Dreamhunter Duet: Dreamquake Part 25

Mamie continued. "What you have to realize, Rose, is that I'm not adventurous. Laura is your natural companion for adventures. You can't charm me into joining you. It's not that I'm timid, it's just that I hate failure, and hate to be uncomfortable, and I don't particularly enjoy effort. I'm a lost cause."

Rose looked at the floor. She thought, "Whereas Laura is just lost."

The day before, Laura had gone with Grace to see George Mason off at the station. Mason was taking Sandy's remains-a collection of carbonized bones-back to his family. Afterward Laura had talked to Rose, in a wispy voice. She told Rose what she knew about Sandy's home-his six brothers and sisters. One brother was the head of the night shift at the sawmill. Another was an engineer in a railway workshop. His father was a shop steward at the carpet factory. Laura talked about the year Sandy had spent working in that factory, about his school, with its tattered books and sour hallways. Sandy's mother was a teacher at a similar girls' school. The family had tenuous respectability-all of them had stayed in school till fifteen.

Rose said to Mamie, "Laura has had adventures I can't even imagine. She's even been in love. Her heart is broken."

"Laura hasn't been lucky, has she?"

"No. Sandy. Her mother ..." Rose looked hard at Mamie. "I suppose you've heard that her father's back?"

"I've heard that he's ill."

"Yes. That's what's finally roused Laura. In a couple of days she is going In to get The Gate."

"The miracle dream."

"I've had it three times now." Rose could feel her face softening. "It's extraordinarily beautiful. It is proving a little controversial, though. At Fallow Hill it carried off any of their patients who were close to death, or ready to die. It can't be dreamed near anyone critically ill or injured who has any chance of recovery. What it does is tell whoever dreams it that there's something beautiful to go on to after death. It tells it with such conviction that very sick people just let go of life. But it's excellent for chronic illness, pain, madness, and misery. I'm glad Laura's father has persuaded her to get it for him. Of course he's hoping it'll help her."

"Is your mother planning to catch it too?"

"No. Ma is going farther In to get Drought's End. She's going to perform it at the Rainbow Opera. What Founderston needs after the fire is a balm of rain-and the dream's sloppy romance, and little white horses."

"You forget I haven't had any of these dreams."

"Oh," said Rose, feeling awkward. She did keep forgetting that Mamie's mother hadn't let her daughter go to a dream palace.

Mamie was looking sly and thoughtful. "Is Drought's End a master dream?"

"I didn't know you knew anything about that."

"I know all about it, despite my lack of firsthand experience."

"I don't think it is a master dream."

Mamie rearranged herself and seemed to change the subject. "Well," she said, "I'm getting on a train tomorrow night. My father is sending me off to our summerhouse."

"Alone?"

"The servants will be there."

"Does your father think you need a holiday?"

"No." Mamie stared into Rose's eyes.

Rose searched her friend's face. Mamie was looking sphinxlike, though she still had her eyebrows. She was trying to tell Rose something, to tell without actually saying.

"Or," said Rose, "does he just think you'll be better off out of Founderston?"

And Mamie said, "That must be it."

It was Rose who remembered the film, five days after the fire. Chorley developed it, and they all sat down to watch it.

Laura saw that Nown had cranked the camera a little too slowly, so that the film's action was fast, the captives and rangers jerky and insectile in their movements. There was shutter flicker, as though the camera were peering through eyes that were blinking away tears. But there were the huts, the barracks, the canvas-walled rooms of the Depot.

"How did you get this?" Chorley said.

"I didn't," Laura said. "I was here."

"We sent someone," said Tziga.

When Nown had been shooting the footage, Laura had been lying in Sandy's arms within the circle of Foreigner's West. They got up and folded the blankets, and she gave up one life for another. Nown had betrayed her. He was heartless. He should have told her what he must have known. He'd always carried her, but-in a way-he'd made her walk. Her long, hard journey might have been simple and short if only he'd said: "The Place is the same thing I am, a Nown-that's something you need to know."

Chorley said, "I'll take this to the Grand Patriarch. I imagine he'll want to present it to the Commission."

"Make a copy first," Tziga said.

Grace said, "I hate having to rely on that old man to get things straightened out."

"We're not relying on him, we are consulting with him," Chorley snapped.

Laura thought how strange it was that her aunt was still able to imagine things being "straightened out," as though all that had to happen was that Cas Doran be exposed and the Regulatory Body encouraged to mind their own business. Grace seemed to think that if those things were accomplished, then dreamhunters would be able to get back to their prospecting and performing in peace. Rose and Chorley and Tziga wanted Doran stopped and punished. They wanted to weed out corruption. Was Laura's aunt right to look to a time beyond that, to order and everyday life?

Laura thought nothing could be mended. And she was sure she was thinking just as straight as her aunt Grace. So which of them was right?

The family agreed that Laura shouldn't be left alone. But only Rose understood what that meant. As soon as her cough eased, Rose had taken to climbing into Laura's bed. She didn't try to watch with Laura, to stay awake and stare into the dark-she slept, but she was there.

The night they screened the film, Rose fell asleep almost the moment she put her head on her pillow. She woke after an hour or two, from a dream in which she wandered along red-painted hallways, unable to open any of the doors because their handles burned her hands.

"Nightmare?" said Laura, from the other side of the bed.

"Yes. There's never any fire in my nightmares. Just heat."

"I still have nightmares where I'm thirsty."

Rose turned over and tried to see her cousin. There was a little light coming in the window from the street, enough so that the shadows of the flowers on the frosted-gla.s.s lamp on the nightstand were visible. Rose could see the lumpy shadow that was her cousin, and the glimmer of Laura's eyes. Because it was dark, Rose felt a little daring. She said, "Have you thought that you could make your sandman again?"

"He let me down," Laura said, her voice flat.

"He couldn't help it."

"Not in the fire. Before that."

"So you won't make him again because you're mad at him?"

"I won't make him again because I can't make Sandy."

Rose thought about the logic of Laura's statement. Of course it was flawless. It made perfect sense. Rose knew that her cousin had loved both of them, Sandy and the monster. Laura wouldn't resurrect one if she couldn't resurrect the other.

"It's not just a decision," Laura said. "I think it's prohibited. My need is great, but I can't feel the song. When I found Da's sandman, but before I knew 'The Measures,' I could feel this storm of music around me. Now I don't feel anything."

Rose found one of Laura's hands under the covers and held it.

"I'm just going to be good and do what I'm asked. Then maybe I'll stop feeling so sick and tired. Sandy felt like my family and my future."

Rose squeezed Laura's hand.

Laura said, "Wouldn't it be terrible if none of us had futures, only fates?"

"I don't believe in fate," Rose said. It was true; Rose believed in the poker, the sewing basket, the broken window, the rooftop, the fire net, the way out. She believed in reprieve. And she was sure that, sooner or later, she would think of some way to help Laura. Something would come to her-it was only a matter of time.

2.

At.u.r.dAY EVENING. TWO MEN, ONE TALL, THE OTHER SMALL, WALKED SLOWLY BACK ACROSS MARKET BRIDGE FROM the Isle of the Temple. The evening was autumnal, and there was a white mist rising from the surface of the river.

Other pedestrians they pa.s.sed glanced, then turned to stare after them.

"It's taking a while for the word to get around Founderston that you're not dead," Chorley said.

"I've been sequestered at home, or at Fallow Hill."

"After Monday we'll be able to deal with the reports of your death. We can bring up the matter of the forged signature in the Doorhandle intentions book."

"After Monday that will be an even smaller matter than it is already."

Chorley and Tziga had shown the film of the Depot to the Grand Patriarch. On Monday afternoon the Commission of Inquiry was due to convene again. Their report would be published soon. All submissions had been read, all witnesses questioned, all arguments heard. But the seven men of the Commission were due to meet again to discuss their findings-and the Grand Patriarch intended to deliver the film to them, with Laura and her testimony.

"I wouldn't like to be in Doran's shoes after Monday,"Chorley said. "Though he must have been forewarned. Your cameraman was spotted. In the final seconds of the film, a ranger points at him." Chorley was quiet for a moment, then added, "He'll have to testify too, I expect."

Tziga was silent.

"Tziga? Why did Erasmus ask you how you got the film? I thought the cameraman was his agent."

Tziga looked vague and baffled, and Chorley was once again overcome by nervous tenderness toward his damaged brother-in-law. "Never mind," he said. "Don't worry about it." They came off the bridge onto the west embankment. The air was still but nevertheless carried the smell of damp, burned timber.

When they arrived home, they were met by a one-girl whirlwind. Rose was wrapped in a thick shawl. She said the house was cold. She said there were fires laid already, kindling and coal under a summer's worth of dust. "Could someone else please put a match to them? I'm allergic to matches. Temporarily, I hope." She followed her father into the parlor, and, as he knelt to light the fire, she stood behind him, ranting. "I'm sick of salad and eggs and bread," she said. "Now that Uncle Tziga's no longer a big secret, could we please get back our cook and maids?"

"Cook left last year. She retired to nurse her sick sister. Remember?" Chorley said.

"Why would I remember? I wasn't here. I was boarding at school, and eating boiled bacon and boiled broccoli and boiled b.l.o.o.d.y potatoes."

"We can summon the maid back any time. She's only on leave. Paid leave."

"This family is hopeless!" Rose raved. "Renting rooms they don't use. Paying maids to take holidays. Throwing money at problems!"

Chorley got up and stared at his daughter with wide eyes. "What on earth has gotten into you?"

"The Doran house is packed with servants. Mamie and her mother can sit around being ornamental. What would we have done if gentlemen had come calling for me? Fed them dried fruit and boiled eggs with their black tea?"

"Sorry," said Chorley. "I'll place an advertis.e.m.e.nt for a cook on Monday. After Monday everything will be different. We'll sit down and talk about the future. You and I. We'll make some plans."

"Fine," said Rose. She came to stand beside her father and leaned against him, not to be friendly but to edge him aside so that she stood directly in front of the fire's warmth. She said, "So it's to be Monday, then?"

"That's when the Commission reconvenes. Would you like to go with us-me and Laura and Tziga, and the Grand Patriarch and his people?"

"No. I don't want Mamie to hear I was in on the kill. She'll probably never speak to me again anyway, no matter what I do."

Chorley put an arm around his daughter. "Are you warmer now, dear?"

"Yes."

"I'd better go see what Tziga is up to. Partway through your tirade he headed for the kitchen."

"Oh no!" Rose rushed off to rescue the food from her uncle's absentminded efforts.

Chorley was in bed by eleven, but it took him a long time to go to sleep. He would be drifting off but would wake up with his heart pounding, startled by the memory of his daughter's plunge from the roof of the People's Palace, or by panic at all the little things he'd left undone. He hadn't talked to Rose about what she wanted to do this year. And what was Laura going through now? Just how involved with that Mason boy had she allowed herself to be? Was Tziga any better? Would Grace be safe walking Inland alone?

Taken together, all these little worries and serious frights kept rousing Chorley till around three in the morning, when he fell asleep in the midst of a memory of the Depot film-the pajama-clad figures in flickering black-and-white-an agitated picture of serene sleepwalkers.

The man was with his family. They were trailing up from the beach after an early-morning swim. The blond sandstone of his house caught the light of the lifting sun. In the high tide, the forest seemed to come right down to the water, so that the headland spilled over its reduced sh.o.r.eline like a gem bulging with light above a gold setting. In the scoop of the bay, two sails were visible, and one far-off smudge of smoke from a steamer's funnel. The man gazed at the horizon and had a sense of the world beyond his peaceful property, going on, industrious, and in good order.

As he strolled and looked around him, the man was filled with satisfaction at everything he saw. He realized that this was one of those moments when it seemed the world itself stopped him and clasped his hand and gave him its congratulations.

He stopped walking. He took a cigar from the pocket of his robe. He trimmed the cigar to his satisfaction, then lit it and blew out smoke of a creamy texture and bluish tinge, the taste of which reminded him of other pleasures he'd had-meals eaten, deals struck, rivals beaten. He planted his legs and stood in his orchard, his bearded chin tilted up, blowing smoke into the branches above him.

Wasps had burrowed in the hanging sh.e.l.ls of the last apricots of the season. The smoke dislodged them, and the man watched, delighted, as the insects kept on seeking the lost sweetness through the smoke, dogged and stupid.

"It was all worth it," thought the man. "All the risks I took, all the sacrifices I made." Before him, yesterday, today, tomorrow, was the proof of the good he'd done himself-his beautiful house and happy family.

He could see his mother on the terrace, with her silver tea service and old-worldly shawl. She was ninety years of age and still straight-backed and sound of mind. With her was his second wife. She'd seen him. She was coming down the terrace steps. In a moment she'd join him, and he'd put his hand in the small of her slender back.

His son and daughter pa.s.sed him in friendly conversation. He watched them with gratification. He'd been wrong ever to worry about them since, true to their mother's habitual saying, they were the cream that had risen to the top of society. His son looked every inch the prosperous businessman he was-a major stockholder in the nation's largest utilities company.

The man detected that advice was being offered, brother to sister, and that it was a happy exchange. His daughter had mellowed, had grown up generous and grateful and good. He had been foolish to worry about her too-though he could always say to himself now that worrying about her was part of doing well by her.

One of his granddaughters stopped beside him. "Look, Grandfather!" she said, and did a cartwheel.

"Very good," said the man, then, "Watch out for the wasps."

She did. She was careful. She called out the same advice to her younger sister. There were no mishaps. He could hear them, their laughter broken up by grunts of effort as they practiced all the way to the house.

The eels the boys had caught yesterday would be smoked and boned and ready for breakfast. The man had a good appet.i.te. He ground out his cigar on the trunk of the apricot tree.