Nightmare se-2

by Steven Harper

  "Yes?" Mom said.

  "Something’s bugging me," Kendi said. His eyes tracked over empty air. "The way Dorna talked. It reminded me of someone, but I can’t quite place-" He bolted upright on the couch. "Buck. Sometimes she talks like Buck."

  Ara blinked at him, puzzled. "Who’s Buck?"

  "A guy we met in the Dream," Kendi said. "He gave me pointers on my falcon. And then that Zelda woman showed up." He gave further detail about them.

  "Kendi," Father Ched-Hisak said intently, "you said you attempted to locate Dorna but found her in a pair of places."

  "Yeah. And once I tried to tag someone I thought was her but it turned out to be Zelda. Another time I thought I had her and it was Buck."

  "I wish this to be clear. You were sure you felt Dorna but you found someone else both times. You also felt her in pairs of places at the same time."

  Kendi nodded. Father Ched-Hisak settled back on his haunches with a grumbling, muttering noise that Ben recognized as a symptom of careful thought among the Ched-Balaar, though he decided not to translate that.

  "I have made studies of human psychology," Father Ched-Hisak said half to himself. "Humans have varied and fascinating reactions to tragedy so different from members of my species. I think this is one of those reactions."

  "What do you mean, Father?" Mom asked before Ben could translate.

  "It is possible," Ched-Hisak clattered slowly, "that your Dorna has a psychological problem known to humans as-" But the rest of the sentence was lost even to Ben.

  "I’m sorry, Father," Ben told him. "I don’t know those words."

  "Dissociative identity disorder," Mom supplied. "How do you know, Father?"

  "I don’t," Father Ched-Hisak admitted. "I only suspect. However, it would explain many things."

  "What’s dishie-dissipate-" Kite said.

  "Dissociative identity disorder," Mom repeated. "It means multiple personalities." When her words met with further blank looks, she continued. "Some people who suffer terrible abuse as children retreat into their own heads. The things that their parent-or parents-do to them are so horrible that the children can’t believe it’s truly happening, so they create other people for them to happen to. The creation is so complete that they actually become someone else, and the alternate personality takes the memory of the abuse."

  "So there are other people living in Dorna’s head," Willa said softly.

  "Possibly. I’m not convinced," Mom said.

  "It would explain a great much," Father Ched-Hisak chattered. "If Dorna has more than one self, it would make sense that she would have more than one Dream self. When we visit the Dream, after all, we become only what we believe we are. It would explain also why Kendi felt more than one Dorna-there was more than one Dorna, truly."

  "And it would explain why her speech patterns changed," Kendi said excitedly. Then he deflated a little. "Wait. I asked her about it-why I felt more than one of her. She said she had no idea, and you can’t lie in the Dream."

  "That is not correct," Father Ched-Hisak said gently. "A Silent can tell an untruth in the Dream if she believes it to be true. I think Dorna remains unaware of the other personalities. She did not lie. She told the truth as she knew it."

  "But why would she be able to get up and leave before she-or whatever personalities-left the Dream?" Mom objected.

  "Human minds are powerful," Father Ched-Hisak said. "I have read of people with many personalities doing similar things. It is quite common for one personality to drink heavily, for example, and leave the other personalities unaffected completely. If many of Dorna’s personalities are in the Dream, one left behind might take body control."

  "She said that," Ben put in after translated Father Ched-Hisak’s words. "She said something about being in control now and keeping it." He shuddered involuntarily. "She’s insane, then?"

  "This is a bad word," Father Ched-Hisak said. "If we are correct, Dorna has many difficult problems. We shall say only that."

  Mom, who had slumped into a chair, sat bolt upright. "Father, are people with multiple personalities violent?"

  "Often there is a violent personality, or two, or three."

  "I have a call to make, and then I’ll have to leave. Ben, you and Kendi stay here. The rest of you can go or stay as you like, but stay out of the Dream." She got up and left the room without a backward glance. Ben watched her go with a grim expression. His mother always left without a backward glance.

  Ara paced outside the door to Dorna’s dormitory room, her mind moving furiously. Dorna Saline. Third year student, average grades, student of Mother Ched-Maruk.

  Serial killer?

  It made dreadful sense. They had been looking for a man because serial killers were usually male and the victims in this case were women. The fact that the killer could change shape in the Dream enough to hide facial features had gone right past both Ara and Tan. If the killer could change a face, how difficult would it be to change gender?

  The vast majority of Silent were stuck with their own shapes in the Dream because that was what their subconscious minds expected. And a mind that thought of itself-or one part of itself-as male would take at least one male shape in the Dream, Ara thought grimly.

  Was this how Kendi had split himself? Kendi had largely grown up in what he called "mutant society" but was trying almost desperately to get back to his Real People roots. Had living in two worlds combined with powerful Silence to allow him multiple Dream forms?

  Soft footsteps came up the hallway carpet and Inspector Lewa Tan approached, a computer pad in her hand and an intense expression on her face.

  "Got the warrant," she said without preamble and pressed the computer pad to the door’s electronic lock. "It was a real trick getting it. Dorna’s only crime is hitting your son and there’s no proof she’s done anything else. Lucky I have an uncle on the bench. Baran, release lock on authority of Guardian Lewa Tan. Warranted search."

  "Scanning warrant," the computer said. "Access granted."

  The lock clicked open. Tan drew on a pair of gloves and hurried inside. Ara followed.

  Dorna Saline’s small room was perfectly tidy. Desk, computer pad, chair, bed, balcony door. No wall decorations or houseplants on the stark white walls. After a quick glance around, Ara knelt by the bed and Tan opened the wardrobe.

  "Nothing under here," Ara reported. "Not even dust. Should I strip the bed?"

  "We’ll get some techs to do that." Hangers scraped the rollbar as Tan leafed through hanging blouses. "We’re doing an overview right now. Check the desk, will you?"

  Ara moved to obey. "Where’s Linus?"

  "Coming. He was-shit!"

  "What?" Ara spun to face her. "What is it?"

  Tan wordlessly held out a pale green blouse with long sleeves. The cuff showed a small red stain.

  "Blood?" Ara said.

  "Maybe." Tan whipped a small scanner from her pocket and ran it over the spot. "Definitely."

  "Whose?"

  "This scanner doesn’t have the memory to hold that kind of database. It might be hers, of course."

  "Or someone else’s. Do we keep looking?"

  Tan eyed her. "You think just because we find one potential clue, we stop searching? Welcome to the tedious side of Guardian work, Mother Ara. Let’s get to it."

  The two of them set back to work.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The smell of your deeds will follow you forever.

  — Daniel Vik

  "The DNA," Tan said, "doesn’t belong to Dorna. Or any of the known victims."

  "Is that good or bad?" Ara asked.

  Tan gave her a hard look. "Bad. If it belonged to a victim, we could get an arrest warrant in five minutes. But we don’t know who it belongs to, so we get nothing."

  Ara swirled her glass around the table, making thoughtful rings of condensed water. The smell of fried onions and mushrooms hung on the air. Nicky’s Restaurant, the quiet, dark place they had taken Kendi after the Dream recreation, had
become a customary meeting place for Ara and Inspector Tan. Over the three days since Dorna’s disappearance, Tan had begun consulting with Ara regularly-more often, it seemed to Ara, than with her partner. Linus Gray, however, was handling the non-Silent aspects of the case-coordinating technicians, interpreting their evidence, and so on, leaving Tan free to handle the Silent end.

  "It’s been three days," Ara said, thinking aloud. "We’ve checked with all her friends and they haven’t seen her. She has no relatives on Bellerophon because she was brought here as a newly-freed slave, so she hasn’t gone to ground with anyone like that. We know she hasn’t left the planet because the spaceport was put on alert for her right after she attacked Ben." A surge of anger passed through Ara, and she had to work to keep it out of her voice. "So where is she hiding?"

  "My vote is still the forest," Tan said. "There are tons of places to hide, and anyone who knows basic survival skills-"

  "Like the ones we teach at the monastery," Ara sighed.

  "— could live out there for a long time." Tan speared a deep-fried mushroom and dipped it in spicy brown sauce. "I wonder which personality does the surviving. Dammit, we have to talk to her. Every instinct I have tells me she’s connected to the murders. Too much of a coincidence that all this happened right in the middle of the investigation."

  "Do you think she did it?"

  "She’s my prime suspect," Tan admitted. "Did you know that in almost a thousand years we’ve never had a serial killer case on Bellerophon? I have no precedents to work with. None. So I’ve been doing a lot of reading about serial killers and a lot of talking to law enforcement people on other planets. Father Ched-Hisak knows a lot about human psychology, too. They all tell me that female serial killers are rare and that women with multiple personalities tend to be more suicidal than homicidal. It’s the opposite for men. In other words, the women kill themselves while the men kill other people. But there are plenty of exceptions. I’m willing to bet we have one of them. Lucky us."

  "We checked the records," Ara said, still swirling her glass. "Dorna did arrive on Bellerophon just before Prinna Meg was murdered, so she’s been on the planet during the killings. I just …I just …"

  "What?" Tan said.

  "I like Dorna," Ara said. "She struck me as a bit odd-now I know why-but she’s always been nice."

  "I wouldn’t call the person-or personality-who attacked your son nice."

  "You’re right." Ara pushed the glass aside. "I just hate the idea that someone I know like this might be murdering people and chopping off their fingers. I keep hoping it turns out to be someone we haven’t even thought of yet."

  "Most of the time the murderer is obvious suspect," Tan pointed out. "The witness you’ve been ignoring because he’s on the outer edge never turns out to be the long-lost nephew-turned-killer. You never get to assemble all the suspects in the library to reveal this fact, either."

  The waiter came to clear away their plates and ask if they wanted desert. Ara passed a hand over her round stomach as a way of getting herself to decline, but her resolve refused to solidify.

  "What’s today?" she asked the waiter, an older man with silver hair.

  "Thursday," he told her.

  "Good. I always give in to temptation on Thursdays. Turtle fudge sundae, please."

  "And for you, ma’am?" the waiter asked Tan.

  "More tea," she rasped. "I only give in to temptation on Tuesdays."

  The waiter left. Ara eyed Tan. "You might want to give in more often. Stress reliever, you know."

  "Be easy to justify," Tan said. "I’m getting big pressure from higher up to solve this."

  "I’ll bet. Were you able to access Dorna’s sale records?"

  "Some. Found out she’s had more than three owners. I talked to some of them. Or I talked to them through a Silent courier, anyway."

  "And?"

  Tan shrugged. "They never noticed any personality weirdness and don’t know of any Silent who were murdered during the time they owned her. Doesn’t mean much, of course. I’m still waiting to hear back from the police agencies-the killer’s M.O. is pretty unique-but it’s slow going. Most of the more densely-populated worlds have a dozen or more governments. That means a dozen or more law enforcement agencies, and they don’t always talk to each other."

  "Then let’s hope they talk to us."

  Kendi grinned and waved as Ben came into sight. Ben nodded to him from the top of the outdoor staircase. It had become their habit to meet here after both their classes were over for the day. Kendi was still living at the Rymar house, though there had never been any indication that the killer was looking for Kendi.

  "Better safe than sorry," Ara had said.

  "Irfan Qasad?" Kendi had said, earning him a why do I do this to myself? sort of sigh from Ara.

  Ben was trotting down the stairs past several students going in the opposite direction when his upper body jerked forward. His computer pad flew out of his hand and he fell. Kendi watched in shock as he tumbled down the steps. People swore in surprise and leaped out of the way. The thuds and thumps as his body hit the stairs were awful. At last Ben came to rest at the bottom. His computer pad struck the ground some distance away and skidded over the edge of the walkway.

  "Ben!" Kendi got to his side without any idea of how he had traversed the space between them. Ben’s face was white, and his freckles stood out like tiny lesions. Kendi automatically reached down to pull him to his feet, but then Brother Dell’s first aid training took over and he pulled back. "Ben! Are you all right?"

  Ben shifted position and groaned. "Shit."

  A voice tinged with harsh laughter called down, "Loudmouth!" A pejorative, the opposite of Silent.

  Kendi looked up and saw two students he didn’t recognize, one male and one female. Both of them were laughing. Kendi didn’t even think. He sprinted up to the top of the stairs and smashed head-first into the male. Kendi flailed with both fists, heedless of the counterblows that rained down upon him, until a firm hand yanked him straight out of the fight. Ched-Balaar clatter ordered him to stop. Kendi swung twice more at empty air before the order registered and he obeyed. It was hard to breathe and took him a moment to realize he was dangling by his collar from Father Ched-Hisak’s left hand. The Ched-Balaar’s right hand held the other male student, and a human teacher Kendi didn’t recognize had restrained the female. Father Ched-Hisak lowered Kendi to the deck, and Kendi found he could breathe again.

  "What’s going on here?" the human teacher demanded.

  "They pushed Ben down the stairs," Kendi said hotly.

  "That’s a lie!"

  An argument ensued. The two students continued to deny the charge, and Father Ched-Hisak had to restrain Kendi a second time. Finally Father Ched-Hisak sounded a deep, rumbling noise like a foghorn that silenced everyone.

  "No one can lie in the Dream," he said. "We will bring these two there to learn the truth."

  Both students blanched but didn’t protest when the human teacher lead them away. Father Ched-Hisak turned to Kendi. His wide brown eyes were hard.

  "And you," he chattered, "you will once again find yourself on work detail."

  "But they pushed-"

  "That does not excuse your fighting," Father Ched-Hisak told him. "Finish this sentence: ‘Serene must you walk the paths …’ "

  " ‘ …and serene must you ever remain,’ " Kendi said automatically. "I know, I know."

  "You do not know," Ched-Hisak said. "Otherwise you would not do these things. I will register your hours. Go to your friend."

  Kendi had actually forgotten about Ben. He hurried down the stairs and found him sitting on a bench next to a brown-clad Sister whose gold medallion bore a square cross, the symbol of a medic. She had his left shoe off and was examining his ankle. Ben’s face was tight with pain. The crowd that had gathered was already drifting away. Kendi became aware that his own face hurt. He touched his lower lip and his finger came away red and sticky. Other parts of his body were also b
eginning to ache.

  "It’s a slight sprain and a few bruises," the Sister said. "Nothing serious." She removed a dermospray from her medical bag and it thumped against Ben’s ankle. Another dermospray thumped against his upper arm. "You need to sit here for at least ten minutes for the sprain to heal. The second shot will help the pain and the bruises, all right?"

  Ben nodded and the Sister turned to Kendi. She stanched his bleeding lip, gave him a shot, and declared him fine. They thanked her and she left. Kendi started to sit next to Ben, whose leg was still stretched out on the bench, but Ben pointed at the rail.

  "My pad went over," he said. "Can you get it for me?"

  Kendi peered over the edge and saw the pad caught in the semi-transparent netting. He lay flat on his stomach and was just able to retrieve it with his fingertips. Ben accepted it with a curt "thank you."

  "What’s the matter?" Kendi asked.

  "Nothing."

  "Ben, come on. What’s going on?"

  Ben paused for a long time. "I don’t need you to fight my cousins for me, Kendi," he said. "It’s stupid."

  "Those two were your cousins?" Kendi said in disbelief.

  "They’re creeps and they’ve been pulling shit like that all my life. This was nothing new."

  "Ben, they tripped you down the-"

  "I don’t care what they did," Ben said. "I get it all the time from them. So what? They’re assholes-full of shit."

  "Don’t tell me it doesn’t make you mad," Kendi almost snapped. "They tripped you on the damn stairs!"

  "It makes me mad, yeah," Ben said heatedly. "But I don’t need you to take care of me, and I definitely don’t need you telling Mom about it."

  "Ben, I didn’t mean-"

  "Just leave alone for a while, okay?" And Ben’s face shut down. After a moment, Kendi got up and headed for the Rymar home. As a result, he was just getting in the door when Inspector Tan called to tell Mother Ara that another dead body had turned up.

  The first thing Ara noticed was the smell. Mother Diane Giday’s house was high up in this particular talltree, and Ara was less than halfway up staircase that wound around the trunk when it hit her-the ripe, rancid smell of rotting meat. Ara faltered, then forced herself onward. Tan had said on the phone that Giday had been killed quite some time ago and that the body was in an advanced state of putrefaction, but Ara hadn’t thought the smell of it would greet her before she even reached the front door. Now she was doubly glad she had spent considerable time convincing Kendi-ordering him, really-that he didn’t need to come to the site of the murder.