The Dream Compass [Book 1 of The Merquan Chronicle]

by Jeff Bredenberg

  Summer night in little mud rut Camp Blade. Bodiless, Pec-Pec wafted down the boardwalk. He imagined himself an invisible air-fish, gently stroking his way through the cool pine-scent breezes. A barracks: snores and disinfectant and masturbation. He came to an empty bunk room, the thin mattress rolled, shelves robbed clean. For an hour, Pec-Pec studied every bared bedspring, every rent and stain and odor of the mattress, the microscopic particles of a minuscule dust storm playing across the floorboards—the leavings, the evidence and imprint of a man gone. Anton Takk had disappeared.

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  5

  Information

  Anton Takk awoke in a pillowed, perfumed luxury like he had never known before. At his feet a superfluous brass bed rail arced over vertical supports in decorative decadence. An acre of quilt, it seemed, blanketed his body in little squares fitted together neatly by invisible stitches.

  He arose naked and studied the giant porcelain basin and its two spigots. The walls of the building, he realized, were webbed with pipes carrying water, hot and cold, to every room. He turned the spigot handles.

  On the door was a notice in small print, tacked in each corner:

  1. No spitting.

  2. This room may not be used for any purpose considered illegal or immoral by the Government.

  3. Guests checking out after noon may be charged for an extra day.

  One hundred centimes a day for a room and still they treat customers like that!

  Is it assumed, he wondered, that anyone who could afford a hotel room could read? Had things gotten that permissive in the cities—blocks of text posted anywhere you please? Or was it that most of the hotel’s customers were Government? His mood darkened, and he tried to fight off paranoia. He regarded the sign again and satisfied himself with a tentative answer: You loosen one rule so that you can publicize three new ones.

  Takk slid into the thrumbling warm water. The side of the tub was cool against his back and a scant film of sand scraped at his buttocks. He imagined himself to be a large pestle grinding away in the mortar of some giant’s pharmacy. Takk resisted the return of drowsiness, feeling guilty about the splendor and the waste of time when he should be out gathering information.

  There was a single thump at the door, and Takk’s sleepiness vanished. He turned to face the door, sloshing the rising water. It could have been a clumsy passerby bumping a swinging duffel. Or? Who would know, especially this fast, where to find him? Ben Tiggle might hazard a good guess, but he would never tell the Badgers.

  There came another rap, harder.

  “Who?” said Takk.

  The knob turned, and Takk began to understand the importance of hotel door locks. Ach, big cities! A slender man entered wearing a blue velvety tunic belted at the waist. He was clean-shaven, from the top of his head to his chin, except for an odd ponytail of wispy hair protruding from his left temple. It was a costume that Takk took to be fashionable on the streets of New Chicago, and it made him laugh—in less vulnerable situations.

  “I am a friend,” the stranger said.

  “No, not a friend.”

  “Friendly, then,” the intruder said, closing the door and seating himself on the edge of the bed. “You want some information.”

  Takk sucked in a breath. What was this, telepathy? He turned off the tub faucets and considered getting out of the water but did not.

  “I’m just a tired tourist from the Northlands,” Takk said slowly, “trying to take a bath. A city map costs half a centime. That I have, and that’s all the information I need. If I need a guide—”

  “Enough,” interrupted the bald man. “Say what you like—I don’t give a poke for what your real story is. But you care about mine, I’ll boogie. That is, if you want to stay out of jail.”

  Takk felt panic rising. He studied the little man’s bulky tunic, wondering if it hid any weapons. New Chicagoans seemed to be smaller than Northlanders, somewhat sickly—perhaps something to do with in-breeding, Takk told himself. Warmer weather didn’t really shrink people, did it?

  “Go on,” Takk said, sitting forward in the tub.

  “Well, I’m at risk with the authorities, y’unnerstand,” the stranger said. “They’ll be not happy not to find you. I need a thousand centimes, I think, for the information.”

  “A thousand!”

  The intruder’s friendliness fell away as he bolted from the bed. “Prison, muscle boy!” he said, face reddening. He pointed a quivering index finger. Takk gagged at the sweetness of his cologne. “And I’ll tell ya this much for free: I own three garages in town—private garages, discreet garages. When I study my logs for new customers, what do I find but—hooo, boogie—a Government registration number! Now what’s a Government truck doing in a private garage? Unless it’s stolen? And it’s all full of dry food and outdoor gear and fuel tanks and old marked-up maps and—hah—books!”

  “You entered the truck?”

  “Oh, I just hear such a tale, that’s all.” He bared his teeth in a hard, exaggerated grin, his lips pushed back into a yellowish rectangle.

  Matter-of-factly, Takk rose from the tub and strode toward the desk against the far wall, leaving footprint-shaped puddles.

  “And that’s all there really is to the story, right?” said Takk. “A thousand centimes for your silence?”

  “A thousand.”

  Takk pulled back the heavy oak chair as if to open the top desk drawer. He gauged the chair’s weight, then grasped it by its right arm. With a sharp grunt, Takk hurled the chair over the bed toward that bald dome with the surprised eyebrows.

  A decade ago a hard-charging executive named Gould Papier was assigned a building project expected to be, literally, the height of his career: construction of the largest building in New Chicago, a five-story tower that would house all of the city’s Government offices. The new structure would be a monument to Governmental principles: power, efficiency, solidity.

  Papier decided that the traditional building materials, quarried stone or yellow brick salvaged from “old” Chicago, would not do; he needed a progressive and spectacular medium, and he eliminated from his board of architects those who seemed mired in the past. After months of bickering, the panel arrived at poured, reinforced concrete, a technique well known to the high-ticket builders: There were said to be two miles of poured concrete sidewalks in the affluent neighborhoods of New Chicago. It was not an unknown material in some buildings’ foundations. Never before, however, had it been used on such a grand scale.

  For eighteen months a model of the new Government office building occupied a corner of his desk. It resembled a pyramid, with eight concrete buttresses sweeping skyward, one at each corner and one on each side. Papier pictured the building as a mighty, ribbed volcano. The model gathered dust, anchored contract papers and requisition forms, and, after its newness wore off, held pencils in its center well.

  No Government workers were surprised, privately, when the final structural work on the Governmental center pushed past its deadline in November that year: What ever really got done on time? The last of the concrete was poured in the ripping, icy winds of late December.

  The first appreciable thaw came on March 21. Grateful construction workers plastering walls and installing plumbing fixtures stripped down to their tattoos in the sudden warmth of the bright morning. T-shirts, sweaters, and coats littered all five tiers. Raucous guffaws and oft-repeated punchlines to forgotten jokes rang freely up and down the corridors.

  The concrete supporting the top two floors of the building, poured in the December freeze, actually never had achieved its intended rocklike state. It was poured into a mold as a liquid, of course, and rather than drying and hardening as the builders expected, the fluid concrete just froze. When Gould Papier’s volcano melted, twenty-three workers died.

  Gould Papier, “promoted” often these days within the shifting sediment of bureaucracy, occupied an office with a door labeled TRANSPORT: PUBLIC INFORMATION. His pocked face was dr
ained of color; his hair, combed back, was yellow-gray. When a tall, rough-clothed figure lumbered through the door, Papier had been waiting patiently.

  “Look, friend,” the man approaching Papier’s desk said. “Don’t you tell me this is the wrong place. I’ve been out at the front desk, to this office, that office—and across town twice. Why the Government doesn’t put all of its offices in the same—”

  “Please,” said Papier, closing his eyes, the bureaucrat’s demand for silence.

  Anton Takk looked around the barren room and sat in an oak chair of familiar design. Papier opened his eyes and studied the man before him. The jackboots alone gave him away as a Northlander, not to mention the thick black beard (with occasional starbursts of silver) or the ill-fitting denim work pants.

  “Information,” Papier said. “You want information.”

  Takk felt sweat burn its way to his brow.

  “This is the office of information, for Transport anyway, and what I can’t tell you perhaps my logbooks will.” He motioned toward the wall of books over his shoulder. “And then there’s always the telephone. So relax. Perhaps this is your last office for the day. What would you like to know?”

  “I am looking for a friend.”

  “In Transport? Or Supply division? An employee?”

  “A prisoner. In Transport, I guess. Right?”

  “His name?”

  “Her. Nora Londi. Came through here maybe year ago. Several months, sure.”

  Papier stood and faced the bank of logbooks. He perused the row of bindings and pulled one out from a floor-level shelf. “Are you a relative, by the way? Technically, this information should go only to relatives.”

  “Name’s John,” Takk said, and Papier’s eyebrows rose. “Uh, John Justin. I’m just passing through. Fellow I work with up north says to be engaged to Nora Londi, is all. We’re up logging, don’t get around much. Said he’d be appreciative if I could find out anything.”

  “You would have travel papers, I suppose.”

  “Travel papers? Oh!” Takk unzipped his fly and drew out a flat wallet. He flipped his thumb across a layer of crinkly purple centime notes and pulled out a folded white square. Papier glanced at the form and handed it back.

  The information officer silently skimmed the columns of his large logbook, at times turning back and forth through hundreds of pages, following numerous cross-references. Finally, he slammed the book shut, and his visitor felt the vibration in the floorboards. Papier returned the book to the gap in the shelf and took his seat again.

  “In fairness,” Papier said, “your friend should be warned, gently, that these women, umm, make extensive use of their physical attributes—for money, security, favors, whatever. Some have fiancées in each sector!”

  “Where is Nora Londi?”

  “Out to Sector 4, a prison mining camp called Blue Hole.”

  As Takk left, Papier noticed a large lock of human hair tied to a side belt loop of the Northlander’s jeans. It looked like a ponytail.

  Papier turned to the telephone. Ah, the exquisite Government tool—quick, efficient, and, if need be, anonymous and faceless. Definitely not to be trusted to the general population.

  He wondered whether to give Takk a head start. Perhaps he was already being tailed by Security, and in that case Papier’s supervisor would be expecting a prompt briefing.

  Papier counted another twenty seconds, lifted the receiver, and dialed four numbers. “Sir … I gave him the information…. Yes…. It was Anton Takk. And there’s something I didn’t expect: He has travel papers…. No, an impeccable forgery.”

  The streets of New Chicago were covered with a malodorous layer of mud and horse dung. To Anton Takk’s mind, however, it was hardly an inconvenience, especially on the main thoroughfares, which were bolstered by reliable paving stones, submerged though they were. (In Camp Blade, a man could lose his horse to a bog on Main Street in certain seasons.) New Chicago’s pedestrians were an entertainment: The daintier among them would remove their glistening shoes, wade barefoot across the intersections, then rinse their feet in troughs at the other side. Enterprising urchins, grubby and brown-toothed, were at each corner charging an entire centime for a few moments’ use of aged jackboots similar to Takk’s, only much more tattered and probably leaking.

  Many of the downtown buildings, some of them two or three stories tall, butted directly against one another, and it was often impossible to tell where one ended and the next began. The procession of horse carts, mule wagons, roaring trucks, and the occasional honking passenger car created a mind-numbing cacophony.

  Takk hurried past the hotel. He had paid for two more nights, locked the door to room 24, and hung the SLEEPING sign on the doorknob. But he ducked his head to avoid recognition nevertheless, on the off chance that someone had entered his room and found a little man gagged and hanging by his wrists and ankles from the arcing bed rail.

  Away from downtown, the streets were no longer at right angles to one another, and Takk navigated by a series of landmarks he had memorized: El Mercado, a sad little grouping of vendors’ booths; the Juke, apparently a bar, with a black doorway he had no thought of entering; Happy’s Hardware, where Takk lingered over the nails and chains and wire spools, and made a few purchases from the sourfaced store owner; and finally the garage, a wood-frame hulk of a building with a tiny office at the street front and ten sets of double doors stretched along the side alley.

  Takk stopped at the fourth set of doors and released the ground bolts and latches. He wished he had used a padlock, but wasn’t sure it would have done any good. The disarray in the Supply truck confirmed that it had been searched. Not much was missing—one of the lamps—it was hard to say what else. If the garage owner had expected a bribe he would have had to return the cargo fairly intact.

  Takk flipped open a toolbox and selected a screwdriver, then walked around to the cab. The long seat cushion was mounted on a metal frame held in place by ten screws, which Takk removed. He heaved the seat up and forward. In the compartment below Takk found a flat bundle of burlap undisturbed, and he exhaled a relieved sigh. He laid the package on the cab seat and opened it. His hands were shaking. Takk eyed the garage doors. He returned to the back of the truck, took the remaining lamp, and lit it, then pushed the garage doors shut.

  Inside the burlap were bundles of centime notes, which he brushed aside, revealing a cardboard notebook. He took the notebook in both hands and turned it over, letting the papers inside fall forward. They were crisp documents, freshly printed and very authentic looking. He didn’t want to touch them with greasy hands. From the back of the notebook he drew another newly minted item, a white metal rectangle with raised lettering: A7279-88CB. Takk spat on the plate and rubbed the saliva over its entire surface, the grime from his hands darkening the fresh paint. He spat again, then scraped dirt from the garage floor and sprinkled that over the plate as well.

  At the back of the truck, the first three bolts in the license plate came away grudgingly and the last one, in the bottom right corner, was rusted fast. Takk dripped oil on the stubborn bolt and struggled with screwdriver and monkey wrench until the bolt head was hopelessly torn. Droplets of sweat formed on the tip of his beard. He glanced at the door.

  Takk bent the old license plate, forming a crease in the metal near the unmovable bolt. He bent the plate again and again along the same crease. Eventually it would break, and he would have to live with a corner of the old plate permanently affixed to the back of the truck. Maybe the new plate would cover it.

  When he drove out of the garage a new lock and chain from Happy’s Hardware clattered from the back door handles. At the end of the alley, Takk saw that a small crowd had gathered across the street beside a delivery truck. There was a small wooden stage, and a dark-skinned man with braided hair was juggling flaming torches.

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  6

  Interrogation

  Ben Tiggle was dreaming. Or was he? There was jus
t blackness. His eyes itched, but he couldn’t scratch. His limbs were numb and immobile. How many days had it been? That smell was in the room again, a sickly sweet floral cologne, which meant that the voice would come too, and there it was, that polite Southlander twang:

  “Mr. Tiggle…. Ben Tiggle.”

  “Unnnh. Morning.”

  “Oh, morning, is it? Well, perhaps it is. Perhaps not. You were telling me about the money, Mr. Tiggle. How much money does Anton Takk have?”

  “I dunno. Dunno.”

  “You gave him money.”

  “A hunnerd … hunnerd ‘n’ fifty centimes.”

  “That’s hardly enough for a long-distance trip, Mr. Tiggle.”

  “He said it was a loan. Skipped out on me, the pig shit.”

  “A small loan, Mr. Tiggle. Not enough to get upset about. Are you sure it wasn’t more?”

  “Maybe someone else…”

  “Did you teach Anton Takk to read?”

  “I can’t read!”

  “Oh, come now. We can all read, some, can’t we? Isn’t it just a matter of degree? I can read….”

  “You’re Government.”

  “We’re all Government.” The voice paused. “Now, I suppose you can read numbers, right? To do your books. You run a warehouse, so you must read crate labels…”

  “I just open the bastards.”

  “…and fill out requisitions…”

  “Nah. I just take what they send me.”

  “Did you help Mr. Takk steal the truck? It was a Supply truck, last known to be at your loading dock.”

  “Anton’s loading dock.”

  “He just helped himself to your warehouse and you knew nothing about it?”

  “Yeah. Told ya, he works there. Worked there.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Dunno. Probably he just went for a ride. He’ll be back sooner or later. He’s crazy like that. But this is the craziest.”