Dreamhunter Duet: Dreamquake Part 18

"No, sir. I only wished a pox upon your closed door."

King laughed. It was a silent, wheezy laugh, but his shoulders bobbed up and down. He put a hand on the young man's shoulder. "If you don't have your paper with you, why don't you run off and get it? I'll be here for the next hour talking to this gentleman." He pointed at Chorley.

The student hurried out. King came over to Chorley, beamed at him, and offered his hand. They shook hands. King called for more coffee. "That lad," he said, "wants to see his paper safely in my hands. He must think that he's done something astounding." He chuckled some more. "Now, before you tell me why you wanted to meet me, I must pa.s.s on a h.e.l.lo from Judge Seresin. He said that you were one of his cleverest students. And the laziest."

Chorley remembered his old professor Seresin, who was now a judge at the Supreme Court and, incidentally, the Head of the Commission of Inquiry into the Rainbow Opera riot. Chorley had disappointed Professor Seresin. "I didn't complete my degree," he said. "I fell out a third-floor window while drinking with some friends. I don't remember it at all. I wasn't hurt. Apparently I landed in a freshly turned flower bed and got up and wandered away. There were dozens of witnesses, and a fuss, and my father put me on a boat to Europe. And that was the end of my studies. I had a full year in parts foreign, then my father died and it turned out we didn't have any money."

The coffee came, a double order, since Chorley had ordered for himself shortly before King arrived. Chorley had also ordered a large savory scone. King eyed it. "Please help yourself," said Chorley, pressing the plate forward.

"No, no," said King and slid the plate back beside Chorley's elbow. "And so, when you discovered that your father hadn't left you anything, were you ever tempted to Try?"

"I arrived back during the first of the rush. It was like a gold rush, wasn't it?"

"Yes and no. So many people were stopped right away. It was as if they discovered that, despite there being gold in the ground, they weren't physically able to dig." King's fingers fluttered, then made a little foray toward Chorley's scone. They broke a piece off. The fingers conveyed the fragment to his mouth; he glanced down at it, apparently surprised, then opened his mouth to accept it.

Chorley said, "I thought then that the whole dreamhunting thing was a little vulgar. I mean-citizens were carrying blankets and pillows into the People's Park on summer nights. Founderston was my town, and it changed almost overnight. I felt somewhat resentful." He shrugged. "So I didn't go near the border till I went with my wife, shortly after we were married."

"And you found that you couldn't go In."

"That's right, I couldn't." Chorley piled three sugar lumps into his coffee. "I read your chapter on the Place in your History of Southland. It struck me as one of the most lucid things written about it."

"You flatter me. And surely there are dozens of even more lucid paragraphs buried among official twaddle and statistical stuff in the Dream Regulatory Body's records?"

"I'm not going to bother the Body."

"Why not?" King was giving Chorley a shrewd appraisal.

"The Grand Patriarch has given me this task. I'm supposed to think about the Place."

"That's fine. That's not a novelty," said King, and his hands pounced again on Chorley's scone. He broke off a big piece and continued to talk, gesturing with the fragment and scattering crumbs around the table like a priest scattering drops of holy water in blessing. "Plenty of people have thought about the Place. But really intelligent debate hasn't been possible because feelings run so high. The Church preaches against dreamhunting. Dreamhunters feel defensive. And the Regulatory Body tries to smooth things over by behaving like a strict parent toward dreamhunters-in public, at least. All the discussions are about whether the Place is good or bad, and how it should be used."

"Yes," said Chorley, eager.

Dr. King seemed startled at the interruption. He slapped the tabletop. "Exactly! We know how the Place can be used, but not why it's there. Do you realize that that is opposite to our views on human life? For instance, as a man who believes in the material rather than the spiritual, I know that my fundamental purpose in life is to father children and teach them the skills for survival. To, in short, do what a mother cat will for her kittens. A human version of that. So-you and I must continue the species-"

"Oh dear," said Chorley, "you and I?"

Dr. King patted Chorley's hand. "No, my dear man, you with your charming wife, and I with mine. But that description of why we are here doesn't give any clues about how we should actually live our lives-the uses of our lives. How many times are we confronted with a thing for which we have a use, but no knowledge of its nature? Its purpose? That's what the Place is to us."

Again King made a raid on Chorley's scone. Chorley didn't dare take a bite of it himself. Momentarily distracted by this, he found, when his attention returned to what Dr. King was saying, that the man was talking about Aristotle.

Chorley was bemused. Hadn't they agreed that there had been enough theological and philosophical thinking about the Place? And now King was bringing up a philosopher.

"You are familiar with Aristotle?"

Chorley, in his impatience, quoted part of a song he'd learned at the University-or rather in the bars and cafes around the University. "Aristotle, Aristotle, was a demon for the bottle."

Dr. King gave him a wry look. "Was 'demon' the word you learned?"

"No, I subst.i.tuted 'demon' for the word I learned. Of course I know Aristotle. Greek philosopher. Taught Alexander the Great. Disapproved of plays, because he thought that, if people enjoyed the villains in plays, that would encourage them to behave badly. The Grand Patriarch would like him."

King laughed his vigorous, shoulder-shaking laugh and reached for some more scone. "Would you like your own?" Chorley said, and turned to seek a waiter.

"Oh no! No!" King desisted. "Now-why I mention Aristotle is that, with the Place, investigators are reduced to the same state of knowledge as the ancients. We really don't have any scientific methods we can apply. There are so few fruitful experiments. Yes, we have brought out bottled air and burned it. Yes, we've collected soil samples and performed chemical tests. But what of it? Chemistry won't do it.

"Aristotle invented an early system of cla.s.sification, with a place for everything: animal, vegetable, and mineral. For instance, in Aristotle's system, put simply, man is a two-legged animal without wings. A chicken, on the other hand, is a two-legged animal with wings-"

Chorley, annoyed by this detour, said flippantly, "And Long John Silver, having only one leg, wouldn't be a man?"

"Well-yes-but do we count his parrot? Its legs and wings?" Dr. King chortled.

Chorley wondered whether he dared to call a waiter over and order himself another scone. He didn't want to embarra.s.s King, whose trespa.s.ses were rather charming. In most situations Chorley was the one licensed to be less formal. But King was making him feel a little stiff and starchy. That was why he'd made his silly remark about Long John Silver-only to get a witty comeback.

King said, "Aristotle is useful in the case of the Place because we can use him to ask very simple questions about it. Shall we try?" He began, "What is the Place made of?"

"Land," said Chorley. "Plains, hills, riverbeds-land."

"Good! What does it contain?"

"Vegetation. Dead pasture, brush, and trees. There are no animal remains, which is very strange."

"No, no!" Dr. King waved his remnant scone back and forth, as if by sowing the tabletop with crumbs he might encourage a crop of little scones. "Let us ignore what the Place lacks. Aristotle would have you start with what a thing has, not what it lacks."

"So the missing leg doesn't count, but the parrot does?"

"Quite so! And therefore Long John Silver was a three-legged creature with wings. Now-let us say that the gra.s.s and trees in the Place are land too, shall we? We don't normally exclude gra.s.s and trees from any purchase of a property, do we?"

"All right. Then what the Place contains is dreams."

"And what are dreams?"

"They are like thoughts. An activity of our sleeping brains."

"Dreams are thoughts," Dr. King said, and made a coaxing motion at Chorley. "Thoughts suggest consciousness. So what do we have, so far, as a cla.s.sification for the Place?"

"Land-with consciousness," said Chorley.

"Yes," said Dr. King, then, "Do you mind?" as he took the very last piece. It was the first time he'd asked. "The medieval scholars who were Aristotle's heirs had the whole of creation in ranks, with ideal examples at the top of each rank. So, in the category of animals there were n.o.ble animals, like lions, 'the king of the beasts,' man above that, and above man, angels. Even gems were ranked, not according to rarity but by all sorts of other ideas, mostly religious." King paused and then glanced guiltily at Chorley's empty plate.

Chorley had to struggle not to laugh.

King brightened again, and said, "So, in those old categories, the animal world rises into the spiritual through man. But the mineral world does not rise into the spiritual. So what is the Place? It's invisible to most people, like a spirit. It's land; so mineral. And it has dreams; so it's conscious."

"Conscious, and mineral," Chorley said. "Which leaves us none the wiser." Then, because he felt he owed it to Dr. King, Chorley told him what he knew so far. About the telegrams, and how some of the dreams seemed set in a time further on than now. He talked about the convicts in Laura's first dream, and the ones Tziga would edit from the end of Convalescent One. The newspapers hadn't printed Lazarus's letters-but Chorley knew what at least one letter had said, the one Cas Doran had shown Grace when he questioned her. The newspapers only claimed that a dreamhunter "a.s.sailant" calling himself Lazarus had sunk the audience at the Rainbow Opera in a nightmare as a protest against the use of convict labor. This claim had started all sorts of public discussions about, for instance, how miners' wages were low because some mines were worked by convicts. But no one was talking about the Department of Corrections' use of nightmares in prisons. Chorley told King about the letter Grace had seen in the hope of getting him talking to others. The man was a talker, and a lecture hall in the University may not have been as good as a newspaper at getting word out, but it was at least as good as the pulpits of Southland's churches.

When Chorley had finished, Dr. King shook his hand, and said, "You will let me know how you get on with your investigation, won't you?"

"I will."

Dr. King signaled the waiter, paid the bill, then rearranged his scarf, handkerchief, crumpled papers, wallet, and gla.s.ses case in the distorted pockets of his white linen summer suit. He shook Chorley's hand again, started away from the table, swerved, came back, asked Chorley if he was intending "to write it all up in a book," insisted that Chorley must, patted his pockets again, shook Chorley's hand once more, and wandered out of the cafe-disappearing only a few minutes before his student returned, panting, with the essay he was so proud of.

Chorley left University Square and turned onto the riverbank, heading toward home. It was a sunny day, and the cafes on the embankment were full. He found himself enchanted by these sultry, underpopulated squares. It was years since he'd spent any time in Founderston in summer. When he was young, his parents and sister, Verity, would always go to a hotel at Sisters Beach, and he and his friends would have the town house to themselves. They'd stay up all night and sleep all day and roam around looking for adventure.

Chorley was ambling along in a mild fever of nostalgia when he spotted his niece and Sandy Mason at a table outside a cafe. They had pulled their chairs together. Laura was leaning on Sandy.

Chorley veered off his path and stood over them.

Mason straightened and said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Tiebold. Please join us." He jumped up to get a chair from an adjacent table and placed it for Chorley. "Will you have something?" He reached for his wallet.

Chorley placed his palm on Sandy's breast pocket and patted him firmly and discouragingly. He wasn't about to let this boy buy him anything.

"We're flush, Uncle Chorley," Laura said.

"It's going well, then?" Chorley caught the eye of the waiter. He said to his niece and her friend, "What will you have?"

Sandy went red.

Laura, oblivious, asked for a scone and another pot of tea, then excused herself and dashed off to the bathroom.

Sandy waited for the waiter to go away and said, "Mr. Tiebold, please don't act as if you're paying for me to take care of Laura."

Chorley gave the boy a look of wounded innocence. "I don't mean to make you feel that," he said.

"My money is as good as yours," Sandy said. "You can enjoy my hospitality, can't you?"

Chorley raised an eyebrow.

"Laura's father approves of me. Who are you to disapprove?" Sandy seemed furious.

"Laura's father is brain-damaged," Chorley said.

When Laura returned to the table, she couldn't fail to notice that Sandy and her uncle were glaring at each other. "What's the matter?"

"Apparently my money isn't good enough for your uncle," Sandy said.

"Uncle Chorley always pays for everything," Laura said. She sat down and nestled up to Sandy again. "You'll just have to get used to it."

"I think it's very good for old dogs to learn new tricks," Sandy said.

Laura chuckled. "He's calling you an old dog," she said to her uncle.

"Woof," said Chorley.

The waiter brought tea and Laura's scone. "I'm still so hungry," she said. "My dressmaker keeps having to let out the seams of my ball gown-which is good, because it's quite close-fitting in places, and before I started filling out again there wasn't much difference between me and the cloth still on its bolt."

"We're going In again in three days to get The Gate," Sandy said. "Laura's ready." He put his arm around her waist.

"We have to go," Laura said. "It's not working out-performing together. We're just too big. I've been doing midnight at Pike Street, and Sandy's doing midday at St. Thomas's. We're booked at both places together and go along together, then I stay awake all day in my room next to his. They always supply separate rooms, did you know that?"

"No. And, good," Chorley said.

"Sandy has to stay awake all night, which is hard on him. The only problem I have is making sure I hang on to consciousness when Sandy goes down. He's a bit of a Soporif now."

Sandy said, "Buried Alive did that to me. Once I'd gotten over the patch where I couldn't catch dreams at all."

"That was emotional," Laura said, and swayed against him, b.u.mp, b.u.mp, b.u.mp, till she got a faint, conceding smile. Then she looked back at her uncle. "Anyway, the doctors at Pike Street, where I sleep, think they have two real talents, and a great bargain. St. Thomas's is happy enough to have two for the price of one, but one of the doctors said to Sandy, sadly, that while our Convalescent One is Hame quality-soothing and significant-even with Sandy helping me I seem to be getting only the sort of range that can be expected from any reasonably talented young dreamhunter."

Sandy said, "We can't go on with our ruse. Sooner or later the different hospitals will compare notes."

Laura said, "Sandy's very pleased that we've been able to work these day and night bookings, because we're earning twice what we would otherwise."

Chorley smirked at Sandy. "That must have been very gratifying for you," he said, and watched the young man suppressing objections.

"So, it's time for us to go and get The Gate," Laura said.

Chorley looked across the Sva at the dome of the Temple, perfect in actuality, wrinkled in its reflection on the river. He thought about The Gate, a dream Tziga had had twelve years before and claimed not to be able to find again, a dream other dreamhunters had looked for in vain.

Tziga had caught The Gate when his wife, Chorley's sister, Verity, was dying. Tziga had carried the dream back for her, only to find she had died while he was away, and without his, or its, help. Tziga had fought sleep for two days after the funeral. He'd gone down fighting, as thought he'd meant to die with the dream and take it to Verity. Tziga was a religious man and may well have been able to imagine meeting his wife in the afterlife. But he'd succ.u.mbed to exhaustion-and to his brother-in-law's tender determination to comfort him. He'd slept and dreamed, and a good portion of his neighbors had shared his dream.

Chorley remembered the dream as one of the most wonderful experiences of his life. He understood why Tziga had kept it hidden all these years. No matter how anyone else who shared it experienced The Gate, to the bereaved Tziga the dream might have seemed only a beautiful lie, not an answered prayer.

Looking back on his memory of The Gate, with much more life behind him, Chorley could see now that the dream wasn't a lie-or not exactly. It didn't matter whether you believed in an afterlife (and Chorley didn't), or even whether the dream believed in one, because The Gate wasn't a true vision. For a start it was different from every other dream. All the Place's other dreams were based on natural laws, and possible facts. No one flew in a dream, or breathed underwater, or met a minotaur. The Gate, however, was mystical, transcendent, and unreal. It promised an afterlife.

"But it isn't either true or false," Chorley thought. "Because what it is, is a wish. And wishes aren't either true or false."

"I'm looking forward to this dream," Laura said. "I remember the feelings it gave me when I had it when I was little. It'll help Da." She rested her head on Sandy Mason's broad shoulder. "Besides, I want to fall asleep with Sandy. It's perverse to keep resisting it."

Chorley knew she meant that it was hard to keep herself awake and reading a book while Sandy dreamed Convalescent One, but, when he glanced at Sandy, Chorley could see the young man feeling the effects of her unintended double meaning. Sandy flushed, clenched his jaw, and crossed his legs. Laura had picked up his hand and was playing with the soft flesh between his thumb and finger-childish and intimate. Sandy was having trouble with this, and Chorley saw, at last, that the young man was in love with Laura, not just drawn and possessive. Sandy was trying to control his desire, and having difficulty doing so. Chorley could see that the young man too thought Laura wasn't ready for things to go any further between them. She was in danger of getting in too deep too young, not because Sandy was older and infatuated with her but because of her own behavior. Something-Chorley could not imagine what-seemed to have stripped away all the normal caution she should have about just touching another person, any other person. The attention she was lavishing on Sandy's hand was playful but intense. She stroked and pressed his hand as if in search of a secret mechanism that would make it open up, or turn into something other than a hand.

Chorley said, "If you don't mind, Sandy, I'd like a word in private with my niece."

Sandy retrieved his hand, nodded curtly, and got up. "I'll be in that bookshop on the corner," he said, and took off.

Laura dropped her hands into her lap and a.s.sumed a blank, wooden look.

Chorley cleared his throat. "Judging by your expression, I think perhaps you know what I'm about to say. You must be careful with that boy."

"I'll try not to lose him, Uncle Chorley, if that's what you mean."

"You know that isn't what I mean. He must be several years your senior."

"Three years. Which is nothing," Laura said. She sounded dry-not exactly impatient.

"At your age, that's a big difference."

Laura laughed.

"What?"