by J. M. Porup
The timer glowed red inside his skull.
35:43:17.
And ticking down.
“Less than thirty-six hours to get back topside.”
“This is the Dream World’s last chance,” Buck said. He shouted to the actors, who still cowered in the tunnel. “Let’s go, people!”
“Wait,” Shade said. He still knelt on the ground.
“What is it? Are you strong enough to walk? Do you want us to carry you? We’ll carry you.”
Buck snapped his fingers and two of the actors rushed to Shade’s side, lifted him to his feet.
“No,” he said, and shook himself free. “It’s not that. I—” He faltered. Something troubled him. What was it?
“What’s going on, Shade?” Buck whispered, gripping Shade’s bicep. “There’s no time. We’ve got to go. Now!”
The others stood there, waiting for him to speak. Shade clutched his head. The implant quivered inside his skull.
“I want to be whole.”
“We want to be whole,” Buck said. “Humanity wants to be whole. For the first time in thousands of years. And you’re the only one who can make that happen.”
“No,” Shade said. “I mean, I want to return to the Collective.”
“And sing for them, I know. We’re going to help you do that. Now come on!”
The Collective had killed his Linda. He hated them. He wanted revenge. He wanted to…but what had she said? Her body, still warm, lay at his feet.
You must not hate. You must love… Hate will destroy your dream.
“Let’s go,” Buck said.
The others headed after the Dream Police.
“Wait. This isn’t what I want.” Shade turned to Ennst. “Can you reattach the tentacle? Is there any way?”
The scientist tapped the replugger with his foot. The tentacle had stopped twitching.
“No. And why would you want that?”
Zune’s body lay on the ground not far away. Shade remembered the actor’s words: “Without an audience, how can I sing?”
“Oh they will hear you,” Ennst said. “Trust me.”
“But I won’t hear them. You understand?”
Buck looked at him in surprise. “You could enter their minds one at a time, could you not?”
Shade shook his head. “It isn’t the same. You know it’s not.”
Ennst cleared his throat. “You just heard a couple dozen Dream Police shout you down. What’s it going to be like when ten billion voices are screaming inside your head?”
Shade struggled for words. “But without that pain, how can I love them?” A couple of the actors nodded their heads. “How can I be whole if I can’t hear what the rest of humanity thinks?”
“You may have a point,” Ennst said. “But it is too late now. Besides, if you still had the reception tentacle, the Collective would be able to spy on us. If you were whole, as you put it, they could enter your mind and hear this conversation. They would know exactly where we are, and they’d kill us all long before we got to the surface.”
“So you see,” Buck added. “This is the only way.”
Sadness filled him, but he could not explain why. Shade nodded.
They filed out of the tunnel, the same tunnel by which they had arrived. Shade was surpised to find the booby traps disarmed. Come to think of it, why had no Dream Police been killed on their arrival? Zune must have disarmed the booby traps before meeting up with the Dream Police.
They began the long slog back to the surface.
“So what’s the plan?” Zama said. “Get him topside, let him loose to sing, and wait for the house of cards to fall?”
Ennst studied Shade’s face. “We must go topside. Yes. But what will happen then is anyone’s guess.”
“Why do you say that?” Buck asked.
The scientist pointed. “Just look at him.”
Buck stared open-mouthed.
“What is it?” Shade asked. “What’s wrong?”
Before Buck could reply, an explosion shook the earth.
A rock struck Zama’s shoulder, cutting open a jagged gash, and he cried out.
“What’s happening?” another actor cried.
Rubble rained down on their heads.
“Back to the chamber!” Buck shouted.
They returned to the King’s Chamber without additional casualties.
A pair of actors tore strips from their jumpsuits and bound Zama’s wound.
“The Dream Police know we’re coming,” Ennst said. “They know Shade has replugged. All they have to do is delay us long enough for the bomb inside his head to explode.”
Shade felt an unexpected relief. He wouldn’t have to go through with this plan after all. He fingered the hole at the base of his skull.
But neither, then, would he have his revenge.
They killed Linda. They killed Linda. They killed Linda!
He would never be whole again. Maybe it was better to die down here. Maybe it was for the best. He lay down on the ground and closed his eyes.
“Get up!” Buck shouted. “What are you doing?”
With a sigh, Shade got back to his feet. He looked for Ennst. “You can go ahead and unplugg me now.”
The scientist shook his head. “Not possible, I’m afraid.”
“What are you talking about? If you can replugg me, you can unplugg me.”
Ennst clucked his tongue. “Replugging is a dangerous business. You are the first human being ever to undergo such a procedure. The human brain is not designed to have implants added and removed, back and forth like this. The implant is normally inserted at birth to give the organism time to adapt. Unplugging so soon after a replugg…” Ennst trailed off. “It would kill you.”
“But I’ll die if you don’t!”
Ennst put a hand on Shade’s shoulder. “You will die if I do.”
“Your only chance of survival,” Buck said, “our only chance, is to get you back topside as planned.”
“But how?” Shade demanded. “The police blew up the tunnel!”
The goat-man gestured around the cavern. “There are dozens of ways to the surface. The Collective has blocked one path. We’ll take another. We’ll just have to be quick.”
Shade gulped. The others looked at him. They expected him to do this thing.
Linda.
His dream.
The Collective.
His song.
His song…
It welled within him now, growing in power until he thought his heart would burst.
“Alright,” he whispered. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
They ran.
Less than thirty-six hours to get back to the Crust, back to the Collective. No time for rest, no time for anything but running, as fast as their legs could carry them.
Reinforcements were coming, Shade knew. Kann had, no doubt, transmitted the news to the other Dream Police below the Crust. A messenger would bring down hundreds, if not thousands, of police to intercept them. The Collective understood as well as he did the significance of his replugging.
In the brief moment of mental intercourse Shade had with Kann, he’d felt a hate he had never before experienced—the Collective’s hatred of him. This puzzled him. Was not hate forbidden? Yet their desire to destroy him was undeniable. They knew he was a Prime. The last Prime ever. A Prime with a dream powerful enough to end the Collective.
They would come after him with everything they had.
Another explosion shook the earth, more distant this time. At least he had the element of surprise. The Dream Police did not know these tunnels, would not know where to expect them to emerge from the catacombs—although they knew when Shade’s head would explode. It was a race against time.
And when he got back to the surface, the Collective would expect him to make for the crystal staircase. As far as the Collective knew, it was a chokepoint, the only way topside. The Collective would defend it to the last man…meanwhile, he and the othe
rs would commandeer the moving box used for food transport, and be back in the Crust before the Dream Police knew what was happening.
He hoped.
They ran on, ever upward, forcing themselves beyond the limits of endurance. They stopped for a few minutes in every hour, just long enough to pop a food pill, a water pill, a caffeine pill. They trudged up the twisting maze, lifting their knees high to step over the skeletons of forgotten dreamers.
They had long since ceased to chatter. There was nothing to say. Hope and fear and desire—what did they matter? To do, or to die. Probably to die. Nothing else mattered.
The clock in Shade’s head counted down, a constant reminder of how little time remained.
The last few hours to the surface they did not rest. Finally, they left the catacombs behind and found themselves surrounded by rusted wheeled boxes on the lowest level of a skyscraper.
They paused to catch their breath. Shade checked his timer: 2:03:45.
They crept up a flight of stairs. A faint wind tickled Shade’s cheek. He stumbled forward, but Buck held out a hand.
A pair of Dream Police patrolled the far end of the tunnel, where it opened into the crater. Shade could just make out the crystal staircase in the distance. The cops faced the crater, backs to Shade.
As soon as he set eyes on the two cops, they spun and opened fire.
“They saw us!” Zama said.
“But how?” Maude asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Buck said, “Come on!”
They turned and ran.
Buck led them back the way they had come. Bootsteps echoed behind them.
“Now what?” Shade asked, checking the timer for the umpteenth time.
“We’ve got to do some reconnaisance. See how many Dream Police there are, how they’re placed.” Buck fingered the tip of one horn. “Make doubly sure they’re nowhere near the food transport.”
“And if they are?” Zama asked. “We have no other choice.”
“We need to be prepared.”
“But we’re in a hurry!” Shade said.
“Like Zama says, we have no choice,” Buck said. “If they’ve laid a trap for us, we need to know now.”
They found the nearest stairwell and climbed. On the twentieth floor of a three-hundred-story building, they left the stairs and slipped between two melted door frames into a desk-filled room. Ancient bones littered the room, fused into plastic chairs and twisted dividers, and preserved from decay by the radiation.
The floor-to-ceiling glass windows bent and twisted inward. Buck and Shade crept on all fours to the edge, and peeked out.
The crater lay below in the distance. Dream Police on foot patrolled the streets. More police cruisers than Shade could count flitted and darted beneath the Crust—all of them armed with machine guns.
The Collective must have bored a hole through the Crust, he thought. Then: did that mean an opening, a way for him to communicate directly with the Collective? He probed with his mind, but could find no one other than the Dream Police below the Crust. They must have plugged the hole as soon as the cruisers went through.
How would he ever get past those defenses? The rickety old food transport was no match for a modern police cruiser, and if he tried for the staircase, the cops on foot would get him.
All of a suden the cops in the crater scrambled out.
“What’s going on?” Shade whimpered. He tried to head-hop into the minds of the Dream Police, but they threw him out before he could learn anything. “What are they doing? Have they seen us? Where are they going?”
Buck held his finger to his lips, continued to watch.
An explosion caused Shade to wince. Before he could open his mouth, the crystal staircase shivered. The angle was odd, he thought. The burning globe atop the golden spire flickered off, followed by the rest of the lights in the City of Dreams. The last thing he saw before the light disappeared was the crystal staircase.
It was falling.
Worse. It was falling toward them.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The giant spiral staircase, kilometers tall, built by dreamers many thousands of years ago, had been severed from the Crust, the umbilical cord that linked the Worlds of Work and Play forever cut. Shade could only imagine that such a scene had already played out all over the world, every city on the planet severed from the City of Dreams beneath it.
Game over. The staircase would crash into the building where they hid. If the impact didn’t kill them, if they managed to get to the food transport without getting shot, and if they even managed to take off—the swarm of police cruisers would shoot them down before they could make it to the Crust. On top of it all, the timer in his head now read:
1:43:58.
Not enough time. No time. No time. No time!
Buck grabbed Shade, dragged him to his feet. “Come on!”
“What for?” Shade yelled. “We’re all going to die!”
“We aren’t dead yet. And we’ve got to get to the food transport. It’s the only chance we’ve got left!”
They scampered back to the stairwell, flicked on their head lamps. A crashing noise of shattering glass roared in their ears. The steps juddered under foot.
“How did they know we were here?” Zama panted.
The ground stopped quaking, and they raced down the stairs once more.
“I don’t know,” Maude said. “Could be a coincidence!”
“With the Collective?” Buck snorted. “No such thing as a coincidence.”
When they reached the underground level once more, Buck called a halt.
“Jimmy,” he said, laying a hand on Shade’s shoulder, “are you broadcasting? Are you telling them where we are?”
“Of course not! Why do you ask that?”
“No head-hopping at all?”
“Well, sure,” Shade said. “I’ve tried to enter their minds, but they throw me out as soon as they see me.”
“And they haven’t entered yours?”
“You know that’s not possible,” Shade said. “After what Ennst did to me?” He gestured at the scientist.
“It is true they cannot enter your mind,” Ennst said. “But you can enter theirs. And you can show them whatever you want to show them, no?”
“But why would I do such a thing?”
“You tell me,” Buck said. He lowered his horns and looked Shade in the eye. “That’s the only way they could know.”
“But I’m not broadcasting!”
“Do you want them to come for us?” Zama demanded. “Do you want them to kill us? Destroy your dream? Is that what you want?”
“Of course not!” Shade said. “How many times do I have to tell you?”
Bootsteps clattered toward them.
“Come on!” Zama shouted.
“Where are we going?” Shade asked.
“Somebody blindfold him!” Ennst called out.
“What? Why?”
A sound of tearing fabric, and Shade’s world went black. He clawed at his face, but hands twisted his arms behind his back. They picked him up and carried him.
The bootsteps faded.
When they were safe once more, they set Shade down but held his arms tight.
Buck’s voice whispered hot in Shade’s ear. “I don’t think you’re doing it on purpose. But somehow they can track us. Somehow they know where we are. The only explanation.”
“If that’s so,” Shade said, “how come Kann and the others didn’t find us in the catacombs on the way to the surface? Why now?”
“Probably because if they took the time, they’d all die. They’re in a race back topside as well as us. Plenty of Dream Police now to hunt us down.”
”The new arrivals could have entered the tunnels and intercepted us there,” Shade pointed out.
Buck shook his head. “The Collective has no knowledge, no map of these tunnels. Their only real option until now has been to wait for us to reach the surface. And now’s their chance to kill us all.”
/> Was he broadcasting? Shade asked himself. It made no sense. If it were true, that meant the Collective could hear all his thoughts.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Why would I broadcast our location? That would be suicide.”
“Maybe not willingly,” Ennst said. “But perhaps without realizing it…”
“What are you talking about?”
“You say you want to destroy the Collective, infect it with your dream.”
“Of course!”
“And I believe you. But,” the scientist said, and laid a finger on Shade’s chest, “unconsciously you still love the Collective. You’re former Dream Police, after all. You could be broadcasting everything you see and hear—without realizing it.”
“But if that’s the case, how do I stop?”
Ennst coughed. “You need to resolve that internal conflict. Decide what you really want.”
“And in the meanwhile, he stays blindfolded,” Buck said.
“Precisely.”
They hefted Shade onto their shoulders.
“Time check?” Buck said.
“1:21:10.”
The goat-man clucked his tongue. “Follow me,” he said. “Be careful what you say out loud. The Collective will hear it.”
They advanced through many different rooms and corridors. Shade was disorientied, the echoes of each room blending together. In other places he felt a breeze on his cheek. After a while he stopped trying to guess, and relaxed in their arms. For the best, he decided. If he didn’t know where he was, how could the Collective?
Hands covered Shade’s ears, lifted him onto a hairy shoulder. He bounced into the air, dropped into what, by the sound of the echo, Shade guessed was a small room. The floor boomed beneath their feet.
“Get moving before he figures out where we are,” Buck hissed.
The ground shuddered, and Shade’s stomach dropped. A moving box, that’s where they were. Oops. Did the Collective hear that?
“They’ve seen us,” Ennst called out.
Buck pulled off the blindfold. “We’ve got about thirty seconds left to live,” he said. “Think of something. Fast!”
Shade peered out the leaded glass window. The food transport lifted off the ground and manoeuvred through the forest of skyscrapers. Its spotlight picked out hundreds of Dream Police cruisers swarming toward them through the groundscrapers of the Crust.
