Waking in Dreamland
Page 29
Roan felt himself inching forward again, his feet moving of their own volition on the pavement. Stop! he thought at them. Stop! They could not afford to lose the day. Brom was near, Roan could sense it. The Dreamland, he had to think of the Dreamland, and the threat of the Alarm Clock! But no, his feet refused to pass, started to turn in towards the doorway.
“We’ll all join arms,” Roan said, taking Colenna’s elbow. She attached herself to Spar. Bergold took Leonora’s other arm, and Misha held on to him. “We’ll run across quickly. That way, we won’t get sucked inside.”
“Hold tight,” Lum said, as the other guards linked arms.
“Ready?”
“Ready!” Bergold said. They were within inches of the glass-and-green-paneled doors. The pull was so strong. “One, two, three, go!”
Roan launched himself forward. As the group hurled themselves past the doorway, they caught the full brunt of
the attraction.
Succumb, the wordless song said. You know you want to. Everything else can wait. The smell of coffee tantalized, cushions beckoned, the bright colors danced, book blurbs whispered in their ears. Roan nearly hesitated in mid-dash. He could feel the others faltering.
“Help,” Colenna moaned.
“Right, then,” Spar said, stoutly. As usual, the guard captain seemed unaffected by the unseen forces that paralyzed everyone else. Spar marched firmly to the other side of the bookstore entrance, pulling his end of the line of people with him. He set his heels against a paving stone, and heaved. The others came flying toward him like corks out of a bottle. Roan stumbled to a halt, trying to cushion Leonora from running into the wall. He panted with the exertion, a bead of sweat running down into his eyes. Felan stood, gasping.
“There, now, you’re safe,” Spar said, putting an arm around Colenna. “Are you all right? My lady?”
Colenna leaned on his arm with a wordless smile, and Leonora nodded.
“My gratitude, Captain,” Roan said. His throat felt dry from the cappuccino fumes.
“All part of the job,” Spar said. He tucked Colenna’s hand into his elbow, and marched forward, his spine proudly erect.
It was only a little easier to walk away from the entrance than it had been to resist walking toward it. All around them on the street were dozens of others without the captain’s iron self-control. Roan feared for them. Some were clinging to lampposts, fire hydrants, and each other, in an attempt to resist. A woman, innocently walking a poodle on the other side of the street, was swept up by the seductive force and carried helplessly inside, the dog yelping behind her.
“It could have been us,” Felan said, sadly, watching her sail past.
“Come on,” Roan said, striding onward. “We shouldn’t tarry. It could pull us back.”
The outside wall of the bookstore was full of small glass display windows. In the case just ahead of him, Roan noticed a title out of the corner of his eye, and turned his head to see. “The Book of Love,” the gaudy cover read. A good omen, Roan thought, squeezing the princess’s hand in the crook of his arm. He continued to step purposefully forward, then had a sudden and irresistible urge to see the author’s name. He stopped in front of the window. The title was perfectly clear, but the bottom of the book was fuzzy, as if someone had smeared soap across it. He started put his hand through the glass of the window to open the cover and read the title page, when a cry startled him, and the glass turned invincibly solid. He snatched back his hand.
“Come on,” Bergold called. “The bookshop’s just eaten another pedestrian!”
“Don’t go back,” Leonora pleaded, holding on to him.
Now I’ll never know, he thought.
Chapter 23
“No, haven’t seen any strangers but you,” said a man on the street corner. The light changed, and the box on the opposite corner said Don’t Walk, so he ran across, and every car, carriage, and bicycle missed him, clearing the crosswalk just as he reached them.
“No one like that,” said a flower woman, offering them each a daisy. Roan accepted his and handed it to Leonora. Spar looked sharply at the flower seller, and back at each of his guards to make sure they wouldn’t do anything so nonmilitary as taking a flower from an unvetted civilian. The woman gave them a beautiful smile anyhow.
“Oh, yes, I saw them,” said a seller of bread, changing a French loaf into breadsticks for a woman customer. “They asked me where to find a bicycle repair shop. I told them to go that way.” He pointed a breadstick toward a street leading west.
“Thank you,” Roan said, shooting an eager glance at his companions. The baker nodded and handed his customer a handful of breadcrumbs change.
“The weirdness, sir. It’s fresh,” said Lum, in great excitement. He indicated light-colored bricks full of holes in the wall at the opening of an alley. Roan examined them, and took a sniff. Yes, they were made of fresh Swiss cheese.
“The crucible must have passed by very recently,” Bergold said, looking about, “since no one has yet noticed the damage and repaired it.”
“Very recently,” Roan exclaimed. He had caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to look at it. He pointed down the alley. “There!”
Several hundred yards ahead, but still unmistakable was the humped silhouette he had been seeing in his nightmares: the Alarm Clock on its litter.
“Right! After them!” Spar said, drawing his sword. He whistled for the bicycles. “You ride straight that way, sir. Alette, with me to the left. Lum, you take Hutchings around the right. We split up, and we’ll have ’em. Go!”
They swung into the saddle, and started pedaling. Roan, Misha, and Bergold were right behind them, pumping for all they were worth. Brom would not escape them this time.
“Hey, wait for me!” Felan shouted.
“We’ll stay here!” Colenna called after them.
The guards peeled off in opposite directions at the first corner, leaving the four men riding along the narrow lane after the bobbing shape of the litter. Roan felt a moment of dread, remembering the last time he had faced the power of the gestalt. Did even eight brave souls have the strength to defeat Brom?
Reverie was a different proposition than Hark. The people who lived here had more influence, and therefore more command over their surroundings. Roan passed through sections of quiet where his tires and even his breathing made no noise on the brick street. Those passages were brief, however, and Roan feared that the noise they made would alert Brom that he was being followed. He kept the dread shape in sight. They would catch Brom now.
They came closer and closer to the litter. The lane opened up into a street, and Roan could see the group ahead of him more clearly. He counted between eight and a dozen people, all on motorcycles. Roan had seen motorcycles before, but never so many of them in one place at one time. The gestalt, again, altering the Dreamland’s reality by concentrating too many modern things in one place. In a moment, dinosaurs would start walking the quiet streets of this town, to try and rebalance the proportions of nature. They must stop Brom and break the Alarm Clock up.
The silhouette of the litter veered to the right into a wide square full of neatly clipped grass and large buildings. Women in short uniforms and men in high-collared white tunics pushed invalids to and fro in Bath chairs. A sign on the side of the street advised, Quiet, Hospital Zone. The loud motors and wide tires disrupted the very air as Brom passed, shaking reality until some of the nurses were in the wheelchairs, and the patients, clad in short hospital gowns, were pushing them. Flowers were plowed up from the gardens in the square and flew in all directions.
By the time Roan and the others came through, the silence had reasserted itself aggressively. Even though the air was still filled with flying blossoms and dirt Roan thought had never been anywhere so quiet. Every sound they made was exaggerated. Their breathing was the rasping of saws on wood. Roan could swear he heard Bergold blink. When Misha raised a hand to bat away an airborne rose, it sounded like he’d hit a fly ball
out of a park full of sports fans. The whine of their narrow racing tires roared as loudly as Skor’s truck engine. Roan willed the air onto the outside of his tires so as to make them run silently, and gestured to the others to do the same.
Ahead of them, only three blocks ahead, the litter bearers rolled to a halt. The gaunt figure that was Brom stood up on his pedals to look both ways along the intersection.
Roan felt a thrill of anticipation. Riding on air, he knew he could catch them by surprise. He dodged a bunch of flying daisies. Where were Spar and the guards? Were they near enough to prevent the Alarm Clock from escaping? Two blocks. One block. Roan readied himself to jump off Cruiser’s back onto Brom’s motorbike. Catch the ringleader, and the others would be easily subdued. Could he get close enough to spring? Half a block. Six houses.
Only yards away from their quarry, Felan reached over and tapped Roan on the shoulder.
“I’m going to sneeze,” he whispered, holding his nose.
“Don’t!” Roan whispered back urgently. “Not a sound!”
“I can’t help it,” Felan hissed. “I’m allergic to flowers. I know I’m going to. I . . . uh . . . I . . .”
“Get out of this street,” Roan said, looking for an alley or a doorway to push the man into, but there was nowhere to go where he couldn’t be seen or heard. Felan’s face wrinkled up, his nose twitched, and his mouth opened. “Don’t do it!”
“Too la—” Felan sputtered. “HACHOO!”
The sneeze sounded like an explosion, even drowning out the idling motorcycles. In unison, all of Brom’s minions turned their heads to see what was behind them.
“That’s done it,” Roan said, abandoning stealth. No time to wait for the guards. “Charge!”
He and the others pumped their pedals to catch up with the bearers. Before Roan crossed the twenty yards separating them, a flash of white light flared, blinding them. He threw up his arm across his eyes. Cruiser squeaked alarm. When his eyes recovered, there was no one on the street but them. Roan pedaled to the intersection, but it was hopeless. The Alarm Clock was gone.
“Did you see them?” Glinn said, urging his steed up beside Brom’s. Taboret was close enough behind him to see the glow in Brom’s eyes turn to red flame.
“Yes, I saw them,” Brom said, the calm in his voice belying the terrifying change in his eyes. “They are stalking us. The game has become more interesting now that they have caught up. We will have to take measures of our own. Follow me.”
“Not a sign, sir,” Alette said, coasting to a stop beside Roan in the foreyard of the big bicycle shop. She took off her uniform beret and ran a hand through her short red hair. “They’re nowhere to be seen. We checked every turning between here and the edge of the city.”
“They’ve vanished into air,” Bergold said. “Not an unheard of phenomenon in this world.”
“But temporary,” Leonora said. “Otherwise they’d just have blinked themselves to the Hall of the Sleepers days ago, without bicycles.”
“Should we stake out this place?” Spar asked, peering at the workshop. “They need a repair shop, and this is the best in the city.” The yard was filled with steeds in every state and stage of disrepair or discombobulation. The mechanics, clad in dirty coveralls, regarded the party with uneasy glances, but kept on about their work, caring for skittish horses, hammering out bicycle frames, recaning balloon baskets. “There’s plenty of places we could hide.”
“No,” said Roan, thinking hard. “Now that Brom knows we’ve spotted them, he won’t come back this way. They’ll find another shop. We’ll have to blanket the city with observers, and hope we can catch them before they leave town.”
“We don’t have enough to make a pillowcase, let alone a blanket,” Felan said, flippantly, although he still looked sheep ish at having given them away with his sneeze. “Just where do you plan to get more observers?”
Roan pointed down the street at a familiar blue light. “The police,” he said. “We’ll ask for their help.”
The large parking lot beside the building was full of official vehicles including blue bicycles, mopeds, one tall, boxlike car with a rack of lights on top, and horse-drawn carriages whose engine sections were munching on bags of oats. The party’s bicycles crowded together at one end of the yard, as if the police vehicles made them nervous.
Roan led the way up the wide stone stairs. As he approached the glass doors, they opened out towards him, releasing waves of soft music and a sweet, flowery scent.
“Welcome,” said a beaming policeman. He had bright pink cheeks and a jolly, round face crested with light brown hair that curled on his forehead. His uniform was a soft blue, and the double line of brass buttons were brightly polished enough for Roan to see his reflection. “Welcome to you all.” He looked at the others over Roan’s shoulder. “Welcome!”
“Thank you,” Roan said. “We would like to see whoever is in charge.”
“Well, of course,” the policeman said, and called back over his shoulder, “Sergeant! These lovely people would like to see the super.”
He pointed them toward a high desk and an equally rosy-faced man with the diamond insignia on his sleeve.
“I’ll be happy to tell him you’re here,” the sergeant said pleasantly, lifting a black telephone receiver larger than his head. “What name shall I give?”
“Please tell him it’s the King’s Investigator and party.”
“Of course. Just make yourselves at home.”
The sergeant gestured them to chairs and spoke quietly into the mouthpiece.
The station was trim and spotless. The waiting room had been painted pale orange, and seemed light and airy. Soft music with a bouncy, gentle beat played over the public address system. It was all very relaxing. No one spoke above a murmur, not even the two masked men whose statements were being taken at small desks behind a glass partition. Roan and Leonora did not speak aloud to one another, but telegraphed messages to one another with their eyebrows.
“How odd this seems,” Leonora’s said.
“This isn’t like any police station I’ve seen,” Roan sent back.
“Do you think we’ll have long to wait?” Bergold’s eyebrows inquired.
“I hope not,” Roan’s replied.
“Sir?” The desk sergeant smiled at them. “I hate to interrupt a private conversation. I was delighted to tell the superintendent that you wanted to speak to him. He’ll just be a moment. It won’t bother you to wait, will it?”
Captain Spar gave him a sharp look, thinking the remark was sarcasm, but the officer’s face remained friendly and open.
“Not too long, I hope.”
“Not at all. There’s coffee,” the sergeant said, helpfully. “And doughnuts. Plenty of doughnuts in the squad room.” He pointed to an open door to his left.
And so there were. The party helped themselves hungrily to the piles of still-warm rings and cups of very good coffee in a pink-painted room filled with easy chairs and footstools. Roan poured himself a large cup, thinking longingly of the bookstore and its coffee bar.
“Gosh, sir,” Lum whispered, clutching half a dozen doughnuts and a steaming mug in his big hands. “Much better than our mess, huh?”
“Don’t be too quick to praise ’em,” Spar said, surveying the trays suspiciously. “Probably turn out tasting like book-paste and talcum powder, like that stuff in Hark.”
But the pastries tasted as good as they smelled, and appeared to be in endless supply. When a platter was emptied, rosy-faced officers swept it away and brought another back full. After a snack of hot crullers and cappuccino, Leonora and Roan browsed through the break room, looking at the wanted posters pinned along the walls. According to the name in the bottom right corner of each, this seemed to be a series of aliases all of one man whose name was “Peter Max.” The very stylized images had been drawn with heavy black outlines and deep, solid, unshaded colors. Behind each portrait, the background was filled with stars and rainbows and daisies.
“Impressions are important in our business,” the sergeant said, cheerfully, coming up behind them. “The super will see you now.”
“Ah,” Roan said, turning and offering an elbow to Leonora. “That would be super.”
The friendly officer escorted them down a corridor painted with bright-colored daisies the size of Roan’s outstretched hand. The effect was bewilderingly hypnotic. The faster he walked, the more the design put Roan in a state of near stupor.
“Easy, easy,” the officer cautioned him, grabbing his arm to steady him. “Feeling the rush, are you? There’s no hurry.” He stopped before a door and tapped on it. Roan shook his head to clear it just in time for the introductions.
“It’s so nice to meet all of you,” the chief of the Reverie police said, as the sergeant showed them to chairs. “Please make yourselves at home. Now, how may I be of service?”
He waited courteously while the princess sank gracefully onto a cushion, and waited for her nod before seating himself in an overstuffed chair. Its tie-dyed upholstery against the flowered wallpaper was almost dazzling. Roan opened his mouth to speak.
“First,” the superintendent said, interrupting Roan, “do let me say how thrilled I am that you are gracing our city, Your Highness. You are everyone’s wanted poster of choice, if you will forgive a little professional joke.”
“Gladly,” Leonora said, patiently. But she tidied up her flowing white dress a little, giving the cloth a satinlike luster. “May we tell you our concerns?”