Storm Dreams (The Cycle of Somnium Book 1)

by Jeb R. Sherrill

  “That’s not surprising,” said Tuck. “You must be a strongly recurring dream. Whoever dreamed you, dreamed about you a lot.”

  “That’s comforting,” Cassidy said, with a grimace. “If only I knew who it was.”

  “Real world’s probably a big place,” the young Twilight said. “And the Everdream…” He trailed off and turned towards a gear-covered wall and pulled a lever. Steam hissed from the edges of a door that slowly appeared as bolts and screws receded. It opened like a hatch, spilling a thin layer of white mist over the corridor tiles. “The Observatory,” Tuck said as the mist cleared.

  Cassidy had imagined some sort of large telescope, but, instead, found a brass wheel three times his height floating in the middle of a vast room. Every inch of the observatory lay covered in instruments, lights and various shapes of coloured glass that throbbed with light.

  The brass wheel turned in the air and electric arcs crackled across the smooth surface within. “We can see the Everdream from here,” he said, as he twisted knobs on one of the many consoles in the room.

  Pictures flashed across the surface. One to the next, arbitrary and maddening. Creatures. People. Landscapes that defied physics or even his ability to remember them. “Can we see Banner? Can we see the crew?” Cassidy asked.

  “It’s random,” Tuck said, shaking his head. “We’ve never been able to make any sense of the Everdream. The geography changes moment to moment as people sleep and wake, and we rarely see past the dream bubbles. Of course,” he added, cocking his head to the side. “If we did see the interior, we wouldn’t recognize it because we don’t know what it looks like.”

  Cassidy chewed his lip. “What do you know then?”

  Tuck continued fiddling with the controls. “Reams of information.” He pointed at stacks of parchment piled in a corner. They appeared to be a continuous sheet of thick accordion paper, covered in tiny holes instead of letters. Cassidy didn’t pretend to understand the technology. “It’s mostly technical data, but ask me anything and I’ll tell you all I can.”

  Cassidy rubbed his chin. “Is there any way to get in without them showing up a moment later?”

  Tuck gave a flippant gesture. “Of course. Just don’t go in flying anything from the real world. You light up like a candle at night. Use a Twilight ship, perhaps.” He narrowed his eyes and looked worried. “Something else you might want to think about. When real people sleep, part of their minds shift over to the Everdream and shape their dreams out of the material already there. That’s why it forms the bubbles. We still haven’t figured exactly how the process works. But, if an actual dreamer, a person from the real world stepped in, it would probably alert them like a sun going nova.”

  Something cold and hot at the same time rolled over in Cassidy’s stomach. He hadn’t wanted the Baron along in the first place, but at the thought of not having him along, he realized how much he’d come to depend on the German’s presence in his planning. Ned wasn’t going to be much use. Cassidy felt alone staring at the great circle where images of the Everdream’s vast bulbs pulsed and changed. “Do you even know why the Armada makes dreams for people?”

  Tuck looked perplexed. “The Armada? No, you misunderstand, Mr. Cassidy. The Armada are only the police. They’re like fingers to a huge body. The forces that work inside the Everdream are something completely different. We’re not even sure if what we’ve seen of them in the observatory is actually them, or just some kind of facsimile they use to speak with their police force.”

  Cassidy took a deep sigh. “Do you have a Twilight ship I can use?”

  “Come to think of it, I have better than that,” Tuck said, the same excited sparkle returning to his eyes. “We have a small airship from the Everdream itself. We can’t say for certain whether or not it’s Armada, but it is a native vessel from inside the mass. They shouldn’t notice it at all. They probably won’t notice you either, since you’re made of the same stuff. It’s small, but it can seat the two of you.”

  Cassidy grimaced. “It only needs one seat.”

  Chapter 14

  Cassidy couldn’t sleep. Richthofen’s snoring from the adjoining room reminded him of a clogged fighter engine. Ned had gone out and hadn’t come back. Probably got lost trying to find prostitutes.

  Cassidy slipped out into the hallway, trying not to wake Richthofen. Enemy or friend, he needed the German well-rested.

  Twilight people still roamed the corridors. They stared at him as he passed as if trying to decide what he was made of. Did these people ever sleep?

  The lights were dim now, but green and red pieces of coloured glass illuminated the walls. He noticed a number of casually dressed engineers stepping in and out of a large door. Poking his head in, the room looked like a lounge. It was dimly lit, like the halls, but here it seemed to be for the sake of atmosphere. The exaggerated gears on the wall cast moving shadows across the floor. They looked more decorative than functional, and he wondered how much of the machine work in the rest of the compound was just for show.

  Cassidy found an empty stool and leaned against the steel rail that ran the length of the counter. The bar looked similar to the New English one from the previous island, but the gear-and-cog motif gave him a headache with the constant movement. A mechanical device moved up, down and across the many bottles of various liquors, ales and lagers, plucking them one by one from the shelves and delivering them into the barkeep’s hands.

  “What’ll it be?” The barkeep asked without turning around.

  Scotch and soda, Cassidy thought. Gin and tonic. A light ale. Schnapps. Dammit, he’d even take schnapps. “Whisky on the rocks,” Cassidy said, and bit his tongue. “No barkeep, make that a…” he concentrated hard, “a whisky on the rocks.”

  “Okay,” said the barkeep, tapping a key on the wall that looked like an elaborate typewriter controlling an alchemy lab, “two whiskies on the rocks.”

  “Thanks,” Cassidy said, as the two drinks plunked down in front of him. The green eyed woman from earlier sat in the shadows at the end of the bar. “On second thought,” he said, “I’ll have what she’s having.” The barkeep grunted and set another whisky on the rocks beside the other two. Why were all the women he met green-eyed?

  “It’s my favourite drink,” she said, and slid to the stool beside him. “Twilights on the bigger islands get to meet dreams from time to time. But here we only see them through the Observatory.”

  Cassidy sipped at his whisky and looked at himself in the bar mirror. Why did all bars have mirrors? Was it some intrinsic rule of reality? “I’m sorry,” he said, without glancing over, “I wasn’t trying to…” She had put her hand on his arm.

  “Of course you were,” she said. “It’s okay. I’ve been wanting to talk.”

  Cassidy rubbed the back of his neck. He polished off the first of his three drinks without glancing over. “I guess you’re one of the scientists here?”

  “No,” she said, leaning sideways over the bar, trying to get her head around to look at him. “I’m just here to be a woman. The men get very bored.”

  Cassidy sighed. “You mean, you get paid to…”

  The woman threw her head back and laughed. “Of course I’m a scientist. Why, were you wanting to buy some fun?”

  “N-no,” Cassidy stammered. “I just wanted a drink. I’m—” He cut himself off before he said anything more stupid.

  She laughed again. “Relax. My name is Elena. I’m sorry. I didn’t know dreams were so awkward around women.”

  Cassidy gave a long exhale and went for his second drink. “I’m just a little on edge. Big day tomorrow.” His ears burned. His heart beat five times too fast. He started to get up to leave.

  Elena gripped his arm. “It’s okay, Flyboy. Finish your drink. I just wanted to talk, not scare you back to your room.”

  Cassidy gulped down his second drink. His skin itched. He’d wanted to run into this woman again, but only now admitted it to himself. He felt bad about it. No, guilty. No, fe
arful for her. She still wore the emerald green gown, and at any moment he half expected an umbrella to come stabbing through her mid-section. Red on green. The blossom pattern of blood on a leaf flashed through his mind. The third drink lay empty between his hands.

  “Two more, Briss,” Elena said to the barkeep.

  “I need my wits for tomorrow,” Cassidy said. He twisted. Realized his penis was rock hard and hung up on his inner thigh. “I need to go.”

  Elena stroked his hand. “Have you ever been with a woman?”

  Cassidy leapt from the barstool. His head spun. He reached out to grab the rail and the world streaked.

  ***

  Cassidy awoke on an examination table. Elena smiled from overhead. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cassidy,” she said. Her eyes weren’t green anymore. Hazel? No, yellow. But they sparkled with playful fascination. Had they only been green because he wanted them to be green? “I just needed to test a few theories.”

  Cassidy closed his eyes as tears welled. A sick lump pushed up in his throat. He tried to roll off the table.

  Elena held him with a restraining arm. “Don’t move yet. You’ve just overloaded your inner boundaries. It’s always been my theory that only so much is transferred from dreamer to dream. Physically you seem perfect, but I know there’re holes. For instance, your emotional stability. It only goes so far.”

  Cassidy kept his eyes closed. The lump in his throat verged on gagging him. “I could have told you that,” he said, clutching at his stomach.

  “I just needed to see,” she said, her voice cold and clinical. “There must be a certain amount of moral core that transfers. Something that wrestles with the base instincts you also seem to possess. Now, have you ever actually been with a woman, Mr. Cassidy? I can tell your equipment works.”

  Cassidy groaned. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  “I mean since you escaped the Everdream.”

  He breathed hard, trying to keep the nausea down. “No.”

  “Have you had the opportunity?”

  Cassidy couldn’t keep Shea out of is mind. The vine tattoos. “Why do you care?”

  “I study behaviour, Mr. Cassidy. I want to know why you didn’t do anything when you had the opportunity. I know I gave you an erection earlier.”

  Cassidy grunted and twisted off the table, breaking her grip. “That’s none of your damn business, ma’am,” he said, restrained from adding anything worse than damn.

  “Please, Mr. Cassidy,” she said, as he ran to the door. “I still have questions. Your friend Ned was far more receptive.”

  Cassidy stopped and glanced back. “Receptive? Did you sleep with him?”

  Elena gave a thin smile. “No, but my associate, Phiielselly says his sexual functions are quite active. She’s been studying him for several hours.”

  Cassidy slammed the door open and stumbled into the corridors. He had no idea how to return to his room from wherever he’d been taken, but didn’t particularly care. His head was swimming too hard. He couldn’t tell the difference between arousal and the sickness in his stomach. At the moment they were the same thing and it was something she’d done. Her phrasing. She’d hit on some internal limit he hadn’t known he had.

  Cassidy found a dark corner, curled up and wept. He couldn’t remember ever crying before, but as the hot tears burned down his face he longed for the coming day. Death would be better than this.

  ***

  One of the techs found Cassidy hours later and helped him to his room. Ned still hadn’t returned. He would probably be gone all night, caught up in the raptures of being studied. The Baron still snored in the next room. Cassidy listened to the sawing sound grating through the wall as he drifted off to sleep. In a strange way, it reassured him.

  The dream came in bits and pieces. The briefing room. The flight. Parts of the battle. The castle rising against the sky. He still couldn’t see the dot that appeared in the distance. It was a fighter though. It wasn’t coming for him. Cassidy was going for the fighter. The dream vanished as he awoke.

  Cassidy sat up. He peeled the sheets off his sweaty skin. It was dawn, or rather the slightly more purple blue that passed for dawn in the Twilight. Lights inside the complex varied to mimic the daily cycles of their world. Ned still hadn’t returned, but the German was already standing at the end of Cassidy’s room, dressed and tightening his leather gauntlets.

  “Ready to fly?” Richthofen asked, glancing around. “Where is your friend?”

  Cassidy shook his head to wring out the last hazes of his dream. “Studying, I’m sure.”

  “Ya,” said Richthofen, “they woke me while you were gone.” He cracked an amused smile. “They wanted to study me, too.”

  “And?”

  “These Twilights are odd people. Not my game. You dream of the castle?” Richthofen asked. “The one with many spires, each taller than the next. It reaches for the sky as you engage in battle with a thousand other fighters.”

  Cassidy’s pulse quickened. “How do you know that?”

  “All airmen dream of battle,” he said. “We love the fight.” He waved a hand in the air as if exalting the very idea of air combat. “I always despised my enemy. Enjoyed killing him. In a way, I hated you most of all.”

  Cassidy narrowed his eyes.

  “For the same reason you hate me.”

  Cassidy clenched and unclenched his fists.

  “It doesn’t matter. You are a dream. I tire of hate and blood.”

  Cassidy couldn’t place the look on Richthofen’s face. A kind of resigned regret, but mixed with a tired sadness. “It’s war, right?”

  “War,” Richthofen said. “And why do you fight in it?”

  “Because you fly better than anyone else, I guess. It’s what you do.”

  The German shook his head. “No. My brother, Lothar. He is a great pilot. He has always flown better than me. I see the Fokker as a gun platform. My purpose is merely to position it to fire. I am not a great pilot. I am a great shot. And I am tired of shooting.”

  “Why are you telling me?” Cassidy asked. “Why now?”

  The Baron sighed. “You do have a first name. Banner should tell you.”

  Cassidy rose from his bed. “I have a full name and Banner won’t tell me? Why?”

  Richthofen poked at the wound on his head. “We need to go.”

  Cassidy gritted his teeth and nodded. He explained the situation, outlining everything Tuck had told him the day before. And everything about the plan he’d had to devise since Richthofen couldn’t come with him.

  The Baron nodded. “Then for now you will just fly in. This is the plan?”

  “Best I can come up with.”

  Richthofen clapped him on the shoulder. “You are a brave man, Major Cassidy,” the Baron said. “Perhaps we can both die as heroes.”

  “Perhaps,” Cassidy said. Heroes. He left the room and made for the bay where Tuck said he had stored the small airship.

  The young scientist met him along the way. “You want the craft? You’re really going to do it?” Tuck asked. “I knew you would. I’ve had it prepped.”

  Huge doors opened into an immense hanger. Single and double-winged planes littered the bay floor and hung from the ceiling. They resembled the types of planes he knew, but all were covered in the same strange copper instruments he’d come to expect from Twilight technology. Several large balloons stood in one corner near a number of land vehicles, but what most caught his eye was the airship that stood in the middle. It looked like a cross between a Zeppelin and a balloon.

  The bulbous portion resembled a distorted purple football, tethered to the dangling basket with an elaborate rigging of black net. The gondola was largely wood, reinforced with brass ribbing, like the Nubigena’s gondola, but more boxy.

  Tuck beamed. “It’s our finest dream ship. Nothing compared to that amazing vessel of your captain’s, but the Nimbus is fast for a semi-rigid and it’s quite dirigible. If you don’t mind,” he said, pointing to a ball-s
haped instrument mounted to the front, “the measuring equipment is still attached. We only dare skim the outside boundaries, but you’ll be headed straight into the heart. When you get back, it’ll provide all kinds of new data.”

  “Fine by me,” Cassidy said, examining the craft. He unlatched the hatch and glanced inside. The controls were similar to the Nubigena right down to the helm and foot pedals. He wondered if Karl might have gotten some of his ideas for modifications from Twilight engineers or from the Everdream.

  “You also might want to take this,” Tuck said, handing him a pocket watch. The timepiece whirred as Cassidy opened it, exposing an instrument far more complex than any he’d seen before. “It’s synchronized with our own time here. We can track you with the Observatory.”

  Cassidy closed the lid and placed it in his pocket. “You wouldn’t have another one laying around, would you?”

  “Of course,” Tuck said. “I’ll get you one.”

  Cassidy spent several hours familiarizing himself with the controls and various instruments. With any luck, he wouldn’t get into any aerial combat, as the vessel had no offensive capabilities to speak of. He would bring a rifle, however. If it came down to it he could always shoot out the port window.

  “Cassidy?”

  Cassidy stuck his head out to find Ned standing a few feet away, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Sorry I’ve been gone so long.”

  Cassidy shrugged. “Just getting ready.”

  Ned bit his lip. “I need to tell you something.”

  “Yeah?” Cassidy said, not looking up, but examining several instructional diagrams.

  “I don’t know if I can do this.” Ned wrung his hands. “I can’t go with you. I’ve decided to stay here.”

  Cassidy nodded, but still didn’t look up. “I know. I haven’t been planning on you going.”

  “I thought you needed a co-pilot.”

  Cassidy put down the papers and looked up. “You’re a good kid, Ned. I like you. When all is said and done, you’re not a bad guy. But you’re a coward. If I took you with me, I might as well kiss myself goodbye, along with any chance of getting anyone out of there alive. I suggest you go back to playing doctor with the Twilights.”