by V. E. Lemp
Karen met his intense gaze. “I believe you, David. But I can’t promise anything. I have to talk to Mark, and we’ll decide what to do, together. You did know I’d share this with Mark Hallam, I hope?”
David turned his head so Karen could no longer see his eyes. “I thought you might. But I believe you can persuade him to stop digging up any more secrets.”
“What makes you think I can influence Mark Hallam?”
“Because he’ll do it to please you. Because, Karen, he loves you.”
Karen stared at him for a moment before speaking. “You hardly know Mark. Why would you say that?”
David gave her a look she could not decipher, though there was something in it of weary amusement. “I saw you together that one time, remember?”
Karen shook her head. “Whatever Mark feels for me, he won’t quit investigating. He’s not so easily influenced.”
“Well, I’ve put myself in your hands. You must decide what to do with this information. I only ask that you think everything through, very carefully, before you take any action.”
“I will. And I won’t bring you into it, David, if there’s any way I can avoid it. I’d like to protect you too.” Karen reached out as if to lay her hand on his shoulder. But when her fingers were inches from his arm, he stepped back, and Karen could do nothing but drop her hand to her side.
“Thank you.” David met her steady gaze, his dark eyes shadowed under his lashes. “I only want what’s best for everyone.”
Karen gave him an encouraging smile. “We all want that. We just don’t always agree on what that is.”
As Karen left the room, she felt David’s eyes on her, until she turned the corner and was lost to his line of vision.
FIFTEEN
As soon as Karen reached her car she called Mark. “I’m coming over. How are you?”
“I’m fine. What’s this about?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there.”
She walked into the house without a hello.
Mark followed her to the sofa. “Well, good afternoon to you too.”
“Sit. I’ve been to see David Cole. He told me everything.”
“Everything about what?” Mark sat next to her.
She told him all the information David had relayed to her earlier. Mark’s face betrayed no shock over her revelations, but at the point where she mentioned the bargain for her freedom he took her hands in his.
“It does make sense. Crazy as it sounds.”
“I know. It brings it all together. When you look at the facts, what David said fits, even though it seems so improbable. I guess Alex knew, at least in the end. That must’ve been what he planned to reveal, and Vance …” Karen took a deep breath. “Vance stopped him.”
“I imagine so. It sounds like he may have been protecting you by not saying anything. Perhaps I misjudged him.”
“It’s okay. I’ve questioned that myself as I’ve learned more.” Her hand strayed to her necklace, and she closed her fingers around the pendant. “It was about the stars, in the end. All those stars, all those other suns …” She sighed and leaned into Mark, who put his arm around her shoulders.
“So, since we’re fairly certain Cole’s finally telling the truth, I suppose we must regroup. This will take some thought.” Mark pulled her closer.
Karen glanced up at him from under her lashes. “Your pain seems better today.”
“Still have twinges, but past the worst of it, I think.” Mark gazed down at her with a smile that made heat rise in her face.
Karen ducked her head. “So what are we going to do? It seems we’re up against something too big for us.”
“We’re going to expose the truth, somehow.” Mark stared up at the entwining branches of the wrought-iron chandelier. “Dig up enough evidence to prove it, and shout it to the world. Yes, I know a lot of people will dismiss it—say we’re lying, or crazy. But people need a choice, and if they’re given the facts, they can decide for themselves. Plenty of people live in ignorance and are probably more content than those who don’t, but I know there are others, people like you and me, who’d rather know the truth, no matter how painful, than live a happy lie. These people exist, Karen. And I want to give them a chance to control their own destiny.”
“So we tell everyone, and most of them think we’re crazy, then what?”
Mark gazed back down at her, his face alight with passion. “We can’t control what people do. All I know is this—if Vance and his compatriots continue their deception, no one will have the chance to become more than just another experiment for the Oneiroi. No opportunity to rise any higher than happy little lab rats, pleased with our bit of cheese. I don’t know about you, Karen, but I don’t want to live in that kind of world, not if I can help it.”
“And if they attempt to kill you again?”
He shrugged. “Everyone dies. But not everyone dies fighting for something they believe in. And not everyone lives for that either,” he added, with the ghost of a smile.
As Karen looked into his eyes, something shifted inside her, like a row of books tipping and sliding in quick succession as the weight of a bookend is removed. She leaned forward, placed one hand behind his neck, and guided his face to hers until he was close enough for her to kiss, quite deliberately, on the lips.
Mark responded by pulling her to him and returning her kiss with an intensity matching the passion of his earlier words. But after a moment he gently pushed her away, still holding on to her shoulders. His eyes searched her face.
“I hope this isn’t some type of experiment.”
“No,” Karen said, “it’s not. It’s me, seeing things clearly. It’s me, accepting the truth.”
She kissed him again, and he, for once, had nothing more to say.
Later, Karen woke to the steady rhythm of Mark’s heart, calmed now, regular as waves following a storm. Karen lifted her head slightly and gently freed the strands of her hair clinging to Mark’s damp chest. She rose up on one elbow to study him. His face, in repose, held a beauty she’d never recognized. An errant thought crossed Karen’s mind, and she chuckled softly.
“What’s so funny?” Mark opened one eye and gazed at her owlishly.
“Oh, I was thinking of a certain prediction.”
“One of Ariel’s pronouncements?” He yawned.
“No, no, a prediction of mine. Anyway, it turned out to be wrong.”
“They often do.” Mark idly traced one finger along her jawline, down her neck, and around her shoulder blade.
Karen shivered with delight. “Well, they aren’t always as spectacularly wrong as this one.”
She laughed and set out to prove, once again, how very wrong that particular prediction had been.
Karen spent the next several weeks working with the local man Myron Tarrow had recommended as an expert on lucid dreaming.
“Think I’m beginning to get it,” she told Mark one morning as they sat drinking coffee. “I can change things now, in my dreams. Manipulate the images and events to my liking, rather than having it happen to me. Of course, these are just ordinary dreams. No dark-eyed strangers or otherworldly locations, just stuff from my everyday life. And I haven’t received any messages from the Oneiroi, at least none I remember.”
He gazed at her with concern. “And when you do, what action might they take? If they realize you’re defying them, I mean.”
“I don’t know. But it’s time someone confronted them.”
“They may decide you’re a liability.”
“Maybe. Or they might decide to actually communicate with me. There’s no way to know until it happens, I suppose.” Karen rose and carried her coffee cup to the sink. “You said you’d let me make up my own mind about such things.”
“I did, didn’t I? What a fool I am.”
Karen walked to the table and stood behind his chair, wrapping her arms around him. “No, never a fool.” She kissed the back of his neck. “Maybe a man who allows for foolishness in others.”
He reached up and laid his hand over her clasped fingers. “Only if they promise to always be careful.”
“They always will be, since they’ve no desire to bring you any pain.”
“Good to know.” Mark leaned his head back against her breast. “Because you know it would hurt me terribly if anything were to happen to you, Karen.”
“I understand. And I keep that in mind. But you need to remember—the same applies to you. Can you promise to be careful for me?”
He sighed. “I can’t promise you that. I’ll never be able to promise that.”
“I know. So you must allow me to take my chances as well.”
“Yes, I must, I suppose. But I don’t have to like it.”
She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For treating me like someone who’s strong.” She released him and stepped around his chair.
“You are strong, Karen.” Mark pulled her down onto his lap. “Strong and brave and occasionally”—he smiled—“wise.”
“Not so sure about that.” Karen made a face. “Look who I ended up with.”
“Exactly,” Mark said, and kissed her before she could reply.
Dream Journal, September 9th:
I stood in a doorway, gazing into an art museum gallery. There was a man seated on a marble bench in the middle of the room. He was studying the paintings on the walls. I realized the paintings were mine, although most were works no longer in my possession. They’d been sold in years past.
“No,” I said. “This doesn’t exist.”
The man turned his head and stared intently at me. “What are you doing, Karen Foster?”
“Discovering where I actually am.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them I was in an empty white room. The man was still in the middle of the room, but he was standing. What I thought were plain white walls were monitors. The screens were blank, but I could tell they were meant to surround the viewer with images.
“You have developed some interesting skills,” the man said.
“I’ve been learning to control my own dreams.”
“So I see.” The man’s gaze never left my face.
“I thought I might be able to speak with you, instead of you simply talking through me.”
“And what is it you wish to say, Karen Foster?”
I crossed the room to stand in front of him. “Why have you used me all these years?”
“As you said—to communicate.”
“To send messages to the humans who collaborate with you. To Ian Vance and his backers. And everyone at Exocorp.”
“Not everyone. Only a few know the truth. But yes, we are sending them information. Data and specifications they need to create new technologies for your world.”
“And why would you do that?” I interlaced my fingers to stop their shaking.
“We made a bargain.”
“You’re trading this information for what? The opportunity to study humans in their natural habitat? Without our knowledge and with no government or other interference, I suppose.”
“Just so.” The man’s expression reflected only a detached curiosity.
“But why? What could be so fascinating, after all these years?”
“It’s our work. We observe. We study. We need to understand. And some experiments require centuries of your time.”
“I see. A bargain. You get to use our world as your laboratory. We get—no, that isn’t right. We get nothing while some select humans receive information that allows them to make a great deal of money. It hardly seems fair.”
“But you,” the man said, “also observe and experiment. You study the creatures on your world. What do you give them in exchange? What benefit do they derive from you?”
I fell silent for a moment. “You’ve no right to treat humans like animals,” I said at last.
“You use your world, including its animals, however you see fit.”
“It isn’t the same.”
A faint smile flickered across his face. “It is. There are no barriers dividing one creature from another, not in the workings of the cosmos, Karen Foster. Everything exists on a continuum.”
“But some things we must do, even if it harms other creatures, if we’re to survive.”
“That is true.” The man flicked his hand, and the bench reappeared. “It is the tragedy of our universe.”
Something pressed against my fingers. I realized I was holding a sketchbook and a charcoal pencil.
“Now show me,” said the man, sitting down, “how you make art.”
I sat next to him. “It isn’t that simple. If you only watch you won’t understand.” I opened the sketchpad and laid it on his lap, then took his hand and wrapped his fingers around the pencil. “You must experience it.”
He sat very still, awkwardly holding the pencil. I covered his fingers with my hand, guiding the pencil across the blank page. When I’d helped him to draw a simple sketch of a tree I pulled my hand away.
“Ah, I understand.” He fixed his gaze upon my face. “It’s in the doing.”
“Yes. The creation is as much the art as the final product.”
“Interesting. What you make comes from your body as well as your mind.”
“And my heart,” I said.
He surveyed me with, I thought, a trace of sorrow. “It is more difficult without such things.”
“What things?”
“Hands. Bodies. Touch.” He stood, clutching the sketch to his chest.
“You create.” I stood. “Or how did I see those images in my dreams all these years?”
“That was your mind, Karen Foster, making sense of what you saw and could not comprehend in its true form.”
“Are we so very different then?” I watched him fade in front of me. The walls of the room also fell away, until I stood in a great nothingness.
“No.” His words resonated inside my head. “No more than the raindrop from the ocean. We are still part of the same universe, Karen Foster. So we cannot be so very different, in the end.”
I closed my eyes. When I opened them I was awake, standing by my kitchen counter with a charcoal pencil in my hand. I’d obviously walked in my sleep again. Lying open on the counter was a sketchbook, where I’d once again rendered some object I couldn’t identify. It was obviously a mechanical device, yet when I stood back, squinting, I realized it resembled something else, something familiar.
A tree.
SIXTEEN
Despite his frequent requests, Karen told Mark she preferred to visit his home rather than move in with him. She knew her experience with living with someone else was driving her decision, but Mark, if he guessed this reason, didn’t question it.
Karen knew it was time to concentrate on painting again. Her substitute and students were busy in the studio, so she decided to experiment with miniatures, since focusing on small-scale projects allowed her to work at home. She was bent over a tiny canvas at her drafting table, a gooseneck magnifying glass angled above the project, when she received an urgent call from Mark.
“Amy,” he said, in a tone that conveyed restrained panic, “is missing.”
Karen laid down her paintbrush and turned off the light. “Where do you want me to meet you?”
Mark gave her directions to a wooded park not far from Claire Ledford’s home. “The police are organizing search parties. She disappeared last night, on her way home from a friend’s house. She wasn’t supposed to be out so late,” Mark said, his voice breaking. “Claire claims she was going to be grounded. And now …”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
When Karen arrived at the park she noticed a sign identifying it as the Great Horned Woods. Owls. It must be about the owls. She spied a large group of people gathered at the edge of the woods and jogged over to join them.
She didn’t see Mark, but Claire, whose face was ashen as birch trees in winter, clutc
hed Karen’s hands and fell into her arms, weeping.
“They’ll find her,” Karen said, patting Claire on the back. “Mark will make sure of that.”
“Yes, I will.” Mark stepped up beside Karen and gently extracted Claire from her arms. “You need to go home and wait for Amy,” he told his sister. “Doesn’t do any good to stand around here.”
“I want to be here when they find her.”
“I’m here,” Mark said. “And Karen’s here. Go home. Amy might show up there any minute and wonder where you are.”
Claire choked on a sob and nodded. “You promise—you promise to bring her back to me?”
“I promise.” Mark’s eyes, hidden behind the lenses of his glasses, were unreadable. He called over a policewoman and asked her to escort Claire home.
As Claire was driven away, Karen turned to Mark. She threw her arm around him. “Hold up. It won’t help if you collapse on us.”
He trembled under her hands. “I’m fine.”
“Right. Come over here and lean on this.” Karen guided him to a nearby tree. “I know you’re frantic,” she whispered in his ear, “but we need your expertise right now.”
“I can’t …” He slumped against the tree trunk.
“Yes, you can.” Karen grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “You can, and you will.”
After a moment, his whole body shuddered. He straightened and shook his head. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I’m not usually so pathetic.”
“I’d be ashamed of you if you weren’t desperately upset. But now we need to find Amy.” Karen rubbed his arm and gave him an encouraging smile.
He pulled her into a quick, fierce hug. “I love you, Karen Foster,” he said before he released her.
“I love you too,” Karen whispered as she watched him stride off toward the cluster of police and volunteers.
Mark was talking to a police officer when Karen caught up with him. He flashed some type of ID at the officer, who looked surprised and stepped back two paces. Karen heard a voice call her name and turned around.