Dreamer's Cat: a sci-fi murder mystery with a killer twist

by Stephen Leather

  Yeah, cats are harder.

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ says Helen.

  ‘It has its drawbacks,’ I reply. She doesn’t understand.

  ‘I can’t think of any,’ she says. She rests her hands on the window sill and leans forward so that her lips are only inches away from the glass. Her breath starts to condense, misting up her reflection.

  ‘It’s a question of reality. Perception and reality,’ I say. For some reason I want to explain it to her, to tell her what I really should have told the company shrink.

  ‘Everything you perceive as being real is filtered through your five senses. You see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, and you feel it. Before psi-discs you could either watch television or a movie - either way you viewed it through only two of your senses, sight and hearing. A few producers experimented with vibrating seats to give the sensation of movement and a couple of oddballs tried releasing smells in the cinema, but they never got anywhere. The reason the psi-discs are so successful is that you experience all five simultaneously. And so long as the Dreamer is good, whatever you take from the psi-disc appears real.’

  She nods. ‘The Dreamers produce reality, which is great. You make Dreams for other people.’

  ‘Sure, and once you take off your headset, you are back in your own reality. You dip in and out of the discs with no blurring between the two. Which is fine for you and the rest of the population.’

  She turns to look at me, eyes narrowed. ‘But it’s not fine for you?’

  I shake my head. ‘Dreamers have such a rigid control of what they imagine that perceived reality and real reality start to intermingle. We get so used to creating reality for other people that our brains can start to play tricks on us. Instead of examining reality through its five senses, it starts to take shortcuts.’

  ‘You mean you see things?’

  I laugh at that, especially as Ruth has padded up behind me and is rubbing her ears against the backs of my legs.

  ‘You’d better believe it, kid,’ she purrs.

  ‘We all see things,’ I say. ‘It’s a matter of degree.’ I point at the moon. ‘Look at the moon, for instance, suspended in the sky. But we both know that we are whirling around the sun at thousands of miles an hour, and the moon is moving around us. But we perceive it to be hanging there. And it’s even more complicated than that, because by the time the light from the moon reaches our eyes, it’s already moved. Now look at the stars. Each one we see as a bright point of light, but that’s just a matter of perception. The stars themselves are millions upon millions of miles away, so far away that it takes light millions of years to get to us. So it’s perfectly possible that the star itself burnt out thousands of years ago, but because the light is still getting here we perceive that the star exists. And the reverse applies to the blackness between the stars. There might be stars in those spaces that have recently been created, but the light won’t get here for millions of years. So the stars that you see tonight might no longer exist, and the ones that do exist you can’t see. Which is reality, and which is your perception of reality?’ She looks suitably confused, and now so am I.

  ‘But that applies to all of us, Leif. We all have to filter our surroundings through our senses.’

  ‘Of course we do. But that means that everybody has their own sense of what is real and what isn’t. Everything we experience is based on a series of assumptions and approximations. We see the stars so we assume they are there. We perceive that the moon is still even though we know it is hurtling through space. You’d be surprised just how many of your senses are dependent on assumptions. Try telling the difference between whisky and brandy with your eyes closed, or see if you can tell the difference between an apple and a pear by taste alone. Most people can’t. You just assume that an apple will taste like an apple, and so on. It’s the brain’s responsibility to gather all the information, and then to use logic and assumption to put together the overall picture. So your view of reality depends on the way your brain processes the information. Take ten eyewitnesses to an accident and ask them to describe what happened and you’ll get ten different versions - ask any traffic cop.’

  Ruth butts my left knee with her head and purrs. ‘You’re gonna confuse her, you know,’ she says. ‘Her eyes are starting to mist over.’

  I look at Helen Gwynne’s gorgeous blue eyes but they don’t seem to me to be misting over. Maybe Ruth is jealous.

  ‘You wish, Jack.’

  Helen brushes a strand of her straight blond hair away from her forehead and with a flick of her neck sends a wave of yellow over her shoulder where it sways and ripples. ‘But I still don’t see how that causes Dreamers such problems,’ she says, frowning.

  ‘OK, it’s because your brain makes assumptions based on past experience. My brain makes assumptions based on the creative bit of my mind. And part of the creative bit lies in the subconscious, where I don’t have any influence over it. The more I use my conscious mind to create alternative realities, then the more my subconscious mind does the same.’ This is exactly the sort of conversation I should have had with Archie Walker, it would have given him enough to fill a dozen textbooks, I’m sure. I’m not even sure why I’m opening up to Helen Gwynne. Maybe it’s because she’s no threat to me or my contract.

  ‘Maybe it’s the eyes,’ says Ruth.

  Helen’s eyes (they are a beautiful shade of blue) open wider. ‘But that’s madness,’ she says quietly, her hand up against her cheek, the five scarlet-painted nails sharp against her skin.

  ‘Yeah,’ I agree, ‘that’s what it is. That’s why so many Dreamers don’t get to finish their contracts. They go mad. They see things that aren’t there. Their subconscious minds start creating their own version of reality.’

  ‘Like what? What happens?’

  ‘Sometimes it’s simple things like tastes getting mixed up, or smells not being right. That’s how it starts. Then you start to see things. You look at a chair and you see a chair and then you look away and when you look back it’s a rhinoceros, until you concentrate on it and then it becomes a chair again. It usually happens when your conscious mind is occupied on something else. In really bad cases concentrating isn’t enough, and the subconscious reality becomes every bit as real as the actual reality, if you see what I mean. And when you get to that stage, it’s usually too late.’

  ‘That really happens?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘It happens. More often than not, it happens. Soon after I’d laid down my second psi-disc I met a Dreamer called Willie Corriere, just by chance I saw him using his black chipcard in a bar and I started talking to him. Every so often he would say something to the space next to him and glare at it. I asked him what he was doing and he told me that my friend kept interrupting him. There was nobody there and when I told him that he started swearing and shouting, directing his anger at me. I calmed him down eventually with the aid of a bottle of whisky and that’s when I found out what the Corporation neglects to tell first-time Dreamers. Willie had got so good at creating characters that he did it subconsciously, and he did it so well that they formed part of his reality. He had no way of knowing whether a person was his creation or a ‘real’ person. Willie was going mad and he was taken into a Corporation rest home six months later, two-thirds of the way through his contract.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘What do you mean, do you mean do I see things? The answer is yes, every now and again.’

  ‘But how do you stop yourself going mad? How do you keep a grip on real reality as you keep calling it?’

  I smile and look at Ruth who gives me the Cat Smile back, her head tilted to one side, her eyes narrowed and amused. There is a limit to how much I’ll tell this woman, and we’ve just reached it. Ruth is my secret, and she has to stay that way. Ruth is my safety valve, she keeps me sane. Through her I can determine what is, and what isn’t, real. Anything, or anybody, which reacts to her in any way does not exist. And she is always 100 per cent honest with me. If I ask her
if something is the product of my imagination she will tell me and she will tell the truth. Ruth came into my life before I got to the stage where I was seeing things, well, major things anyway. I was already losing my grip on taste and smell, and colours would occasionally shift, but I wasn’t seeing non-real people. And even now, after nine psi-discs, I have my subconscious creativity under control, with just the occasional slips. But I can’t tell Helen Gwynne any of that, so I wave the glass of Japanese whisky under her nose and tell her that it’s the drink that keeps me on the straight and narrow. She turns away from the window and goes back to the sofa to light her third cigarette.

  ‘Do you not realise, Leif, that if the psi-discs can have that much effect on the professionals, the Dreamers, then they must be just as dangerous for the average viewers, especially for children?’

  ‘I don’t agree. I think it’s the same genetic ability to create the psi-discs that makes the Dreamers susceptible to the hallucinations. The average viewer isn’t sensitive enough to be affected.’

  ‘But that’s only your theory,’ she says, and I have to agree with that. ‘So, will you help us?’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But only after I’ve finished my contract.’

  ‘Which is when?’

  ‘Three weeks, maybe earlier. I’ll call you.’

  She gets to her feet again with the rustle of silk. ‘Promise me one thing,’ she says.

  ‘What’s that?’

  She takes a long pull on her cigarette and inhales the smoke, holding it deep in her lungs before letting it out slowly and sensually, watching me all the time from under lowered lids. ‘If you come across anything that you think helps the Crusade’s case, something that is so important it won’t wait, then get in touch with me immediately. Will you promise me that?’

  I say yes, and I mean it, not because I have a burning urge to spill the beans on CBS Corporation but because if I do turn up anything nasty then I might, just might, need some sort of insurance.

  She puts the cigarette out in the ashtray and I follow her to the door, my eyes on the sway of her hips. She holds out her hand and I shake it, feeling the pressure of her nails against my flesh and we say goodnight and then she’s gone. As the door closes behind her I realise I have been holding my breath.

  ‘Nice,’ I say.

  ‘If you like that sort of thing,’ hisses Ruth, who obviously doesn’t. ‘Are we going out, or what?’

  *

  There is a hefty bouncer in a stained dinner jacket guarding the entrance to the bar and holding at least a dozen people at bay, most of them in their very best party gear. I make to walk past him and his arm descends like a portcullis, blocking the doorway at neck height. Ruth walks by him, her nose in the air.

  ‘We’re full, sir,’ says the bouncer, with the emphasis on the ‘sir’. It’s not immediately obvious what has got up his nose, my pullover or the baseball hat, or maybe just the fact that I’m at least twice the age of the rest of the would-be revelers trying to get in to his exclusive establishment.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, as an afterthought.

  I fish into my wallet and show him the black Corporation chipcard. His eyebrows threaten to leap off his forehead and he takes his arm away. He says ‘sorry’ again and this time he sounds as if he means it. Dreamers are generally big spenders and it would be more than his job is worth to offend one.

  Ruth is waiting for me inside, sitting on the edge of a darkened dance floor watching the boys and girls at play. Most of them are rich kids with dads in high places, a scattering of drug dealers and young girls on the make, all frantically jerking around the floor as if their lives depended on it. None of them look like Dreamers. How can I tell? It’s in the eyes, like with policemen.

  The music is loud and throbbing, and my head starts to pulse in time with the beat. Ruth pulls a face. ‘So this is where the beautiful people hang out,’ she says and I can see that she’s not impressed.

  We skirt the edge of the floor together, changing colour with the overhead lights. There is a long bar to the left of the dance floor with a line of stools, all of them occupied. The men look intense and well groomed and the women look available and expensive and I look out of place. I get a few strange glances. Nobody else seems to be wearing a pullover and a baseball hat.

  One of the barmen, in a crisp white shirt and black bow tie, catches my eye and I ask for a Kumagai malt and ice. I hand him the chipcard, which turns a few heads at the bar. Suddenly I become more than just a guy in a funny hat.

  I sip the drink and wander along the bar towards a semicircle of booths beyond the dance floor, hidden in the gloom. Ruth walks ahead, taking care not to bump into anyone, her ears alert, eyes flicking from side to side, in hunting mode.

  There are two of them in the booth at the far right, both in their teens with faraway looks in the eyes, as if they’re not giving their full attention to the world around them. As if they know of a better world. One of them is tall with shoulder length yellow hair and a faint blond shadow of a moustache that is speckled with a white powder. He is sniffing a lot and keeps reaching up to pinch his nostrils. The other is a good head shorter, also blond, but his hair is curly, like a Greek god’s, and he is pretty in a girlish way. The two of them are giggling with a couple of bimbos in low-cut dresses and lots of gold jewellery but it’s clear that the girls are just there for decoration.

  I stand and watch for a while, toying with my drink, with Ruth sitting by my side, until the taller of the two notices me.

  He looks up aggressively and sniffs, reaching up to brush his powder-crusted nose. ‘Hey man, get your face out of my space,’ he says.

  ‘A poet,’ says Ruth. ‘A veritable poet.’

  I take my black chipcard out of my back pocket and show it to him and he looks as surprised as the bouncer.

  ‘Leif Ableman,’ I say. ‘Can I join you?’

  The two youngsters look at each other and then back at me. ‘Leif Ableman?’ says the tall one.

  ‘The Leif Ableman?’ says the short one.

  ‘Good grief,’ says Ruth.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Can I talk with you guys?’

  ‘Sure, sure,’ says the tall one and waves the bimbos away. ‘We’ll catch you girls later,’ he says with a total lack of conviction. They give me a stony look as they move off. They do not seem happy.

  ‘Put anything you want on our tab,’ the tall boy shouts and the girls cheer up, but it is still clear that I am not their flavour of the month.

  ‘They obviously don’t know who Leif Ableman is,’ purrs Ruth.

  ‘Sit, sit,’ says the short one, who introduces himself as Robbie Menzies. ‘And I’m Rick Mcgee,’ says the one with long hair.

  I’ve heard of both of them, Robbie has laid down two discs, one about a rock band on tour and the other a gritty police drama, and Rick has done three, one of which went platinum.

  ‘Hey man, your Macbeth was the greatest,’ says Rick, sniffing again. ‘They made us do it at school and I thought it was gonna be a bummer but it was out of sight. That was about six months before I took the test myself. I’m gonna try and do one of the classics myself, maybe Hamlet, what do you think?’

  ‘Go for it,’ I say.

  ‘Hard work or what?’ asks Robbie.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘The Macbeth one took months of research, and you’ve got less flexibility when it comes to plot and characterisation, but that can be a good thing too. You should try it…..it’s good discipline.’

  The two of them nod enthusiastically and Robbie orders another round of drinks. ‘You want some coke?’ asks Rick, and he doesn’t mean the fizzy stuff.

  ‘Thanks but no thanks,’ I say.

  ‘Ever try it?’ he asks and I tell him I’ve tried everything there is to try and that on my list of best experiences the white powder comes less than half way up and that I can think of at least three other pastimes that end in nosebleeds which are twice as much as fun. I smile when I say it so that he knows I’m jok
ing because I don’t want to piss him off. He laughs and says yeah, he knows what I mean.

  ‘When are you two guys gonna be laying down your next discs?’ I ask. ‘Four months,’ says Rick.

  ‘Five,’ says Robbie. ‘You?’

  ‘Less than three weeks,’ I reply, ‘it’s my tenth’ and the two of them do a double take, looking at each other with open mouths and then back to me.

  ‘Wow!’ says Robbie. ‘I’ve never met a Dreamer who’s done nine.’ And I’ve never met anyone above the age of six who says Wow.

  Ruth looks at me wide-eyed. ‘Did he just say Wow?’ she asks, and shakes her head sorrowfully.

  ‘Hey man, you should be celebrating,’ says Rick, and running the back of his hand under his nose. ‘One more and you’re home free.’

  ‘Wow!’ says Robbie again.

  ‘I’ll celebrate after the event,’ I say.

  The fresh drinks arrive and I take mine off the waitress’ tray and raise it in salute.