Dreamquake

by Elizabeth Knox

  Mamie’s mother was determined to make the best of the ball, to put on a brave face, and to show her daughter how to do it. As she said to Mamie when she was making her final, short-tempered motherly adjustments to her hair and wrap, “There are some things that are simply expected of ladies, and that is that.” Mrs. Doran wasn’t blessed with docile children, but Mamie could usually be relied on to be calm, if only as a result of being chronically unimpressed. However, for the past week, Mamie had been stuffing herself shamefully, and for the last twenty-four hours, on and off, she’d been vomiting. Mrs. Doran was determined that her daughter wasn’t actually ill but was only giving way to nerves.

  Everything necessary had been done for the girl’s debut. She had a double strand of pearls—a gift from her father. She’d had five hair appointments till they found a style that suited her. And she had gotten her way about her deviant black-and-white gown. She had her black gloves, her crown of flowers. Mamie’s interests had been served with the best possible care, attention, and expense. And now, her mother thought, it was time for Mamie to show that she could make the best of her lot.

  What Mamie’s mother couldn’t see was that, while the ball had been still far off, Mamie had been happily scornful about it and anyone who hoped to enjoy it. She’d gone along with plans, scoffing at all the fuss. Then, one night, a week before the event, she woke up with a heart full of dread. This was it, the first occasion in her life on which it would matter that no one much liked her. She wouldn’t fit in, wouldn’t be just one more goose in the gaggle of girls. She was too serious, too ponderous. She wouldn’t be sought out. Her dance card had a number of names on it—friends of Ru, who understood what was expected of them—but no one would actually want to dance with her, or sit with her.

  Mamie knew Rose had done her best for her. She also knew Rose understood that Mamie was unattractive—and it seemed to matter to Rose, though perhaps only as a problem with possible, partial solutions. Rose had served her friend;Mamie knew that. But now Mamie was on her own, with her transformed classmates, and all the people who knew how to behave, how to enjoy themselves, how to rise to occasions.

  The Doran family was half an hour late. Cas Doran let his wife, son, and daughter sit in the car for minutes before he joined them. He left the house flanked by officials passing him telegrams and taking dictation. Then, when the family got to the People’s Palace, Mrs. Doran spotted more officials in black bowler hats. “Cas, this is impossible,” she said as she eased her wide self, and wider skirts, across the seat. “Why must the government be in crisis on the night of the Presentation Ball?”

  Her husband’s fingers closed like claws around her wrist, crushing the links of her diamond bracelet into her flesh. “The government is not in crisis, my dear. You must not say such things. And have you forgotten that you and Mamie do not get out here? That the car will take you around to the north door, and that it is only for reasons of security that I have been delivered before you?”

  “I hadn’t forgotten.” Mrs. Doran settled herself again and rubbed her wrist. She heard Mamie whisper, “Stop it. Just stop it.”

  Cas and Ru got out. Ru stood waiting for his father at the foot of the staircase. He kept adjusting his uniform tunic, pulling at its hem, twitching its collar. Mrs. Doran wanted to shout at him. The car wasn’t moving. It was in a line. And, for all his nonsense about security, Cas was standing on the steps holding court—with no one of any consequence, only his bowler-hatted underlings. She heard him say, “I have no use for another report. I want to see the man. Bring him to me.” Then he summoned his son to his side and went up the carpeted steps, pulling on his gloves.

  Up in the dressing room, the society matrons presiding over the ceremony of the presentation were marshaling the girls.

  Grace kissed her splendid daughter on the little patch of bare arm between her sleeve and the top of her glove. Then she let Rose go.

  A matron said, “You young ladies all know which row you’ll be in. Please remember that the order of your presentation will be determined by the alphabet, not by any sentiments of friendship.”

  Grace heard her daughter from among the white, glistening throng. “Yes, girls, we can put friendship in our glory boxes and get it out again after we’re married.”

  There was laughter. One of the other mothers—perhaps someone young enough to remember the society dragons herding her—applauded.

  Another mother sidled up to Grace and whispered, “This is all very strange.” As they followed their daughters down what seemed like endless hallways and staircases to the ballroom, Grace and this woman, whom she’d never met before, talked about their very different comings of age—Grace at twelve in an apron behind the counter of her father’s shop, and the other woman as a governess at seventeen.

  The debutantes and their escorts bustled into the Great Hall before the ballroom. As they passed under the forty-foot lintel carved with the names of the founders, the woman beside Grace touched her hand and pointed out the name at the center of the shallow arch— Tiebold.

  Mamie and her mother caught up with the cavalcade of debutantes at the entrance to the Great Hall. The matrons were lining up the girls—one hundred and five of them, in fifteen rows, seven abreast. The girls had practiced, and the maneuver was quickly accomplished. Mamie was in the fourth row, Rose the thirteenth. Mamie craned over her shoulder to see her friend, highly visible because of her height and radiance. Inadvertently, Mamie caught Patty’s eye. Patty was babbling to any of her neighbors who would listen that she shouldn’t be nervous, she’d been to all sorts of assemblies all summer in the South. “Fancy dress balls, cricket club balls, the Masonic Ball in Canning. Girls who know how to dance don’t have to wait to come out. And all the married ladies dance because women are still so outnumbered by the men in our town …”

  “Shhhh …,” said someone.

  “Mamie, you’re wearing black,” someone hissed.

  “Perhaps she hopes to start a fashion.”

  Simpering.

  A matron clapped her hands. “Girls!”

  “Bloodstock. Brood mares,” Mamie muttered at her feet.

  “Oh, God, I need to go again!” squeaked the girl behind her.

  From the ballroom came the sound of trumpets and drums, cymbals and violins—their processional music.

  Cas Doran left his son in the company of several young naval cadets. (Ru had a commission and was now at the naval academy in Westport.) He joined the throng around the President. There was a flurry of hand shaking among the powerful men of the government. Doran watched the master of ceremonies at the far end of the room conferring with Mamie’s grandmother Eugenia Chambers—a woman like some imposing public building that has been flounced, frilled, tucked, and draped with lace.

  Doran had the sense of some threat looming behind him and turned to see a long, black slab of a body—the Grand Patriarch in his robes, his beard combed and oiled and glistening golden-white.

  “Secretary Doran,” said Erasmus Tiebold. “Are you and your family back in Founderston for the entire season?”

  “Yes. My daughter, Mamie, is out this year.”

  “Congratulations.”

  There was a silence, then Doran, pricked by curiosity and a catlike delight in hunting, tried to continue the conversation. “Were you able to get out of the city yourself over the summer? New Year’s was very uncomfortable, I hear.”

  “Alas, no. I must always look forward to the ball season—when the churches are full.”

  “Indeed? The theaters and dream palaces too, I gather.”

  Erasmus Tiebold shot Doran a look of scarcely veiled contempt. Doran, inspired by this, went on. “And can you manage to have a quiet season by stocking yourself with sermons well ahead of time?”

  “Sermonizing is the least of my work.”

  Cas Doran nodded, a polite, understanding nod. “And yet I hope you may discover some leisure in the coming weeks. As I say, I predict a peaceful season. And, surely, if the
flock is contented, the shepherd is also?”

  The Grand Patriarch was silent for a moment, then he replied, “With too much rest I fear I should not know myself.”

  Doran had to turn away from the old man’s cool, keen scrutiny. He thought, “How much can he know? And what can he prove?” Then he recalled the telegrams and second-hand news, the wild reports he’d had all evening, and he shivered. He shivered, but his skin went hot and his muscles hardened and he was filled with a wish for combat and the bodily joy that always came with that.

  The master of ceremonies drummed his staff on the floor. The crowd drew back toward the walls of the ballroom, and the orchestra struck up a processional tune.

  Cas Doran was surprised how taken up he was by the ceremony. He had always thought the whole idea of the presentation of girls to society relied on the society being more limited than that of the Republic of Southland. Families rose and fell in the Republic. People made fortunes, and their daughters were presented—by now often only to other fortune makers. It was a transplanted tradition, and Doran took it only as seriously as his wife’s insistence that the family dress for dinner. The ball was just another silly social exercise that it was pointless to resist. Yet, as he watched the As, Bs, and Cs, Doran was gradually overcome by a sense of suspense. Something important was about to happen. Then came Lillian Danvers, and Rebecca Deal, and Penelope Dische, and, finally, Mamie Doran, who didn’t stumble or falter, passing from one state to another—schoolgirl to Society—with no visible embarrassment.

  Doran relaxed. His mind idled for a time. He refused to think about the mad, fragmentary reports that had come in from the rangers who had arrived in Founderston shortly before he left for the ball. One of these rangers—whichever his officials judged would be the most coherent—would be delivered to him here at the People’s Palace. They would find a quiet room, he’d get the stories straight, and he’d make plans. In a short while, he’d make plans.

  The entire population of the room held its breath, then sighed collectively as Rose Tiebold dropped into her curtsy and came up again, graceful and glistening, holding up her coiled golden hair like a heavy crown on her slender neck.

  Several young men thought to themselves sadly that Miss Tiebold’s dance card was bound to be full already.

  Minutes later, when the first chords of the first dance had sounded and all the debutantes had taken to the floor, some with their fathers, some with brothers, some with suitors already, one of Maze Plasir’s best clients caught him on his way to the refreshment room. The man clutched Plasir’s sleeve and stood close to whisper in his ear. “Rose Tiebold,” he whispered, his breath wet on Plasir’s earlobe.

  “No,” Plasir said. “I’m terribly sorry, but no.”

  “Surely, Maze, you can’t suddenly have developed scruples?” the client said, bunching his round face so that it looked like a deformed apple that has grown pressed between branches.

  “Get away from me!” Plasir hissed.

  In the breather after the second dance—a maxina—Rose went back to her mother and showed her card, full except for one space. “I’m about to meet twenty new people,” she said. “But if I like any of them, I won’t be able to get a second look.”

  Grace threw up her hands. “I don’t have any advice.”

  Mamie’s grandmother, the formidable Mrs. Chambers, leaned across Grace and told Rose that tomorrow the calling cards would come in. “And a parade of young men’s mothers. Next Wednesday there is the President’s Ball, then after that Founders Day Ball, the Naval Ball, the Grand Social, and the Carnival Social—and a dozen other private functions. Anyone you like you are bound to see more than enough in the coming weeks.”

  “That’s why you have five pairs of gloves, Rose. And another gown coming,” Grace said.

  “The girl has only two gowns?” exclaimed Mrs. Chambers.

  “Oh, dear,” said Grace, and laughed. “I’m no good at this.”

  Rose’s next partner came to claim her. She gathered up the hem of her dress; he took her hand and led her onto the floor and into a crisscrossing, lively contra dance. It was fun, and all Rose’s hours of practice came back to her. No one on the floor seemed lost or clumsy. The girls were all weaving their way deftly backward past their partners, their hair bouncing, their heads turned back over their shoulders. Rose saw Mamie, wearing a look of determination and concentration but doing fine. She saw Laura, who was dancing not with Sandy but with a tall, fair-haired army lieutenant. Laura was easy to spot, in her vivid dress, flying, light on her feet.

  The next dance was a waltz. And Laura danced with Sandy, scooped against him so that he seemed to support half her slight weight. Rose’s partner was a proficient dancer, but so shy and formal that Rose had a hard time not laughing her way through the whole thing. He talked about the weather, and the heat of the room. She wished he hadn’t mentioned the heat. Her close-fitting, pearl-encrusted gown was proving hot and heavy. She was going to be cooking before the night was through.

  One of the ushers delivered a note to Cas Doran and pointed out the men, bowler hats in hand and standing partly concealed by pillars in the entranceway. Doran made his way around the edge of the dance floor.

  His daughter galloped past, part of a group of couples skipping counterclockwise within the clockwise movement of a greater circle of dancers. Mamie looked at him as though he was guilty of some terrible treachery to her. He slowed down and stared after her as she was swept away. He was annoyed—his wife had promised and assured him that, ultimately, Mamie would enjoy this ball. It didn’t appear to him as though she was enjoying herself.

  The Regulatory Body officials had delivered one of the rangers who were the source of the reports that, all evening, had been aggravating the Secretary of the Interior. They had secured a quiet room in the Palace. Their chief closed that room’s door, and they all gathered around the tired man.

  “I want you to explain these reports,” Doran said, and produced two of the telegrams. “I know you’ve been told to be careful in your communications. But in this instance you’ve been so careful that you’ve left us in the dark.”

  He placed the telegrams in front of the ranger. The top one read: AGENT SEEN FILMING THE DEPOT STOP GAVE CHASE BUT LOST INLAND STOP.

  “How is it possible that your people pursued this cameraman but didn’t manage to catch him?” Doran said. “You were, after all, selected for your strength and stamina as well as your discretion.”

  Every ranger had once hoped to be a dreamhunter. All had enjoyed moments of elation at their Tries. They had crossed the border! Each one of them had imagined being rich and famous, but all had found themselves unable to catch dreams. There were no famous rangers, and all were wageworkers for the Dream Regulatory Body. Some did a little better in private deals they made with various dreamhunters, but none were rich. Rangers did tend to suffer from a sense of thwarted ambition, so it had been no trouble for Secretary Doran to recruit men eager to take on extra risks—and vows of secrecy.

  “The man was faster than we were, even carrying his camera,” the ranger said. Then he straightened in his chair. “I want to give a report, Mr. Secretary, not offer excuses.” He began: “At five-thirty p.m. on February the twenty-eighth, rangers McIndoe and Butler first spotted a man standing around one hundred and fifty yards from the outbuildings of the Depot and cranking the handle of a movie camera. As we watched, he came closer. Rangers McIndoe, Butler, Carter, Hollander, and myself—”

  Cas Doran looked at one of his officials, who supplied the ranger’s name, “McIntyre.”

  “We approached him,” said McIntyre, then paused and passed his hand across his face, pressing hard, as though to wipe something off. “Secretary Doran,” the man said, “the cameraman seemed to be wearing some kind of suit.”

  “A uniform?”

  “No.” The ranger seemed reluctant to say what he’d seen.

  “Please go on,” Doran said.

  “He was wearing an all-over, skinti
ght, glistening gray suit of some kind.”

  “Knitted,” one of the officials added; he had obviously heard the story earlier.

  “I didn’t say knitted,” the ranger snapped.

  Doran knew that the navy was trying to develop garments to keep bodies warm in cold water, and he supposed it was possible that someone enterprising might have invented a protective, water-conserving suit to be worn deep Inland.

  “Not knitted, not rubber, not any of those things you’ve speculated about,” the ranger said, glaring at the Body officials. “I want to say that it—” He broke off and scoured his face with his hand again. Then he finished, very softly, “—that it wasn’t even a suit.”

  “Wait,” said Doran, though no one had spoken. He walked around the room a few times.

  After the riot at the Rainbow Opera, several members of the fire watch had claimed that a “glistening, gray, monstrous man” had shorted out the power board and smashed all the doors on the private balconies. Cas Doran paced and thought. He thought that Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles was only a dog daubed with luminescent paint and howling with pain. He didn’t believe in monsters, he traded in them, at least in monstrous dreams. He knew that impressionable people could be made to believe things that weren’t true, could be tapped for fear of the unknown—as if dread was the groundwater of humanity and all any intelligent master of men had to do was sink a well.

  Doran rounded on the ranger. “You’ve been manipulated. You’re a superstitious lot—you rangers and dreamhunters. You make myths faster than you make money.”

  “All right,” said the ranger, then added, “sir.”

  “Perhaps you couldn’t catch him because you were afraid of him,” Doran said, insinuating.

  “We ran after him. He slung the camera over his shoulder and took off—like a horse.”