Dreamquake

by Elizabeth Knox

  “Quite so! And therefore Long John Silver was a three-legged creature with wings. Now—let us say that the grass and trees in the Place are land too, shall we? We don’t normally exclude grass and trees from any purchase of a property, do we?”

  “All right. Then what the Place contains is dreams.”

  “And what are dreams?”

  “They are like thoughts. An activity of our sleeping brains.”

  “Dreams are thoughts,” Dr. King said, and made a coaxing motion at Chorley. “Thoughts suggest consciousness. So what do we have, so far, as a classification for the Place?”

  “Land—with consciousness,” said Chorley.

  “Yes,” said Dr. King, then, “Do you mind?” as he took the very last piece. It was the first time he’d asked. “The medieval scholars who were Aristotle’s heirs had the whole of creation in ranks, with ideal examples at the top of each rank. So, in the category of animals there were noble animals, like lions, ‘the king of the beasts,’ man above that, and above man, angels. Even gems were ranked, not according to rarity but by all sorts of other ideas, mostly religious.” King paused and then glanced guiltily at Chorley’s empty plate.

  Chorley had to struggle not to laugh.

  King brightened again, and said, “So, in those old categories, the animal world rises into the spiritual through man. But the mineral world does not rise into the spiritual. So what is the Place? It’s invisible to most people, like a spirit. It’s land; so mineral. And it has dreams; so it’s conscious.”

  “Conscious, and mineral,” Chorley said. “Which leaves us none the wiser.” Then, because he felt he owed it to Dr. King, Chorley told him what he knew so far. About the telegrams, and how some of the dreams seemed set in a time further on than now. He talked about the convicts in Laura’s first dream, and the ones Tziga would edit from the end of Convalescent One. The newspapers hadn’t printed Lazarus’s letters—but Chorley knew what at least one letter had said, the one Cas Doran had shown Grace when he questioned her. The newspapers only claimed that a dreamhunter “assailant” calling himself Lazarus had sunk the audience at the Rainbow Opera in a nightmare as a protest against the use of convict labor. This claim had started all sorts of public discussions about, for instance, how miners’ wages were low because some mines were worked by convicts. But no one was talking about the Department of Corrections’ use of nightmares in prisons. Chorley told King about the letter Grace had seen in the hope of getting him talking to others. The man was a talker, and a lecture hall in the University may not have been as good as a newspaper at getting word out, but it was at least as good as the pulpits of Southland’s churches.

  When Chorley had finished, Dr. King shook his hand, and said, “You will let me know how you get on with your investigation, won’t you?”

  “I will.”

  Dr. King signaled the waiter, paid the bill, then rearranged his scarf, handkerchief, crumpled papers, wallet, and glasses case in the distorted pockets of his white linen summer suit. He shook Chorley’s hand again, started away from the table, swerved, came back, asked Chorley if he was intending “to write it all up in a book,” insisted that Chorley must, patted his pockets again, shook Chorley’s hand once more, and wandered out of the café—disappearing only a few minutes before his student returned, panting, with the essay he was so proud of.

  Chorley left University Square and turned onto the riverbank, heading toward home. It was a sunny day, and the cafés on the embankment were full. He found himself enchanted by these sultry, underpopulated squares. It was years since he’d spent any time in Founderston in summer. When he was young, his parents and sister, Verity, would always go to a hotel at Sisters Beach, and he and his friends would have the town house to themselves. They’d stay up all night and sleep all day and roam around looking for adventure.

  Chorley was ambling along in a mild fever of nostalgia when he spotted his niece and Sandy Mason at a table outside a café. They had pulled their chairs together. Laura was leaning on Sandy.

  Chorley veered off his path and stood over them.

  Mason straightened and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Tiebold. Please join us.” He jumped up to get a chair from an adjacent table and placed it for Chorley. “Will you have something?” He reached for his wallet.

  Chorley placed his palm on Sandy’s breast pocket and patted him firmly and discouragingly. He wasn’t about to let this boy buy him anything.

  “We’re flush, Uncle Chorley,” Laura said.

  “It’s going well, then?” Chorley caught the eye of the waiter. He said to his niece and her friend, “What will you have?”

  Sandy went red.

  Laura, oblivious, asked for a scone and another pot of tea, then excused herself and dashed off to the bathroom.

  Sandy waited for the waiter to go away and said, “Mr. Tiebold, please don’t act as if you’re paying for me to take care of Laura.”

  Chorley gave the boy a look of wounded innocence. “I don’t mean to make you feel that,” he said.

  “My money is as good as yours,” Sandy said. “You can enjoy my hospitality, can’t you?”

  Chorley raised an eyebrow.

  “Laura’s father approves of me. Who are you to disapprove?” Sandy seemed furious.

  “Laura’s father is brain-damaged,” Chorley said.

  When Laura returned to the table, she couldn’t fail to notice that Sandy and her uncle were glaring at each other. “What’s the matter?”

  “Apparently my money isn’t good enough for your uncle,” Sandy said.

  “Uncle Chorley always pays for everything,” Laura said. She sat down and nestled up to Sandy again. “You’ll just have to get used to it.”

  “I think it’s very good for old dogs to learn new tricks,” Sandy said.

  Laura chuckled. “He’s calling you an old dog,” she said to her uncle.

  “Woof,” said Chorley.

  The waiter brought tea and Laura’s scone. “I’m still so hungry,” she said. “My dressmaker keeps having to let out the seams of my ball gown—which is good, because it’s quite close-fitting in places, and before I started filling out again there wasn’t much difference between me and the cloth still on its bolt.”

  “We’re going In again in three days to get The Gate,” Sandy said. “Laura’s ready.” He put his arm around her waist.

  “We have to go,” Laura said. “It’s not working out—performing together. We’re just too big. I’ve been doing midnight at Pike Street, and Sandy’s doing midday at St. Thomas’s. We’re booked at both places together and go along together, then I stay awake all day in my room next to his. They always supply separate rooms, did you know that?”

  “No. And, good,” Chorley said.

  “Sandy has to stay awake all night, which is hard on him. The only problem I have is making sure I hang on to consciousness when Sandy goes down. He’s a bit of a Soporif now.”

  Sandy said, “Buried Alive did that to me. Once I’d gotten over the patch where I couldn’t catch dreams at all.”

  “That was emotional,” Laura said, and swayed against him, bump, bump, bump, till she got a faint, conceding smile. Then she looked back at her uncle. “Anyway, the doctors at Pike Street, where I sleep, think they have two real talents, and a great bargain. St. Thomas’s is happy enough to have two for the price of one, but one of the doctors said to Sandy, sadly, that while our Convalescent One is Hame quality—soothing and significant—even with Sandy helping me I seem to be getting only the sort of range that can be expected from any reasonably talented young dreamhunter.”

  Sandy said, “We can’t go on with our ruse. Sooner or later the different hospitals will compare notes.”

  Laura said, “Sandy’s very pleased that we’ve been able to work these day and night bookings, because we’re earning twice what we would otherwise.”

  Chorley smirked at Sandy. “That must have been very gratifying for you,” he said, and watched the young man suppressing objections.
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  “So, it’s time for us to go and get The Gate,” Laura said.

  Chorley looked across the Sva at the dome of the Temple, perfect in actuality, wrinkled in its reflection on the river. He thought about The Gate, a dream Tziga had had twelve years before and claimed not to be able to find again, a dream other dreamhunters had looked for in vain.

  Tziga had caught The Gate when his wife, Chorley’s sister, Verity, was dying. Tziga had carried the dream back for her, only to find she had died while he was away, and without his, or its, help. Tziga had fought sleep for two days after the funeral. He’d gone down fighting, as thought he’d meant to die with the dream and take it to Verity. Tziga was a religious man and may well have been able to imagine meeting his wife in the afterlife. But he’d succumbed to exhaustion—and to his brother-in-law’s tender determination to comfort him. He’d slept and dreamed, and a good portion of his neighbors had shared his dream.

  Chorley remembered the dream as one of the most wonderful experiences of his life. He understood why Tziga had kept it hidden all these years. No matter how anyone else who shared it experienced The Gate, to the bereaved Tziga the dream might have seemed only a beautiful lie, not an answered prayer.

  Looking back on his memory of The Gate, with much more life behind him, Chorley could see now that the dream wasn’t a lie—or not exactly. It didn’t matter whether you believed in an afterlife (and Chorley didn’t), or even whether the dream believed in one, because The Gate wasn’t a true vision. For a start it was different from every other dream. All the Place’s other dreams were based on natural laws, and possible facts. No one flew in a dream, or breathed underwater, or met a minotaur. The Gate, however, was mystical, transcendent, and unreal. It promised an afterlife.

  “But it isn’t either true or false,” Chorley thought. “Because what it is, is a wish. And wishes aren’t either true or false.”

  “I’m looking forward to this dream,” Laura said. “I remember the feelings it gave me when I had it when I was little. It’ll help Da.” She rested her head on Sandy Mason’s broad shoulder. “Besides, I want to fall asleep with Sandy. It’s perverse to keep resisting it.”

  Chorley knew she meant that it was hard to keep herself awake and reading a book while Sandy dreamed Convalescent One, but, when he glanced at Sandy, Chorley could see the young man feeling the effects of her unintended double meaning. Sandy flushed, clenched his jaw, and crossed his legs. Laura had picked up his hand and was playing with the soft flesh between his thumb and finger—childish and intimate. Sandy was having trouble with this, and Chorley saw, at last, that the young man was in love with Laura, not just drawn and possessive. Sandy was trying to control his desire, and having difficulty doing so. Chorley could see that the young man too thought Laura wasn’t ready for things to go any further between them. She was in danger of getting in too deep too young, not because Sandy was older and infatuated with her but because of her own behavior. Something—Chorley could not imagine what—seemed to have stripped away all the normal caution she should have about just touching another person, any other person. The attention she was lavishing on Sandy’s hand was playful but intense. She stroked and pressed his hand as if in search of a secret mechanism that would make it open up, or turn into something other than a hand.

  Chorley said, “If you don’t mind, Sandy, I’d like a word in private with my niece.”

  Sandy retrieved his hand, nodded curtly, and got up. “I’ll be in that bookshop on the corner,” he said, and took off.

  Laura dropped her hands into her lap and assumed a blank, wooden look.

  Chorley cleared his throat. “Judging by your expression, I think perhaps you know what I’m about to say. You must be careful with that boy.”

  “I’ll try not to lose him, Uncle Chorley, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You know that isn’t what I mean. He must be several years your senior.”

  “Three years. Which is nothing,” Laura said. She sounded dry—not exactly impatient.

  “At your age, that’s a big difference.”

  Laura laughed.

  “What?”

  “I see difference differently,” she said. Then she sighed, a sigh like a yawn, as if she was sleepy. “Sandy suits me.”

  It seemed a strange, cold thing for a girl to say, and Chorley shivered to hear it.

  “I like to be with him,” she added. “I’m safe with him.”

  “Yes, I think you probably are. And he does seem to sincerely care for you. But even if no one is mistaken in their feelings, feelings get hurt. And there are physical dangers of intimacy.”

  “Uncle Chorley, you’re talking to someone who nearly died trying to see what was at the end of a rail line. Intimacy—as you put it—is safer than half of the things I’ve had to do.”

  “Did you nearly die?” Chorley knew she’d been sick—“depleted” Tziga had said—but Tziga had understated his own injuries too.

  “We’ll have some film soon of the Depot,” Laura said.

  “What?”

  “Da and I arranged for someone to go In at The Pinnacles with one of your movie cameras, to film those buildings and people. We need documentary evidence.”

  Chorley supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that Laura and Tziga were communicating independently with the Grand Patriarch, and calling on his help. Of course the Grand Patriarch must have had dreamhunters who would act as his agents.

  “We’ll show the film to the Commission of Inquiry,” Laura said. “That’s probably the quickest way to get questions asked, and to cut Cas Doran off at the knees.”

  Chorley reached across the table and waited for her to take his hand. She did—hers dry and callused, a smaller version of his wife’s and Tziga’s. “Dreamhunter,” Chorley said, wonderingly, and squeezed her hand. “You changed the subject,” he said. “Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

  “Yes, I did. But, back on that subject, Aunt Grace was only Sandy’s age when you met her.”

  “Your Aunt Grace was a powerful woman.”

  “Uncle Chorley, I’m a powerful woman,” Laura said.

  “Or girl,” Chorley said.

  “Don’t worry. Sandy is loyal and kind, and I think maybe I do love him.”

  Chorley sighed; he got up and helped her up too. He opened his wallet and dropped bills onto the table. “All right then, honey.” He took her arm. “I’ll deliver you to your destiny.”

  They set off toward the bookshop on the corner. As they went, Laura said quietly and fervently, “Oh—I wish he was.”

  3

  AURA WAS LATE FOR HER FINAL BALL GOWN FITTING. GRACE AND ROSE HAD BEEN THERE FOR HALF AN HOUR. Rose had her dress on and was standing between two angled mirrors. Sunlight came in the high fitting-room windows, and there were electric lights on the walls, but Rose managed to look like candlelight and moonlight combined, like the central panel of some devotional altarpiece, haloed with radiance.

  She had wanted a high-necked dress, and the design she’d chosen had a Chinese-style collar that circled her strong throat. The bodice was fitted, boned and tapered in at the waist, then followed the swelling curves of her hips. The fabric was heavy bone-white silk. The sleeves and bodice were sewn with a filigree of seed pearls. The dress had a train that Rose would have to fasten to one arm in order to dance. She was practicing this when her cousin came in.

  “You’ll do very nicely,” Grace was saying. “And we must put your hair up.”

  Rose arched her back and neck and threw off light.

  Grace grinned at Laura. “I think there will be displays of dumb admiration and the falling over of feet.”

  “It’s not too tight?” Rose said.

  “No,” said everyone.

  The dressmaker nodded to one of the seamstresses. “Please go and get Miss Hame’s dress.”

  Laura had toyed with pale blues and greens, and Rose had nearly persuaded her to wear pink. But her aunt had insisted that, since Laura wasn’t a debutante and didn’t
have to wear white, she should realize, for the purposes of fashion, she wasn’t a young girl and could choose a strong color, one that would set off her tan and her dark hair. Laura’s dress was also silk, of a vibrant coral red. It was sleeveless, with a low, square neck, fitted at the bust and flaring under it. It was a simple dress of a rich fabric, and Laura was going to wear it with long black gloves and her mother’s jet choker.

  Laura put her dress on and shared the mirror with Rose while her hem was pinned. They stood looking solemnly at each other.

  “Do debutantes wear white so that men can imagine the brides they’ll be?” Rose asked her mother.

  “I’m not sure,” Grace said. “I didn’t have a coming out.”

  “It’s for you to imagine the bride you’ll be,” said the dressmaker.

  “I don’t look like a dreamhunter,” Laura said. She wished that Nown could see her in her ball gown—which was silly, since he couldn’t see color anyway.

  Her tall cousin walked out of the mirror’s frame. “Can I take this off now?”

  “Certainly. And we should look at your friend’s dress. She’s due in for a fitting tomorrow at three. Her mother has already given the dress provisional approval.” The dressmaker looked worried.

  Rose had finally taken it on herself to design Mamie’s gown, after they had held every variation on white—icy, bone, cream, pearly peach, salmon, beige, fawn—up to Mamie’s face, and every shade, without fail, had made Mamie’s mauve, mottled skin look corpselike. Grace and Rose had found a pattern Mamie liked, a dress that would let her bare shoulders and the tops of her breasts rise out of it. A dress with a belted waist and a skirt that had two generous pleats at the back and two at the front. Rose’s innovation was to make the shawl neck and sleeves of black silk—to add a black belt, and to make the recessed pleats black also. The silks were the same weight, the white brocaded, the black with a sheen rather than a gloss. The black made Mamie’s skin look better—a lilac-tinted pallor rather than fishy.

  When the dress was produced, Rose, Laura, Grace, and all the seamstresses gave it their full attention.