The Nex

by Tim Pratt

  “It’s amazing,” the man was saying. “They get more real all the time. I know you think it’s stupid, but lucid dreaming is amazing, I’m so glad I took that seminar. It’s like living a whole other life while I’m asleep!”

  “What did you do this time?” She leaned back and closed her eyes.

  The man hesitated. “I was in a sort of fish-market. There were fish-people, mermaids, selkies, things like that, and ordinary people, too, all buying and selling things. There was a lake, or an inland sea, and we were all on a wooden platform floating on the water...”

  “You get seasick just stepping over a puddle,” she said.

  He looked at her, mouth a tense line, eyes narrowed, and I think if she had seen his expression she would have leapt from the bed in fear for her life. Unless long association with this man had dulled her awareness to the dark currents in him I saw so clearly.

  “My dream body doesn’t get sick,” he said. “It’s part of my positive visualization technique. My dream body is impervious to harm.”

  “And I bet you look like a movie star, too.”

  Another hesitation, this one accompanied by a troubled frown. “Something like that.”

  I wondered what his dream self really looked like – his father? An old enemy? A figure from a childhood nightmare that he could not escape, but was eventually able to embody?

  He continued. “The only problem is, I can’t seem to control where I go. The teacher at the seminar said that was the best part, being able to go to the mountains or the beach or outer space as easily as thinking it. But I just find myself in this city full of strange people and creatures, and...”

  “Do you fuck any of those strange people?” she asked.

  “No. It’s not like that.”

  “What good’s having control of your dreams if you can’t wish yourself into a sex dream? Seems like that would be the best part.”

  “I want to go back to sleep,” he said. “I want to try again.”

  “You don’t have to ask my permission. I was sleeping fine until you sat up and started yelling. Doesn’t sound like lucid dreaming is doing you much good – you’re still having nightmares.”

  “The nightmares are different now,” he said. “I’m in control.” But she just turned over and pulled the sheet up to her neck.

  “He’s the fat man,” Howlaa said, speaking silently into me, able to share thoughts as easily as we shared senses. “He goes to the Ax in his dreams, and he kills us for pleasure. That’s why the questing beast couldn’t hold the killer, why he melted away, because he has no substance beyond the borders of the Ax.”

  “Madness,” I said, though Howlaa’s intuitive leaps had proven right more often than my resultant skepticism.

  “No, I think I’ve figured it. The Regent has consulted with many oneiromancers, lucid dreamers, and archetype-hunters over the years – I know, because I was sent to kidnap and press-gang many of them into civil service. I never knew why he wanted them before. I think that, with the Regent’s help, the royal orphans have constructed a machine to steal dreams. A dream engine, that grabs mental figments and makes them real. But they locked on to this mad man’s dream, and now his dream-self will keep coming, and killing, until this world spirals too far from the Ax for the engine to reach, which could take years.”

  “A dream engine,” I repeated. “The activity of such a machine might explain the plague of nightmares in the city center.”

  “I doubt the Regent would worry overmuch about properly shielding any strange radiations,” Howlaa said. “This is a new low for him. It’s not enough that he grows rich through the orphan’s thefts – now he wants to pillage our dreams, too.”

  The man lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Despite his words, he did not seem eager to sleep again. If Howlaa was right, the man had just been chased out of his fantasy of infinite strength by the monstrous questing-beast, which would be enough to give any dreamer pause.

  “If you’re right, we have to kill him,” I said.

  “Or not,” Howlaa said.

  Howlaa severed our connection, swirling my motes, and so it took me a moment to realize zie was transforming into the questing beast again – and I knew why. To jump away from this world, to another plane, adjacent to this one but not necessarily adjacent to the Ax. A few dimensional leaps, a little time, and Howlaa would be far beyond the Ax’s influence, beyond the grasp of even the greatest snatch-engines.

  But I still had a chance, this brief moment between transformations, to strike, and I did. I performed the one act that Howlaa could not resist, the power I was given permission to use only in circumstances as extreme as these.

  I took possession of Howlaa’s body.

  ***

  Howlaa fought, and I batted zir efforts aside, then simply reveled in having a body, especially a body as sensitive as the questing beast’s, seeing into higher dimensions, seeing colors that only exist between worlds. I wanted to fly through suns, roll across jagged stones, immerse myself in lava, feel feel feel this forever.

  Howlaa was laughing at me, a tinny internal sound. “Shushit,” I said, not speaking aloud. I didn’t even know if this body had vocal cords. “You didn’t escape. You failed. We’re going to kill this man, and then return to the Ax.”

  “Go on then,” Howlaa said. “Best of luck.”

  I attempted to take a step forward, and everything blurred. My head rang with odd chimes, and bizarre scents assailed me. I had never been in a body so sensitive to smell – each scent was like a line attached to me, tugging me in one direction or another. I paused, and the chaos of sensory input lessened. I took another step toward the dream-killer’s window, and this time a whole new set of sensations struck me, making me fall to the ground.

  “This form will not do,” I said.

  “Why not? Because you have no finesse, Wisp? Because you can control gross motor functions, but the intricacies are lost to you? In the questing beast’s form, even the most trivial movement is intricate. Then why not take another form, a simpler one?”

  I felt rage – glandular rage, pumping up from somewhere in this body, a biological response to a mental state. I never get used to that, the feedback loop of mind and body that the corporeal undergo constantly, and I tried to dismiss its effects. I couldn’t shift into another form. That was far too intricate a task for my understanding of how to control a body. If Howlaa had been in a human form, I could have broken into the man’s house, stabbed him with a knife, and walked out again – such simple physical manipulation was within my powers. But as the questing beast...

  “We have reached an impasse,” I said.

  “And what do you propose?”

  “Kill this man,” I said. “And I will not report your attempt to escape.”

  Howlaa laughed. “Oh, please, don’t report me. What will they do? Sentence me to another lifetime of servitude?”

  “Just kill him! That’s why we came.”

  “I came to kill an invulnerable fat man with the golden weapons, Wisp, not a mentally disturbed human in his bed.”

  “They are the same!”

  “They are not the same. This man is mad, but he is not the killer – he simply dreams of killing.”

  “But... his dreams are evil...”

  “You would hold us responsible for our dreams now? If so, I am a regicide a thousand times over, for in my dreams, I rip the Regent and his orphans to wet bits every night. The Regent is the guilty party in this – he has made a machine that steals dreams, and he brought the killer to our city.”

  “What do you recommend?”

  “Fixing this problem at the source. Which is what I was trying to do when you so rudely possessed me.”

  “You were trying to escape.” I said.

  “No, Wisp, I was trying to return to Nexington-on-Axis. Sorry I didn’t consult you – my understanding was that you’re an observer, here to lend me support.”

  “I am here to make sure you serve your duty,” I repl
ied, wondering if zie was telling the truth.

  “I will. But my duty is not to the Regent. I serve the welfare of Nexington-on-Axis. Come, Wisp, and I’ll show you I do have a sense of responsibility. Such a strong one, in fact, that I won’t kill an innocent madman for the Regent’s crimes.”

  I gave up control of Howlaa’s body, and with more shifting, we returned to the Ax.

  ***

  We appeared in the Regent’s private chambers, which should have been impossible, as there were safeguards against teleportation there. The Regent sat in a wingback chair, holding a ledger in his lap, and he raised his eyebrows when we appeared.

  Howlaa shifted to female human form, only swaying a bit on zir feet in the aftermath of being the beast. “Huh,” zie said. “I wondered if that would work. It’s said nothing can stop a questing beast from coming and going as it pleases.”

  “Mmm,” the Regent said. “I trust you solved our problem, and disposed of the fat man? I’ll see you get something extra in your next pay allotment. Now, go away. I’m busy.” He looked back down at his ledger.

  Howlaa cleared zir throat. “Regent. I require your assistance in the fulfillment of my duties.”

  The Regent looked up. “You didn’t kill the fat man?”

  “My investigation is ongoing. I need to see the new snatch-engine, the one that steals dreams, and I may have some questions regarding its operation.”

  The Regent set his ledger aside and stared at Howlaa for a long moment. “Well,” he said. “You are not famed for your powers of deduction, Howlaa Moor, but for your powers of destruction. I had not expected you to make inquiries, and I did not ask you to. You are dismissed from this case. I will assign someone else to deal with the fat man.”

  “Respectfully, sir, you may not interfere with any legitimate inquiries I care to make in an ongoing investigation. My contract prohibits such interference. Again, please have me escorted to the new snatch-engine, and provide someone knowledgeable to answer any questions I might have. Or do you believe this line of inquiry is without cause? If so, I would be happy to bring my evidence before the magisters.” Howlaa smiled.

  I was in awe at zir audacity. To confront the Regent this way! And zie had no evidence, just intuition and inference. If the Regent called the bluff... But no. He didn’t want any evidence Howlaa might possess brought before the magisters and, indirectly, the citizens of the Ax.

  “I am the Regent, Moor. You take orders from me.”

  “Indeed. But my contract states that I serve the city, and not the ruler. You may not lawfully inhibit me. Break my contract, if you like, and I’ll not trouble you again. Otherwise, you are obliged to cooperate.”

  “I could have you executed for treason.”

  Howlaa bowed. “You are welcome to try, sir.” Skinshifters could be executed, but it was difficult, since a long-lived member of the species would have forms resistant to most obvious methods of execution. “But if you choose not to execute me or break my contract, then I must ask, for the third time, that you take me to the dream engine and provide –”

  “Yes,” the Regent snapped. “Fine.”

  I was astonished. Howlaa’s bluff had succeeded. Zie was too valuable for the Regent to dismiss from duty or kill, and his own laws prevented any other action.

  The Regent couldn’t simply disregard these laws, for they were the source of his power. Without his laws, there would be no city of Nexington-on-Axis, just a giant junkheap full of things snatched at random by the orphans, indiscriminate slaves to their magpie impulses. “But I am about to show you a state secret.”

  “That’s fine,” Howlaa said. “My contract gives me any necessary clearances to fulfill my duties –”

  “I know what your contract says, Moor. I wrote it myself, so you would be forced to serve the city in perpetuity, even in the event of my death. Now shut up about it. I’m taking you where you want to go. If you speak a word about this device to anyone, you will be executed for treason. We have methods designed for your kind. There’s a special chamber in one of the basements for disposing of skinshifters.”

  “I serve the state,” Howlaa said. “I will not betray it.”

  I wondered what kind of execution chamber the Regent had that could hold a questing beast, since the safeguards on his private chambers had been insufficient to keep the beast out. I didn’t think the Regent realized what kind of power he was giving Howlaa by letting zim drink the questing beast’s blood.

  We set off down the shifting opalescent corridors of the palace, and the walls groaned around us as they moved.

  “You think the killer is a dream-being, snatched here by the experimental engine,” the Regent said as we walked.

  “I’ll submit my report when my investigation is complete,” Howlaa said. “Along with my recommendations for how to rectify the problem.”

  The Regent scowled, but kept walking. Finally we reached a door of black iron. The stone around it was discolored and cracked – the substance of the palace apparently had an allergy to iron, but the heavy metal had certain shielding properties that made its use necessary on occasion. The Regent knocked, a complex rhythm, his unbreakable adamant signet ring clanging against the metal with each rap.

  The door swung open silently, and the Regent ushered us into the dimly-lit place beyond.

  “This is the dream engine,” the Regent said. “Not what you expected, I wager.”

  “No,” Howlaa murmured. “It’s not.”

  Unlike the snatch-engines, there were no gears here, no oiled pistons, no sparking ladders of electricity, no bell-shaped domes of glass, no miles of copper pipes for coolant. There was only a throbbing organic mass in a web of wires, a red-and-green slick thing with no visible eyes or limbs, though it did have vestigial wings, prismatic like a dragonfly’s, which drooped to the floor. A royal orphan, pinned in a web of wires.

  Howlaa crossed zir arms. “So it’s psychic, then.”

  The Regent smiled. “In a way. It sees dreams. More importantly, it covets dreams. And what the royal orphans covet, they get. Much of the process of governing Nexington-on-Axis is making sure the orphans want things the city needs. They don’t care what happens to the things they snatch. They simply live for the process of snatching. This one is no different, except for the sorts of thing it snatches.”

  “You haven’t been successful making this one want things the city needs, since it pulled a madman’s murderous dream to this world.”

  “You’re certain of that?” the Regent said.

  Howlaa just nodded, and the Regent sighed. “I’ll have to spend some time tuning the process. It’s still experimental. I trust you found and killed the dreamer, to prevent another incident?”

  “I did not,” Howlaa said. “If I had known for certain about the existence of this dream engine, I would have tried, but I only had suspicions. When I grabbed the fat man, I was carried to another world, surrounded by houses filled with sleeping humans, with no sign of the fat man anywhere. That’s when I began to suspect that I’d grabbed a dream-figment – I remembered your studies with various experts on dreaming, Platonic ideals, the collective unconscious, things of that nature.”

  “You have quite a memory,” the Regent said.

  “I drank the blood of an elephant once,” Howlaa said, and I almost laughed. “Since I wasn’t sure the killer was a dream-thing, I came back here to inquire further.”

  “We should talk in the hall,” the Regent said abruptly. “Vibrations disturb the engine.” Indeed, the vestigial wings were flickering, weakly, and we left the room. Once in the hall, the Regent said “How do you intend to proceed?”

  “When the killer appears again, I’ll grab him, and when he sweeps me back to the human world with him again... well, I think it’s safe to assume that the dangerous dreamer will be somewhere in the general vicinity of the place where I land. I’ll simply kill everyone within a mile or so. It will take time, but I have some forms that are suited to the task.”

 
; I was stunned. I knew Howlaa was lying. We knew very well who the dreamer was, and Howlaa had shown no inclination to kill him. So what was zie planning?

  “Very good,” the Regent said. “ But if you mention a word about the contents of that room, I’ll have you flayed into your component atoms. Understood?”

  “The authorities appreciate your cooperation,” Howlaa said. The Regent sniffed and walked away.

  “Come, Wisp. Back to our eternal vigilance.”

  “Back to the bar, you mean.”

  “Just so.” Howlaa grimaced, touching zir stomach. “Shit. I’ve got a pain in my gut.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Probably something I ate in another form, that doesn’t agree with this one. I’ll be all right.” Howlaa shivered, stretched, and became the questing beast. We traveled.

  * * *

  I tried to get some sense out of Howlaa at the bar, before zie drank too many red bulldozers, primal screams, and gravity wells to maintain a coherent conversation. I slipped a tendril into zir mind and said “What is your plan?”

  “Assume what I told the Regent is true,” Howlaa said, smiling at the human bartender, who looked appreciatively at Howlaa’s human breasts as she mixed drinks. “If things work out, it won’t matter, but if things go badly, you’ll need all the plausible deniability you can get. No reason for you to go down with me if I fail. This way you can honestly claim ignorance of my plans.”

  “You want to protect me from getting in trouble with the Regent?” I said, almost touched.

  Zie laughed aloud and gulped a fizzing reddish concoction. “No, Wisp. But on the off chance that they imprison me instead of putting me to death, I don’t want to be stuck in a cell with you forever.”

  After that, zie wouldn’t talk to me at all, but had fun as only Howlaa on the eve of potential death can.