Dreamquake

by Elizabeth Knox

  The man Laura was with had filthy red hair and was wearing Sandy Mason’s coat—Rose was sure of it. The coat was wet. The strips of cloth wrapping the man’s feet were oozing blood-tinged seawater. He’d been pulling mussels off the rocks at the tide line and was smashing them open and eating them raw.

  “I told him you’d have some food,” Laura said. “But he has a somewhat independent disposition.”

  Rose put her arms around her cousin and held her close. Mamie began to burble, more excited than complaining, about the dreamhunters who had swarmed the Doran summerhouse. “Rose thought it best to run off. But I’m beginning to suspect there’s a strong streak in your family of fleeing the scene.”

  “Huh!” said the man smashing mussels.

  “Who is he?” Rose asked Laura. She could see that he was wearing arrow-printed trousers and that his ankles bore the marbled purple scarring caused by years of wearing leg irons.

  “This is my cousin, Rose,” Laura said to the man.

  Rose was intrigued by how gentle and respectful Laura sounded when she spoke to him. The man looked up at Rose with great interest. It made her blush. Then he dropped the shell-and-meat-flecked stone and, looking decisive, said to Laura, “How many people are there who need to know?”

  Laura said, “There’s Da, Uncle Chorley, Aunt Grace, and Rose.”

  “But not this girl,” he said, and pointed his chin at Mamie.

  “No,” said Laura.

  “Well, I’ll wait till they’re all in one place. I’m only going to tell my story once more. Then, if I’m going to have any kind of life, I have to keep my mouth shut. I’m sure you agree.”

  “Hell—you’re a bit forceful,” Rose said to him. She had a very strong urge to pick a fight with him. It made her feel like a blowfly trapped under a glass.

  “Do you have food?” he said, and gave Rose an up-from-under-the-brows look like the kind of dog who nips your fingers while snatching meat.

  “Only if you tell me your name,” Rose said.

  “Lazarus Hame.”

  Rose looked at Laura, who said, “Yes—it turns out there was a Lazarus, after all.”

  6

  N ONE OF THE FASHIONABLE TERRACES ABOVE THE BAY AT CASTLEREAGH THERE WAS A HOUSE WHERE ALL THE MIRRORS had been covered, and where, in the late afternoon following the funeral, only a few family members and close friends remained. The servants were gathering glasses and plates from under the chairs, on the windowsills, and from the top of the piano. No one expected a caller, given the time, and the funeral wreath on the front door.

  One of the dead woman’s daughters went to answer the knocking. It was something to do. Something to distract her from her nagging misery.

  On the steps stood a small, severe-looking woman, and a man in a long cape, who had his arms folded under it in a way that made an imposing triangle of his upper body.

  The dead woman’s daughter stood aside and let the two in. She took them to her father, who was tucked in the house’s smallest downstairs room, drinking whiskey with his best friend. Then, because the room was so small, the daughter went out and closed the door.

  “Judge Seresin,” said Marta Hame, “I’m very sorry for your loss. I hate to disturb you at this time, but I’ve come a long way and on desperate business.”

  “Mitch, this is Marta Hame!” Dr. King said to his friend the Judge.

  The caped man took a pace back and leaned against the door. He let his hidden rifle dangle, so that its muzzle appeared from under his cape, pointed at the floor.

  “With a Temple guard!” said Dr. King. He was intrigued.

  Marta Hame put her valise on the table, opened it, and lifted out her folded clothes balanced on the flat false bottom. She put the pile down, then produced the figure eight of film. “We’ll need to put this film back on a reel. It’s footage of the Depot, a prison camp in the hinterland of the Place, reached by a secret rail line. Cas Doran and his Regulatory Body have been loading captive dreamhunters with a dream that makes anyone who has it stupid and incautious with happiness. Doran has begun to use this dream to control people in the capital.”

  The two men stared at her, mouths open.

  “So far he’s contrived to have a dream-narcotized Congress pass legislation to extend the presidential term. And he is hunting down and trying to eliminate, or permanently dream-drug, anyone he thinks will spoil his plans.”

  “I told you that vote was rigged,” Dr. King said to his friend. “And I’m sure the earlier appointment of the Speaker of the House was somehow rigged too.”

  Marta said, “My niece, Laura, has been to that camp and can testify to its use. And anyone who has had a strong dose of the dream can testify to the fact that it is a gross abuse.”

  “But, Miss Hame …” Judge Seresin said.

  Marta blinked at him in surprise. She was already worried that he hadn’t leapt into action of some kind. Didn’t he believe her?

  “Have you not heard?” he said.

  “Haven’t you seen the newspaper?” Dr. King said.

  Marta’s hand crept to her throat and clutched her crucifix. “I’ve been traveling by back roads and in locked train compartments. I’ve had no news.”

  “The Place has gone,” said Seresin. “It just melted away. Any plan of Doran’s that requires dreams is doomed. Finished. Doran’s empire has fallen.”

  “Poor sod,” said Dr. King, then chuckled.

  Then the Judge jumped up and stuffed a chair under Marta Hame’s sagging legs. Dr. King poured her a stiff whiskey.

  Marta knocked back the whole glass, grimaced, and said, “God be praised.”

  They refilled her glass and shook the decanter at the Temple guard, who set his gun against the door and joined them.

  “I’ll cable Wilkinson—who will quickly work out which side he’s on,” said Seresin.

  “I’ll cable the Grand Patriarch, and my brother at Spring Valley,” Marta said, her voice already faintly slurred—she wasn’t a drinker. “And could you issue a warrant for Doran’s arrest?”

  “I shall certainly be doing that,” said the Judge. “But perhaps we should all get on the next train to the capital?” For a moment he looked defeated and exhausted.

  Dr. King said, “Yes, Mitch. That would be best.” He put his glass down and touched his friend’s hand.

  The Judge nodded. He looked at Marta with solemn dignity. “I think I should see to this myself,” he said.

  7

  HE PRESIDENT, GARTH WILKINSON, REGARDED THE MEN IN HIS OUTER OFFICE — THE GRAND PATRIARCH AND HIS secretary, Father Roy; Supreme Court Judge Seresin; Dr. King; and the resurrected dreamhunter Tziga Hame. He straightened his vest over his trim stomach, said, “I will be with you shortly, gentlemen,” and walked back into his own office, his inner sanctum, where his friend the Secretary of Labor was waiting for him.

  “Karl,” said Wilkinson. “There’s one thing I think we should do right away, and that is get Doran’s name off the Prosperity Measures Bill. We don’t need to lose the ground we’ve made there.”

  “So—you’re letting them have him?”

  “I don’t have any choice.”

  “And what about the repeal of the presidential term limits?”

  Wilkinson sighed. “Well—we’ve landed on a snake there. But it doesn’t need to be a long snake, it might take us back only twenty spaces, since only the last vote will be discounted. The vote under the influence of that dream—about which you and I know nothing whatsoever.”

  “What if Doran’s Colorist talks?”

  “If Plasir keeps quiet about the coloring, then he’s guilty of nothing but having a criminal friend. Or having misplaced his trust—as we have, Karl. We trusted Doran. How were we to have known he was such a villain?” Wilkinson put his hand over his heart and practiced a look of great disappointment. “And I doubt we’re in danger from Doran himself. Cas won’t say anything to further jeopardize his achievements.”

  “What makes you think that?”<
br />
  “He’s a patriot,” said Wilkinson.

  They left the Presidential Offices in a cavalcade of motorcars and men on horseback.

  Dr. King and Judge Seresin rode in the President’s own car. It was a five-minute drive to the Palace of Governance, where the Secretary of the Interior had his offices.

  Wilkinson said to the two men opposite him, “I do not relish this task. Cas Doran is a personal friend.”

  The car turned onto the embankment. Across the Sva, on the upstream end of the Isle, the tower of the Regulatory Body seemed to be throwing off seed. Paper was being tossed from at least two of its top windows. Sheaves of paper that fanned as they fell into the swampy garden below, or blew out over the river to lie, white, on the water.

  “I wish someone would put a stop to that,” Dr. King said mildly. “That’s history.”

  “The real tragedy is that thousands of people will be out of work,” Seresin said. “Everyone in those offices, and dream-hunters, rangers, the staff of dream palaces, and proprietors of dream parlors. All will be ruined.”

  “Indeed. The social consequences are dreadful to contemplate,” said President Wilkinson.

  The cavalcade pulled up at the Palace of Governance, and they went into its lobby, which was already full of police. Garth Wilkinson and his bodyguard got into the first elevator. The Grand Patriarch, Father Roy, the Judge, and Tziga Hame all waited patiently. King rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet saying, “Oh—to be a fly on the wall!”

  Doran was alone in his office. When the door opened and he saw Wilkie, he was pleased—and he was even more pleased when the President stepped into the room and shut the door on his escort, the police, and the handful of pallid and pop-eyed officials who were helping the police put Doran’s papers into crates.

  “His Eminence and Judge Seresin will be here soon,” said Wilkie. “I’m very sorry, Cas.”

  Doran opened his mouth to speak, but his friend held up a hand. “We have only a moment,” Wilkie said. “And I want you to know that I regard this failure as bad luck. Who could have guessed that the Place would choose this moment to vanish?”

  Doran kept quiet but went on nursing the murky suspicions he had, because he didn’t believe in coincidences, only in hidden influence.

  “Very bad luck,” Wilkie said, sounding like someone consoling a gambler after his favorite horse has taken a tumble at the Founders Day Cup. Then he said, “Oh—and that Hame is with them. I thought I should warn you since I know you regard him rather superstitiously.”

  “He’s nothing now,” Cas Doran said through clenched teeth. “He’s a cripple, a fiddler from the old town. Curse him and his family.”

  And then the door opened and that man came in with the other men. The Grand Patriarch was all dignity, and so were his secretary and the Judge. The historian King was present too, which was something of a surprise to Doran. King—the bumptious twit—was so excited he was having to suck his lips in to keep from smiling. Tziga Hame had his eyes cast down as though he was embarrassed or ashamed.

  Wilkinson said to them, “Secretary Doran was just saying that he has hopes of house arrest.”

  Doran flushed. He wanted house arrest even less than he wanted to be shut up in a cell in Founderston Barracks. At home he’d have to endure his wife’s tears and recriminations. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want her. So—Wilkie was going to act sympathetic in private, then subject him to indignities. Like the indignity of having Seresin say to him, “Your charges will include abduction and conspiracy to abduct. They are too serious for house arrest.”

  Doran gave the Judge a polite nod.

  “How did you hope to get away with it?” the Grand Patriarch said.

  Doran thought for a few moments about a possible defense—and saw it was impossible. He thought about making Wilkie’s life uncomfortable—of all the people he could take down with him. But he liked what he’d achieved too much to undo it all just because he couldn’t enjoy it. Knowledge was enjoyment. Knowledge of a few lasting successes. And, since he didn’t plan to defend himself, he at least had the satisfaction of being able to answer the Grand Patriarch. “I would have succeeded had the Place not disappeared.”

  “The Place is not the whole story. There will be other changes,” said the Grand Patriarch in the tones of a crusader. “This society cannot continue in its callous willingness to base its wealth on suffering.”

  Doran laughed. “Oh, yes, Your Eminence? And what are you going to give up?”

  Garth Wilkinson smiled ever so slightly and inspected the fingernails on one hand.

  “Do you think I might be taken off to jail now?” said Doran. “My lawyer is here already and wants to go along with me.” He touched the solitary paper on his desk and looked at Wilkinson. “This is my resignation—though I don’t know why I imagined it was required.”

  “Thank you, Cas,” said the President.

  Father Roy opened the door and stood aside. Doran came around his desk and walked past them. He stopped beside Tziga Hame and tried to catch the man’s shy gaze. He asked, “Do you know why the Place disappeared?”

  “I know nothing,” said Tziga Hame.

  “And you are nothing now,” said Doran. “You and your famous family.”

  Tziga Hame gave Doran a beautiful smile. “Yes, please God,” he said. “Let us be nothing—for a time, at least.”

  Doran stared into that wavering black gaze and sought understanding. Understanding didn’t come to him. “What I tried to do had to work,” he said to Hame, very quietly, and with desperate puzzlement, “because there I was, twenty-six years later, congratulating myself on my successes. The dreams were the future.”

  “Oh—you knew that?” said Tziga Hame.

  Doran nodded, then walked out to the waiting police.

  8

  HEN THEY FINALLY REACHED SUMMERFORT, LAURA DRANK A LARGE GLASS 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, cocooned, 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 God separated light from darkness and made the world, perhaps he left the dark world behind him. And, because the dark world is stil
l 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.”

  “Hello!” 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.