Part 2

"_A sound foreign policy_," the leader said, aware that no one else had obtained the insight. "If a sound foreign policy can't be created the only alternative is not to have any foreign policy at all. Thus the movement into domes began--_by common consent of the governments_. This is known as self-containment."

Dialectically out in left field, Humphrey Fownes waited for a lull in the ensuing discussion and then politely inquired how it might be arranged for him to get out.

"Out?" the leader said, frowning. "Out? Out where?"

"Outside the dome."

"Oh. All in good time, my friend. One day we shall all pick up and leave."

"And that day I'll await impatiently," Fownes replied with marvelous tact, "because it will be lonely out there for the two of us. My future wife and I have to leave _now_."

"Nonsense. Ridiculous! You have to be prepared for the Open Country. You can't just up and leave, it would be suicide, Fownes. And dialectically very poor."

"Then you _have_ discussed preparations, the practical necessities of life in the Open Country. Food, clothing, a weapon perhaps? What else? Have I left anything out?"

The leader sighed. "The gentleman wants to know if he's left anything out," he said to the group.

Fownes looked around at them, at some dozen pained expressions.

"Tell the man what he's forgotten," the leader said, walking to the far window and turning his back quite pointedly on them.

Everyone spoke at the same moment. "_A sound foreign policy_," they all said, it being almost too obvious for words.

* * * * *

On his way out the librarian shouted at him: "_A Tale of a Tub_, thirty-five years overdue!" She was calculating the fine as he closed the door.

Humphrey Fownes' preoccupation finally came to an end when he was one block away from his house. It was then that he realized something unusual must have occurred. An orange patrol car of the security police was parked at his front door. And something else was happening too.

His house was dancing.

It was disconcerting, and at the same time enchanting, to watch one's residence frisking about on its foundation. It was such a strange sight that for the moment he didn't give a thought to what might be causing it. But when he stepped gingerly onto the porch, which was doing its own independent gavotte, he reached for the doorknob with an immense curiosity.

The door flung itself open and knocked him back off the porch.

From a prone position on his miniscule front lawn, Fownes watched as his favorite easy chair sailed out of the living room on a blast of cold air and went pinwheeling down the avenue in the bright sunshine. A wild wind and a thick fog poured out of the house. It brought chairs, suits, small tables, lamps trailing their cords, ashtrays, sofa cushions. The house was emptying itself fiercely, as if disgorging an old, spoiled meal. From deep inside he could hear the rumble of his ancient upright piano as it rolled ponderously from room to room.

He stood up; a wet wind swept over him, whipping at his face, toying with his hair. It was a whistling in his ears, and a tingle on his cheeks. He got hit by a shoe.

As he forced his way back to the doorway needles of rain played over his face and he heard a voice cry out from somewhere in the living room.

"Help!" Lieutenant MacBride called.

Standing in the doorway with his wet hair plastered down on his dripping scalp, the wind roaring about him, the piano rumbling in the distance like thunder, Humphrey Fownes suddenly saw it all very clearly.

"_Winds_," he said in a whisper.

"What's happening?" MacBride yelled, crouching behind the sofa.

"_March_ winds," he said.

"What?!"

"April showers!"

The winds roared for a moment and then MacBride's lost voice emerged from the blackness of the living room. "These are _not_ Optimum Dome Conditions!" the voice wailed. "The temperature is _not_ 59 degrees. The humidity is _not_ 47%!"

* * * * *

Fownes held his face up to let the rain fall on it. "Moonlight!" he shouted. "Roses! My _soul_ for a cocktail for two!" He grasped the doorway to keep from being blown out of the house.

"Are you going to make it stop or aren't you!" MacBride yelled.

"You'll have to tell me what you did first!"

"I _told_ him not to touch that wheel! Lanfierre. He's in the upstairs bedroom!"

When he heard this Fownes plunged into the house and fought his way up the stairs. He found Lanfierre standing outside the bedroom with a wheel in his hand.

"What have I done?" Lanfierre asked in the monotone of shock.

Fownes took the wheel. It was off a 1995 Studebaker.

"I'm not sure what's going to come of this," he said to Lanfierre with an astonishing amount of objectivity, "but the entire dome air supply is now coming through my bedroom."

The wind screamed.

"Is there something I can turn?" Lanfierre asked.

"Not any more there isn't."

They started down the stairs carefully, but the wind caught them and they quickly reached the bottom in a wet heap.

Recruiting Lieutenant MacBride from behind his sofa, the men carefully edged out of the house and forced the front door shut.

The wind died. The fog dispersed. They stood dripping in the Optimum Dome Conditions of the bright avenue.

"I never figured on _this_," Lanfierre said, shaking his head.

With the front door closed the wind quickly built up inside the house. They could see the furnishing whirl past the windows. The house did a wild, elated jig.

"What kind of a place _is_ this?" MacBride said, his courage beginning to return. He took out his notebook but it was a soggy mess. He tossed it away.

"Sure, he was _different_," Lanfierre murmured. "I knew that much."

When the roof blew off they weren't really surprised. With a certain amount of equanimity they watched it lift off almost gracefully, standing on end for a moment before toppling to the ground. It was strangely slow motion, as was the black twirling cloud that now rose out of the master bedroom, spewing shorts and socks and cases every which way.

"_Now_ what?" MacBride said, thoroughly exasperated, as this strange black cloud began to accelerate, whirling about like some malevolent top....

* * * * *

Humphrey Fownes took out the dust jacket he'd found in the library. He held it up and carefully compared the spinning cloud in his bedroom with the illustration. The cloud rose and spun, assuming the identical shape of the illustration.

"It's a twister," he said softly. "A Kansas twister!"

"What," MacBride asked, his bravado slipping away again, "what ... is a twister?"

The twister roared and moved out of the bedroom, out over the rear of the house toward the side of the dome. "It says here," Fownes shouted over the roaring, "that Dorothy traveled from Kansas to Oz in a twister and that ... and that Oz is a wonderful and mysterious land _beyond the confines of everyday living_."

MacBride's eyes and mouth were great zeros.

"Is there something I can turn?" Lanfierre asked.

Huge chunks of glass began to fall around them.

"Fownes!" MacBride shouted. "This is a direct order! Make it go back!"

But Fownes had already begun to run on toward the next house, dodging mountainous puffs of glass as he went. "Mrs. Deshazaway!" he shouted. "Yoo-hoo, Mrs. Deshazaway!"

The dome weevils were going berserk trying to keep up with the precipitation. They whirred back and forth at frightful speed, then, emptied of molten glass, rushed to the Trough which they quickly emptied and then rushed about empty-handed. "Yoo-hoo!" he yelled, running. The artificial sun vanished behind the mushrooming twister. Optimum temperature collapsed. "Mrs. Deshazaway! _Agnes_, will you marry me? Yoo-hoo!"

Lanfierre and Lieutenant MacBride leaned against their car and waited, dazed.

There was quite a large fall of glass.