Arc of the Dream

by A. A. Attanasio

  “And if I refuse? What happens then?”

  “The timelines shift, and I don’t go home.”

  “Just because of some stupid writing on the wall? You gotta be kidding.”

  “Why would I joke about my life?”

  “But how can that be?”

  “If the man we’re waiting for doesn’t see this sign, he will begin to doubt the absolute veracity of his visions. That doubt will prove fatal soon enough—when the orc finds us again.”

  “So I’ve got no choice?”

  “No.”

  That syllable punched him like a trumpet blast, and in the riff of silence that followed, he rose and stared at the white wall. What would he write? Nothing came to mind. The alien offered nothing. Screw it, he thought and poured motion into his arm, slashing up and around in a wild, swirling gush of spraypaint, striding the length of his effort in an arm-waving monkeydance. When he finished, he cast a furtive glance about him to establish that no one had appeared during his reverie, and he regarded his mess with a puckish grin.

  A jab of shock dropped his grin and made him stand back when he saw that his unguided arm had actually written a sentence: TIME HAS NO SHORES. He looked at its rust-red curves and turnings like a dog staring at a doorknob, impressed by the incomprehensible.

  People appeared at the far end of the concourse, and Dirk wandered off in the opposite direction. Sunlight running through gray filtered glass patterned the curve of carpeted hallway with white trapezoids. The skewed squares of ruined light looked like steppingstones into the afterworld.

  Dirk, shattered about losing control of his life, believed that the strangeness of the alien poisoned him. He wanted to be free again. But conscience stalked him: Had he ever been free? The Home acted as his kennel, the counselors his masters. Closer to the bone, he lived as his own prisoner, condemned by his defiance of fate and caged by rage. He had even created his own executioners—damp-eyed and vicious Donnie Lopes and love-demented Ipo.

  What would it mean for him to lose his life? he wondered, and Ipo’s hysterical scream in the last moment of his life echoed across his mind. That prompted what the alien had said about ghosts as waveforms in the vacuum field, and sadness drizzled in him for the intense fragility of life. He wanted to make peace with the whole world.

  His amble had brought him to a garden of raked sand, boulders, bamboo, and orchids, and he sat down on a stone bench facing the wave-pattern sand and cried. The brutal and utterly unreal events of the last day made all his memories, all his prior moods and vaunting hopes, appear trivial, vulgar, pathetic. He quaked with remorse for the mindless selfishness of his life. In mid-sob he noticed a family in matching aloha outfits strolling by, pretending to ignore him.

  He got up and walked across the combed sand. At the exit to the garden, he noticed that he was still holding the spraypaint, and before chucking the can he fired onto the wall: PLEASE TURN OFF THE ORCHIDS.

  ***

  Dirk slouched against the wall beside the alien’s painted message when Howard arrived through the gate in a crowd of tourists. He carried a dull metal attaché, the kind bottles of rare blood might be conveyed in. Dirk picked him out from his precognitive dreams and nodded at him once to break his amazed stare. He was a stork-faced guy with a red mustache and question mark posture. The woman accompanying him had curly brown hair, sugar pink lips, and long legs. He waved at her.

  “Howard, that boy is waving at us,” Cora complained.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Howard answered morosely. “He’s probably our tour guide.”

  “We don’t have a tour guide.”

  “I asked for one at the last moment,” he lied. “Wait here.” He walked up to the kid. “Dirk?” He didn’t offer his hand. “I’m Howard Dyckson.”

  “Howzit?” Dirk flicked a nervous glance to each side. “Let’s get this thing over with.”

  The boy’s face was smudged and scratched, and he smelled of wet lumber. “Look, Dirk, my wife doesn’t know about any of this. We’re going to keep it that way, okay?”

  “Ask the alien.”

  “You’re not the alien?” Howard retracted his head in bafflement.

  “Hell, no. You’re supposed to help me get rid of it.”

  “Howie?” Cora stepped in. “Is everything all right?”

  “Sure it is. Cora, this is Dirk, our tour guide.”

  Cora eyed the scruffy teen and frowned fiercely at her husband.

  “Cora—” Howard didn’t know what to say. His dream had ended here. “Come on now, don’t argue with me.”

  Cora turned Howard aside. “Howie, he looks awful—and mean,” she whispered.

  “Mm.” Howard plucked at his mustache, thinking. “All right, Cora. You deserve the truth. He’s not our tour guide. After what happened in Vegas I thought we needed someone to keep an eye on us. He’s a bodyguard. I didn’t want to alarm you.”

  Cora peeked at Dirk with slimmer, wiser eyes.

  “He comes highly recommended,” Howard added.

  “By whom?”

  “My bookie back home.”

  They left the gate and walked along an outdoor rampway through pollen breezes and the grousing of air traffic to the baggage claim. On the taxi ride to the best hotel in Waikiki, while Dirk sat with the driver, Howard amused Cora by ogling the emerald faceted mountains and pointing out cloud-piled nooks and rainbow-linteled corries. He grouched about the traffic. And in sight of the white beaches, he goggled with sun-vexed eyes the girls in hip-cut swimsuits and promised to buy a bikini for Cora. By the time they stepped out of the cab and into the submarine shade of their hotel’s elegant lobby, he had convinced her that he had eased back into his old self again.

  The desk informed them that the large suites had been booked months in advance, and Howard strode into the hotel manager’s office. He opened his metal attaché on the manager’s rosewood desk and revealed his Vegas winnings. The manager herself escorted them to a vast, cool presidential suite. Dirk took a shower in one of the two bathrooms while Howard and Cora freshened up in the other. Afterward, Dirk put on red briefs, color-drained jeans, and an apricot pullover with bevel-cut short sleeves. He sat on the balcony overlooking the beach, his cartooned duffel bag at his bare feet, the arc turning in his fingers like a lucky charm. Howard, in sandals, orange swim trunks, yellow T-shirt, and Cubs baseball cap, sidled in.

  The sight of the arc transfixed him. Timelines bundled around it: Red-gold cell clusters bubbling like roe.

  Dirk saw the trance in Howard’s eyes, and he palmed the arc. Howard blinked and rubbed his pink-whiskered chin. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.

  Dirk tugged on his boots, and Howard shouted at Cora, basking in the whirl of the Jacuzzi, that they were stepping out for a spell.

  In the lobby, Howard thought of ducking into the bar for a drink. The sight of the arc had left a floater on his visual field, spiderwebbing flux lines that distorted everything he looked at. But he knew that the alcohol would only suppress the distracting visuals. The future-fusing dreams went on inside him anyway—and when he finally dozed he would see into the next room of time. Better to stay close to the experience, he figured, now that he could share it with someone.

  “What was that thing you were holding upstairs?” Howard asked.

  “That’s the alien.”

  They stepped out of the cooled lobby into a vivid afternoon, and Dirk turned toward the beach. Howard took his arm and guided him in the opposite direction. “It looks better this way,” he said. Time gleamed more brightly in one direction than the other, and he didn’t know why, but he knew enough not to doubt it. “That thing is the alien? That thing that looks no bigger than a bottle cap?”

  “That’s right,” Dirk said, allowing himself to be led.

  “Well, who is it? What is it?” In the panoply of timelines, Dirk glowed like no one he had ever seen before. The loom of possibilities spun a wheel of light around him, visible even in the crashing sunlight. Luck shone in him.

&
nbsp; Dirk relayed what he knew about the alien’s trespass on Earth as they sauntered under sun-spinning palms on the streets of Waikiki. “If we don’t get the arc back in time, it’ll turn into light. A lot of light. And heat. Enough to waste this whole island.”

  Howard slowed almost to a stop. “I’ve always felt the only way into Hell was assbackward—but this is too sad.” Backdropping all his timeviews, a diaphanous white luminance glowed, which was easy to ignore. Maybe that was the nuclear glare of the arc’s doom at the end of his visions. That thought quickened his pace.

  Dirk didn’t like Howard’s sombrous expression, and he searched for something to say. “You can see the future, because where this thing comes from everything is happening at the same time. Weird, huh? What’s it like seeing the future?”

  “I don’t see very far. And maybe that’s best.” He told Dirk about the state lottery, Vegas, and Tony Robello. “I’ll tell you, kid, I’ve never been so scared in my life. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, even in my nightmares.”

  “You think any of us are experienced at this?” Dirk laughed soundlessly. “We’re all running scared. But what’re we gonna do?”

  “There are others?”

  “Two more. An old Chinese guy—Jiang—and a woman, Reena. She’s in France.” Dirk recounted how Donnie Lopes found the arc on the Big Island. He also related his horrible encounter with the orc.

  Howard’s insides crawled at the description of the alien’s monster self. “If all this creature from the fifth dimension wants is to get back to the lava fields, let’s go. I’ve got plenty of money. We’ll charter a plane. Hell, we’ll buy one. If we leave now, we’ll get there before the orc gets any stronger.”

  “You haven’t been listening, Howie. The alien has to be returned to the exact spot where Donnie picked it up. Even the gimp won’t remember that. That’s why Insideout is becoming human—so it can find its own way back. The only problem is, we’ve gotta wait around for the others.”

  “But there’s only a day left before it’s too late. The alien said it could only last three days away from its hyperfield. It arrived yesterday.”

  “Yup.”

  “Then we better go to the Big Island ourselves and at least try. The others will catch up with us there.”

  “You see that happening in the future?”

  Time shadows had darkened around them since they’d left the hotel. “No,” he said. “The only direction that looks good now is toward the sea.”

  Dirk had a similar feeling. Something urgent had to be communicated between them and moved them toward the harbor. The thought itself, whatever it was, loomed too big for his head.

  “What about Cora?” Dirk asked.

  Howard gave him a funny look. “She’s got Waikiki and almost two million bucks to spend. She won’t miss us till dinner.”

  For Howard, the walk among the long boardwalks of the wharf proceeded narrow as a tightrope act. The path that led to the future desired by the alien showed as a crystal corridor; the peripheral view of banner-streaming boathouses and white yachts smudged in the crosshatching of timeplanes. They meandered through sunbursts from high cumulus and a sweet warm wind damp with scents of plumeria and the green reef water. Ahead, almost hidden from view by cruise boats docked on either side, Howard foresaw a clear, lens-rainbowed focus on a black speedboat. Sleek as a shark and bobbing with the excited breath of the water, the boat blazed with time’s aura. A sandy-haired man in oil-stained canvas pants and faded red T-shirt lowered the shiny black bonnet on the engine. Howard stopped on the dock in front of him.

  “Hey, buddy, how much for a spin in your rowboat?” Dirk asked.

  “Forget it,” the boatman said, latching the bonnet. “I just tuned the engine. I’m racing later today.”

  Dirk stared up at terns circling in the wind.

  “We’re not going to take the boat for long,” Howard added. Not far ahead, he visualized himself and the kid returning in the boat, gliding on the still water of the harbor. “We’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Guys, forget it.” The racer grinned affably. “This boat ain’t for hire.”

  Dirk rubbed his fingertips with his thumb, looked at Howard, and nodded his head toward the racer.

  Howard removed his baseball cap, reached into it, and took out a wad of hundred dollar bills. He handed the wad to the boatman. “Here’s ten grand. Yours for an hour in your boat.”

  Howard steered through the olive-green water of the harbor, ignoring other boats and following the brightest curve through the hallucinatory contours of Insideout’s timesight. Boats honked angrily as they veered by in near collisions, and Dirk waved cheerily at them. Once out of the harbor, Howard opened the engine full throttle, and Dirk heaved back in his seat. They sliced over the water windstroked in the belly of the engine’s roar until Honolulu dwindled to a cluster of brilliants in the lap of the jade mountains. Castles of rain glowed darkly far to the south. Nearby, buffalo clouds wore silver fur. Sunlight studded the wavetips like topaz.

  Howard killed the engine when the timefacets gumming his peripheral sight irised open. They coasted into an undulant, ocean-breathed stillness on the night-blue water. “What now?”

  “Damned if I know,” Dirk said, standing up and gazing back at O’ahu swaying with the horizon. “I was following you, pal.” Mica flashes drew his attention to a burst of small fish leaping from the swells. Larger water shadows ghosted under the boat, and Dirk spun his head to watch them appear on the other side.

  With a heart-punching shriek, a group of dolphins flew out of the sea and thrashed water in a ring around the black boat. Their synchronized cries ripped hearing and collapsed Dirk back into his seat.

  The dolphins splashed away, leaving their stabbing scream quivering in the brains of the two humans. The cry greeted Insideout, and the song reached the alien at the moment it painfully compressed itself more vividly into the humans’ nerve plexes. Insideout heard the cry from its 4-space niche within the curly brains of the humans, and it used the abrupt stillness of their thoughts to draw all its power back into itself. The effort intensified the noise of its pain, and the cramped space of human consciousness lit up like a slim moon in a thick night.

  Howard tipped back his cap and knuckled his tingling sinuses. His timesense had vanished. “What now?”

  Dirk stood up again, his mind reaching for an explanation. But his thoughts were simple and uninformative. “I don’t know.”

  The dolphins shoaled and swam in a tight circle on the starboard side. The water they corraled shimmered like peacock feathers or gasoline’s water-furled streamers. As the two men stared, the iridescent circle of water bulged to the head of a surfacing swimmer. The head looked bald and smooth-featured, masked in veils of water. Horror icicled through them when they saw the glassy shoulders and arms of the figure surface and realized that this human shape was made up of water.

  Both men backed with surprise as the shiny humanoid lifted straight up until it stood on the water. Naked and lively but devoid of genitals, hair, or markings, the figure rose like a person in a slick bodysuit. The dolphins broke their circle, and the sun-sparkling human shape of water walked to the edge of the speedboat and placed its foot on the rail to step aboard.

  Howard panicked at the sight of the bizarre being approaching them, and he tried to start the engine. It choked like a rooting hog.

  “Friends, friends!” the precise human shape of water said in a voice childlike and nervous. “Don’t be afraid. It’s me, Insideout. I have to talk with you.”

  “This is crazy,” Howard howled softly. He and Dirk had backed up against the windshield and steeringwheel.

  Dirk reached down into the duffel bag and came up holding the arc. “You want it?”

  “Oh, if only I could.” The alien pouted and sat on the taffrail, colorless as a glass of water. The rail and hull it leaned against showed through it visible and warped. “I wouldn’t get a hundred yards before this body broke up. It
’s terrible. Everything I do is fits and starts without the hyperfield. I couldn’t even parametrize right with you people. Tell me you forgive me.”

  “What?” Howard moaned.

  “I think it’s apologizing,” Dirk said.

  “Yes, that’s it. I apologize.” The alien’s face looked like it had a stocking pulled over it, yet the despair in its expression was stark. “I’m so needful of you, I don’t want to upset you. But look at what I’ve done. You’re both terrified. And I thought this shape would please you.” It sobbed and hung its head.

  The two men’s rigid stances unlocked, and Dirk stepped closer. “Hey,” he said with forced casualness, “I oughta apologize to you for moving the arc.”

  “No, that wasn’t your fault—or Donnie’s. I should have been more careful. I was overeager. I wanted yes-out-of-mind right away, here with the dolphins. What a fool I’ve been.”

  “Yes-out-of-mind?” Howard asked. He leaned against the side, ready to leap overboard if the thing got any closer.

  “That’s what I called you here for. You see, I’m dying. My mind is going first. And I was afraid I’d lose it before I’d brought all of you together. Jiang and Reena have been exalted by my intrusion into their lives. But the two of you— Well, to make peace with myself, I had to be sure I’d given back something for all I’ve taken from you.”

  “You paid me off just fine,” Howard said with bold sincerity.

  “Money,” Insideout sniffed. “A mere token. A symbol. That’s really your poverty as a species. You have an appetite for symbols but can’t stomach experience. Don’t you see that?”

  “You can fork me some of that poverty anytime,” Dirk said.

  “You really don’t see, do you?” Insideout leaned closer with amazement. It pointed out the dolphins crowding the water around the boat’s aft. “These poor creatures, without tools, clothes, or houses—these beasts that your people kill with impunity know more about wealth than you do. Because they have a song and you don’t. They can sing, while all you can do is sign.”

  “Huh?” Howard looked to Dirk, who squinted at the alien, trying to grasp.