The Dreamfields

by Kevin Wayne Jeter

  The details of his dreams were fading beyond recall, but had left him with a certain melancholy. Sunlight might have dissipated it, but at this hour, Ralph knew, it was a true vision, a glimpse of dark eternity. This is the way it is underneath everything else.

  He felt himself alone on the earth. The social construct of time had stopped, along with light and warmth. The dark hours would last forever.

  Whatever point of conspiracy and violence his life had been hurtling toward still waited in the future. But this is worse. This is death and knowing you’re dead. He turned from the window, sat on the couch and pulled on his shoes. From the dark apartment he stepped into the dimly lit corridor and drew the door shut behind him.

  The building was silent. Ralph passed by the closed doors, feeling like his own ghost. All the familiar components of his life were changed somehow, as though they were never meant to be seen at this hour.

  Everyone else, he thought, is asleep or holding down a shift on the dreamfield. Far away from here, in either case. He entered the stairwell at the far end of the corridor and started down.

  Outside, the concrete paths were like corroded silver in the partial light. He walked slowly between the buildings, not knowing for whom or what he was looking. This kind of motion is becoming a habit with me.

  A small asphalt lot at the corner of one of the apartment buildings held the dozen or so cars that belonged to people on the base. A sad collection, mostly—aged and not well taken care of. Neglect and time had exposed their essential cheapness. Peeling fenders squatted over bald tires. Things have gotten out of hand, thought Ralph with grim humor, when metal starts decaying as fast as human beings. The dusty lenses of the cars’ headlights watched as he went by.

  A honk from one of the cars’ horns startled him. He spun around on the sidewalk and stared at the dark windshields. Wobbling loosely at the end of a sleeve, a pale hand emerged from a side window and beckoned to him.

  “Metric,” called a voice. “Hey, c’mere.”

  Ralph bent forward, trying to see who was in the car. “C’mon, c’mon,” the voice shouted again. “Up and at ’em, dream watchers.” Ralph’s muscles untensed as he stepped off the sidewalk and headed toward the car. It was Blenek the operations chief, his voice recognizable even beneath a slight blurring of syllables. Drinking at this hour? wondered Ralph.

  A brewery odor spilled from the car as he approached. Blenek waved an open can from his seat behind the steering wheel. “C’mon in and have a couple.” Beer slopped from the top of the can and rolled down his wrist.

  Without saying anything, Ralph circled the car and got in on the other side. The seat was damp and a little sticky from the dregs of a couple of empty cans that rolled and fell to the floor as he sat down. They clattered softly against the ones already there. The cans rolled under Ralph’s feet as he pushed his legs into the space beneath the dashboard.

  Blenek tore a full one from the six-pack on the seat between them.

  “Here ya go,” he said with boozy friendliness.

  Ralph felt intuitively that he had nothing to fear from Blenek; the man was, like the watchers he supervised, simply used and kept in the dark by the ones at the top. Whatever additional connections Blenek had with that uppermost layer were of no more importance than simple instructions to be carried out, revealing nothing of the designs behind them. Ralph knew there was nothing sinister about the car in the unlit parking lot—just a car with an inebriated occupant. The beer, though—Ralph pulled back and waved it off with his hand spread wide.

  Blenek looked puzzled at Ralph’s motions, then nodded wisely as he signalled an Okay with the thumb and forefinger of his other hand. “Don’t worry, man,” he said. “ ’S all right. It’s not that stuff they stick in everybody’s ’frigerators around here. I bought this stuff down in Norden myself.”

  Surprised, Ralph looked at him for a moment, trying to read something behind the reddened eyes. Then he took the beer from the unsteady hand.

  “Thanks.” He opened it and tossed the ring and tab onto the car’s cluttered floor. The can’s icy sweat seeped between his fingers as he tilted his head back and swallowed.

  The bitter liquid pulsed down his throat and completed a circuit somewhere inside him. “God, that’s good.” Another swallow stoked the little fire. Exactly what I needed, thought Ralph. He was pleasantly amazed at the potency of its effect on him. “What kind is this?”

  “Good stuff, huh?” Blenck pulled at his own can, then mumbled some Teutonic-sounding brand name. “This isn’t that pale Colorado sugar-water all those pansy college kids and movie stars drink. This is real beer. Put hair on your chest, as my old man used to say.”

  He had never thought about Blenek having a father. Ralph sipped meditatively at the beer. But then everybody has one. More beer deepened this vision. And mothers. And grandparents, and old friends they see or don’t see anymore. He gazed over the rim of his beer can at Blenek. It suddenly seemed as if the corpulent operations chief, and everyone else in the world, had an enormous cavern he dragged around behind him everywhere he went. He drained the can and let it slide from his fingers. It bounced on the edge of the seat and fell with the others.

  Blenek pulled another can free and handed it to Ralph, then took the last one for himself. The small percussive sound of the opening cans stood out again the night’s silence.

  Ralph wiped his damp upper lip with the back of his hand. “So you know about that stuff, huh? That beer they sneak into your kitchen when you’re not around?”

  “Oh, sure.” Beer gurgled inside the can as Blenek gestured with it.

  “Suspected somebody was screwin’ around a long time ago. Never caught ’em, though. They’re pretty sneaky about it.”

  “Ever tell anybody about what you knew was going on?”

  “Naw. I figured, what’d be the point? The only ones who could do something about it are probably the ones doing it in the first place. You know—the general and his staff assistants.” Blenek tilted the can into his mouth for several seconds, then lowered it.

  “What about the other watchers?” said Ralph. “Why didn’t you tell them?”

  “Tell them?” Blenek guffawed into his beer can. “Most of ’em already know! Jeez, you’d have to be really pretty dumb not to know about it. I mean, free beer showing up in your fridge is pretty obvious.”

  “Oh? Yeah, I guess maybe it is.” More beer slid into his stomach, but instead of connecting with his nervous system and lighting things up the way the first can had done, this one produced a slight fog around his mind. Pretty strong stuff, he thought, whatever it is. He tilted the last of it out and dropped the empty can with the rest.

  “How come—” He groped for words. “How come nobody ever did anything about it, though? I mean, why didn’t they stop drinking it, at least?”

  “Stop drinking it?” Blenek goggled at him from across the car seat. “What the hell for?”

  “Well, there’s something wrong with it, isn’t there? They put something in it, don’t they?”

  “Whaat?” Slowly, Blenck’s head moved from side to side. “Wow, Metric, you sure got some wild ideas. You mean, like putting salt-peter in prisoners’ food or something? That’s, uh, pretty crazy if you ask me. It’s just ordinary beer they put in the ’frigerators. There’s nothing wrong with it. Just beer, is all.”

  Ralph frowned as he watched the other lean over the back of the seat and snag another six-pack. There was most of a case sitting on the car’s back seat. “How would you know?” he said at last.

  “Man, I’ve drunk plenty of beer in my lifetime. If anybody added anything to it, I’d know. Believe me.” With a flourish he ripped the tab from another can. “Most of the watchers prob’ly figure that if the people who run this place want to stock free beer in the fridge, it’s fine with them. What’s to complain about? Kind of like a fringe benefit, you know? Me, I just like a better kind of beer. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, I guess. Wait a m
inute. No—nothing.” Ralph lifted his hand to rub his forehead and discovered he had a half-full can of beer in it and no memory of how it got there. The dots of moisture on the smooth cylinder glinted like jewels in the moonlight that came through the windshield. In two gulps he had drained the can. He had never drunk beer this fast before, but now it just seemed to fall without effort into a hole inside himself. It must be the stress, he told himself. The desert’s horizon beyond the base tilted for a few seconds, then settled down.

  “ ’Nother one?” Blenek’s can-laden hand came into view.

  Ralph took it and tugged it open. The pleasantly sour foam spilled across his tongue. He leaned back into the seat and closed his eyes. There was no point, he decided, in telling Blenek all that happened, and was still happening. That was all in another universe, far from this cozy alcoholic communion. Respite, he thought vaguely. Time out. He had read once of how the soldiers in the trenches of World War 1 had sung and jollied around between charges at the enemy a few hundred yards away. Now he understood that. Now he felt free to savor this little piece of time, no matter what terrors he had already gone through and what even worse ones still lay ahead.

  The empty cans were two layers deep on the car’s floor when Blenek held up an unsteady finger. “Lemme show you somethin’.” He tilted in front of Ralph and opened the glove compartment.

  “Wha’s that?” said Ralph thickly. Filling the compartment was a rectangular piece of electronic equipment with dials and switches studding its front panel. A momentary flash of paranoia bubbled inside him.

  “CB.” said Blenek. “Citizen’s Band radio. Big fad for ’em a while back. Lots of people were stickin’ ’em in their cars, chatting back and forth with each other as they drove along. Now it’s back to mostly truckers and a few lonely old geezers like me.”

  A pang of shame hit Ralph, partially sobering him. Who could tell what private sorrow Blenek was drowning out here in the darkness all these nights?

  Blenek switched on the equipment and fiddled clumsily with the now softly glowing dials. Voices crackled out of a speaker somewhere on the dash. Disembodied truck-drivers warned each other about speed traps on the highways. A couple of kids swapped details about their radio equipment—much talk of diodes and transistors. Other voices came and went, flying through the dark air. Ralph listened and watched through half-shut eyes. Too much of that damn beer, he thought dimly.

  “Here.” Blenek had pulled a microphone on a coiled cable from the glove compartment. “Say something. See if anybody wants to talk to you.”

  He took the mike, hesitated for a moment, then pressed the button on the side. “Does anybody—” He spoke slowly and carefully. “Does anybody out there know what’s going on? Anybody? Anywhere?”

  “What a weird question,” mumbled Blenek from somewhere beside him.

  No answer came. Ralph dropped the mike and looked across the seat.

  Blenek had fallen asleep, his head resting against the top of the steering wheel. With a fumbling hand Ralph switched off the radio. The glowing dials lapsed back into darkness. A couple of empty beer cans tumbled to the ground as he opened the door and got out. Under the stars’ gaze he reeled back to his apartment.

  After relieving his aching bladder, he made his way to the kitchen and discovered that the stove’s little clock still read three a.m. He leaned across the cold burners and brought his ear up against the clock’s face. There were no tiny mechanical sounds. Stopped, he thought, straightening up. Dead. He wobbled into the living room and collapsed on the couch. For a moment he thought of Sarah and felt alone and forsaken. At last he fell asleep and dreamed again about the slithergadee.

  Chapter 13

  The sun was well up before he woke again. The familiar teeth of his nightmares faded away. He swung his feet to the floor from the couch. His clothes felt damp and sleazy, with the odor of stale beery sweat from the shirt bunched up under his arms. After finding his way back from Blenek’s car he had collapsed on the couch without even taking off his shoes. But that’s over now, he told himself. That little interlude. I’m back in my own universe again. The comforting alcohol had drained away.

  A cold shower perked up his circulation. Then he opened his bedroom closet, threw his wadded-up civilian clothes into the corner and took one of his Opwatch uniforms from a hanger. Just like an old skin, he thought, pulling on the shirt. I thought I’d gotten rid of it for good.

  Half of a box of saltines was all he could find in the kitchen cupboards.

  The crackers clung so tightly to the roof of his mouth that he could barely swallow. Now what? he thought, staring out the window as his molars ground together. If I ever had a permanent answer to that question. . . .

  Spencer had babbled on the phone about—what? With an effort, the frantic words came up from Ralph’s memory. The Manhattan Project. 1942. Something about that didn’t seem quite right. Had it been called something else? The first nuclear pile. Through his mind floated vague notions of what he’d learned in some physics class in college. Hadn’t they put it together in an underground tennis court or something? He shook his head. This, he thought, is what comes from being asleep all your life. You never know what important stuff you’re going to miss. And what, for Pete’s sake, is a “zip rod”?

  He walked into the front room and stared out the sliding glass door.

  Muehlenfeldt’s jet was still out there, gleaming in the sun, painful to the eye. The senator might know what Spencer had meant on the phone. His men in L.A. might even have pumped Spencer for information before they killed him. So what’s the point in asking me anything? thought Ralph. Everybody around here seems to know more than I do. He crumpled the empty saltine box in his hands, dropped it, and went back into the bedroom to get his Opwatch jacket.

  There was no one in the Rec hall when he entered. It was still too early for any of the watchers to be awake after their shift last night. Good thing I’m still on vacation, he thought in a mixture of irony and relief. He walked down the corridor to the last room, the one least used by anybody on the base—a tiny library with metal shelves crammed full of shabby-looking volumes.

  Ralph stepped into the room and ran his eyes over the faded book spines until he located what he was looking for. One shelf held an outdated encyclopedia set. He pulled out the M volume and started leafing through it.

  He felt no surprise when he found that the pages had been neatly razored out where the article on the Manhattan Project would have been.

  That’s real cute, he thought. Why not throw away the whole hook? Who would have noticed? The sense of deranged ingenuity annoyed him. He didn’t even bother to open any of the other volumes.

  * * *

  “An encyclopedia?” The shopkeeper frowned and held the sides of the cash register drawer. “What would we carry something like that for? Don’t think we’d get much call for it. This ain’t a bookstore, you know.” He fished change for a dollar from the drawer and slid it across the counter.

  “No,” said Ralph, pocketing the pack of gum he’d bought in order to start the conversation. “I mean, do you have a set at home? Where you live?”

  “Now that’s a funny thing.” The man stroked his chin meditatively.

  “Sure are a lot of people asking about encyclopedias lately.”

  “Yeah? Who else?”

  “Oh, they said they were from some publishing company back east.”

  The shopkeeper nodded his head in the general direction. “They sure had mean little eyes, though. Never can tell, I guess. Anyway, they said their company was bringing out some new fancy type of encyclopedia, and they were going around Norden giving people cash for their old ones. Fred Webb—you know, the barber—he said they gave him two dollars a volume for an old set of Globals that his kids used to do their homework with.

  “They’re all grown up and moved out now, of course, so Fred figured he might as well have the money for the books. There probably weren’t more than four or five sets in the whole town,
and those publishing company people most likely got ’em all. Encyclopedia paper must be getting pretty scarce.”

  Muehlenfeldt, thought Ralph. Just ahead of me. There’s some kind of info about the old Manhattan Project that he’s trying to keep me from finding out. Just like he thinks I’m keeping something secret from him. But what?

  “Whatcha need one for, anyway?” asked the shopkeeper. “Something you wanted to look up?”

  “Yeah.” Coin by coin he picked up his change from the counter.

  “What was it? Maybe I’d know something about it.”

  He smiled wearily, without hope. “I don’t think so. I needed some information about the first nuclear pile experiments.”

  “The ones in 1942?” said the shopkeeper. “At the University of Chicago, with Enrico Fermi?”

  Startled, Ralph looked at the man on the other side of the counter. “I guess that’s the one,” he said slowly. “The Manhattan Project. What do yo know about it?”

  “That’s not what it was called. The code name was ‘The Metallurgical Project.’ ” He slapped the counter and looked pleased with himself. “I was reading an article about it just the other day. In an old copy of the Reader’s Digest. I save all my issues—got ’em complete for, oh, some forty years back.”

  The skin on Ralph’s arms and neck tensed with a small but growing current of excitement. “Do you still have that one? Can you find it?”

  “Oh, sure. Watch the register for a minute, will you?” The shopkeeper left the counter and headed for the stairs in back that led to the rooms above the store. After a few moments, during which Ralph could hear grunting and sliding noises from above, he reappeared carrying a cardboard box. It was haphazardly filled with copies of the Reader’s Digest, the top layers of the mound threatening to slide and capsize onto the floor.