Keeper of Dreams

by Orson Scott Card

  “This is pointless,” said Douglas. “I’m still primordial ooze. I can’t regress any farther than that.”

  “I want you in hell,” said Jack.

  “But I won’t go to hell. I don’t have any karma at all yet.”

  “You personally released the pigs on me twice last time. Tonight you’re never going to be reincarnated.”

  “Grudge-holding is beneath you, Jack.”

  Jack burst into a country-music song.

  If I can’t hold me a woman,

  Then a grudge will have to do.

  The woman I’d hold against myself,

  But the grudge I’ll hold against you.

  Rainie had never heard the song before, so she figured he had made it up. The tune was actually pretty good.

  The pigs were about to start charging down the pigpath when Jack played her former card adding two pigs to the pen. Now there were even more pigs on the path, and since they leapfrogged instead of taking turns, the pigs were bound to reach Douglas. Each pig that got to him would cost him two life-pennies, except for Momma, who would cost him four. Since everybody started with only ten life-pennies, he was doomed.

  “I need the lobster dice,” said Douglas.

  “You need an angel from heaven,” said Jack.

  Tom handed Jack the two bad karma cards he got for playing evil power cards.

  “Oh, these are bad,” sad Jack.

  “Only what you deserve,” said Douglas.

  “Well, before we sic the pigs on you, Dougie, let’s try this.” Whereupon Jack laid down another of Rainie’s old cards, the one that allowed him to swap karma with Douglas. Since Douglas had none and Jack had two bad karma cards, it meant that when Douglas died his karmic balance would be negative and he’d go to hell.

  “You are one seriously evil dude tonight, Jack,” said Raymond. “I like your style. Let’s see what happens with this one.” He laid down an evil power card that said:

  “ANGRY OINKERS”

  DOUBLES THE DAMAGE OF

  ALL PIGS ON A GIVEN PIG

  ATTACK

  “Hey, how dead can I get?” asked Douglas.

  “We won’t find out on this turn,” said Grandpa. He laid down a good power card that said:

  “FAIR IS FAIR”

  Causes the person

  who released the

  pigs to take the

  damage from a

  pig attack (only

  when pigs are

  released on

  someone else)

  “Son of a gun!” shouted Jack. “You can’t do this to me!”

  “Can so.”

  “I’m not even on a pigpath!” It was true. Jack’s playing piece—the plastic triceratops—was on a square with no path connecting it to the pigpen.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Tom. “You’re taking the damage from the attack on Douglas, so the pigs will still follow his pigpath.”

  “And since you just played that evil power on Douglas switching your karma, you get a new evil power card of your very own,” said Grandpa. “So if you die, you’ll go to hell.”

  The pigs started down the path. As each baby pig advanced to a new dot on the path, Jack got to roll one die. If he got a one or a two, the pig was “popped” and returned to the pen. He wasn’t lucky—he only popped two pigs, so five reached him and he was dead before Momma could even start her run down the path.

  Just before the last pig reached him, though, he played the other Release-the-Pigs card that he had got from Rainie, and since this one was “for the good of the whole” he got a good karma card for it. “Ha!” he said. “It’s a ten and my bad karma card was only a four. I’ll go to heaven, and Douglas still has to face the pigs!”

  So once again the pigs were lined up and started down the path. Rainie looked again at the cards she had gotten from Jack. One of them said:

  “PERHAPS I CAN HELP”

  Allows you to heal

  another player of

  all damage.

  (Will not work after

  they have been

  killed)

  She waited until Douglas was down to his last two life-pennies, and played the card.

  “You are my hero,” he said.

  “You’re just too young to die,” said Rainie.

  “There’s still some more pigs,” Jack pointed out.

  “Not enough to kill me,” said Douglas.

  “But,” said Tom, “what if Momma rides again!” He slapped down an evil power card that said:

  “MOMMA RIDES AGAIN”

  CAUSES THE MOMMA PIG TO COME

  DOWN THE PATH TWICE.

  “This has gone too far!” cried Cecil. “I say Momma is drunk as a skunk.” He laid down a good power card called “SOUSED SOW” that was supposed to keep Momma home.

  “I hate do-gooders,” said Raymond. He laid down an evil power card that said:

  “I HATE

  DO-GOODERS”

  Allows you to

  cancel a Good

  power before it

  takes effect

  “So Momma rides twice,” said Tom. “That’ll be eight life-pennies if she makes it both times, and that plus the two babies and you could die, Douglas.”

  “Good to know,” said Douglas. “Is this how you talk to your patients?”

  “I’m a dermatologist,” said Tom. “My patients don’t die, they just put bags over their heads.”

  “Let’s make sure of this,” said Raymond, laying down another card.

  “PIGS CAN FLY”

  PIGS MOVE 2 SQUARES

  EACH STEP INSTEAD OF 1

  “I’m dead,” said Douglas. And it was true. The pigs came down the path, Momma twice, and all his life-pennies were gone.

  “Dead and in hell,” said Jack cheerfully.

  “Boy am I nice,” said Grandpa, laying down a card.

  “Not ‘Boy Am I Nice’!” wailed Jack.

  But it was the Boy-Am-I-Nice card. Grandpa took on himself all of the bad karma Douglas had gotten from Jack, leaving Douglas with no karma at all. “And that counts as good karma,” said Douglas, “and so I go to heaven.”

  “No, no, no,” moaned Jack.

  “I’m in heaven while you’re in hell, Jack,” said Douglas. “Which is the natural order of the universe.”

  “Do people get to stay in heaven if they gloat?” asked Rainie.

  “Absolutely. It’s about the only fun thing that people in heaven are allowed to do,” said Grandpa.

  “And you should know, Grandpa,” said Jack.

  “All my old friends have gone to heaven,” said Grandpa, “and not one of them is having any fun at all.”

  “They talk to you?” asked Rainie.

  “No. They send me postcards that say ‘Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.’ They’re all gloating.”

  The game went on, the power cards flying thick and fast, with everybody praying like crazy to get more power cards. When someone didn’t have enough beans to pray, somebody would invariably lend him a few. And Rainie noticed that there actually was a remarkable amount of bean-stealing when people weren’t looking. In the meantime, Douglas had eaten every single brown peanut M&M in the bowl. “It really does look more festive when you do that,” said Rainie.

  “Do what?”

  “Take the brown ones out. It looks so much brighter.”

  “Sometimes he leaves only the red and green ones,” said Raymond. “At Christmastime, especially.”

  Douglas got out of heaven after three turns there, and before long he had caught up with the others—or rather, the others had been sent back or killed or whatever so often that he was about even with them. Jack, however, was never even able to get past the slime stage and up to the level of newt. “The game knows,” said Douglas. “Slime thou art, and slime thou shalt remain.”

  “Makes me want to go wash,” said Jack.

  “That’s a question,” said Douglas. “If slime washed, what would it wash off? I mean, wha
t seems dirty to slime?”

  The game ebbed and flowed, people ganging up on each other and then, at odd moments, pitching in and helping somebody out with a good power card. Rainie began to realize that crazy as it was, this game really was like life. Even though people could only do to each other whatever was permitted by the power cards they randomly drew, it took on the rhythms of life. Things would be going great, and then something bad would happen and everything would look hopeless, and then you’d come back from the dead and the dice would be with you again and you’d be OK. They didn’t take it easy on Rainie, and she played with the same gusto as everyone else, but the dice were with her, so that she seemed to make up her losses quite easily, and seemed to have exactly the power card she needed time after time.

  Then Rainie prayed successfully to the Baby of Sorrow and the evil card she drew was an event, not a power.

  “TAKE A BREAK”

  EVERYONE RELAX, EAT SOME

  FOOD (AT HOST’S EXPENSE),

  CALL YOUR SPOUSES OR

  WHATEVER. AFTER ALL,

  WHAT’S LIFE FOR?

  “About time!” said Tom. “I’m hungry.”

  “You’ve had your hands in the potato chips all night,” said Douglas.

  “That just means my hands are greasy.”

  “Nobody can eat just one,” added Raymond.

  They were already up from the table and moving toward the kitchen. “Should I draw another power card to replace this?” asked Rainie.

  “Naw,” said Jack. “When the card says take a break, we take a break. You can finish your turn when we get back.”

  In the kitchen, Douglas was nuking some lasagna.

  “It doesn’t have that revolting cottage cheese this time, does it?” Raymond was asking when Rainie came in.

  “It’s ricotta cheese,” said Douglas.

  “Oh, excuse me, ri cotta cheese.”

  “And I made the second pan without it, just for you.”

  “Oh, I have to wait for the second pan, eh?”

  “Wait for it or wear it,” said Douglas.

  Rainie pitched in and helped, but she noticed that none of them seemed to expect her to do the dishes. They cleaned up after themselves right along, so that the kitchen never got disgusting. They weren’t really little boys after all.

  The lasagna was pretty good, though of course the microwave heated it unevenly so that half of it was burning hot and the other half was cold. She carried her plate into the family room, where most of them were eating.

  “They’ll call them ‘the oughts,’ ” Grandpa was saying.

  “They’ll call what ‘the oughts’?” asked Rainie.

  “The first ten years of the next century. You know, ‘ought-one,’ ‘ought-two.’ When I was a kid people still remembered the oughts, and people always talked about them that way. ‘Back in ought-five.’ Like that.”

  “Yeah, but back then they still used the word ought for zero, too,” said Douglas. “Nobody’d even know what it meant today.”

  “People won’t use ought even if they ought to,” said Tom. Several of the men near him dipped a finger into whatever they were drinking and flicked a little of the liquid onto Tom, who bowed his head graciously.

  “What about zero?” said Raymond. “Just call the first two decades ‘the zeroes’ and ‘the teens.’ ”

  “People aren’t going to say ‘zero-five,’ ” said Douglas. “Besides, zero has such a negative connotation. ‘Last year was a real zero.’ ”

  “Aren’t there any other words for zero?” asked Rainie.

  “I’ve got it!” said Tom. “The zips! Zip-one, zip-two, zip-three.”

  “That’s it!” cried Raymond.

  Douglas tried it out. “‘Back in zip-nine, when Junior got his Ph.D.’ That works pretty well. It has style.”

  “ ‘I know what’s happening, you young whippersnapper,’ ” said Cecil, putting on an old man’s voice. “ ‘I remember the nineties! I didn’t grow up in the zips, like you.’ ”

  “This is great!” said Tom. “Let’s write to our congressman and get it made into a law. The next decade will be called ‘the zips’!”

  “Don’t make it a law, or they’ll find a way to tax it,” said Raymond.

  “Fine with me,” said Tom, “if I get a percentage for having thought of it.”

  Rainie noticed when Grandpa got up, set his plate down, and stepped outside. Probably going for a smoke, thought Rainie. And now that she thought of smoking, she wanted to. And now that she wanted to, she found herself getting up without a second thought. It was cold outside, she knew, and her coat wasn’t that warm, but she needed to get out there.

  And not just for the cigarette. In fact, when she got outside and looked into her purse, she realized that she didn’t have any cigarettes. When had she stopped carrying them? How long had she not even noticed that she didn’t have any?

  “Nasty habit,” said Grandpa.

  She turned. He was sitting on the porch swing. Not smoking.

  “I thought you came out here to smoke,” said Rainie.

  “Naw,” he said. “I just got to thinking about the people I knew who remembered the oughts, and I liked thinking about them, and so I came out here so I could hold the thought without getting distracted.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “No problem,” said Grandpa. “I’m old enough that my thoughts aren’t very complicated anymore. I get hold of one, it just goes around and around until it bumps into a dead brain cell and then I just stand there and wonder what I was thinking about.”

  “You’re not so old,” said Rainie. “You hold your own with those young men in there.”

  “I am so old. And they aren’t all that young anymore, either.”

  He was right. This was definitely a party of middle-aged men. Rainie thought back to the beginning of her career and remembered that in those days, people in their forties seemed so powerful. They were the Establishment, the ones to be rebelled against. But now that she was in her forties herself she understood that if anything middle-aged people were less powerful than the young. They had less chance of changing anything. They seemed to fit into the world, not because they had made the world the way it was or because they even particularly liked it, but because they had to fit in so they could keep their jobs and feed their families. That’s what I never understood when I was young, thought Rainie. I knew it with my head, but not with my heart—that pressure of feeding a family.

  Or maybe I did know it, and hated what it did to people. To my parents. Maybe that’s why my marriages didn’t last and I never had any babies. Because I never wanted to be forty.

  Surprise. I’m past forty anyway, and lonely to boot.

  “I’ve got a question I want you to answer,” she said to Grandpa. “Straight, no jokes.”

  “I knew you’d get around to asking.”

  “Oh, really?” she said. “Since you’re so knowledgeable, do you happen to know what the question is?”

  “Maybe.” Grandpa got up and walked near her and leaned against the porch railing, whistling. The breath came out of his mouth in a continuous little puff of vapor.

  He looked unbearably smug, and Rainie longed to take him down just a notch. “OK, what did I want to know?”

  “You want to know why I called you a ghost.”

  That was exactly what she wanted to ask, but she couldn’t stand to admit that he was right. “That wasn’t my question, but as long as you bring it up, why did you say that? If it was a joke I didn’t get it. You hurt my feelings.”

  “I said it because it’s true. You’re just haunting us. We can see you, but we can’t touch you in any way.”

  “I have been touched in a hundred places since I came here.”

  “You got nothing at risk here, Ida Johnson,” said Grandpa. “You don’t care.”

  Rainie thought of Minnie. Of Douglas and his kids. “You’re wrong, Grandpa Spaulding. I care very much.”

  �
�You care with your heart, maybe, but not with your soul. You care with those feelings that come and go like breezes, nothing that’s going to last. You’re playing with house money here. No matter how it comes out, you can’t lose. You’re going to come away from Harmony, Illinois, with more than you brought here.”

  “Maybe so,” said Rainie. “Is that a crime?”

  “No ma’am. Just a discovery. Something I noticed about you and I didn’t think you’d noticed about yourself.”

  “Well ain’t you clever, Grandpa.” She smiled when she said it, so he’d know she was teasing him, not really being snide. But it hurt her feelings all over again, mostly because she could see now that he was right. How could anything she did here be real, after all, when nobody even knew her right name? In a way Ida Johnson was her right name—it was her mother’s name, anyway, and didn’t Douglas Spaulding have the same name as his father? Didn’t he give the same name to his son? Why couldn’t she use her mother’s name? How was that a lie, really, when you looked at it the right way? “Ain’t you clever. You found out my secret. Grandpa Spaulding, Grey Detective. Sees a strange woman in his parlor one November evening and all at once he knows everything there is to know about her.”

  Grandpa waited a moment before answering. And his answer wasn’t really an answer. More like he just let slip whatever her words made him think of. “My brother Tom and I did that one summer. Kept a list of Discoveries and Revelations. Like noticing that you were a ghost.”

  Every time he said it, it stung her deeper. Still, she tried to keep her protest playful-sounding. “When you prick me, do I not bleed?”

  He ignored her. “We made another list, too. Rites and Ceremonies. All the things we always did every year, we wrote them down, too, when we did them that summer. First stinkbug we stepped on. First harvest of dandelions.”

  “They got chemicals to kill the dandelions now,” said Rainie.

  “Stinkbugs, too, for that matter,” said Grandpa. “Very convenient.”

  Rainie looked through the window. “They’re settling back down to play the game in there.”

  “Go on back in then, if you want. Haunt whoever you want. Us mortals can’t determine your itinerary.”