Dreamhunter Duet: Dreamquake Part 33

HEN THEY FINALLY REACHED SUMMERFORT, LAURA DRANK A LARGE GLa.s.s OF MILK AND WENT STRAIGHT TO BED, not worrying that her hair was tangled, or that her feet would make her sheets filthy. She left any explanation to Rose, who didn't know much but did explain why Laura was so tired.

For days Grace had alternated between silence, weeping, and clinging to Chorley saying, "What will we do now? What can I do with my life?" Rose's bit of news gave Grace something to think about. "Laura's pregnant!" she said. "How far along?"

"Well-it must have been before Sandy-"

"Oh, the poor girl," Grace said. She jumped up. Rose grabbed her. "No, Ma. Let her sleep. She told me that's all she wants for now. I'll go and make up a bed for Mamie."

Mamie had remained outside. She'd picked up one of the folded rugs from the wingback wicker chairs and was sitting, coc.o.o.ned, gazing out at the view.

"And then I'll run a bath for that man," Rose said, and jerked her thumb at Lazarus.

Lazarus waited in the doorway. He stood very still, and his extreme exhaustion only added to his presence. His face was cadaverously thin and pale, and Chorley, looking at him, was tempted to make some joke about Poe's raven-because the man really did look like he might start croaking "Nevermore!" at them.

Rose took Lazarus to the upstairs bathroom. She put the plug in the tub drain and turned on the taps. The water splashed, then began to chime as the tub filled. "I don't think I've ever seen Laura so sad," Rose said.

"Laura is sad because she believes in fate," he said.

Rose was trying to figure him out. She kept staring at him, and the longer she stared the longer she wanted to stare. He was grimy and abrupt and, she thought, violent in some way she couldn't quite work out, but he was mesmerizing to her-the mysterious fact of him.

He said, with a kind of exhausted eagerness, "But I think what happens is that when anyone does anything absolutely extraordinary-great or terrible-then, when they change the world, they make another world. When G.o.d separated light from darkness and made the world, perhaps he left the dark world behind him. And, because the dark world is still there-"

"You really are a Hame, aren't you?"

A little color came into his cheeks, rosy gray under the dirt. "Meaning?"

"Quaintly religious."

"Who are you calling quaint, you old-fashioned girl?" he said.

Rose turned off the taps and tested the water. She couldn't tell whether it was a comfortable temperature. Her hands still felt warm as hot and hot as burning. But this man wasn't an infant and could look after himself. "Throw your clothes outside the bathroom door and I'll bring you something to wear," she said, and bustled out.

Mamie was in the guest room, sorting through some of Rose's clothes to see what she could fit into. Chorley had gone out to send a telegram to Mamie's mother, saying she was safe and staying at Summerfort. Laura was still asleep.

Rose had taken up the task of listening to her mother's lamentations, which were a little less intense now and interspersed with thoughts about Laura's baby. "If I wasn't so worried about how we're going to make a living, I'd be happier about it. Your father and I always wanted another baby, but it didn't happen. I do love babies."

"Ma, we don't owe anyone money. And we have two properties. Everything is mortgage free, and there's money in the bank. We're not going to be poor."

"But I don't know who I am if I can't catch dreams," Grace said.

"Then you'll find out, Ma."

"h.e.l.lo!" Chorley called from the front door.

"He has good news," Rose said. "He sounds really happy."

A moment later Chorley appeared, his arm clasped protectively around the waist of a figure in yellow pajamas.

"Sandy!" Grace and Rose shouted together. They rushed him and hugged him. Grace cupped his whiskery, grinning face and cried. Rose held his hand, noticing as she did the shiny, red, hairless patches that matched her own scorch marks.

"He was limping barefoot along the promenade," Chorley said.

"I'm all right," Sandy said. "I only walked from the Awa Inlet to Sisters Beach."

"Forty-five miles," said Grace. "Nothing for a dream-hunter."

"Are you all Contented?" Rose said.

"A little. I feel much less serious than I know I should. I should feel like tearing off Secretary Doran's head."

Chorley gave a gleeful laugh and pulled a telegram from his pocket. He gave it to Rose. It was from her uncle, Tziga. It said that Cas Doran was under arrest on charges of abduction.

"That's a start," Rose said. She felt only grim relief. She knew that she'd have to carry this news to Mamie, and that Mamie might feel she should go back to Founderston at once, to stand by her mother. And Rose knew that sometime in the near future there would be a trial, and that her family would be called to give evidence against her friend's father. Mamie already had difficulties with the world and its expectations, and this could only make it all worse. Remembering how she'd said to Mamie, proudly, that she would go to university to study "Law-for justice," Rose thought that it was all right for her, she had committed herself to a struggle, had spied, plotted, carried a copy of the d.a.m.ning film. But Mamie hadn't made any choices, yet she would have to suffer for those her father had made.

Rose touched Sandy's arm. "Laura is in bed," she said. "You know where her bedroom is, don't you?"

"Um, yes," Sandy said.

Chorley poked Sandy in the arm with a stiff finger. He said, with a prod for every word, "She. Is. With. Child."

Sandy opened his mouth, swallowed, then shut it again.

"Precisely," said Chorley, and pointed to the stairs. "Go," he said.

Laura woke up, still tired, with the heavy, sickening feeling that comes when you know something terrible has happened. Then she remembered that the terrible things were still ahead of her-her whole future mapped out already in the story Lazarus had told her. She longed to speak to Nown. She badly wanted to tell him what it was like to know what would happen. To know, and to have to choose to be alone in knowing.

She opened her eyes-and looked straight into Sandy's. He had been lying with his head beside hers, waiting for her to wake up. He smiled and touched her cheek.

And in that moment everything changed for Laura. The world became world-sized again, and full of surprise.

Sandy said, "There's a strange man in the upstairs bathroom. A strange man who looked at me strangely."

"Well, he would," Laura said.

"I wasn't dead," Sandy said. He gathered her in his arms.

Laura took a deep breath of Sandy's own odor-with its overlay of dust and sea salt. "It's not true, then," she said, through her tears. "Here you are, my baby's father. I thought I was going to have to go through with it all-do all the lonely things. Say bon voyage to Uncle Chorley. Let Rose go away and live in another country. Nurse Father. Live quietly. Wait to die. I thought I had to do what fate dictates. Follow its laws as my poor Nown had to follow my orders."

"Shh, darling," Sandy said, and stroked her hair. "It's all right."

"Yes," she cried. "It is all right. Here you are. That poor man out there must come from a different world than this one. G.o.d is merciful. G.o.d has given us a new world to live in-like The Gate. There is a first time for everything."

Sandy smiled at Laura, moved by how moved she was but completely bewildered. "I have no idea what you're talking about, love."

She laughed, and her last two tears were squeezed out of her eyes by a smile. "I'll tell you," she said.

When Lazarus came downstairs, wearing some of Chorley's clothes, he found Grace, Chorley, and Rose waiting for him. He seemed unable to look at any of them for long. His gaze flitted away around the room and finally lighted on Tziga's violin, sitting on its stand and covered in a peach fuzz of dust. Lazarus crossed the room-so thin in his borrowed clothes that he seemed to drift, bodiless. He picked up the violin and put it to one ear. He plucked at its strings with his scabbed thumb, then began adjusting it-plucking, listening, twisting its pegs. "This is mine," he said, softly, lovingly. "The last time I saw it, it was 'produced in evidence.'"

"Excuse me?" Chorley said, outraged.

Rose said to Lazarus, "I know this isn't everybody, but I promise I'll pa.s.s on faithfully anything you say if you don't feel like saying it again."

Lazarus nodded. Then he said, "My name is Lazarus Hame."

Chorley narrowed his eyes. "Explain," he said.

"Give me a moment," said Lazarus.

And it was amazing what Lazarus could do, given a moment.

9.

HE CITY WAS BIGGER, AND SO WERE ALL THE OTHER SETTLEMENTS. THERE WERE MORE ROADS, BETTER ROADS, WITH MANY MORE CARS ON THEM.

But Nown kept away from the roads. He traveled cross-country, and often by night. He walked so far that his feet turned as white as old ice.

Laura had been his compa.s.s-she was North, South, East, and West to him. He couldn't find her, but he kept on looking in all the places he'd found her before.

His pilgrimage finally took him along So Long Spit. He walked on past the lighthouse, then farther, beyond where he'd been that day with Laura.

At the end of the Spit, a sandbar pointing out into a thousand miles of empty ocean, Nown found the gannet colony. He stopped at the edge of the throng of black-and-white birds and gazed at the pattern they made, a glow going away into nothing. He thought, "Laura," her name like a prayer. "Laura, I am not in the same world as you."

He started forward and moved delicately in among the roosting gannets. The birds weren't at all afraid of him. They shuffled aside, clucking peevishly.

Eventually Nown stopped and stood surrounded by the warmth of the colony. He looked out over the sea, gazed into nothingness, and waited. He began his waiting.

The setting sun shone though his gla.s.s body and showed up the dark matter at its heart-his heart, a rust-stained rock from the railbed.

Epilogue.

(1912).

IT WAS THREE DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, AND THE FAMILY WAS AT SUMMERFORT. CHORLEY HAD JUST FINISHED SHOOTING A FILM, HIS FIRST TWO-REELER, AND WAS SHUT UP IN HIS DARKROOM, EDITING IT. HIS THREE JACKS-OF-ALL-TRADES-SANDY, SANDY'S BROTHER THE ENGINEER, AND LAZARUS-WERE KNEELING ON THE LAWN AROUND A NEWSPAPER, ON WHICH RESTED A DISMANTLED CAMERA. THE CAMERA HAD BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR SOME EDGE FOG ON THE FILM, AND THEY WERE TRYING TO WORK OUT WHERE THE LIGHT HAD LEAKED IN.

The newspaper, disregarded by the men, carried a headline that, three days before, had made everyone in the family very happy: PRISON REFORM BILL Pa.s.sES-HARD LABOR abolished.

Grace was upstairs, getting her granddaughter off to sleep so that her daughter could study.

The afternoon was still and humid, the air filled with the abrasive music of hundreds of cicadas, and one violin. The violin belonged to a four-year-old boy, who stood, shoulders back, his instrument tucked under his chin, playing. He was practicing legato, his bow moving smoothly and never leaving the strings. His performance was watched by his grandfather, who sat on a stone seat at the edge of the lawn, back to the hazy, hot blue of the bay.

The cousins, Laura Mason and Rose Hame, were on the veranda. Between them was a table covered in books and papers.

Laura was using her cousin to test the wording of t.i.tle cards for the finished film. Chorley liked to have as few t.i.tle cards as possible. That morning he and she had watched a rough cut and worked out where it was absolutely necessary to add those six or so seconds of darkness and white words.

Laura hunched, chewing on the end of her big, flat builder's pencil. Then she pounced, scrawled for a moment, and raised the sheet of paper to flash it at her cousin.

Rose read: "Pat Sloc.u.m-General of the Heroes of Dog Alley."

"That's not bad. But is it worth interrupting the action for?" Rose said.

"He's a dumpy little dandy who swaggers, so we know 'General' and 'Heroes' are ironic," Laura said. She frowned at what she'd written, chewed her pencil some more, then had another inspiration. She scrawled more words and held them up.

Rose read: "The Commander in Chief of the mighty forces of Dog Alley-General Pat Sloc.u.m."

"Change his name to Pat Potts or something," Rose said. "Unless Da's done the cast credits already."

Laura was about to answer when Rose lifted her book and flashed its t.i.tle- Southland Const.i.tutional Law. She said, "I'm having enough trouble with this without the Dog Alley Gang."

Laura gathered up her sheets of paper. She went in search of another victim. She stood behind her son and flashed t.i.tle cards at her father.

"I've forgotten the film's plot, darling," Tziga said, "so I'm not much use. But I like 'mighty forces.'"

And, at that moment, the ground began to shake.

Laura dropped into a crouch and put her arms around her son. She watched her father's slow realization that this violent noise and vertigo wasn't the beginning of one of his fits but was external to him. Tziga didn't try to stand up. He clamped one hand on the edge of the stone seat and rode it as it rocked and shuddered.

Laura could hear gla.s.s breaking. She looked back at the house.

The panes in the dining room windows were exploding, one by one. The windows had jammed in their warped frames and were bent and bowed. Laura saw that Rose was trying to crawl to the front entrance. Trying to get into the house and upstairs to her baby. But Laura could see Grace already had the baby. Grace was sheltering in an open door on the upstairs balcony, her back against the doorframe, her head and shoulders curved protectively over the lace-swathed bundle of her granddaughter.

Chorley staggered out the front door and pulled Rose back in under its solid frame.

The ground between Laura and the house cracked, the fissures only inches wide but showing stretched fibers of gra.s.s roots. The gravel on the new driveway jumped like popcorn in a hot pan.

And then the shaking stopped. Sound seemed to ebb all the way out of the world. The silence that followed the quake was like a presence-some vast, demonstrative, living thing.

In the Sisters Beach firehouse, a siren wound up into a long, wobbling shriek.

Laura saw that her father had held on to his seat with only one hand; he still had the book he'd been reading in the other, his finger shut into it as a place marker.

Sandy ran up to her. They both took a good look at their boy, Sandy squeezing his arms as if to check for injuries, she brushing his fine, red hair back from his face and peering into his black eyes.