Ralph paced slowly around the dried mark. Something in its outlines, or its color, pushed back the memory of the Thronsen Home’s dark interior for a moment.
A thought crept into his head. He looked away from the stain and towards the base. The concrete cube of the line shack was visible in the distance. With careful precision he tried to recall the different directions he and Stimmitz had taken during the last shift on the field. The adrenaline in his system had sharpened his memory. The line, he thought, runs east and west inside the building. When we got to the field we turned . . . right, I think . . . He closed his eyes and pictured the section of small town. It was close to being firmer in his mind than the real world.
We turned right. In his mind Ralph saw the two of them moving slowly through the dreamfield sections, stopping occasionaly to watch a sequence or to rest, then finally turning the corner to follow the slithergadee—
He opened his eyes and laid the line he had constructed in his head down on the ground between himself and the distant line shack, and suddenly felt cold beneath the desert’s noon sun. If his calculations were right, then it was the same distance from where they had let go of the line to where the slithergadee had attacked Stimmitz, as it was from the line shack to this blood-colored spot.
He looked from the gray building, small in the distance, to the brownish red mark on the ground. His thoughts seemed to have frozen in his head. There was the stain, the building, and all the desert in between, but the connection was still elusive. The more Stimmitz’s universe coalesced around Ralph again, the darker things got. He squeezed the manila folders in his hands and walked quickly, then broke into a run away from the spot.
Chapter 5
The six o’clock news was on the television in Goodell’s apartment.
Groups of blurred soldiers were directing great block-long gushes of flame into a blackening jungle. The jungle sagged and crackled. Unseen jets could be heard wailing mournfully somewhere. Ralph put his index finger under a beer can’s tab and lifted.
A newsman’s rouged face came on, all the way from some studio in L.A., but Ralph didn’t hear what he was saying. Little stars lit up on a pink and green map of South America behind the newsman.
Ralph didn’t hear the other watchers slouching in the apartment’s chairs either. He sipped at the first cold, sharp edge of the beer, and let his mind pace slowly among his thoughts.
The two folders he had stolen from the Thronsen Home were hidden beneath the cushions of the couch in his own apartment. He had glanced quickly through them but had found nothing to throw any light on what he had witnessed on the other side of the fence.
He imagined the spot out on the desert. Its outlines reformed, throbbing, inside his head, fading into the memory of the sand in the shoes, then into the woman he had seen with the camera. Was the Bach tape Stimmitz had left for him part of the mystery also? He sipped again at the beer. Who knows, he thought.
After all—a group of sullen-looking South American Indians with machine guns were trooping across the television screen—it could still be all right. So what if the kids in the Thronsen Home are wired asleep? Ralph asked himself. Maybe that’s just part of the therapy that they don’t tell anyone about. For appearance’ sake. Another pull, and the beer can was half-empty.
There were explanations for everything. All he had to do was to accept them. Or if necessary, invent them. The real world felt like a tide, pressuring him to accept what everyone else in the world believed to be true. Except weirdos like Stimmitz and Helga, he thought.
“Hey,” he said, turning in his chair to see the others. They had all come to Goodell’s apartment because the Rec hall was getting its monthly floor-polishing by an outside squad of janitors. “Anybody seen Helga recently?” For some reason he felt like trying to talk to her again.
“Didn’t you hear?” Kathy yawned and scratched. “She got canned.”
Ralph lowered the beer can from his lips and looked at her. “What for?” he said finally.
Goodell looked disgusted. “Same thing that idiot Stimmitz got it for,” he said. “They found out that she had sneaked into Thronsen with him.” A couple of the other watchers nodded, a silent chorus.
“Did anybody . . . see her go?” Ralph squeezed the cold cylinder in his hands.
“Naw,” said Goodell. “She took off without saying anything to anybody. Wouldn’t you if you got caught doing something that stupid?”
“She must’ve really been in a hurry to get packed and out of here,” said Kathy, and giggled. “I peeked in her apartment before Blenek came and locked it up, and it was all torn-up looking.”
“Like somebody had been fighting there?” asked Ralph dully.
“Yeah, like that.” She giggled again.
Ralph stared at her while he sipped the flat remnants left in the can.
Maybe Helga was in a hurry, he thought. It’s more likely than all that other stuff. He noticed that the top button of Kathy’s Opwatch blouse was missing, revealing a small triangle of skin below her throat. It was pale white, like the rest of her slender body. The skin of the girl with the camera had been golden. But if that wasn’t in another universe, it was far enough away in this one to be not worth thinking about.
He turned and looked past the television and out the window. The sunset was melting the desert. Maybe, he thought, she was some kind of nature buff, taking pictures of the spot where some desert animal killed and ate another one. Maybe that’s the explanation. He drained the can, stood up, and went past the others into the apartment’s kitchen.
There was a small mountain of empty cans on one of the counters—he added his own to it. Sometimes, he thought, it drops inside you without even making a splash. He opened the refrigerator for another.
Inside were four sixpacks of two different brands; one whole shelf was stacked with them. It looked like every other refrigerator he had ever seen on the base, including his own. He pulled one can apart from the rest and closed the door.
As he opened the can, it suddenly struck him as funny that, considering how lazy all the watchers were, they had spent so much energy carrying all that beer all the way from the little store in Norden where they bought their groceries. A question of values, he decided. He brought the can to his lips, then took it away, and stared at it.
He had never seen any of them bring any beer back from the town. The realization hit him like a wave. Right now, there were sixpacks of beer in the refrigerator of his own apartment that he hadn’t put there. There were always fresh sixpacks, yet he never bought any. And neither, as far as he knew, did any of the others.
Damn, thought Ralph. He opened Goodell’s refrigerator, looked inside, closed it again. The beer was still there, mute and solid, covered with moisture not much colder than that now springing out on Ralph’s skin.
This has been going on all the time, he thought, and nobody’s ever noticed. None so blind, right? As those who will not see— until it tears out their throats. He felt ill—his universe was crumbling for good, dissolving at last to reveal the one, the true one, underneath.
That bloodstain, he thought. There’s no animal in this part of the desert big enough to have made that. And the base commander’s explanation of what happened with Stimmitz and the slithergadee—that’s crap, too. If the kids are all unconscious, how could they see Stimmitz and incorporate him into their dreams! It was clear to him that Stimmitz had been right all along and had died because of it. There was something wrong about Operation Dreamwatch—something that killed to hide itself.
And the beer. His hand trembled as he looked at the can he held. Who knows what they put in it. Or what it’s doing to us. He stepped to the sink and started to pour it out.
“Hey,” said Goodell from the doorway. “What’re you doing?” He looked from the last golden drops falling into the sink to Ralph’s face. “Are you feeling okay? You look terrible.”
Ralph set the can down on the counter. “I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t worry
about me.”
“You’d better go back to your place and lie down.” Goodell put his hand on Ralph’s shoulder. “So you’ll be ready to go out on the field tonight.”
“The field?” echoed Ralph. He stared at Goodell. Some part inside himself clenched with the realization of what might be waiting for him there.
* * *
Commander Stiles was just leaving his office when Ralph caught him.
“Hello,” said the older man as he locked the door with his key. “What’s the hurry?”
Ralph gasped, trying to catch his breath. He had run all the way from Goodell’s apartment. “I just wanted to see,” he managed to speak, “if I could go ahead and take that week off.”
“Sure,” said Stiles. “I don’t see why not. Be good for you. I’ll have the forms ready tomorrow so you can take off right after your shift if you want.”
“Uhh . . . would there be any way I could leave tonight?”
The base commander frowned, his leathery skin bunching around his lower lip. “No, I don’t think so. Not according to the Opwatch manual, you know.” His eyes sharpened on Ralph. “Was there some particular reason you wanted to leave so soon?”
Careful, Ralph told himself. Don’t let him suspect what you know.
“No,” he shrugged. “Just a spur of the moment decision, that’s all.”
“Come by in the morning, then.” Stiles pocketed his key and started down the hallway. “No need to be impatient.”
Ralph watched the broad uniformed back receding from him, then slowly followed after it toward the exit.
* * *
Nothing happened on the dreamfield that night, except for the usual sequences to be observed. As the line came snaking down out of the field’s blue sky, Ralph’s observation partner remarked on how nervous he had seemed all through the shift. Ralph only nodded, watching the descending line. It looked wonderful, a linear angel.
By nine a.m., he was standing on the one small section of sidewalk in Norden with a single canvas bag in his hand, even though he knew the Greyhound to L.A. didn’t come through until eleven-thirty.
PART TWO
L.A.
Chapter 6
It felt good to be back in L.A. The farther away from the base the Greyhound had travelled, the better Ralph had begun to feel. He knew that whoever was behind Operation Dreamwatch—Stimmitz’s remarks about the mysterious Senator Muehlenteldt echoed in his head—was certainly powerful enough to get at him just as easily as in the desert. But there was still the sensation, the release of a knotted gut, of having somehow escaped a trap. At least L.A. was something of a home base, familiar ground that didn’t tremble in the heat, but lay comfortably swaddled in its gray air.
He walked out of the bus terminal and headed for the row of taxis at the curb. Tucking his canvas bag under his arm. he opened the first one’s door and slid into the front seat beside the driver. “That all you got?” said the driver, glancing at the bag.
“Yeah, I’ll hold it.” Through the canvas Ralph could feel the stiff manila folders he had stolen from the Thronsen Home. He gave the driver his parents’ address, and they pulled out into the downtown traffic.
“What happened there?” asked Ralph. One of the towering office buildings had what looked to be a giant hole chewed out of one corner, with warped girders protruding into the air. He twisted around to stare at it as they went past. Trucks and bulldozers were clearing away a small mountain of rubble that blocked one of the streets at the foot of the building.
“One of those damn Ximento crazies,” said the driver, scowling. “Wired himself up like a bomb and set himself off in the men’s room on the thirtieth floor.”
“Really?” Ralph felt a familiar unease at not knowing what everyone else seemed to know. He’d once considered subscribing to Time. “What for?”
“Who knows? Maybe the guy had something against pay toilets. Hah.”
The uncomfortable feeling went away as it always did when he realized nobody else seemed to know anything either. Anyway, he thought, I know more than they do. Just enough to be scared.
Several minutes later, he was standing on the sidewalk in front of his parents’ house. The taxi’s engine faded away, the noise swallowed by the residential street’s relative peace. The neighborhood had deteriorated a little since he was a kid—a couple of the houses were abandoned, with broken windows and spray-painted graffiti—but, in general, had resisted the complete decay that radiated from other parts of the city. He lifted his canvas bag and headed up the little path that bisected the front lawn.
The front door was unlocked. Ralph stuck his head into the house and listened for a moment. He could detect the faint, barely audible hum of a television set in one of the rooms. Closing the door softly behind himself, he peeked in the living room—empty, except for furniture—then went down the hallway and looked in the den. His parents were there, both silently watching the television. “Hello,” called Ralph from the doorway of the room.
Mrs. Metric turned her head toward him. The garish colors from the pre-embargo Japanese portable glinted from the oval lenses of her glasses.
“Ralph,” she said, showing no surprise or any other emotion. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m on vacation.” He crossed in front of them and sat down in an armchair at right angles to both them and the television.
“That’s nice.” She and Ralph’s father continued to watch the screen.
Some type of game show was on.
“Yeah.” Ralph shifted in the overstuffed chair, feeling somehow uncomfortable. “I just thought I’d spend some time looking up some people.”
“Oh?” She didn’t look at him. “Who?”
“Uh, just people I . . . used to know.”
Several seconds passed, filled with the faint hysterical squealings from some woman on the television.
“Would it be all right,” said Ralph, “if I borrowed one of the cars? The Ford?”
“Oh, sure.” His mother waved vaguely at the doorway. “The keys are hanging on the bulletin board in the kitchen.”
“Thanks.”
“There’s still some of your clothes in your old room.” She seemed to be talking to the television. “Doesn’t look like you brought very much with you.” Somehow she had noticed his small canvas bag.
“Okay.” The sound from the television grew even shriller. Ralph pushed against the arms of the chair, feeling the uneasiness growing in his limbs.
“Uh, anything new?” he said, almost desperately. “Hear from Linda recently?” That was his sister.
“She’s fine. George got stationed at El Toro, so he sees her and the baby every weekend. He’s radio-controlling a Soldier Joe right now.”
“That’s the big three-ton model,” said Ralph’s father. His voice rumbled up from some depth in his chest. “With the plasma howitzer.”
“He says he’s seen quite a lot of Brazil on his view screen.” Mrs. Metric nodded for emphasis. “Even piranha fish in the Amazon River.”
“How about that.” Ralph stood up. “Well, I’m going to be on my way. Maybe I’ll stop back by tonight.”
“That’s fine. We’ll be right here. We’re not going to go anywhere.”
He crossed the room, picked up his bag from where he had left it in the doorway, then looked back at his parents. The source of the uneasiness he felt became apparent to him. The expression on their faces as they sat absorbed in the television—absence of expression, really, on the border of the inanimate—was the same as he had always seen on the watchers back at the base. And sometimes in his own mirror. A shudder moved across his shoulders and arms. He turned away and headed down the hallway.
In his old bedroom he found a fresh shirt hanging in the closet and, tucked away on a shelf, a shallow rectangular box he had forgotten all about. He knelt beside the open closet and lifted the cardboard lid, revealing a sheaf of paper. On the topmost sheet was his own name, neatly typed beneath the manuscript’s title. He
lifted out the thin bundle and flicked through the pages of crisp black typing and the slightly blurred carbon copies.
It was supposed to have been a science fiction novel. He had already started on it and was about a quarter of the way through when he had taken the night job at the Juvenile Hall south of L.A. Then his life had bogged down and he had wound up with Operation Dreamwatch out in the desert.
He put the lid back on the box. Science fiction, he thought, shaking his head. What’s the point of writing it when you find yourself living it? He stood up, laid the carton back on the shelf in the closet, and stripped off his shirt.
When he had finished buttoning the fresh shirt, he picked up the canvas bag and laid it on the bed. He zipped it open and took out the two battered manila folders. The booking slips, made whenever the kids had been arrested, had the addresses of their parents on them. He located the most recent slip in each folder and jotted down the addresses on a piece of scrap paper. Folded into a square, the paper lay in his shirt pocket against his heart as he left the room.
His parents were watching the same game show, or maybe a different one, as he stepped into the kitchen and took the ring of keys from the board next to the bright yellow wall telephone. He pulled the front door shut behind himself without them hearing.
* * *
With a hamburger in one hand and vanilla milkshake balanced precariously on the seat next to him, Ralph maneuvered the Ford through the Harbor Freeway traffic. There was a certain elemental pleasure to the car’s motion in and out of the lanes—what he supposed he would feel if he had ever learned to dance. He braked for a bus wheezing through its gears ahead of him, whipped the Ford into a small gap in the next lane, cleared the corner of the bus by inches and caught his milkshake as it started to fall over. Pleased with himself, he pulled on the plastic straw, drowning the last of the hamburger’s dry gray meat.
The Dreamfields Page 5
