“You’re … time-travelers?” said David, amazed as the thought finally hit him.
“No,” said the professor, the look on his face becoming suddenly wistful. “You are. I can only dream.”
Petra shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “All this talk! Professor, wouldn’t it be easier to just show him?”
“I’ve already made arrangements for that,” the professor replied. “David, you’re going to need to accept all this as quickly as possible if you’re going to be any use to us. So, what do you think? You’ve been dreamwalking accidentally for about a year now, but are you ready to do it deliberately? Are you ready to free your mind, to become — in a sense — your own ghost?”
David didn’t know what to say, but if these two were playing some trick on him, they were very good actors. And suppose it was true? What the professor had said about Eddie certainly sounded right. The dream-Eddie had always seemed the scientist type — constantly asking questions and never just accepting the answers, writing everything down in those notebooks of his. His own grandfather! Besides, no matter what was coming next, no matter how incredible it all sounded, there was no way he was going to look bad by showing fear. And he couldn’t help liking the way Petra was looking at him.
He nodded. “You said I can be useful in some way. How?”
“Come with me,” said the professor, standing, “and I’ll show you.”
David was led out of the stone chamber and into a wide corridor of metal and glass. People bustled down it purposefully, carrying folders or box files, and one man was pushing a cart loaded with enormous, crumbling leather-bound books, which seemed entirely out of place in the strange modern surroundings. David wanted to ask about this but stopped at the sight of two teenagers running down the corridor. Even the most officious-looking adults stepped aside to let them pass. Both were wearing the same kind of black suit as Petra. But though it appeared featureless from the front, on the back, where the wearer couldn’t see it, was a bizarre logo: a sleeping face, with a third, open eye in its forehead.
“What’s the outfit for?” David whispered to Petra.
“The science guys call this a ‘zero-retention suit,’” Petra said, making a face as she spoke. Then she nodded to the professor, who had walked ahead to talk into a mobile phone. “They love to give things stupid names. What they mean is it’s completely plain so that your dreaming mind retains no memory of it. That way, you can easily mask it when you’re dreamwalking.”
David said nothing, but Petra must have seen the confusion on his face, because she flashed him one of her brilliant smiles.
“Ah, don’t worry — it will all be clear soon. And don’t be too impressed by any of the science guys, not even the professor. We are the important ones here — no one over eighteen can dreamwalk reliably. The adult mind is just too rigid. The science guys would be nothing without us.”
The corridor ended in a wide, circular cavern with further metal corridors radiating out of it, some descending steeply while others rose and disappeared into the rocky ceiling. Everything was lit artificially — David couldn’t see a single window or skylight. He felt completely disorientated as the professor led him up a spiral staircase and into yet another corridor. Here they headed toward a wide doorway that was lit with a rich golden glow.
The professor hung up and slipped his phone into his jacket. “Tell me,” he said to David, “are your eyes sensitive to bright or flickering light?”
David wasn’t sure what was expected of him, so he just shrugged.
“Take one of these anyway,” the professor said, removing several pairs of sunglasses from his pocket. He held them out to David like a conjuror about to perform a trick. David took the coolest-looking pair, glancing at the light ahead and wondering what on earth he was about to see.
They came out onto a gallery halfway up a vast cavern that rose above them like the inside of an aircraft hangar. The professor produced a big pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses and forced them over his normal spectacles. He walked to the rail and pointed over the edge with a dramatic gesture. David put his sunglasses on and edged forward. When he saw what was there his mouth fell open.
Below them was a wide, hectic workspace, filled with people and oversized computer monitors. There was a strong smell of hot plastic and fresh coffee, and from somewhere in the haze far above David heard the unsteady hum of straining air-conditioning units. Throughout the cavern, men and women sat or stood squinting into the screens, discussing what they saw or bustling about over bundled cables to compare notes on clip pads and pocket displays. The atmosphere was not only energetic, it was slightly panicky, and David couldn’t tell if the waves of heat that rose from the room below were from the computers or the heads of the scientists themselves.
At the far end, the wall was made entirely of darkened glass, and David could see nothing through it. The gallery where he was standing ran right around the chamber, following an irregular circle along what was clearly a natural rock wall. There were glass-fronted offices all along it, dug back into the stone.
But it was the thing in the center of the room that made David stare.
Floating in space above a circular dais was a huge sphere of colored light. Its surface was a rainbow mass of swirling shapes, and yet David could clearly see more colors and living swirls right down into the very heart of it. His eyes just couldn’t decide whether to focus on its surface or its interior. He couldn’t begin to comprehend what he was looking at, but despite this — or perhaps because of it — it was by far the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. It lit the cavern like a captive sun.
“Amazing!” he said.
“Welcome to the Map Room of the Dreamwalker Project.” The professor grinned from behind his retro shades. “When we get to my office, I’ll tell you what this means and precisely what we do here, but right now I want you to look at this. What do you think that pretty holographic sphere is showing?”
David looked again at the ball of wondrous light. A hologram? Glancing down, he saw that a group of six people were standing below it, pointing to a small jagged black mark amid the tumbling colored swirls and talking over each other in strained voices. He tried again to focus on the sphere, but it just seemed to be a mass of shifting colored smudges. Breathtaking and fizzing with energy, but meaningless.
“I suppose you want me to believe that this thing shows people’s dreams,” said David slowly. “Is that what they’re all looking at?”
“Not quite,” said the professor. “That sphere is the Metascape Map, a four-dimensional hologram charting all possible places and all possible times. You don’t need to worry about that right now; all you need to know is that we can use this Map to locate and follow people like you — dreamwalkers, that is. This is how I know about your dream, David. We’ve been using this Map to protect you, but also to protect a very special young man who was your own age in the year 1940.”
“Eddie?”
“Eddie. But while we can bring you here safely with us, I’m afraid Eddie isn’t so fortunate. In fact, right now there’s nothing we can do to help him at all. You see, Edmund Utherwise has disappeared, and we need your help to find him again. Because if we don’t, if our enemies find him first —”
The old man seemed suddenly unable to speak, his face becoming grim behind his dark glasses.
“Enemies?” said David. “Wait. In my dream there was a boy on Eddie’s roof. I’d never seen him there before, but —”
“Last time you dreamed about Eddie,” Petra said, coming to stand beside David, her own eyes protected by a stylish pair of dark glasses, “there was another dreamwalker there. And if the professor can’t find words to describe him I certainly can!”
“All right, Petra, all right.” The professor stared out at the hologram. “David, the boy you saw was Adam Lang. He is the strongest and most capable dreamwalker we have ever known, and something of a hero to us here at Unsleep House, but —”
“Hero?” Petra spat th
e word out. “He’s nothing more than a traitor and a murderer!”
The professor held up his hand. “Okay, Petra! David, I’m sorry to say that about a week ago Adam Lang decided to turn his back on his friends and his years of good service here. He has gone over to join our enemies.”
“The Haunting.” Petra spoke the word as though it tasted foul on her tongue.
“Haunting … what?” said David. “And why’s this Adam after Eddie? What’s Eddie done to him?”
“Well, it’s not what Eddie has done, it’s what Eddie will do when he grows up that Adam’s really after. As I told you, Eddie devoted his life to trying to understand the ghostly visits you made to him as a child, and eventually, as an adult, he succeeded. He is the one who unraveled the secrets of dreamwalking in the first place, David, the man who set up the Dreamwalker Project, who built all this.”
The professor swept his arm around the vast chamber of light and science.
“But there are other dreamwalkers out there. Some have been banded together in a group known as the Haunting. For them, the ability to dreamwalk is nothing less than the power to change history. They certainly think nothing of destroying lives in order to get what they want. That’s why we’ve had to keep Eddie such a closely guarded secret, and you too, David. But Adam knows everything. We trusted him with everything!”
By now the professor was gripping the rail so tightly his knuckles were showing white.
“And now he’s decided to give his new masters what they’ve wanted for years — the utter destruction of Unsleep House, the only thing that stands in their way — by arranging the early death of Eddie Utherwise.”
“So last night, when I saw Adam on Eddie’s roof — ?”
“Last night was Adam’s first attempt,” Petra said. “Originally Eddie was never at home during the air raid that destroyed his house; he was in a shelter when it happened. But Adam changed that part of his history — he made Eddie go home. And because he was from the future, Adam knew precisely the moment the bombs would fall.”
“Made him go there?” David shook his head as he tried to take in what he was hearing. “But Eddie’s smart — why would he do something so stupid?”
“Because of you,” said Professor Feldrake. “Don’t forget, you were his inspiration — you’re Eddie’s ghost. All Adam had to do was disguise himself as you and tell Eddie to go home, and Eddie obeyed. Eddie was fascinated by the mystery of his ghostly visitor, obsessed by it — he would have walked into an erupting volcano if someone promised him answers.”
“Then we have to warn him!” David was almost shouting now. “I have to do this dreamwalk thing — go back and tell Eddie someone’s after him!”
“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.” The professor’s lips tightened. Then he pointed at the Metascape Map, to where the jagged black line marred the rainbow brilliance of the sphere. “See that? It’s a change in the time line — the mark of history being altered. You may have saved Eddie from the fire, but afterward he ran away, potentially deviating completely from the original path of his life. What happens to him next hangs in the balance, but the longer he strays from his original history in the year 1940, the greater the danger to us here in the present. Which is why it’s so disastrous that we have no idea where he’s gone. But that’s where you come in.”
“Me? What makes you think I can help?”
“You’re his best friend, aren’t you?” Petra turned her sunglass-covered eyes directly onto him. “Of course you can help.”
“But that’s crazy! I just had some stupid dreams. How can I possibly know where he’s gone?”
“Maybe you don’t right now, but you’ll probably find that you do when you’ve given it some thought,” said the professor. “Because while Eddie may have seemed a little odd to you, he wasn’t just some awkward loner. He was entirely friendless. Edmund Utherwise had a fragile psychology, little understood at the time, and spent his whole disturbed childhood locked away by an overprotective mother. No matter how strange the circumstances of your friendship may seem to be, David, you’re the only one who knows the fourteen-year-old Eddie personally. You really are our best hope of finding him now.”
David said nothing. There was no mistaking the desperate hope in the old man’s voice or the trust in Petra’s smile. But he was bound to disappoint them. How on earth could he know where Eddie would have gone? They’d clearly picked the wrong person to help them, after all. It was just a matter of time before they realized it.
“Don’t worry.” The professor slapped him on the back, apparently mistaking his silence for simple nervousness. “You’ll get at least one training run, and help from some of our best dreamwalkers. You won’t be going back to 1940 alone. But first there’s something more you need to see.”
The old man put his arm on David’s shoulder and led him along the gallery. David didn’t resist. He just gazed deep into the crackling, scintillating sphere of the Metascape Map and tried to imagine where on earth Eddie could have got to.
Eddie was hiding.
It was dark where he was, and cold, but he knew that cold was good for burns. He pushed his cheek harder against the icy bricks and pulled his hair to try and focus his thoughts. But he couldn’t, not with the sounds of the fire that had just destroyed his home still roaring outside.
You nearly died, whispered the voice of Eddie’s doubt in his head. You were supposed to die …
Eddie shook his head into the bricks, but the voice went on.
Why else would David make you go home during an air raid? And why did he come back, if not to watch you burn? Kat was right …
“No,” Eddie said aloud. “He helped me. He got me out.”
YOU broke the window. You helped YOURSELF. Kat was right …
Eddie quickly patted down his coat, which was still smoldering in places, and for one awful moment he thought he’d lost his notebook. But no, there it was, still rolled up in his pocket. He took it out, reassured by the soft paper cover. Squatting down against the wall in a chink of light, he opened the book to a new page. He took out his pencil and started to write.
Q: What do I do now?
No confusing answers inside his head. The question was out now, on paper, ready to be dealt with in proper order in a place the voice couldn’t reach. He drew a circle around it. Eddie knew that every question was only the start, but this was as good a start as any. After all, what was he going to do now? There was no other choice but to keep writing.
A: Get warm — It’s freezing. But …
Q: Am I seriously hurt? Am I still in danger?
Because …
DAVID
Q: What do I do about David?
Eddie broke out into a sudden fit of coughing, pain shooting through his lungs with each convulsion. After a moment it passed, but when he put the pencil on the paper again he ignored the question about David and went back up to draw a ring around Am I seriously hurt? Then he drew a line off to one side. This had to be dealt with first because everything else depended on whether or not he should see a doctor, especially since blood was smudging the paper as he wrote. But Eddie really didn’t want to see a doctor.
He took himself on a quick mental tour of his aches, asking his body for answers. As they came to him he wrote furiously, willing the answers to be good news:
Pain: right ankle — hurts to walk, but nothing broken.
Pain: chest. I breathed in smoke. Lots of smoke.
Hurts to breathe.
Pain: hands and face. Burns. Water good for
burns …
Eddie stopped writing. He could actually hear running water. He was under a flight of stone steps by the back basement door of a house at the end of his street, and a thin stream of water was pouring down from the brick arch at the entrance. He tucked the book and pencil under his arm and cupped his hands in the water. It had to be from the hoses of the firefighters — Eddie could still hear the clamor they made as they fought the flames. This reminder of
the fire almost made him panic, but the water was so cold when he splashed it over his face that it shocked his mind back into focus. With his wet hand he explored his face lightly, then took up the pencil once more.
… burns not serious. Just painful.
Pain: hands — bleeding. Sharp?
Something hard was embedded in the heel of his right hand. He fumbled for it and gasped as he tugged out a sliver of glass. He closed his eyes tightly and shoved his bleeding hand back into the trickle of icy water until it went numb.
Only a fool would make friends with a ghost. Look how much he’s hurt you.
Eddie shook his head and dived back into the security of the page. On the list, he circled Pain: chest, drew a line away to the side, and crossed out the others. Of all his injuries, this was the only one that really worried him. He would have to take that into account when he decided what to do next, and as if to underline that, another coughing fit engulfed him.
When it had passed, Eddie snatched up his pencil and wrote the first thing that came to him.
Mother?
The word triggered vivid visions of home. He recalled it so vividly that he could almost smell it. How could he even begin to accept that it was gone, confined to the past by a brief moment of destruction? In his mind’s eye he saw his room, his books arranged in their proper order, the brown pattern of the wallpaper. He remembered his mother’s sad smile as she watched him from the door. He remembered how he sometimes found her crying …
Then Eddie saw that he’d written Father? without thinking.
He stared at the word for a moment before crossing it out in a smudge of blood and ink. He hated not being able to answer a question, to not even be able to begin answering it. He drew his pencil line away.
Q: What will Mother do?
The answer to this was so obvious that Eddie didn’t even write it down. She’d do what she had been threatening to do for months and send Eddie away from the bombing, to live with his aunt in the country. Now that their home was gone, Eddie’s mother would surely come too, but even this couldn’t make the prospect of his aunt’s house appealing, with its stuffy rooms and ticking clocks. Eddie found he’d almost crushed the end of the pencil between his teeth as he thought of her. His aunt was the rich one in the family, and therefore powerful. She also made no secret of the fact that she thought there was something wrong with Eddie.
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