The Dream Widow

by Stephen Colegrove

  All the monks attended, even Parvati. She sat beneath a gold and crimson umbrella at the north corner, nodding and smiling to the monks packed in beside her. A sky-blue robe covered her black jacket and pants.

  A staccato of wooden sticks began the main attraction: the chham. Twelve monks danced a methodical circle around the plaza as drums and cymbals crashed a simple rhythm. All were dressed in crimson-patterned jackets with wide strips of gold, red, green, and blue fabric hanging from their belts like a skirt. Each wore a different mask painted to represent a heavenly figure. Some masks were red with fierce white teeth and others were as black as a coal sculpture.

  Wilson and Reed watched the ceremony from the edge of the crowd. Wilson wore a huge yellow cockscomb of a hat along with his crimson robes and mustard-colored jacket.

  “I don’t understand,” he said through the din of cymbals and drums.

  Reed chopped a hand at the dancers. “It’s symbolic. To bring luck and to drive away evil spirits, that’s the most basic meaning. On a higher level it’s the story of Lopon Rinpoche, the guru with powerful magicks who brought Buddhism to these mountains. The monk dancing now represents his power to transform into a tiger.”

  “I’m sorry––I didn’t mean that. What I don’t understand is this month of meeting people and scraping data from memory fragments. Parvati said that was the only way to leave but it’s still impossibly strange to me.”

  “I have only a simple understanding of the problem, but I think it is something like a game, like a children’s puzzle.”

  “Maybe it is,” said Wilson. “I just don’t want to play anymore.”

  Reed was quiet for a moment and watched the memorized steps of the costumed monks.

  “When this is over, will you remember?”

  “I’m not the problem,” said Wilson. “The entire point was to bring back your memory.”

  Reed chuckled. “We have a pattern of misunderstanding each other.” He clapped Wilson on the shoulder. “I know that I am nothing, a corrupted memory fragment of someone’s walk through the streets. I’m less than an eyelash lost in a wheat field.”

  “You’re not––”

  “Who I am now or what I was before isn’t important. What is important is you. Promise me you will contemplate what’s happened here and won’t forget the people you’ve met, fake or not.”

  “I promise.”

  A stooping Chinese soldier in a fur cap and long coat squeezed through the crowd. Wilson felt nervousness rise in his throat until the soldier pushed the cap up and he saw Jack’s face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” said Jack. “They’re coming, that’s all.”

  Wilson and Reed followed in his wake as Jack plowed a furrow through the tightly packed crowd of monks and villagers to an empty cobblestone lane.

  Jack pointed to the far end. “Any moment now.”

  “The last,” whispered Parvati’s voice in his ear. “The secret of freedom.”

  Wilson turned and she was right behind him.

  “More mumbo-jumbo,” said Jack. “Stop teasing the kid.”

  A motley group turned a corner and approached over the rounded gray stones. All the people from Wilson’s past, but snapping with an uneven flicker.

  His father, blonde-haired and without a beard. His mother, young and thin with long auburn hair. Badger in hunting leathers and black braids, her brown eyes snapping back and forth.

  Wilson felt his skin prickle with goosebumps. All three seemed real, enough that he wanted to hug each one and ask how they were doing. He made the sign of the cross and bowed as the group approached.

  With no sign of recognition, his mother and father nodded respectfully and brushed fingers across Wilson’s upturned palms.

  Badger stood plank-solid in front of him, her head tilted back and eyes wide as if she’d just seen a ghost. Wilson blinked at her strange expression and held his hands out further.

  Without warning Badger grabbed the front of Wilson’s robes and shook him like the last leaf on a branch. Spittle flew from her mouth as she screamed at him.

  “Wake up, Will! Wake up!”

  Wilson’s lemon-colored hat tumbled to the swept cobblestone and he tried to push her away. The crowd turned and the chham music stopped.

  “What’s wrong with her!”

  “Look, the girl’s gone mad.”

  “She’s attacking the guru!”

  Parvati and Jack tried to pull Badger away but her fingers gripped like talons. Wilson tried to concentrate on whispering the four lines of the strength-trick.

  The cobblestone vibrated, bounced, and the buildings swayed back and forth. Stones fell onto the screaming crowd.

  “It’s starting,” yelled Parvati. She pointed at Reed.

  Blinding needles of light exploded from his midnight-blue robes. Reed floated into the air and changed to a diamond of sunlight. Wilson squeezed his eyes shut and looked away, but a red glare seeped through his eyelids.

  A sound crackled the air like the falling limbs of an ancient tree. The worn stones beneath Wilson’s feet became still and the buildings settled onto their foundations. Reed and his light were gone, and left only the smell of lavender.

  Badger grabbed Wilson around the waist with both arms.

  “Now my turn,” said Wilson, still trying to push her away.

  Parvati shook her head. “It’s too late.”

  Fifty PLA troops in pea-soup uniforms with red patches flashed into being a half-meter above the empty street. Their boots crashed down like thunder and an officer screamed orders in a strange language. The first row knelt and pointed long rifles at Wilson. The second row aimed over the heads of the first.

  Jack raised his hands. “Face it, Wilfred––we lost.”

  NINETEEN

  Hands still tied behind her back, Badger kicked the table and made the cables stuck to Wilson’s body wave like branches in a hurricane. She bent down to his ear and screamed.

  “Wake up, Will! Wake up!”

  “There you are,” said Darius. He limped out of the stairwell with the pistol aimed at Badger. “I think you broke my foot. And how dare you fake the effects of my sedative. It’s for science, after all.”

  Badger turned and touched Wilson’s cold hand with her fingers. The Circle soldiers clattered out of the stairwell hatch and pointed rifles at her. The two that were in shape, that is––the other three put their hands on knees and panted hard. Only five, like she expected. The one she’d knocked over the edge lay in a heap at the bottom of the deep stairwell.

  Darius limped around the vast cavern with wide-eyed amazement and forgot all about his foot.

  “By the seven sectors, what is this place?”

  The sparkling light from Reed’s dome mixed with the red Circle headlamps and cast waves of purple on the walls of caskets.

  “Utterly fascinating,” said Darius. “It appears to be a storage facility, but for what?”

  The five soldiers aimed rifles at Badger from a respectable distance as Darius took his time inspecting the machinery in the cavern and the domes in the center of the smooth stone floor.

  “Four of these glass chambers are dark,” he said. “One contains a naked man floating in blue liquid. What a mystery!”

  He approached Wilson’s table and pursed his lips at the web of cables and monitoring boxes around the blanket-covered body. Wilson’s head lay on a pillow and someone had carefully brushed his dark brown hair. A wire connected the silver band on his forehead to a panel under Reed’s dome.

  “A modern-day fairy tale,” said Darius with a smile. “I would call him sleeping beauty, but are you princess charming? I don’t think so, dear.”

  “Touch him and I’ll kill you,” said Badger.

  Darius sighed. “Give me another boring, clichéd phrase. How about ‘you’re all going to die here,’ ‘nobody leaves alive,’ or ‘over my dead body?’ It’s a shame, but I suppose a girl in your position doesn’t have time for a more creat
ive response.”

  The cavern boomed with a deafening gunshot and Darius instinctively ducked. In the shadows near the entrance to the medical room a Circle trooper struggled with someone briefly. He kicked a pistol across the floor and pulled the short figure into the light.

  Badger’s eyes opened wide. “Mary?”

  Wilson’s mother twisted in the grip of the big man. “Get off me!”

  The soldier brought her to Darius beside Wilson’s bed.

  “One more player upon the stage,” Darius said, and clicked his metal thumbs. “Who might you be, dear lady?”

  “Don’t say a thing,” said Badger. She held Wilson’s hand tighter.

  Darius clapped. “I love secrets! Now I really must know.”

  “You’re as stupid as I thought you’d be,” said Mary. “I’m his mother.”

  “Who––Wilson’s? This gets better and better. Mother, son, and baby––three generations under my thumb. A very sharp one, thanks to you.”

  Mary stared at Badger with a horrified expression. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

  “Of course she didn’t,” said Darius. “I’m capable of discovering simple things like pregnancy all by myself.” He turned to Badger. “Now what were we talking about? Oh yes, I wanted to know what this cavern is all about.”

  Badger lifted her chin and spoke slowly. “This is the tomb of our ancestors. All of them came here with grand plans and high hopes. In the end all their machines and careful thinking failed. The brave people dreaming for a new life became rotten corpses trapped in a box. They believed in fairy tales and a future that never happened. If you want to be more than just a dead man in a scary story told over a campfire, you should leave now.”

  Darius smiled and bowed from the waist. “That’s so much better. I should write it down.” He stuck out his tongue and licked his lips. “I have so many questions. Why is this single dome lighted when the others are dark? What happened to our dear friend Wilson on the table?”

  Badger looked down at Wilson’s pale face.

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly.

  “Well, well,” said Darius.

  His hands hovered over the silver band on Wilson’s forehead. “What does this do?”

  “You’ll kill him,” screamed Mary. “Don’t touch it!”

  Badger kicked Darius with all the strength she could muster and he fell backwards onto the stone floor. Three soldiers grabbed her arms and pulled her away from the table.

  Darius got up from the floor, rubbing his shin. “I think this must be important.”

  “We don’t know what it does,” said Badger. “Take it off and you’ll regret it.”

  Darius shrugged. “I have to do something before I go, right? Otherwise what was the point of coming down here?”

  The azure light that swirled from Reed’s glass dome tripled in brightness and an electric hum filled the air.

  “Ugh ... what a headache,” said a voice like metal on a grindstone.

  Darius spun and looked around the cavern. “Where’s that coming from?”

  “Oh my,” said the voice. “It sounds as if I have guests. Uninvited ones at that.”

  Darius pointed the pistol at Badger. “What’s going on?”

  Badger stared defiantly at Darius until he pulled back the hammer and touched the stubby weapon to her belly.

  “Reed’s back,” she said. “And he’s not happy.”

  Thin silver arms with razor claws clacked from the walls and hissed rapidly along their rails toward Darius and his men. The soldiers fired deafening rounds at them without effect.

  The first arm cracked Darius across the head and he crumpled. A flock of other spider-arms sliced into the green-uniformed Circle troopers. Several were pulled high into the air and dropped with sickening crunches onto the stone floor.

  Seconds later it was over and the metal arms retreated through tiny ports in the walls. The last one cut the rope around Badger’s wrists and sped away. Badger was left alone with the twisted, bloody heaps of five Circle troopers.

  She looked around the cavern. “Where’s Mary?”

  Reed’s voice said something but Badger’s ears still rang from the gunfire. She rubbed the red marks on her wrists.

  “I can’t hear you,” she yelled. “Do something about Wilson! I’ll find her later.”

  Wilson’s arms and legs jerked violently under the blanket and he arched his back in pain for a split-second. Sweat beaded and rolled off his face.

  “You’ve killed him!”

  Badger touched his cheek and a snapping spark of electricity shocked her fingers. His eyes were open but he wasn’t breathing. She shook him by the shoulders then began to press on his chest straight-armed, like she’d seen the Medics do.

  Metal clanked on glass and Badger looked up.

  Darius grinned at her, his face a devilish mask of blood. The muzzle of his large-caliber pistol pressed against the sparkling surface of Reed’s dome.

  Reed’s voice thundered. “No!”

  As metal arms shot from the walls Darius pulled the trigger and blew a spiderweb of cracks into the glass. He stepped back, thumbed the hammer, and fired again. The wall of the dome blew apart and a gushing blue torrent knocked over Wilson’s table, the medical instruments, and Darius himself.

  Badger slipped and fell to her hands and knees from the force of the wave. She splashed through the sulfur-smelling liquid and held Wilson’s head out of the spreading pool. The top half of Reed’s wrinkled body hung out of the dome and his arms dangled uselessly. The spider-arms swayed within reach of Darius, unpowered and dead like their master.

  “You stupid worm,” spat Badger. “Now the reactor’s going to melt and kill us all.”

  Darius shrugged. He took a pair of shells from his belt and reloaded the pistol, then waved it Badger.

  “Drop your dead boyfriend and let’s go see the reactor, whatever that is.”

  TWENTY

  After Reed disappeared in a gust of lavender and column of diamond-light, Parvati, Jack, and Wilson faced a group of Chinese soldiers on the cobblestone. The carbon copy of Badger continued to hold Wilson around the waist.

  Parvati slid her hand into the crook of Jack’s arm. “Grab him!”

  Jack held Wilson’s arm and Parvati snapped her fingers. Blue sky and snow-covered crags replaced the streets of the white monastery and all three dropped half a meter into deep powder. The fake Badger had disappeared.

  “That’s a relief,” said Jack, and brushed snow from his knees. “Thought I was going to Chinese prison. Again.”

  Parvati waved a large circle in the air with both arms, and a roaring fire surrounded by stone benches appeared in the snow. She sat and warmed her hands.

  “I wonder sometimes,” she said, mostly to herself, “Is this how things actually feel, or is it how I think they used to feel?”

  Jack sat next to her and pulled off his gloves. “It’s close enough, just don’t stare at the seams for too long. If people are locked in a box for a few hundred years they need something to do, right? This place is a fashion magazine and we’re all in the waiting room.”

  Wilson sat on a bench. “What’s a magazine?”

  “Something you read when there’s nothing else to do.”

  “Spaces of meaningless time,” said Parvati. “That’s what we all are, until we find the purpose of our existence.”

  Jack shook his head. “The old man always said I’d turn out bad. Never thought I’d be a human popsicle.”

  “What about your purpose, Lee Wilson? Is there anything that drives you, anything that supersedes the daily cycle of needs and survival?”

  “Of course. I’m not a ground squirrel.”

  “You’re making a joke, but even small animals seek meaning in the daily struggle of life. The foundation of everything created by myself and the other founders is falling apart. Whatever you think your purpose is, you may find a better one in leading Station’s people to a new home.”

&nb
sp; “Without an access code to the reactor there won’t be people to lead anywhere, even if Reed wakes me up.”

  Parvati nodded slowly. “Twitch has it. I can send you there, but Jack will have to go with you.”

  Jack lifted his fur cap and scratched the stubble on his shaved head. “Fine with me.”

  Parvati stood from the bench and took a small ceramic pot from her sky-blue robes. She dipped an index finger in the pot and smeared a cross of red paste on the foreheads of both Wilson and Jack.

  “What’s that for?”

  Parvati ignored him. With a vigorous flapping of cotton cloth, she waved her arms in wide circles. A hole opened in the powdery snow and a tower of crimson light poured into the sky.

  “Go through it.”

  Wilson peered into the sparkling beam. “How?”

  “First time’s the hardest,” said Jack. “Like jumping out of a plane.”

  “But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!”

  Jack grabbed Wilson by the arm and leaped into the light. The portal closed and powdery snow drifted over a glazed circle of ice.

  Parvati sat down with a sigh and rested her chin on her hand. “The best-laid plans of mice and men ... and women.”

  THE PAIR BOUNCED against each other as they fell through a maroon sky that deepened to purple and black. Wilson’s skin crackled like a winter lake under a giant’s feet.

  Wilson held his knees and became a spinning doll. He closed his eyes. The shattering roar and nauseating tumble ceased and he felt the pressure of soft earth on his left side. Something sharp poked his cheek and the sound of branches swished above his head. The breeze smelled of pine and fresh mud.

  He opened his eyes to a nighttime forest and the rough bark of a pine tree. A body in a PLA-green overcoat lay next to him, face-down on a carpet of brown needles.

  “Jack!”

  Wilson prodded the body in the ribs and it twitched.

  “Mother of God,” groaned Jack. “I want a refund, stewardess ...”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”