The Dream Widow

by Stephen Colegrove

  The boy gave Wilson a bowl of thick white soup and a plastic spoon. Inside the bowl floated chunks of meat, red vegetables, and dark green leaves. It tasted bland but Wilson finished all of it.

  “This is either a dream or a part of the program,” he said. “Why should I have to eat?”

  Both Reed and the boy stared at Wilson, spoons halfway to their mouths. They glanced at each other then continued eating. Wilson decided to keep quiet.

  As night fell the boy left momentarily––Wilson guessed to check on the sheep and goats. The strange version of Reed mumbled a few phrases at Wilson. He waved him over and motioned to a bedroll in a bright red and yellow pattern.

  Wilson had been strangely tired all day and during the meal all the muscles in his body felt exhausted and sore. He unrolled the bedding and fell asleep, wondering if he would dream while inside a dream.

  He woke with the sun in his face.

  Immediately he thought the pair had abandoned him, then recognized the sandy trough from the day before.

  “What? This is where I was yesterday.”

  He climbed out of the ditch. The tan mountains and pale blue sky all looked the same. Across the narrow valley was the same dash dot dot of the abandoned caves.

  “That’s a long way to carry me.”

  He walked along the dusty valley in the cool sunshine. Instead of climbing to the caves he angled his path to the right. A narrow dirt trail wound up to the break in the mountains––the pass into the spreading grassland. Not far away stood the dusty black tent with its guy lines and poles with square yellow flags. The same herd of goats and sheep wandered nearby.

  “Hello? Did I do something wrong?”

  The ugly dog sprang from the same pile of rocks and barked. The tent flap whirled open and the boy walked out.

  “Nan owa ga de-le?”

  He spoke to Wilson with the same smile and curiosity as before and without a trace of recognition on his face. Inside, Reed wore the same strange outfit and asked the same questions in the unfamiliar language. The boy served the same mutton soup and Reed offered the same red and yellow bedroll.

  Wilson fell asleep. After a minute or hours, he woke in the same ditch and under the same cold sunlight.

  He closed his eyes and sighed. “Cat’s teeth.”

  THE DAY REPEATED when he slept. He didn’t know how to escape.

  A facet of the controller system had looped upon itself like a snake swallowing its own tail. Was it to protect Reed, the facility, or just his own stupid, bad luck?

  Wilson had many opportunities to ponder these questions. He had an abundance of time and nothing else. Shepherd Reed and the boy owned few worldly goods and Wilson had found no other humans in his exploration of the mountains.

  He had not been able to travel far. Any exercise brought piercing headaches, weakness, and pain over his entire body. Even with the help of the implant tricks, he always collapsed from fatigue before making it through the mountains or over the plains. Once his eyes closed from sleep or lack of consciousness, the day began again.

  Each morning brought an identical struggle––the same exhaustion, the same mountains and valley, the same smile from the boy, the same odd language.

  If someone back in the real world––back at his body in the cavern––would lift the circlet from his head, he could escape. As the days turned into months Wilson was shocked that it hadn’t happened, but he could have been wrong. Someone could have removed the silver band and caused the entire problem with the loop.

  He gave up exploration and settled into the same routine. Each day he walked through the heat straight to the black tent and studied the strange language that Reed and the boy spoke. He learned the boy’s name was “Rogspo.” Reed went by “Shaba.”

  The pair had no books or paper. Wilson couldn’t save anything from day to day, but he wanted something to write on just as a mental exercise. He experimented with different materials and finally used charcoal to mark words on the inside of his jacket or on rocks outside the tent. Everything disappeared overnight, of course.

  Reed had little patience for his questions but the boy was eager to help. Wilson quickly learned words for everything inside and outside the tent. The problem lay with abstract concepts. Even with diagrams, explaining the right word became a struggle. He turned the problem on its head and began to teach the boy English.

  Between language studies Wilson reviewed the implant tricks. When he used them, the boy would always stare at Wilson like he’d flown down from the Moon. Wilson taught him how to throw a knife and fight hand-to-hand, but it was more for Wilson’s practice than the boy’s. After all, the boy had to start from the beginning every day.

  He thought about Badger and Station under attack, but mostly Badger. As his language skill increased he told the boy and shepherd Reed about her, and about his friends.

  Before he slept he repeated the number of days over and over in his mind. When he woke it became his first thought.

  On this night he spent a few hours watching the stars. He’d stopped mulling over questions such as where the fake pinpoints of light came from, and satisfied himself with learning the new language and controlling his daily exhaustion through meditation. Reed had explained to him weeks ago that it seemed like a disease called “altitude sickness” that happened only to outsiders.

  As he lay flat and covered himself with a blanket, Wilson whispered the day’s number to himself and closed his eyes. He woke under the same uncaring sunlight.

  “Four hundred,” he whispered.

  Today would be different. He was determined to make that happen.

  He could have walked through the valley to Reed’s tent blindfolded, guided by the same smells of lavender and dust, the same brown hawk that screamed over the pass, the same dreary yellow flowers.

  The boy poked his head out of the tent. “What are you doing?”

  Wilson shrugged. “I’m lost.”

  “But you speak well. Are you an outsider?”

  “I’m lost. I should be somewhere far, far away.”

  The boy smiled. “Come in and rest.”

  Wilson sat on the wool rug across from the old, bearded shepherd. He decided it was time to take a chance.

  “Good day, stranger,” said shepherd Reed.

  “Good afternoon, Shaba,” said Wilson.

  The old man squinted over the fire. “The boy told you my name?”

  “No, but I know everything about you.”

  “What things?”

  Wilson cleared his throat. “You’ve been here for two years, helping the boy with the herd. You can’t remember anything before those two years. Somehow you and the boy can understand each other. Now you are dark and tanned, but when you came to the valley you were as pale as a cloud.”

  Reed frowned. “Which side are you from? The government or the people?”

  “You stay in this place,” continued Wilson, “Because you don’t want to leave. You do the same things day after day, even though you don’t know why you’re here. You’ve never told the boy this, but you’re waiting for something.”

  Reed slowly took out a wooden pipe and small cloth bag. He packed the pipe bowl with tobacco from the bag and lit it with a burning ember from the fire. He puffed on the stem until the leaves began to smolder, then handed the pipe to Wilson.

  “You know everything about me, but there’s something you don’t understand––yourself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Reed shook his head. “You are like a water-bug on the surface of what is real, always looking up, never searching for the meaning. Something is broken in your heart.”

  “What is this crap? You’re stuck here just like me.”

  “I don’t know this word ‘crap.’ I say those things because your body fades and flickers at times like a ghost.”

  “The dream tiger,” said the young boy.

  Wilson pulled a mouthful of fragrant smoke from the tobacco pipe and handed it back to Ree
d. He opened his mouth and blew a pair of rings in the air. “What’s a dream tiger?”

  The boy slid closer to the glowing fire. “When the medicine does not work, when a mother has lost a child, when the young lovers cannot marry, they climb the mountain to fight the dream tiger. Sometimes they come back, but are ashamed to say what happened. The ones who stay on the mountain ... we find the bodies later.”

  “Did they kill themselves?”

  The boy shook his head. “The dream tiger. They did not understand how to meet her.”

  “Well, it’s good for a laugh. If I fail I’ll just wake up again.”

  The boy shook his head. “You will fail or succeed completely. There is nothing else.”

  “Boy, how do you know so much?” asked shepherd Reed.

  The boy tilted his head. “Stories from the old people.”

  “I’ll leave right now,” said Wilson. “Show me where to start climbing.”

  “What’s the hurry? Rest well tonight and leave tomorrow,” said Reed.

  Both he and the boy stared as Wilson laughed too loudly.

  “Sleep’s not an option,” he said.

  REED USED A BLACK PAN to fry cakes filled with red chilies, mutton, and bitter, strong-tasting cheese. He wrapped them in a small cloth bag along with a water skin.

  The boy Rogspo unwound an embroidered yellow belt from his waist and handed it to Wilson.

  “It is from my mother,” said the boy. “Best cloth of Monpa.”

  “Thank you, but I don’t want to take your special things.”

  “Not taking,” said the boy. “You are coming back.”

  Reed struggled out of the black tent with a worn cane. Wilson and the boy helped him to walk through the cold afternoon sun to the pass.

  They stopped before the hatcheted vee in the mountains and Reed handed Wilson a small bundle wrapped in crimson felt.

  “Do not open this yet. Wait until it is night.”

  Wilson turned the heavy, strangely shaped bundle in his hands. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know.” Reed squashed a tiny scorpion with his cane. “There is a part of me that knows your face, but it is like a dream in the morning. I know your face but then I blink and it’s forgotten. This thing I give you is from before the blink.”

  Wilson nodded. He clapped his hands together and bowed to each in the traditional farewell. The ugly dog barked, but not as furiously.

  He climbed the slippery gray scree toward the distant dash-dot-dot of the caverns. The boy had said the dream tiger lived in the tunnels.

  The dizzying sickness tried to stop him, to stab his legs with needles and pull his bones to the earth, but Wilson fought back with the calming trick. He constantly muttered the four lines and imagined his body surrounded by the freezing ice of a winter lake.

  He slowly climbed the spill of broken rock and finally made it to the slice of cavern. Wilson lay on the flat concrete ledge and rested while holding the small cloth bag above his head. If he started to fall asleep the bag would fall on his face.

  Once he’d recovered, Wilson explored the tunnels. Apart from the red-and-white wrapper he’d seen before, all the rooms were empty.

  Over the valley the scattered clouds turned pink and the sun disappeared in the west. He ate two of the chili cakes and drank from the water skin. A tan lizard no longer than his finger hunted for insects along the rocks of the slope. A hawk drifted on the air currents over the valley and screamed a sound like a young boy’s whistle.

  As dusk approached the air cooled and his breath steamed white.

  What would happen if his days looped forever? Would they finally try something in the real world to save him? His body couldn’t survive indefinitely, even with intravenous fluids and life support. He wondered what options he’d have if he were outside and someone else had become trapped.

  The desert slowly came alive. Lightning bugs floated along the valley floor, tiny pinpoints of blinking light. Small rodents began the night’s forage and foxes crept from rocky, underground dens. The high-pitched bark reminded Wilson of the foxes around Station.

  He pulled the crimson-wrapped bundle from the bag and unwrapped it carefully.

  “What in the three cats––?”

  A revolver gleamed silver in the moonlight. Apart from the silver finish it looked identical to his revolver back in the real world, the one he’d found in the old tunnels. “SMITH&WESSON” was engraved on one side of the barrel.

  Wilson popped the cylinder––empty apart from one round. He dropped it onto his palm, where it lay heavy and gold in the moonlight.

  “This will have to be enough, one way or another.”

  He worked the action easily and shoved the round back into the cylinder.

  A crash exploded from the tunnel behind Wilson, like a steel door thrown from the top of a building.

  He could run. He could even let his body tumble down the side of the mountain. He’d probably just wake up again, no matter what Reed and the boy had said.

  Wilson stood from the ledge and cocked the hammer of the revolver. He whispered the poem of the sight-trick and walked slowly into the gray tunnel.

  Claws scraped on concrete. Wilson wiped sweat from his eyes and kept going.

  A ragged female voice hissed at him.

  “Zi tshai du lo?”

  Wilson looked to his left and stared at a pair of shining circles.

  The cat was huge, blindingly white, and covered with black spots. A mesh of circles marked the fur over one eye. Long fangs curved from the upper jaw.

  “What I want is to escape,” said Wilson. “Something has gone wrong with the system or my interface.”

  “There is nothing wrong with the syssstem,” hissed the dream tiger. “You are the thing that is wrong.” Her shoulders rolled as she paced in the small room, watching him. “You are the thing that is different from the othersss.”

  “The others that are dead or dying? What’s the point of protecting them now? I didn’t come here to spend my life in a security loop. I came here to help Reed!”

  “Lies! I’ve seen into your mind. You destroy everything you touch!”

  The tiger leaped at Wilson and smashed him against the tunnel wall with her massive paws. The revolver fell out of his hand and clattered onto the floor.

  Her breath smelled of rotten meat. “Die, you disgusting virussss ...”

  Wilson yelled and rammed the hunting blade into the tiger’s neck. She leapt away with a roar and shook her massive head from side to side. The knife flew from her neck in a burst of blue sparkles.

  Wilson crawled to the silver revolver. He turned on his back and aimed between his knees as the dream tiger leaped through the air.

  The tunnel exploded with a deafening boom. The golden bullet speared the tiger like a ribbon of lightning and she vanished in a snap of blinding light.

  Wilson sighed and lay back on the cold concrete. He closed his eyes and waited.

  Nothing happened.

  “Super.”

  His shoulder and ribs were numb on his left side. Wilson got to his feet and left the cave. By the light of a crescent moon he made the exhausting climb down to the pass.

  The ugly dog barked at him as usual, prodding Reed and the young boy to rush from the tent.

  The boy hugged him around the waist. “Did you defeat the tiger?”

  Wilson held up the revolver. “Thanks to this. But it doesn’t matter because I’m still here.”

  Reed shrugged. “This is the way of things.”

  After a meal of spiced lamb, Wilson lay on the same bedroll as always. He closed his eyes and fell asleep, expecting to wake in the same ditch.

  He woke in the dark, confused and disoriented. He saw the glowing embers in the center of the tent and let out a whoop that woke Reed and the boy and caused the ugly dog to bark for a full minute.

  TWELVE

  Robb would have screamed if he had the energy. He blacked out instead.

  “That’s too deep,”
said the Consul. “My mistake.”

  She pulled the hair-thin needle from the boy’s left side and slapped him in the face. Robb opened his eyes and watched the Consul flip through the pages of the yellow volume again, like a mother nose-deep in the family cookbook.

  This looks like Hausen’s quarters, he thought groggily, except for the changed furniture and the ceiling-to-floor post in the middle of the room. The one he hung from, his arms tied above his head. He wished he were a trussed deer hanging from a tree. At least then it would be over.

  The Consul slid a finger down his ribcage and stabbed the needle between a different set of ribs.

  “Hope this works,” she said. “Try not to pass out.”

  Robb grunted as intense pain shot through his chest and rotated between hot and cold. Sweat dripped from his nose and onto the concrete floor.

  “Perfect. Now I’m going to ask the same question as before. It’s about the place you call ‘the Tombs.’ Do you know the entrance code?”

  Robb twitched his head from side to side.

  “Do you know who does?”

  Robb bobbed his head up and down.

  “Finally, some progress. Tell me one name and I’ll pull out the needle.”

  “Wilson,” said Robb hoarsely.

  “And?”

  “Badger.”

  The searing pain went away as the needle left his body. “Continue,” she said.

  “Mary and Father Reed.”

  “Continue.”

  Robb shook his head and drops of sweat curved to the floor.

  “You can’t be serious. Only four people out of all these hundreds know the secret?”

  Robb nodded.

  “Not good enough, dear boy. Dear, dear boy.”

  The Consul flipped through the pages of the yellow book. “Here’s a good one.”

  She looked through the dozens of needles on a nearby table, selected three of varying lengths and sizes, and walked behind Robb.

  “I’ll never tire of saying this,” she whispered in his ear. “But I told you so.”

  Robb found the energy to scream this time.