by J. M. Porup
“What about your song?” she whispered. “Your…gift?”
Kann rode inside Shade’s head and heard the song, felt Maude’s claw, her hot breath on his skin, the monstrous stench of her. It seemed comforting, almost normal, to Shade, but his partner recoiled in horror and loathing.
Get that ChemLob into you, my friend, he drawled. Then we can clean up this nest of dreamers, get you back to the Collective.
Great! Shade thought. It’ll be good to see Boss again.
Boss, Kann thought, has been recycled.
Recycled! Why?
You infected him with your dream, Kann said.
I infected him?
When you visited him yesterday. The sentence was ChemLob.
But recycled…
A ChemLobbed quadriplegic is of no use to society. Kann cleared his throat. You, on the other hand, can still be useful to humanity. The hydroponic gardens can always use another worker. But not until you kill your dream—because if you don’t, your dream will kill you.
THE TIME FOR DREAMING IS OVER, the Collective boomed.
Shade’s lips moved silently: Now we all must work.
He took the jabber from Buck’s outstretched hand, felt its comforting plastic surface in his palm. The principal tool of his trade. He uncapped it, lifted it, pressed it against his neck. The needle broke the skin, entered his vein. All he had to do was push the button, and this nightmare would be over. Then he would know who he was, would never again have to question or doubt himself.
Linda wrapped her arms around his waist. “Don’t do this. Please,” she said. “The world needs to hear your dream.”
Shade pushed her gently away. “What Is Good For All Is Good For the One.”
She nodded, hid her face in her hands.
Still, Shade hesitated.
“Come on!” Zune shouted. “We’ve go to go now!”
But…ChemLob…
It’s the only way out of this alive, Kann reminded him. Remember, without us, you are nothing. You are We. We are All. We are the Collective.
His partner was right, of course.
I know I’m right.
Shade drew a breath. Held it. Pressed his thumb against the plunger.
And halted. A dozen pair of eyes stared at him. He gulped, felt the needle bury itself deeper into his flesh.
I choose… I choose to—
A blast came from far above. Rubble rained on their heads. Bootsteps echoed behind them.
“Do it now!” Buck screamed, “or we’re all dead!”
The others turned to flee.
What happened next baffled Shade for the rest of his life. Why did he do it? What mysterious force took control of his body, and moved his arms as though he were a puppet? What impossible motive made him act as he did?
Because he threw the jabber on the ground, grabbed the unplugger from Buck’s still outstretched hand, jammed it against the base of his own skull, and, without a word, pulled the trigger.
Chapter Eighteen
Shade wandered in his dreams for an eternity, tormented by doubt. Had he done the right thing? Shadows engulfed him, accusing him with their silent menace: You betrayed the Collective betrayed humanity because of you the world could end!
The darkness suffocated him. When he could stand it no longer, when he felt madness creeping over him, when the only choice remaining to him seemed to be madness or death, he began to sing.
He sang. Gasping for air, he sang. Afraid to let a moment’s silence pass inside his head, he sang.
Jimmy Shade sang, and the song lasted many lives of men. The song pushed him past the limits of endurance, until he was no longer sure what he feared most—a world destroyed because of him, or his song destroyed because of the world.
A rough palm caressed his cheek.
He opened his eyes. A goat-beast—like the one in his dreams—peered down at him. Shade screamed in his mind, but heard only a thin echo in reply. He screamed out loud, but a hairy hand pressed down over his lips and teeth.
“Not here,” Buck whispered. “They’re coming for us. We have to get out of here.”
It was real. It wasn’t a dream after all.
Or was it?
“Can you walk?” the actor with two mouths asked. Then, louder, “Can he walk?”
Shade got to his feet. He stumbled, grabbed hold of Buck’s arm. Something was missing. Something important. His brain felt—empty. What did that mean?
Then he spotted what Buck carried in one hand.
An unplugger.
Inside the clear tube, the tendrils of an implant twitched, groped the glass. As he watched, the charge exploded, turning the implant into frothy organic goo.
Shade stifled a sob. His implant, his connection to the world above. To the Collective. Cut. Forever.
Kann? he thought. Are you there?
No answer.
Another explosion shook the earth. “He’s out of it!” Buck shouted. “We’re going to have to carry him!” Two actors draped Shade’s arms over their shoulders and shuffled down the second of the three tunnels, Shade’s toes scraping against the floor.
Kann? he thought. Hello? Panic rose in his chest. Are you there? Is anyone there? Hello. Please answer. Please answer. Please answer. Please!
But no one answered. No one would ever answer. The silence inside Jimmy Shade’s head was final. He was alone, locked inside the solitary confinement of his own soul, and would be for the rest of his life.
Chapter Nineteen
They stumbled through a maze of switchbacks and junctions for hours. Although Shade could no longer be sure. The clock inside his head was gone. The only thing he could be sure of was that Buck led them ever downward.
The overhead lighting ended, and they picked up a dozen head lamps from a hidden recess. Buck explained the late king had left them there for just such a contingency.
A couple of times they thought they heard bootsteps, and halted, head lamps switched off, backs pressed against the wall in the darkness. An unnecessary precaution, Shade thought. In this maze the Dream Police would never find them. How could they?
I am running, Shade thought, from everything I know and love. But he had made his choice. Now he had to live with that decision. Either go ahead and live, or stay here and die. The Collective would kill him if they found him.
And who was he kidding? They would find him.
The emptiness inside him grew. These last few days he’d learned to live without the Collective—even learned to speak out loud. But the implant had always been there, ready to reconnect to humanity on a moment’s notice.
But now…
He felt as though a limb had been cut off. An arm, or a leg. A major organ removed.
Well, a major organ had been removed, hadn’t it? The implant was a major organ, and it was dead. He was no longer whole. He was maimed, damaged beyond repair, forever doomed to hobble through life on the crutches of—what exactly? Fellowship with these—monsters?
This was a superior alternative to the Collective?
Why did he do it? It was like committing suicide, only worse. He was a walking dead man. He could never go back to what he was before. He would live what little remained of his life, hunted like a rat in a hole, and die at the hands of the nodes he had called colleagues, friends, fellow members of the Dream Police, the Collective, humanity.
The tunnel widened. Something crunched underfoot. Bones littered the ground. Human bones—but distorted, misshapen. Monstrous. The actors lowered Shade to the ground with a sigh of relief.
What is this place? he thought. Then out loud, “Where are we?”
“Catacombs.” Buck indicated the tombs that lined the passageway. All manner of knives, axes and saws hung from the walls, many stained with blood. “Beneath the City of Dreams lies the City of the Dead. Where dreams go to die.”
“And here we are, ready to join them,” cackled an actor. Zune, still in his green costume.
“We’re not going to die,” Buc
k said.
Zune snapped his fingers in the goat-man’s face. “Now look who’s dreaming.”
Shade pushed himself up against a stone sarcophagus, took a few uneasy steps on his own. He picked up a femur bone, gnarled and twisted and old. He began to laugh. The laughter grew, became hysterical. The others turned to look at him.
I gave up the Collective—for this?
“What’s the matter with him?” another actor grunted. Zama, this time. The one with the donkey head.
He, Jimmy Shade, would never again be part of humanity. Barred from head-hopping, barred from knowing others’ true feelings, always wondering what other people really thought. Never again would he flit through a million minds a second, seeing the world through their eyes, walking in their shoes. He was marooned in his own head, and the loneliness was like a cold knife in his chest.
His laughter grew maniacal, shrieks of horror echoing in the catacombs.
The world spun. He closed his eyes. But that only made things worse, and he opened them again.
The monster-dreamers stared at him. Go away, he thought. He lay down and curled up amidst the ancient bones, rocked himself back and forth.
“He’s in shock,” the goat-man said.
“Since when do dreamers go into shock?” Zune demanded. “Remember when I got down here? The king unplugged me and I started prancing around, I was so happy to be free of the Collective.”
Linda sat cross-legged on the floor, lifted Shade’s head into her lap. She caressed his feverish scalp. “The greater the dream, the more it hurts to be severed from the Collective,” she said.
“So now you belittle my dream?” the actor snapped.
“I didn’t—”
“This great dreamer of yours,” Zune said, and spat on the floor, “caused this mess in the first place!”
“What are you talking about?” Linda asked.
“Thousands of years of stalemate and the Collective comes down here? Why now?” Zune pointed at Shade. “You think it’s just coincidence?”
“The Collective sees only what it wants to see, and nothing that it doesn’t.”
“Well they sure as hell can see us now. And I wonder who woke them up?”
“He’s right,” Shade sobbed, his head in his wife’s lap. “It’s my fault. I brought them down here.”
“You see?”
“What are you talking about?” Buck asked. “How was this your fault?”
Shade buried his head in Linda’s lap, wishing he could disappear. “When I went back topside, when I left you in the mines,” he said, “I stuck my head through the grate. At Dream Police HQ. I talked to Boss. Another cop. I head-hopped, told him I had a dangerous dream, a dream that could destroy the Collective. Told him all about the City of Dreams, what I’d seen so far. Uploaded everything I’d seen and heard since coming here.”
“I told you it was his fault!”
“Oh why did I run,” Shade wailed. “Why didn’t I escape when I had the chance? Why didn’t I ChemLob myself just now? Then I’d be home with the Collective, not stuck down here with you monsters.” His shoulders heaved.
Linda stroked his forehead, but he pushed her hand away. “At every step I’ve made the wrong decision,” he whispered. “But the worst thing is—I don’t even know why!” He tore at his hair, pressed his nose between her knees. “It hurts…so…much!”
“I’ll give you hurt, you dream-killing cop!” Zune shouted, and attacked Shade with his fists.
The others pulled him off with difficulty. Shade wiped a bloody nose.
“I say we tie him up and leave him here as a peace offering for the Collective,” Zune said. “Then maybe they’ll go away and leave us alone.”
“You should,” Shade said. “I deserve it.”
Buck cleared his throat. “Shade is the only hope you have to continue dreaming. If you value your dream, I suggest you guard him with your life.”
“What are you talking about?” Zune demanded.
A gunshot tore through Buck’s shoulder and dropped him to the floor. Bootsteps clattered toward them.
“Come on!”
The actors grabbed Buck and Shade and fled. Dream Police in dream shields raced toward them. Shade thought he recognized Kann, but it was impossible to tell in the dark catacombs. Bullets zinged off the walls, sparked at their toes. A sarcophagus lid shattered.
“How did they track us? How did they find us?” Zama shouted.
“It’s Shade, it has to be!” Zune said. “I say we leave him.”
“But he’s unplugged. You saw him do it yourself!”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Buck wheezed. “Just get us out of here!”
An actor stumbled and fell. His brains spattered on Shade’s boots.
“Leave him, he’s dead!” Zune shouted. “Move, move, move!”
“Can we fool them? Hide in plain sight?” Linda asked.
“Too late,” Buck gasped. “They want to see us. Run!”
The Collective sees everything it wants to see, and nothing that it doesn’t… Shade remembered how he had fooled the Collective with the vision of him asleep in his bunk. Could he do that now…? Perhaps it was too late, but worth a shot, anyway.
Shade projected a tableau on the tunnel floor: a score of dead dreamers, bleeding out from bullet wounds, himself in the center. Bones of dead dreamers piled up around them.
They fled into the blackness, panting for breath. The bootsteps halted behind them.
“Why did they stop?” Zama panted. “What’s going on?”
“Count your blessings,” Maude said.
Shade opened his mouth, but thought the better of it. Did he do that? It worked! But why? And for how long? When they tried to pick up the bodies they’d realize their mistake.
And how did the Collective track them this far? Footprints in the dust? Or was it something he was doing…? He felt so strange. There was no way for the Collective to track an unplugged Dreamer…or was there?
They ran on for another fifteen minutes, twisting their way through that underground labyrinth at Buck’s direction, heading slightly upward, toward the surface.
“Where are we going?” Zune asked.
“Wire room,” the goat-man said.
“Of course!” Zune said. “I forgot. The other Dream Cities. Let ‘em know we’re coming. Book a stage for us!”
“Maybe,” Buck grunted. “Maybe not. Let’s wait and see what the others cities have to say.”
“’Wire room’?” Shade asked.
“Primitive technology,” Linda explained. “It’s how we communicate with the other cities.”
“For emergencies only,” Maude added.
“And now,” Buck said, “would appear to be an emergency.”
“Is it much farther?” Linda asked, struggling to catch her breath, Shade’s arm around her neck.
“We’re almost there,” Buck said. Blood streamed from the wound in his shoulder.
After five more minutes they came to a door.
Zune cackled, rubbed his hands together. “Dump Shade, grab some supplies, head for the nearest City of Dreams.” He high-fived with Zama. “We’ll be back on stage in a week’s time.”
Buck ripped a strip of fabric from his jumpsuit. “You aren’t listening to me,” he wheezed. “You need Shade. We all do.”
“But he’s the one who caused this in the first place!”
Buck draped the strip of fabric across his shoulder, struggled to bind the wound. “Because,” he said, “Shade here is the only hope you have to keep on dreaming.”
“You said that before. What are you talking about?”
Maude bent to help Buck. She tied the bandage around his shoulder. The goat-man winced, said, “How do you know there are any Cities left to go to?”
Zune’s eyes widened. “You think the Collective has invaded and destroyed every City of Dreams on the planet?”
“I don’t know,” Buck said. “That’s why we’re here. To find out
.” He struggled to sit up. “But I ask you. If the Collective invaded our city, why wouldn’t they invade all the other cities?”
“That would mean…” Zama muttered, and sat down.
“And if that is the case,” Buck said, “if the Collective has destroyed every City of Dreams on the planet…” He turned his lidded gaze to Shade. “Without you, dreams will be exterminated. Forever.”
Zune went pale. “How do you know that?” he whispered.
“The king’s dream is that one man—one dreamer—the most powerful dreamer there has ever been—will unite the worlds.” He glanced at Shade. “I believe Shade is that dreamer.”
Zune glared. “And if he’s not?”
Buck shrugged. “Then we are all dead.”
Chapter Twenty
They crowded through the Wire Room door, along a passageway, and up a flight of stairs.
“So this is the Wire Room,” Ennst breathed. He clutched his black case under one arm. Shade had almost forgotten about the man, who’d been silent until now. “I’ve always wanted to come down here.”
A desk made of ancient bones stood to one side. Next to it, a bone chair. In the center of the desk lay several pieces of carved bone with metal tips, connected by some kind of hinge. Shade could not identify the contraption.
Buck gestured to Ennst. “Will you do the honors?”
The scientist sat down. Papers rustled as he examined the setup.
“Now what?” Shade asked. “Where are these ‘wires’ you keep talking about?”
Ennst scooted the chair a few feet sideways, pointed behind the desk. Two thin strands of ancient, rusty metal led from the bits of bone on the desk through a gap in the wall.
“Now all I have to do is figure out how to use this thing,” Ennst murmured. He examined a paper at his elbow.
“What do you mean?” Shade asked. When he got no reply, he turned to Buck. “What does he mean? How can he not know how to use this?”
“Ennst is a scientist, not a Wire Room operator.”
“Well who is? Where is he, then?”
Maude touched Shade’s elbow. “All dreamers are required to attend Decision Time,” she said gently. “I fear he is no longer with us.”