Dreamhunter Duet: Dreamquake Part 17

The train was a local headed toward Sisters Beach.

On a clear day the red painted steel flag of the stop signal was visible to the engineer from the lowest turn of the Mount Kahaugh spiral. He had miles to slow and stop. The Secretary of the Interior had a house in the Awa Inlet-and it was Doran who most often used the train stop. There was never any question that the train would pause, though stopping always put at least ten minutes more on a journey.

It wasn't until he was going very slowly, and approaching the bridge, that the engineer spotted the small, ragged figure by the signal. As he pulled to a halt, he saw that it was a girl, her clothes torn at the knees and elbows and white with dust.

A conductor got out to inspect the prospective pa.s.senger. He took in her bedraggled appearance and lack of luggage. He went up to her ready to ask whether she even had the fare, but, when he reached her, he saw how young she was, and how she trembled, and how she was holding herself up against the signal pole. Instead of demanding money, the conductor placed his strong hand under one of her elbows. "What happened?"

Pa.s.sengers were pus.h.i.+ng down their windows and poking their heads out to take a look.

"Are you a dreamhunter?" the conductor asked.

"Yes. I got lost," the girl whispered.

"Can you walk?" the conductor said, then looked at her feet and gave a little yelp of sympathy. He put an arm around her and took some of her weight. They tottered together toward the nearest door. Another conductor leaned out and lifted her up. He said to the first, "The only house here is up beyond that border."

"Yes," the girl whispered. "I couldn't look for help there."

There was a clatter of stones behind them as someone came running along the track beside the train. It was a pa.s.senger, who had jumped from one of the second-cla.s.s carriages. He was wearing a dreamhunter's long duster coat. The young man said, "I'll take her." He sprang onto the steps behind the girl and scooped her up.

The second conductor retreated into the carriage ahead of him. The first followed, leaning out only to wave all clear to the engineer.

The train exhaled and began to move.

"We have an empty compartment in first-cla.s.s," the first conductor said to the young man. "She'll be more comfortable there."

The girl had her eyes closed and her head on the young man's shoulder. Perhaps she had fainted.

"I can't pay." The dreamhunter looked stricken and stiffly angry at the same time.

"Was anyone asking you to pay?" The first conductor was irritated. "If you'll please just carry your friend this way." He set off up the carriage. The young man followed.

The other conductor went to find towels and soap, bandages and ointment, food and drink.

Laura woke up to see a man in a bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned uniform bandaging her blistered feet. Her head was in someone's lap. She looked up, said, "Sandy."

"Laura," said Sandy. Then, "Love." Then, "What have you been doing?"

"I got lost," she said, and closed her eyes again.

7.

AURA DIDN'T REALLY COME BACK TO HERSELF TILL SHE AND SANDY WERE IN A TAXI TAKING THEM FROM SISTERS Beach Station up to Summerfort. The driver was sitting out in the open air. They were in the back, and she was leaning heavily on Sandy. He thought she was still faint and feverish; then she started to speak.

As she talked, he realized that she'd postponed answering his question, "What have you been doing?" and that what he was now hearing was her answer.

"The Regulatory Body has built a rail line beyond The Pinnacles at Z minus 16." The map reference made her sound lucid, despite her ravaged little voice. She said, "They run handcars on it. They move supplies. There's a kind of camp far Inland along the line. A camp they call the Depot. It's full of dreamhunters, missing dreamhunters, and, I guess, a few no one misses-like little Gavin Pinkney. Rose told me she saw Gavin on St. Lazarus's Eve after the riot. And Aunt Grace saw him before she went into quarantine in the forest near Doorhandle. I bet if you asked Plasir where his apprentice was, he'd say Gavin had suffered a breakdown and was under treatment."

Sandy saw Laura's eyes glimmering at him in the gloom of the cab. He saw her tears spill and how her skin grew instantly red where the tears were running. She wasn't sunburned-no one ever got sunburned in the Place-but the skin of her face was so parched and damaged that it flared wherever salt touched it. Sandy drew his cuff up over his hand and dabbed gently at her cheeks.

Laura went on. "The camp is on the site of a dream, a master dream called Contentment, which makes people perfectly happy. Perfectly, slavishly happy." She shuddered.

Sandy put his arms around her.

"I didn't sleep," Laura said. "I got away."

"Good girl."

They had arrived at their destination. Sandy opened the door, dropped his pack onto the sh.e.l.l driveway. He pulled money out of his pocket and paid the driver. He said, "Keep the change," which felt as strange as anything else that was happening since it was something he'd never said, or been moved to say, before. He eased out and lifted her up-she was so light, so small.

Sandy watched the taxi backing around the corner of the drive, its tires kicking up clanking scallop sh.e.l.ls. He asked Laura, "Is anyone here?" Then he turned to the house in time to see someone appear-a small man with graying black hair and a badly scarred face.

The man looked alarmed and hurried down off the veranda.

Laura croaked, urgently, "It's all right. I'm all right!" She sounded even more worried than the man looked.

The man reached Sandy and for a moment, despite his slightness and fragility, looked set to s.n.a.t.c.h Laura out of Sandy's arms.

"I can walk," Laura said. "Don't try lifting me, Da. It's only my feet that hurt."

Sandy finally recognized the man. He was Laura's father-Tziga Hame-reported missing a year ago, declared dead shortly after that.

"Take her inside," said Tziga.

"I'm all right, Da," said Laura.

"Shhhh," said Sandy and Tziga together.

Sandy carried Laura indoors. Tziga went ahead. He led Sandy up to Laura's room and pulled back the covers on her bed. Sandy put her down, and Tziga shook out a down comforter and draped it over her, leaving her bandaged feet uncovered.

Laura lay looking at Sandy, then at her father. Her gaze went back and forth between their faces, and her eyes began to close. For a moment longer her eyes went on moving behind their shut, smooth lids. Then she was asleep.

Tziga said, "It's probably best just to let her rest. I'll sit with her. I have a nurse, who is out at the market. When she returns, could you please send her up to me? Laura's aunt Grace went In yesterday to catch something for The Beholder. Laura's cousin is in Founderston with her father for a dress fitting. I'll cable them tomorrow. You can help yourself to something to eat. The kitchen is on the right at the foot of the stairs. And, Sandy, if you can be so good as to not go off anywhere before I've had a chance to talk to you."

Sandy was puzzled that he was known to this man he'd never met, and by Tziga Hame's tone, which wasn't just grat.i.tude but a kind of warm eagerness that Sandy knew he didn't deserve. "Um" was all he managed to say.

"Good," said Tziga, as though Sandy had said, "Yes, sir."

Sandy retreated from Laura's room, went downstairs, and wandered around examining everything. The house wasn't at all what he had imagined-what he had been imagining since the day the previous summer that the two beautiful, forward, tangle-haired girls had edged up to him when he was lying on a lounge chair on Sisters Beach in order to read over his shoulder. They had talked about their libraries, two libraries in two houses. They had talked about their town house in Founderston and their beach house, Summerfort. Sandy had spent the following few days looking up at the big house on the headland. And-more recently-he'd looked at it from the sea when he sailed into Tarry Cove on a coal barge. Sandy had thought Summerfort would be full of brocaded chairs and ta.s.seled lamps and furniture darkened and gnarled with carving, with gilded mirrors and bra.s.s fire screens and Turkish rugs and crystal lamps. He wandered around looking at the bare floorboards-oiled timber-the few rugs, the faded, comfortable sofas, everything showing the wear of sun and sand. Everything except the books in the library, whose windows were shaded by white Roman blinds. The chairs in the library were studded leather, but so aged and scuffed by use that in some places the leather was pink, not red.

Sandy sat down and gazed up at the spines of the books. After a moment he heard the front door open and went to relay Mr. Hame's message to the nurse.

Later, the sun went down and Sandy followed the light out onto the veranda in order to keep reading a book he'd discovered, a book with a t.i.tle irresistible to him. Laura's father found him frowning over The Seven Principles of Self-Reliance. Tziga Hame sat in a chair opposite him.

"How is she now?" Sandy said.

"She's sleeping. Her feet have been lathered with some smelly ointment and properly, professionally bandaged. When the nurse left us, Laura told me about her ordeal."

"She told me too."

Tziga nodded. "I hope you'll stay, Sandy. I mean-you must."

Sandy bit his lip for a moment, then his irritation and the sense he had of himself being salt of the earth got the better of him. "I can't just hold my breath, even when someone I care about is convalescing," he said. "I have to earn a living."

"I wanted to talk to you about that. And about Laura."

Sandy was speechless. Was Laura's father trying to talk to him about his "prospects"-whether he could support his daughter? Laura's father didn't sound stern, or prying, he didn't seem embarra.s.sed either, and if he was joking he was being remarkably deadpan.

Tziga went on. "There's a dream I'd like to have again. I doubt I can catch it myself. I don't have the strength anymore."

Sandy realized that he wasn't being asked about his intentions toward Laura. He also understood that Tziga Hame's scars and smashed-in cheekbone were signs of a more serious, invisible injury. "I must be kind to him," Sandy thought-though the notion of trying to be kind made Sandy feel he was trying to stuff his big feet into small shoes.

"Just listen." Tziga smiled, a sweet, fey smile. "Let me finish before I forget how I began," he said. Then, "Master dreams are all somehow brutal, even when they're beautiful. I couldn't manage The Gate now myself, but Laura certainly can. And Grace tells me you show great promise ..."

V.

The Gate.

1.

HEN LAURA WAS UP AND ABOUT AGAIN, AND CHORLEY, GRACE, AND ROSE WERE BACK AT SUMMERFORT, THERE was a family conference.

Sandy Mason sat in on it, looking at once embarra.s.sed and pleased with himself. For a time they talked about the Regulatory Body's secret railway and the happy captives at the Depot. Laura hadn't told anyone but her father that she'd been caught, and held, and how she'd made her escape. She did tell them she'd been seen, and possibly recognized, but didn't say that Cas Doran and his cronies might be surprised to see her alive after she'd vanished from the remote and isolated compound. Laura and her father didn't discuss the possibility that she was in danger. And it crossed Laura's mind that her father-still sometimes muddleheaded with fits-hadn't even considered it. She didn't raise the subject, because she didn't want to have to hide again.

Laura's father was, himself, tired of hiding. At the meeting, Tziga said, "If I reappear in Founderston, the Regulatory Body will, no doubt, feel uncomfortable. But since I only want to visit medical specialists, and not darken the Body's doorways, they'll soon get over it."

"We should all return to Founderston," Chorley said. "You'll get better care. And Laura must talk to the Grand Patriarch about this Depot. We should put the problem in his hands-for now."

Grace frowned. She said, "I agree that Laura should go back. Late summer is a very good time for her to return to work. All the regular healing dreamers supplying the hospitals and nursing homes are out of the city enjoying their vacations. It makes sense for Laura to go back when there's less compet.i.tion, and when she can do so in a kind of disguise." Grace looked at Sandy. "And this is where you can help. The best thing you can do for Laura is form a temporary partners.h.i.+p with her. You can catch the same dreams and sell yourselves together-two dreamers for the price of one. You can say you're boosting each other, and then maybe-with smaller houses, and less supervision-your performance won't strike anyone as too remarkable. Laura's Buried Alive pushed her penumbra out to about five hundred yards. I think it must have blown her wide open."

Tziga said, "At some point Laura's figures must become official."

"Yes," said Grace. "Just because we have to deal with Cas Doran and his b.l.o.o.d.y Depot and whatever the h.e.l.l his plan is, that doesn't mean that Laura's future is finished. Or mine, or Sandy's. When the Regulatory Body is straightened out, there will still be-well-a Regulatory Body. We'll all still be dreamhunters. Laura will have to work according to the advantages and constraints of her power. What we need for now, so that n.o.body will suspect she acquired her big penumbra by catching Buried Alive, is a way for Laura to ease into work until she's recovered enough to catch The Gate-which, when I shared it twelve years ago, gave me another twenty-five yards."

"When you catch The Gate, you can offer it to the sanatorium at Fallow Hill," Tziga said. "I can make the arrangements for you."

Grace and Tziga had, it seemed, taken their cue from Laura. Sandy was now completely in their confidence. Chorley trusted him-up to a point-but resented the fact that his own fatherly authority had been usurped by Laura's actual father. Tziga seemed to think he was up to making decisions for his daughter despite the fact that he'd always been impractical, and was now confused and forgetful.

Chorley watched Grace and Tziga handling Sandy Mason and thought, "Grace is ambitious for Laura. She's so focused on Laura's future that she's overlooking present problems."

"So," said Grace to Sandy. "Will you work with Laura for a time? Does that suit you?"

Sandy blushed and nodded.

Laura looked at the floor and smiled. Then she got up. "If that's settled, can Sandy, Rose, and I go to Farry's? There's only invalid food here."

"Fine, fine," said Grace, and waved them off.

When the young people had gone, Grace said, "I'm so pleased Sandy's gotten over the business of the letter. Now that he's seen Tziga, he thinks he got it all wrong and she was writing to her father."

"Why do you say 'he thinks she was' instead of 'he knows she was'?" asked Chorley.

Grace looked irritated. "Fine- knows she was, if you like."

Tziga said, "The point is that Sandy isn't angry with Laura anymore and can be called on to help her."

Chorley did agree that Laura's well-being was important, and that the young man seemed to be important to her well-being. He would like to feel as settled as Grace seemed to feel about the subject of the letter Laura had asked Sandy to deliver. But, no matter which way he looked at it, some things refused to become clear. Sandy supposed now that Laura's letter must have been to Tziga. But the letter had come from the lighthouse, where Laura was staying with her father, so she would hardly have been writing to him.

Chorley had always supposed that Sandy Mason was the one who had helped Laura carry his movie camera from Y-17 in the Place back to Summerfort the previous winter. But, if so, why wasn't the boy with her when he and Rose arrived? Sandy Mason didn't strike Chorley as particularly well bred or bashful. Laura had been in the bath when Chorley and Rose arrived, and Chorley was convinced that if he arrived at Summerfort now to find Laura bathing, he might well find Sandy Mason in the d.a.m.n tub with her!

So the question remained, who was Laura's letter to? And who had carried the camera? Apparently there was some shadowy agent whose existence no one but Chorley seemed ever to notice, as someone sensitive to drafts notices the least touch of cold moving air.

Grace got up and stretched. "I'm so glad that's all settled. It's time Laura got on with actually being a dreamhunter-instead of a spy for the Church." She gave her husband an indulgent smile. "And how is your investigation going?"

"Slow, puzzling, and possibly pointless," Chorley said. "I have one more person I want to talk to. Then-like the Commission of Inquiry-I'll ponder my findings. Such as they are."

2.

N A WARM DAY IN EARLY FEBRUARY CHORLEY SAT IN A CAFE IN UNIVERSITY SQUARE. THE ESTABLISHMENT WAS surprisingly busy, since commencement was still over a month away. Chorley had an appointment with Dr. Michael King. He'd reached the stage in his investigations where what he wanted was to chew the fat with any intelligent person prepared to really think about the Place. He'd decided that the historian Dr. King was his man.

King arrived half an hour late. He bustled in, scanning the tables, spotted Chorley, and gave him a wave, his raised hand making a little wriggle as if to mime smoke going up a flue. Then he swerved and pounced on a table near the door, and one student at that table. "Mr. Jones! Where is that thesis you're supposed to have finished and turned in?" he said, in a loud, friendly tone.

The young man got up. "I came to see you about it-" he began.

"Yes-and a colleague of mine caught you putting curses on my closed door!"

"I wasn't cursing you, sir. I was just annoyed not to find you there, because I wanted to put my paper into your hands personally."

"Mr. Jones, did you, or did you not, wish a pox upon me?"