet and stood up. He started to think through the shift ahead. Today
he was due for an interview with Planner Milpitas yet another interview,he thought and he felt his
heart sink.
He walked to the window and swung his arms back and forth to generate a little circulation in his upper
body. From his home here on Deck Two Morrow could make out, through the open, multilayered
flooring, some details of Deck Three below; he looked down over houses, factories, offices
and looming above all the other buildings the imposing shoulders of the Planner Temples, scattered
across the split levels like blocky clouds. Beyond the buildings and streets stood the walls of the world:
sheets of metal, ribbed for strength. And over it all lay the multilevelled sky, a lid of girders and panels,
enclosing and oppressive.
He worked through his morning rituals washing, shaving his face and scalp, taking some dull, high-fiber
food. He dressed in his cleanest standard-issue dungarees. Then he set off for his appointment with
Planner Milpitas.
The community occupied two Decks, Two and Three. The inhabited Decks were laid out following a
circular geometry, in a pattern of sectors and segments divided from each other by roads tracing out
chords and radii. Deck Four, the level beneath Three, was accessible but uninhabited; Superet had long
ago decreed that it be used as a source of raw materials. And there was also one level above, called
Deck One, which was also uninhabited but served other purposes.
Morrow had no idea what lay above Deck One, or below Deck Four. The Planners didn't encourage
curiosity.
There were few people about as he crossed the Deck. He walked, of course; the world was only a mile
across, so walking or cycling almost always sufficed. Morrow lived in Segment 2, an undesirable slice of
the Deck close to the outer hull. The Temple was in Sector 3 almost diametrically opposite, but close
to the heart of the Deck. Morrow was able to cut down the radial walkways, past Sector 5, and walk
almost directly to the Temple.
Much of Sector 4 was still known as Poole Park a name which had been attached to it since the ship's
launch, Morrow had heard. There was nothing very park-like about it now, though. Morrow, in no hurry
to be early for Milpitas, walked slowly past rows of poor, shack-like dwellings and shops. The shops
bore the names of their owners and their wares, but also crude, vivid paintings of the goods to be
obtained inside. Here and there, between the walls of the shops, weeds and wild flowers struggled to
survive. He passed a couple of maintenance 'bots: low-slung trolleys fitted with brushes and scoops,
toiling their way down the worn streets.
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The rows of small dwellings, the boxy shops and meeting places, the libraries and factories, looked as
they always did: not drab, exactly each night everything was cleansed by the rain machines but
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