The Dream Archipelago

by Christopher Priest

  ‘I’ll go up to the folly today, and tomorrow, and every day,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll move away from this house,’ he said. ‘I’ll rent it to Parren and I’ll move into town and live with Jenessa.’

  ‘I’ll watch the Qataari,’ he said. ‘I’ll watch them until I have seen everything, until I know all their secrets, until I have taken from them the last thing they have.’

  He left the cushioned sun lounger and roamed around the patio, playing to an imagined invisible audience, gesturing and waving, miming elaborate postures of deep thought, of sudden decision, of abrupt changes of mind.

  It was an act but not an act. Free will liberates the purposeful and traps the undecided.

  ‘Am I interrupting anything?’

  The voice broke into Ordier’s ridiculous charade, startling him. He swung around in anger and embarrassment. It was Luovi Parren, standing by the open door to his lounge. Her large leather bag was slung as usual across her shoulder.

  ‘All the doors were open,’ she said. ‘I tried knocking but there was no answer. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  It was impossible for Ordier to keep the incivility out of his voice.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I would like a drink.’

  ‘I’m drinking coffee. I’ll get you another cup.’

  ‘I’d prefer water. I’ve walked a long way.’

  ‘All right.’

  Furiously, Ordier went into the kitchen and found a clean glass. He took a bottle of mineral water from the fridge and filled the glass, clinking in two ice cubes. Before he took it through to her he stood by the sink, resting both hands on the edge and staring down angrily into the bowl. He hated being caught off guard. How had she got through the electronically controlled gates?

  Luovi was sitting in the shade, on the steps that led down to the patio from the verandah. As he passed her the glass Ordier briefly stood over her. He saw that she was sitting with her knees wide apart, stretching the fabric of her dress across her legs. Dark stains of sweat spread beneath her armpits. The front of her blouse was mostly unbuttoned and he had a momentary view of two large, unsupported breasts hanging loosely inside the garment, vertical stretch marks along her sunburnt chest indicating the sag. Had she undone those buttons while he was in the kitchen? He didn’t recall noticing that they were undone when she arrived. She smiled flirtatiously up at him as he gave her the glass.

  ‘I thought you might be swimming in the pool today,’ she said to him. ‘It’s so hot in the sun.’

  ‘Maybe later.’

  ‘It looks wonderful to me. Shall we take a dip together?’

  ‘If you’d like to take a swim, feel free,’ he said. ‘I might be going out shortly. You could use the pool while I’m away.’ He was beginning to recover from the surprise of her unwelcome arrival, at least to the point where he felt able to say polite things. ‘I thought you’d be with Jacj today.’

  ‘I didn’t want another trip to Muriseay,’ Luovi said. ‘There’s nothing for me to do while I’m there. Is Jenessa with you?’

  ‘Isn’t she with Jacj?’ Ordier said. ‘She said something about going to Muriseay. Catching a ferry?’

  ‘You think Jenessa is with Jacj? I don’t believe so. Jacj left two days ago.’

  Ordier frowned, trying to remember what Jenessa had actually said about her plans for the day. Although he didn’t recall her saying she was going on the ferry herself, she had distinctly said that Jacj was travelling across to Muriseay. Since she had been working for Parren she accompanied him on most of his short trips. How had Luovi reached his house? It was surely too great a distance for anyone to walk all the way from Tumo Town, yet she had arrived without a car. Had someone given her a ride, all or part of the way?

  ‘Jacj has gone to Muriseay to charter an aircraft, I take it?’ he said.

  ‘Of course not. The Qataari camp was scintillated two nights ago. Didn’t you hear the plane engine?’

  ‘No, I didn’t! Does Jenessa know about this?’

  ‘I’m sure she must,’ Luovi said, and smiled the same sparse smile he had seen the day she came back from looking at the folly.

  ‘Then what’s Jacj doing in Muriseay at the moment?’

  ‘Collecting the monitoring equipment. Do you mean Jenessa hasn’t told you anything?’

  ‘Jenessa told me—’

  Ordier hesitated, regarding Luovi suspiciously. Her manner was as sweetly polite as that of a suburban gossip breaking news of adultery. She sipped her water, then tipped her fingers into the glass and pulled out one of the ice cubes. She ran it over her mouth and lips, then around the sides of her face and finally over the skin of her neck and chest. Droplets of meltwater ran down into her blouse, trickling into the loose chasm between her drooping breasts. She took another sip of water, apparently waiting for his reply.

  Ordier turned away, took a breath. He had to make up his mind whether to believe this woman or to trust the words and behaviour of Jenessa, who in the last few days had done or said nothing that roused any suspicions about what Jacj might be doing, or what her knowledge of that might be, or indeed of anything else.

  As he turned back to face her Luovi said, ‘I was hoping I would find Jenessa here today so that she and I could talk things over.’

  Ordier said, ‘Maybe you should talk things over somewhere else, Luovi. I don’t know what you’re trying to do, or what you mean by coming to my house today—’

  ‘You do know a lot more about the Qataari than you’ve admitted.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Everything, as far as I know. Isn’t the folly the whole reason you bought the house?’

  ‘The folly? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Don’t think we don’t know! It’s time Jenessa was told.’

  Five days earlier Luovi’s insinuations would have struck straight through Ordier’s defences to his guilty conscience. That was five days ago, though, since when everything had become more complex. His own feelings of guilt now made him less vulnerable to attack, because they had become part of what was obviously a larger intrigue.

  ‘Look, it’s time you left, Luovi,’ he said.

  ‘Very well.’ Luovi put down her glass. She stood up with an athletic motion, scooping up her leather bag and turning away from him all in one movement. ‘You presumably realize there’ll be unpleasant consequences for you.’

  ‘I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about. But I don’t wish to know, so kindly—’

  She had already stepped away from him, into his house. He followed her through the cool rooms, making sure she left by the main door. She walked down the sloping drive towards the gate. In spite of his protestations to her, now that she was actually leaving the house Ordier was far from uncomprehending of what she meant. The main gates were open. Perhaps they had failed to close behind Jenessa’s car when she left earlier. Ordier followed Luovi through the gates, then used his radar key to close them.

  He watched her walking angrily away.

  Clearly, she must know as much as she was implying: that he had been spying on the Qataari. He felt a surge of defensiveness, a need to deny or explain, but he knew it was already too late. Anyway, there was nothing he wanted to say to Luovi about that. Meanwhile, had she really come to the house simply to find Jenessa, or was it to confront him with what she knew about him? Then there were those implications she had made that Jenessa had been lying to him. Why should she do that? What could her motives conceivably be for that?

  The sun was high. White light glared down across the dusty countryside. In the distance, the Tumoit Mountains were shimmering in the haze. Luovi was striding angrily away from him, through the heat, across the radiant landscape. He could see her heavy shoulder bag banging against her thigh with every other step she took.

  He noticed that she had somehow taken a wrong turn and was not heading back along the road that would lead eventually to Tumo Town. She was mov
ing across the hillside parallel to the ridge. Ordier knew that there was nothing in that direction: no other houses, no more road. Not much further along from where she was walking the terrain became extremely rough and broken, dangerous for anyone to try to walk across, never mind someone ill-equipped for walking and seething with anger into the bargain.

  He ran after her. She had gone further than he thought and he had to run fast to catch up with her.

  ‘Luovi!’ he called breathlessly, as soon as he thought she was within earshot. ‘Luovi, please wait!’

  Finally she either heard him or decided to wait for him. In a moment he caught her up. She glared at him interrogatively as he went up to her, out of breath and tormented by the dazzling sunshine.

  ‘I can’t let you walk all the way back to town,’ he said. ‘It’s a huge distance. You mustn’t do that now, not in heat like this.’

  ‘I know what I’m doing,’ she said.

  ‘Come back to the house. I’ll drive you to town.’

  She shook her head, then turned away and walked on.

  ‘I know exactly where I’m going,’ she said grimly. She glanced up at the high ridge as she stumbled along.

  Ordier marched into his house and slammed the door behind him. Motes of dust billowed in his wake.

  He went out to the patio and sat down on the cushions scattered across the sun-hot paving stones. A bird fluttered away from where it had been perched on the grapevine and Ordier glanced up. The verandah, the patio, the rooms of the house – they all had their hidden scintillas, making his home into a stage for an unseen audience.

  He was hot and breathless after running after Luovi so he stripped off his clothes and dived into the pool. He swam to and fro for a long time, trying to calm his thoughts. Afterwards, dried and dressed in fresh clothes, he paced around the pool’s edge, trying to organize his thoughts and replace ambiguity with certainty. He was not successful.

  The unmarked scintillas. He had almost convinced himself that they were being planted by the Qataari but the possibility remained that someone else was responsible.

  Jenessa. According to Luovi she had deceived him, while according to his instincts she had not. Ordier continued to trust her, but Luovi, annoyingly, had succeeded in placing doubt in his mind.

  The trip to Muriseay. Parren had travelled to Muriseay (today? or two days ago?) to charter an aircraft, or alternatively to collect the monitoring equipment. According to Luovi the aircraft had already done its work. But would it have been carried out before the eager and ambitious Jacj Parren was standing by with the decoding equipment to receive the images?

  Luovi. Where was she now? Was she returning to the town, or was she still somewhere close to the house, in the area next to the ridge?

  Jenessa, again. Where was she now? Had she gone to the ferry, as she had implied she would, was she at her office, was she with Parren, or might she be returning to his house?

  The folly. How much did Luovi know about his visits to the hidden cell? Had she been guessing and hoping that questions might prompt him to reveal inadvertent information? What did she mean about the folly having been built for something ‘in the first place’? Had she managed to find out more about its past than he had? Why was there in fact an observation cell in the wall, with its view across the valley?

  All these were the recent doubts, the additional ones created by Jacj and Luovi. The others, the old ones, remained.

  The Qataari. Who was watching whom? He had thought he had known; now he wasn’t so sure.

  The young Qataari woman. Was he a free observer of her, hidden and unsuspected, or was he a chosen participant playing a crucial role in the development of the ritual?

  In his confusion between free will and determinism, Ordier recognized that by paradox it was the young woman who provided the only certainty.

  He was convinced that if he went to the folly at any time, on the spur of the moment or after hours of deliberation, it made no difference, if he went there and placed his eyes to the crack in the wall, then for whatever reason or combination of reasons she would be there waiting for him … and the ritual would recommence.

  He knew that the choice was his. He need never again climb up to the cell in the wall. It was over if he wanted it to be.

  Without further thought, Ordier went into the house, found his binoculars and started to climb up the slope of the ridge towards the folly.

  He went a short distance then turned back, pretending to himself that he was exercising his freedom of choice. In fact he was collecting his scintilla detector, and as soon as he had the instrument under his arm he left the house again and climbed towards the courtyard gate.

  He reached the bottom of the folly wall in a few minutes, then went quickly up the steps to his hidden cell. Before he went inside he put down the detector and used his binoculars to scan the countryside around his house.

  The track down to the road into town was deserted, as was the road itself along the stretch of it he could clearly see. There was not even any drifting dust to show that a car might have driven recently in either direction. He then scanned along the parts of the ridge visible from his position, searching for a sight of Luovi. Where he had last spoken to her, though, was dotted with high, free-standing boulders. He could see no sign of her, but knew she could still easily be in that area.

  Ordier stepped back, squeezed between the two projecting slabs and went through into the cell. At once he was assailed by the sickly, pungent fragrance of Qataari roses. It was a smell that he had come unambiguously to associate with the woman in the ritual, with the feeling of spying on the valley, with the watching of the ritual, and with the sense of sexual provocation and illicit promise.

  He placed his binoculars on the shelf and took the scintilla detector from its case. He paused before switching it on, apprehensive of what it might reveal. If there were scintillas here, inside the cell, then he would know beyond any more doubt that the Qataari had been aware of his presence for some considerable time.

  He pulled the antenna to its full height and threw the switch. At once the speaker gave out an electronic howl that faded almost instantly to silence. Ordier, whose hand had jerked back reflexively when the device went off, touched the directional aerial and shook the instrument but no further sound came from it. He swept his hand across the switch, wondering what was wrong.

  He took the detector out into the sunlight and turned on the switch again. In addition to the audible signal, the detector normally indicated its response through several LEDs and a row of calibrated dials on the side of the housing. The LEDs glowed, albeit dimly, presumably because of the bright ambient sunlight, but the dials remained at zero. The speaker was silent. Ordier shook the instrument but the circuits stayed dead. He breathed noisily in exasperation.

  When he checked the batteries Ordier found they were dead.

  He cursed himself for forgetting to recharge them and put the detector on the steps. The thing was useless to him. Another uncertainty had appeared. Was his hiding place seeded with scintillas, or was it not? That sudden burst of electronic noise: was it dynamic overload, or the dying gasp of failing batteries?

  He returned to the confining cell and picked up his binoculars.

  Qataari rose petals lay thickly on the slab where he normally stood and as he stepped forward to the observation slit Ordier saw that more petals lay there, piled so thickly that the aperture was all but blocked. Uncaring whether they fell back into his cell or fluttered down into the valley, Ordier brushed them away with his fingers and shuffled his feet to kick them from the slab. The fragrance rose around him like a cloud of pollen. As he breathed it he felt a heady sensation: sexual arousal, physical excitement, intoxication.

  He tried to remember the first time he had found the petals here in his cell. There had been a strong, gusting wind. They could have blown in through the slit by chance. But last night? Had there been a wind? He could not remember.

  Ordier shook his head, trying to th
ink clearly. There had been all the confusions of the morning, then Luovi. The dead batteries. The perfumed petals.

  It seemed to him, in the suffocating darkness of the cell, that events were being contrived by greater powers to confuse and disorientate him.

  If those powers were real, he thought he knew whose they were.

  As if it were a light seen wanly through a mist, Ordier focused on the knowledge and blundered mentally towards it.

  The Qataari had been watching him all along. He had been selected by them, he had been led to the hiding place inside this cell, he had been intended to watch. Every movement he made in the cell, every indrawn breath and muttered word, every voyeuristic intent and response and thought, they had all been monitored by the Qataari. They were decoded and analysed, and tested against their own actions, so that they knew his every response. The Qataari behaved according to their interpretations of the data they collected from him.

  He had become a scintilla to the Qataari.

  Ordier gripped a piece of stone jutting out from the wall, trying to steady himself. He could feel himself swaying as if his thoughts were a palpable force that could dislodge him from the cell. He sensed the dark wall cavity that lay dangerously beneath him.

  The first day he had found the cell, the beginning of all this. He had been concealed and the Qataari had been unaware of him. That was surely axiomatic? He had found the land, paid for the house to be built, taken over ownership of the folly, by a process, a sequence of events, that must be considered random. He had always watched the Qataari in secret, gradually realizing the nature of his stolen privilege. He had spied out the young woman, watched her moving through the rose bushes, plucking the flowers and tossing them into the pannier on her back. She had been one amongst dozens of others but he focused on her because some physical chemistry, based on his perception of her appearance and manner, made her extremely attractive to him. He had said nothing, except in his thoughts, and the Qataari could not have noticed.

  They could not have noticed, any more than they could have contrived the whole thing.