It wasn’t too bad. Most of the blacks treated him fairly. But they made it clear that he was white in a world where only black can be beautiful. The Muslims had many different shades of black, though. Some of them were the tannish brown of Latin Americans. Some were so deeply black that their skin shone with an African heat. Most were some shade between those two extremes. A few even looked like Indians.

There were more old people among the Muslims, although Ron saw little of them. Like Timmy Jim, most of the Muslim warriors were Ron’s own age, or slightly older. The mechanics that Ron worked with were all in their early teens. Some of them resented taking orders from a white, but they did what Ron told them to with skill and speed.

Timmy Jim quickly set Ron up in the afternoons with even younger kids, whom he was expected to teach. They were fun. Young and eager and burning to learn about machinery. They learned fast. Ron soon had them fixing refrigerators and furnaces and even automobiles.

Once or twice some of the black warriors who always stayed near Ron gave him trouble. One guy clubbed Ron with a pistol butt once, for some reason that Ron never found out about. Two other warriors pulled him away, and Ron never saw that one again.

Timmy Jim himself was hard to figure out. Whenever Ron saw him, he seemed to be different. Sometimes he was quiet and friendly. Other times he seemed hard and mean. He could smile at Ron, talk pleasantly with him. Or he might call Ron “whitey,” or “paleface,” or “nigger’s slave.”

Slowly Ron began to understand. Timmy Jim was tough with him whenever there were other blacks watching. When they were alone, he was almost friendly.

As the weeks went by, Timmy Jim called Ron up to his private office more and more. It was in the building next to the old church. The office was bare, like a field general’s tent. No decorations on the walls, except for a street map of Manhattan. No furniture, except a desk and its chair, plus a stiff wooden chair for a visitor.

“So tell me more about what it’s like Outside,” Timmy Jim would say.

Ron couldn’t determine why he wanted to hear so much about the world outside the Dome. But he told Timmy Jim all about it, time after time.

“Wish you was back there, huh?” Timmy Jim asked Ron once.

“I guess so.” Ron was surprised that he didn’t feel more strongly about it. His parents, his friends, his whole life was Outside. But that was so long ago, so far away. It felt strange even to think about it. As if that life belonged to somebody else, some other kid, not Ron himself.