Dreamer's Cat: a sci-fi murder mystery with a killer twist

by Stephen Leather

  Behind the glass I can feel the eyes of the Kueians boring down on us.

  ‘Also, bear in mind that if you do not do well, you will be killed. That is the Kueian way. The way of the warrior.’

  He moves slowly backward, against the orange wall. The other guards do the same until they form a ring around the room, blasters at the ready.

  The angel takes a shiny aerosol from a pocket, it is almost hidden by his palm, the sort that is used for breath freshening. ‘To make it easier for you, to remove your inhibitions as it were, our masters have developed this hormonal spray. It acts as a stimulant and, as you’ll find out, something of an aphrodisiac.’ He walks down the line and squirts it at each of us in turn, holding his breath as he does so, then steps away and repockets the aerosol.

  ‘Begin,’ he says.

  The knife feels good in my hand, it is heavy but well balanced. A couple of the Weapons Officers are making swishing movements with their knives, men who are used to fighting with computers finally getting to hold cold, hard steel, and enjoying it. The women are not sure what is happening, they huddle together like frightened sheep. Jill has her hand on the shoulder of the woman she recognised in the helicopter.

  Xavier is standing next to me and seems to be hypnotised by the shining blade in his fist and there is a faraway look in his eyes and beads of sweat on his forehead. One of the men throws down his knife and tries to rush past the guards at the exit. He hits the force field and spins back into the room, falling to his knees with his hands clasped to his nose. Blood trickles to the floor, red on orange. The guard to the left of the doorway steps forward and shoots him in the head with his blaster. Blood sprays across the floor and the man slumps to the ground, his head hitting the rock with a sickening thud, his legs still in a kneeling position. He looks like a Muslim at prayer.

  ‘We’re gonna have to do this, man,’ Xavier says, swishing his knife at waist level. ‘I don’t wanna end up in one of their body banks. We’re gonna have to do this if we’re gonna survive.’

  There is nothing I can say, I know that, and to be honest there is an ache in my groin, anticipation for what I know is to come. I’m just along for the ride, but I cannot suppress the rising excitement, the thrill. I don’t know if the kick is my own reaction to the psi-disc or something that Miss Dewar has injected into the subliminal tracks in the same way that most Dreamers overlay music to increase the atmosphere. The aerosol spray was a good idea, it encourages the viewer to get involved, to feel that anything he does can be blamed on the hormone mist.

  We have now split into two groups, the women standing facing each other, whispering intently, the men standing in a rough semicircle and weighing our knives. Two of the Weapons Officers move first, walking slowly towards the women as if not knowing what to expect. Above us the Kueians watch through the two-way mirrors. And wait.

  The girls stand their ground, standing back to back, their fingers curled and ready to attack. The men move in, like wolves attempting to split off a weak zebra from its herd. Jill tries to kick one of them, but misses. The taller of the two men grabs her leg and pulls her and she loses her balance, arms waving frantically in the air. She screams and the man steps back and pulls hard so that she topples backwards. The other two women try to hold her upright, grabbing an arm each. All the men start to move then, myself included, we rush them and pull them apart, ignoring their cries for help. It is as if I am seeing everything through a faint red haze, I am panting like an animal and there is an intense pressure in my groin, a sexual longing, an urge. Miss Dewar or my own reaction? I just don’t know, and for the moment, I don’t care.

  Jill is now on the floor, one man holding her arms behind her head, the other sitting on her legs. She calls out to Xavier but he turns his back on her. So do I. She continues to cry out and then I hear the sound of her uniform being ripped and then her screams are muffled as if something has been placed over her mouth.

  Xavier and I team up with a Pilot, a thin guy with tight, black curly hair and sharp features, a swarthy stubble over his jaw. A true team. Pilot, Weapons Officer and Navigator, but this time with no thoughts of flying a fighter. We have only one thought on our minds - the girl in front of us.

  Her chest is heaving and she stares at us, waiting to see which of us will make the first move. She is pretty, and the uniform does not hide her curves. She is the Pilot that Jill knows. The thought of Jill makes me turn to look at her. They have torn a strip of cloth from her uniform and used it to gag her. The man sitting on her legs has used the knife to cut her uniform apart as if skinning a rabbit and is cutting her bra with the blade. He pulls it and throws it behind him, then reaches down and holds her breasts, then squeezes, viciously, and she bites down hard on the cloth in her mouth.

  ‘Come on, man,’ says Xavier, and bangs me on the shoulder. The Pilot has grabbed the girl and has his knife at her throat. ‘Let’s get her,’ says Xavier. I know I should say no, I know I should tell them both that this is wrong, but I cannot. I see what they are doing to Jill behind me but it doesn’t disgust me, it excites me, and I want to do it to the girl in front of me. I want to tear the uniform from her, to strip her naked, to take her. And to kill her.

  Over the girl’s shoulder I see the angel. He is watching me, the arrogant smile on his face. Our eyes meet and he nods as if satisfied with what he sees.

  ‘Hold her legs,’ Xavier tells me. She tries to kick me and connects with my arm. It hurts, but it doesn’t matter, it just makes me more determined. I kick her legs sideways and duck down and seize them before she knows what is happening, then I wrench them up so that she is right off the ground, the Pilot has her by the neck and I keep hold of her knees.

  ‘Deck her,’ yells Xavier, animal lust in his eyes. ‘Get her down, get her down.’

  We slam her to the floor, but keep a tight grip so that she can’t get away. She has jet black hair in a pageboy cut, thick eyebrows and wide, frightened eyes that are a deep grey. She begins to scream and the Pilot moves to put his hand over her mouth but then decides not to bother, there is nobody to help her. She screams and screams, no words, just howls of terror, not because we are hurting her, but because she knows what we are going to do to her. And she knows that nothing can stop us. Nothing and no-one.

  The Pilot holds both her wrists in one hand and uses the other to rip down the zip of her uniform. Xavier pulls off her boots while I lie across her knees. The Pilot can only get the zip down as far as her breasts with one hand so I take over and pull it down to her groin.

  Xavier is grunting, he has both boots off now and tells us to hold an arm each while he pulls the uniform off. She kicks and bucks and her nails are sharp so we don’t want to risk letting her hands lose while we strip her so the Pilot and I use our knives to slice off her sleeves from cuff to shoulder. Xavier grabs the torn material near her neck and pulls hard, peeling her as if she was a banana. Her bra and pants are white and lacy.

  ‘No, damn you, no,’ she screams, and she keeps shouting until the Pilot slaps her across the face, backwards and forwards, right and left, until she shuts up, her lips swollen and her cheeks flaring red.

  Xavier cuts her bra with the knife, nicking her skin as he flicks the blade through the cotton strap. A small dribble of blood runs down her white skin like a line drawn with a red pen. He pulls the pants off roughly and throws them down by her boots. She is naked, kicking her legs, trying to push him away. The Pilot takes both her arms and pins them to the ground, leaving me free to help spread her legs. I grab her left ankle and pull it savagely and she yelps and before she can put her legs together Xavier drops down on top of her, unzipping his own uniform. He is grunting, flecks of spittle around his lips.

  While he is pushing into her I look over his shoulder and see what they are doing to Jill. They have turned her over so that she is lying on her front. The first man has finished with her and he is now sitting on her shoulders, his knees either side of her neck so that her face is hidden from me. The other man
is taking her from behind and he is not gentle, he is pounding into her, banging her hard into the ground with each thrust, his head back and the tendons straining in his neck, his eyes glassy. As I watch he reaches a climax and groans, then collapses down on her, his chest heaving. The other man gets off Jill’s back, his knife in his hand, and he runs it slowly across her shoulders. I can see her face now. Her eyes are open. She is looking at me and she is crying. Her lips are bloody. The man puts the blade of the knife against her neck and he pulls it and blood pools out over his hand and onto the stone floor. She closes her eyes without a sound.

  Beside me, Xavier rolls off the girl and tells me it’s my turn. She has stopped resisting, her legs stay open as Xavier moves away. He takes his knife and puts it under her chin as if about to drive the tip through into her skull.

  ‘I want my friend to enjoy this, you bitch,’ he says savagely. ‘You’d better move, you’d better give him a good time.’ He pushes the knife up, just enough to break the skin and blood runs down her neck. All thoughts of whether this is right or wrong have gone, I am not even conscious of the Kueians watching above or the arrogant leers of the armed guards around us. I shrug off my uniform, leaving it hanging around my knees as I grab her thighs and pull them apart. She purses her lips, her teeth clamped together, and I pull her towards me.

  ‘Go on, man,’ says Xavier, ‘she’s yours. Take her. Take her and hurt her.’

  I hear a noise behind me, and sense rather than see something leaping at me. I turn, letting go of her fleshy thighs and raising my arms to protect my head. It is……..

  ………Grey. I am alone, and there are no sounds of violence. I am panting for breath, bathed in sweat and I am sexually aroused under the gown. The side of the cubicle slides back and Max comes into view. I must look in a right state because he seems worried. He puts a medi-scope on the side of my neck and reads my blood pressure and pulse rate but I don’t need any equipment to tell me that my heart is racing. My erection dies down quickly, saving me further embarrassment, but while the physical signs of excitement disappear, my mind is still filled with the images of the psi-disc. ‘Bad?’ asks Max quietly. I cannot look at him or speak. I close my eyes and try to steady my breathing. Bad? No, not bad. My first thought when I snapped back into the cubicle was to curse Max and the technicians for bringing me back to reality, for pulling me away from……well, you know what from. From raping and killing without conscience. From acting like an animal.

  I want to ask him to send me back, to let me see how it ends, to taste the fear of the girl and possess her and then see her die, but I know how it ends. It ends with the death of the Dreamer, and yet maybe it would almost be worth it. That’s how it feels right now, but I’m rational enough to know that the feelings must be discounted and controlled, I am on a hormonal high that has been induced by the psi-disc and I must bring myself down before I talk to anyone in the real world, before I try to explain what I am going through.

  Janet Dewar is in a different league to any Dreamer I have ever heard of. Technically she is damn near perfect, but she does more than provide information for the five senses, she seems to be able to influence emotions, it’s almost some sort of mind control. And what is so frightening is the way it carries over into the real world. If it had been a girl who had walked into the cubicle instead of Max, and if we had been alone, and if I had had a knife……God, I can’t stop my mind racing away, the heady mix of sex and violence in my head speeds up my heart rate again and I concentrate on relaxing, trying to fill my mind with calming images, waves breaking on the beach, eagles soaring in the sky, choirs singing in cool cathedrals.

  ‘Are you all right, Leif?’ asks Max.

  I open my eyes and try to speak but my mouth is dry and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. He sees my discomfort and tells one of the technicians to fetch me a glass of water while he removes the headset. I try to sit up but I’m too tired so I stay where I am. Max holds the glass to my lips and I drink greedily.

  ‘Take it easy,’ he says. ‘Did we leave it too late?’ He’s worried that he hadn’t ended the psi-disc soon enough, which means the old bastard knew he’d been cutting it fine.

  ‘No, that wasn’t it,’ I say, which leaves him even more puzzled, but I’m not sure if I want to tell him what is troubling me. Maybe my reaction to the psi-discs is a weakness in my own personality rather than a feature of the discs themselves. I guess that’s what worries me most, that it’s insanity on my part, that I’ve been a Dreamer for too long. But that doesn’t explain why three Dreamers have died and why two technicians who plugged into their psi-discs also lost their lives. Still, at the moment I do not feel like opening up to Max.

  He takes hold of my left shoulder and Herbie seizes my right arm and together they ease me into a sitting position. The wet gown makes a crusty, scraping sound as it pulls away from the leather couch and I feel sweat run down my back. My hands are shaking and I clasp them together in my lap.

  Max walks around to stand in front of me and bends at the waist so that he can look into my eyes like a referee checking a punch-drunk boxer to see if he’s okay to go on with the fight.

  ‘I’m all right Max,’ I say.

  ‘You don’t look it,’ says Ruth. For the first time since coming out of the psi-disc dream I notice her, sitting at the foot of the couch with anxious eyes. Her head is cocked on one side, her ears up and alert and she is clenching and unclenching her claws like she does when she’s very happy or very agitated. She twitches her nose as if smelling the fear that I know is oozing from my pores, fear and excitement.

  ‘Do you want to rest?’ asks Max.

  I shake my head fiercely. ‘I want a drink,’ I say. Herbie offers me the glass of water again and I look at him disdainfully because he is supposed to anticipate my every whim. ‘A real drink,’ I say, with emphasis on the ‘real.’ Herbie looks suitably chastened but Max folds his arms across his white coat and says no, no alcohol, not until I’ve had a check-up.

  I insist I’m okay but Max taps the side of his head with his forefinger. ‘Physically that may be so, Leif, but what about in here? I want you to have a chat with Walker.’

  ‘The last thing I need just now is a chat with the company shrink, Max. Give me a break. Better still, give me a drink.’

  ‘Orders, Leif,’ he says, and his lips tighten.

  ‘Whose orders?’ I ask but I know the answer to that before he even untightens his lips to tell me that the command has come down from Aintrell’s office.

  ‘Now?’ I ask.

  ‘Now,’ repeats Max, firmly, but with a trace of a smile because he knows he’s won. I slip off the couch and walk out of the booth to get changed.

  ‘Wimp,’ calls Ruth behind me before dropping gracefully down on to the tiled floor and padding out.

  Walker’s office is down on the 48th floor, it’s about half the size of one allocated to Max, which gives you some idea of where he stands in the Corporation hierarchy. He has possibly the oldest secretary in the building, perhaps the world, a white-haired matron with a nanny’s cheery personality and wide, child-bearing hips that could give birth to a mammoth if she so desired. God knows what a psychiatrist would make of Walker’s choice in secretary. Look to ze mutter, ze mutter is ze key to it all, as Freud might have said.

  ‘She can probably type, too,’ says Ruth.

  Miss Reynolds can type, and there’s even a rumour that she even studied shorthand back in the archaic days of note-taking, and she waters the plants and makes Walker endless cups of milky tea and for all I know changes his nappies at regular intervals.

  ‘Good morning, Leif,’ she says brightly. Her hair is done up in a tight bun, held in place with a Victorian pin that could be used to harpoon a whale. If there were any whales left in the polluted oceans.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Reynolds.’ That’s the way it works, I’m afraid. She calls everyone, the chief executive and the main board directors included, by their first names and everyone refer
s to her as Miss Reynolds. It’s partly because of her age, but she also has an aura that commands respect and civility. I don’t think anyone actually knows what her first name is.

  ‘Vanessa,’ says Ruth. ‘She looks like a Vanessa.’

  Miss Reynolds looks less like a Vanessa than anyone you could ever imagine. Her face looks freshly-scrubbed and there is not a trace of make-up, she has apple cheeks and a small, prissy mouth with thin lips and is plump enough to keep the wrinkles away, a flowery print dress with a wide white belt that stretches the material across the landing strip platform of her massive matronly bosom. She waddles slowly to Walker’s door, knocks twice and ushers us in.

  ‘Can I get you tea, Archibald?’ she asks. Nobody else refers to Archie Walker as Archibald, but the day Miss Reynolds joined the Corporation she had decided that Archie was not a fit and proper Christian name, at least not for her employer. She had even changed the plaque on his door to read Archibald D. Walker, BSc, PhD. It later turned out that she’d made a special trip to Personnel to discover his middle initial.

  ‘Tea would be lovely, Miss Reynolds,’ he says meekly. ‘And for you Leif?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you, Miss Reynolds.’ It is impossible to be impolite to her, or to not use her name in conversation.

  ‘I’ll have a bowl of milk, please, Miss Reynolds,’ Ruth says sweetly, but is ignored.

  Miss Reynolds smiles as if to tell me that not sampling her brew is my loss and closes the door quietly behind her. For some reason I immediately feel like a young schoolboy who has been left alone in the classroom and I have an intense craving to write obscenities on the blackboard.

  ‘Well…..’ says Walker, addressing the six foot tall rubber plant in the corner of his office. He is one of those men who do not like eye contact when they speak and does everything he can to avoid it. He’s a thin guy, average height, with brown wavy hair that he brushes back away from his sloping forehead, giving the impression that he’s been riding a bike into the wind. He has sideburns that come half way down his cheeks and he looks and sounds like a 19th century North of England mill owner. He’s English, got his psychology degree from some obscure provincial university and then came to America to seek fame and fortune and found it with CBS Corporation.