Dreamhunter (11 page)

‘Any further questions?’ asked Grace Tiebold.

There were none.

THE HEAD RANGER
thanked Mrs Tiebold, and she spread her hands to herd the candidates from the room — out to the road and the short walk to the border. The rangers fell in behind her. The Head Ranger was surprised to see Grace Tiebold collect a pack from her car, shoulder it and set off along the road with this latest clutch.

The Head Ranger had, years before, stopped bothering to check the newspapers to see who had passed at each Try. The successful were always named in the same breathless, gossipy tones in which the social pages reported on who attended the Founderston Cup race day. It wasn’t worth following. He’d only notice them when they either became dreamhunters or came to work for the Body as rangers. However, on this occasion, the man did go back and ask one of his clerks for the day’s log to see the name of those who went In. The unlicensed eleven were easy to find. And there were only three girls.

‘Laura Hame,’ he read. That sombre, pretty child was the daughter of the dangerous Tziga Hame.

GRACE AND THE
dreamhunter guides left the eleven guarded by rangers at an encampment at A–8, under a group of trees from which the bark hung in blackened strips. The children spread their bedrolls on ground rubbed bald by successive visitors. Grace and the other hunters walked off out of range. The eleven had something to eat and drink, then lay down.

Laura slipped a black silk eye mask over her face. For the next few hours she listened to the ludicrous sound of coughs, sniffs, shuffles and giggles as the stage-struck eleven tried to settle. Someone got up to pee, then everyone did, including Laura. Once they’d done that — a mutual acknowledgement of nerves — the eleven settled somewhat. Laura noticed the sounds thin out as, one by one, the young people fell asleep.

She felt a lurching drop. It was as if she had been walking and had lost her footing on a tilting stone. She knew the feeling. It was what she always felt when she was in a dream palace and the dreamer fell asleep before she had. There was a moment when she teetered, and either fell in after them, or not — and the feeling would pass. Laura very nearly removed her eye shade and sat up to see who the real dreamhunter was, the one who just fell so hard into the Wild River. But she didn’t sit up, she continued to lie still and breathe deeply. She would go too. She could feel the Wild River beneath her, rushing by under her bedroll. ‘Ah,’ Laura thought, with relief, falling asleep,
dropping through dream water and white bubbles, ‘here it is —’

For a moment it seemed to the fleeing convict that he had fallen asleep on his feet, and had dropped through his weakness into a cold, stifling substance, like water. He found himself lying, gasping for breath, on the leaf litter of the forest floor.

The man knew he was finished. He was sick and tired. He couldn’t keep up with the others, who could coax but not carry him.

It was black dark in the forest. He and the others from the mass breakout were running, strung out along a ridge.

The man was glad at least to be out. He got up from the ground to struggle on to the clearing he could see ahead, a thinning of the trees on the ridge’s spine, where he’d be free of the forest and under the sky.

Another convict took his arm to help hurry him along. It was the young man from the cell next to his. They’d scarcely ever spoken, but had always stood together at the tubs to wash off the mine’s black grime. The young man hauled him along. Then the failing convict stumbled and was dragged a little further, skidding on his knees.

Several of the men nearest him in the ragged line stopped when the sick man fell in the clearing. They waited for him. But he looked up at the star-filled sky, and remained on his knees, swaying.

The man who had helped him began to call out to the others — his voice croaking. He was parched. He made no words, only a sound, a rattling scream. Back along the ridge a
line of torches moved through the trees. The pursuers. Their dogs would be bounding ahead of them, nosing along through the dusky forest, following the warm trails of the desperate convicts.

There were other fires burning, a long way down on the coast. Stationary fires, the convict thought. Bonfires maybe, bonfires on a beach. He imagined company, singing, fish baking in glowing embers. He turned full circle, looking one last time at all the open horizons, before running down to the trees again. He saw why the man beside him had cried out in despair. He saw that both coasts were visible from the ridge and that he and the other prisoners were being driven along a narrowing peninsula. He saw that, as the pursuers came on, their line grew tighter, the lights closer together, and that it would be impossible for any of the escaped convicts to double back to break through that line. He saw that the only real choice was to be swept along by that net and eventually be gathered up into it. He saw what was going to happen, and yet he ran.

He felt the raw surfaces of bone grate in his bad knee. He swung his leg out from the hip at each step as though meaning to fling it away from him.

The continuous line of light was closing on him. His fellows were scrambling ahead of him, grubby shapes in the acidic undergrowth of the dry forest.

He was all in, worn out by labour. For years he’d broken stone, and hauled stone. His hands were permanently cramped as though clutching a pick. He couldn’t run any further. He lay down to wait. He pressed his face into the leathery leaves on the forest floor.

A dog found him and leapt about, barking and snapping at the air over his head. One of the pursuers arrived and pushed it away. The light of the torches held over him made the long, dry gum leaves on which he lay look like dim flames and their shadows like a bed of coals. He heard one pursuer say to another, ‘This is the first. But what should I do with him?’

An overseer answered, ‘I’m tired of even feeding these people. They’re all ill-conditioned and I’m not going to trouble myself driving the worst of them back.’ He kicked the convict in the ribs. ‘Do you hear me?’ he said. ‘There’s nowhere to take you animals back to. When you set fire to the prison you burnt your own bridges.’

The convict realised he was about to be killed. The man was working himself up to it. The convict held out his hands, asking for mercy. In the torchlight he saw his clawed fingers, his broken nails. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Was this it, then? Was this all? How could it be? ‘This isn’t me,’ the man thought. ‘This isn’t what I’ve come to.’

He remembered being a boy at the lighthouse on So Long Spit — his quiet, isolated life with his father, tending the light. He remembered how he had liked it when ships had come along the Spit, stopped and offloaded supplies on to the platform his father and the other keepers had built out on the level sand at the low-tide line. The convict remembered being a boy, running on the sand, alongside a schooner that was sailing up the ocean shore of the Spit. He ran on the unending, smooth sand, and waved at figures lining the ship’s rail. He ran into the wind, the same steady wind that bellied out the schooner’s sails. The boy waved. A group of four low-flying
gannets passed between him and the ship, faster than both, scooping the air back with their black-tipped wings. The gannets flew on towards their colony, far away at the end of the Spit where — to the boy’s eyes — the sand vanished in the sea horizon so that only the colony itself was visible, a thin line of shimmering black and white drawn between the sparkling water and the blank sky.

The flying gannets overtook him easily, but he made an effort, sprinted, breasting the wind, trying to keep up with the ship. His shadow ran beside him, and sometimes he was paced by his reflection too, on sand made wet by waves. Reflection, shadow, boy — running, and all keeping up.

The head office of the Regulatory Body was in a tower built on a spur of reclaimed land, formerly swamp, at the downstream end of the Isle of the Temple. The tower stood by itself in a walled park, whose grounds were planted with water-loving willows and cypresses. From the gallery that circled its upper storey there were views of the city, the wide pavements of the west embankment, and, on the east bank, the walls of narrow houses stained by the outfall from jutting privies. Upstream, back along the island, the white marble dome of the Temple itself — St Lazarus — seemed to hang in the blue air, hazy and weightless, like a daytime moon.

The examiners were waiting in the ring room, some walking about stifling yawns. One complained to another that he was dead on his feet. This season’s little
clutch of unlicensed dreamhunters had arrived back at the very end of the period he was rostered on. The woman walking with him had only just arrived and wasn’t at all sleepy. In fact, she felt quite perky. She glanced at one of the clocks. It was three hours yet to sundown.

On their arrival the tired children had been escorted into inner chambers at the base of the tower, where they bathed and were given something to eat. Once they were clean and fed they would get into night clothes. Shortly the examiners would take their places, two to each child, in the dream-testing rooms, cabins that lay in the park around the tower like seed dropped from a tall flower. Indeed, at the moment when the sun vanished the doors in the walls of the antechamber opened and messengers appeared to summon the examiners into the core of the tower. A stair spiralled down to the ground floor and the doors out to the garden and its carefully spaced, isolated cabins. The messengers seemed to want the examiners to hurry. There was an air of urgency in their gestures as they gathered the examiners towards the doors from the room. They kept glancing back towards the elevator. Apparently they were expecting someone. Their glances were surreptitious, and they checked as often on each other as on the examiners they were herding. The perky examiner guessed that they had been asked to get themselves out of the way too. She refused to be hurried. She feigned some trouble with the heel of her
shoe. She stopped and fussed with it. A messenger came forward and took her arm, helped her to her feet and hustled her towards the door. She heard the elevator open. She and the messenger hesitated, and looked. They saw three men. Two were dark-suited Regulatory Body officials — men from records, or registry. The third was still wearing his topcoat and hat, so had come from outside the building.

As she was pushed through the inner doors and out of his line of sight, the examiner recognised the man. It was the Secretary of the Interior, Cas Doran.

‘Now why —,’ thought the examiner, as the door swung to between her and the Secretary, ‘— should these functionaries be in such a hurry to clear everyone out of Secretary Doran’s way?’ Doran was responsible for the Regulatory Body. It was in his portfolio. He had every right to be in the Body’s offices. ‘Is he coming now to lie in on one of these candidates’ examinations?’ thought the examiner. ‘Even so,’ she thought, ‘why should his interest be a matter of any secrecy?’

SEVERAL HOURS
later the examiner emerged, feeling rather deflated, from a ghostly, muffled experience of Wild River. She decided to take a walk around the garden to clear her head.

She strode swiftly away from the cabin she’d been in, careful to avoid meeting the eyes of her fellow examiners — though she was sure they’d agree with her about the poor quality of the dream. As she walked she
thought about how she would word her unenthusiastic report on the feeble dreamhunter whom she would
pass —
but whom she should, in all justice, discourage from taking up the life.

The examiner ducked through a grove of dripping golden ash trees. She caught sight of some dark-suited figures hurrying ahead of her towards the tower. She was sure that one of them was Secretary Doran.

She stopped under the trees and waited till the group was out of sight, then went on cautiously towards a hubbub she could hear through a hedge of hydrangeas.

A crowd was milling around the open doors of a cabin, their shoes making dents in the damp lawn. The examiner saw two of her colleagues sitting on the cabin’s veranda with their heads on their knees. And she saw the dreamhunter Grace Tiebold leaning on a veranda post, pale, her hand held over her mouth.

The examiner thought better of her walk. She retraced her steps through the garden, and took her usual route into the tower.

GRACE HAD SENT
a wire to Chorley from Doorhandle. In it she had said only that she and Laura were back and she’d be lying in on Laura’s examination. Going by the wire, Chorley thought he could expect them both back home the following day.

That day arrived, and Grace and Laura didn’t. For that matter, neither did Tziga, who’d been gone for two weeks now, long enough to have exhausted even his
most enduring dream. Chorley had expected Tziga to appear about the time Laura set off on her first overnighter. They had all hoped he’d be back before she left and would be able to take Grace’s place as Laura’s guide. He hadn’t arrived in time and Grace had accompanied Laura. Tziga was still absent — and Chorley hadn’t had word from him.

The next day Chorley had another telegram:

Chorley was concerned. He took himself to the head offices of the Regulatory Body to make his own enquiries.

He was shown to the Director’s office. Chorley simply asked what the problem was with Laura’s examination. ‘And do you — by any chance — have news of Tziga Hame? We did expect him back several days ago, before Laura’s examination.’

The Director summoned underlings and sent them off to find answers to Chorley’s questions. The Director had his secretary bring in a pot of tea. He poured and chatted and — Chorley thought — acted oddly nonchalant.

Chorley had thought it strange that, when he had first appeared in the Director’s office, he had got the
feeling that the man had been expecting his visit, and had even known what it was about. The man was — Chorley thought — now walling himself up behind this bricks and mortar of chatter. The Director had acted helpful, and sent people running, but all his showy activity seemed to Chorley to conceal something.

By the time Chorley’s second cup was cool the underlings had returned with answers — and with documents.

The Director read them while Chorley waited. The Director made a neat stack of the pages and rested his folded hands upon them. He looked up at Chorley.

‘Apparently your niece caught a nightmare. However, she didn’t describe it as such to the rangers who escorted the season’s candidates back from the test site. No one for a moment imagines Miss Hame was being
dishonest
, just a little shy, and backward. She did manage to let the rangers know that she’d caught something
different
, and unexpected. Her examiners were chosen very carefully, and there were more than the usual number. Your wife insisted on lying in with the girl too — so, unfortunately, the effect of the nightmare was rather amplified.’ The Director paused and smoothed the pages with his fingertips. He cleared his throat and continued. ‘It was decided that it was
imperative
that Laura overwrite her nightmare. There were no dreamhunters in Founderston with any dream suitable, or sufficiently strong, to do the job. The child had to be taken back In. Your wife went with her. Mrs Tiebold can
steer her niece into calmer waters, I’m sure. I’m sure they will both be back directly.’

The Director smiled. ‘As to Mr Hame. According to our records he went back In seven days ago, after registering his intentions at the ranger’s post at Doorhandle.’ The Director paused, then asked, ‘Did Mr Hame not go home first?’

‘No,’ Chorley said. ‘And, since he wasn’t there for his daughter’s Try, we expected him to turn up as soon as he was able. Why would he go back In?’

The Director frowned. ‘I have no idea,’ he said. It seemed to Chorley that the Director looked
expectant
, as though waiting for him to begin making excuses for Tziga. As though by hearing what Chorley would say the Director would supply himself with explanations for Tziga Hame’s behaviour. Not — Chorley suspected — because the Director was disturbed and
needed
Tziga’s behaviour explained, but perhaps because the Director wanted an answer to offer
other
people.

Chorley leant forward, he put his hand out for the papers and asked, ‘What were Tziga’s recorded intentions?’

The Director sorted one sheet from the pile and passed it to Chorley. He said, ‘That’s a carbon.’

Chorley looked at the paper then, sharply, up at the Director. The form wasn’t written in Tziga’s handwriting.

The Director seemed already aware of this. ‘The ranger on duty filled in the form,’ he said, and waved a
hand, as if to wave away any suspicions Chorley might have. ‘Mr Hame only signed it. That’s not unusual, especially for the great dreamhunters. They are often helpless about anything practical.’

The space on the form where the dreamhunter was meant to write his planned destination had only one word in it. The ranger who’d supposedly filled in the form for Tziga had written: ‘Across’.

Chorley saw that the paper in his hand was trembling. He put it back on the Director’s desk, but kept his hand upon it. Chorley’s ears were ringing. He was in shock — a shock that was several parts rage. He wanted to lean across the desk and take the Director by his collar and shake him. But Chorley knew that showing what he was feeling wasn’t wise till he’d got away from the office and had a chance to think. Chorley had a suspicion that the document was
forged
, not ‘filled in’ for Tziga. He was sure that something was being covered up, hastily and messily, just ahead of his enquiries. He was sure, too, that if he didn’t pursue the matter
at once
the cover-up would sort itself out and tidy itself up and form a solid front.

Chorley Tiebold was a man who’d got his own way almost all his life. His whole life experience, and his forceful nature, told him to challenge these lies and whatever lay behind them. His character and knowledge shrieked at him to
attack —
now, decisively. But something else — an instinct deeper than experience — was telling him to let it go, and not let this
man know how suspicious he was. For, as he sat there in the office of the Director, Chorley was at last being forced to face a fear he’d had but kept secret from himself. Worries that he’d shaken out of his head whenever they intruded. The fear was
this —
that Tziga, his sad, secretive friend, had been involved in dangerous things. Dangerous things possibly sanctioned by the Regulatory Body, but things that Tziga was ashamed of and wanted to keep from his family.

Something had gone wrong. The danger had overwhelmed Tziga.

And, until Chorley discovered exactly what that danger was, and that it only threatened Tziga and not his family too, Chorley decided that he had better keep his new understanding from anyone who had anything to do with the Dream Regulatory Body.

The Director cleared his throat again. ‘We can’t know how Mr Hame was
in himself
. If he was joking, for instance. Perhaps he wrote what he did only to imply that he didn’t like to be asked where he was going. I mean — the great ones in their exploratory phases are often secretive about their sites.’

‘Yes,’ Chorley said. He looked at the paper again, at that word ‘Across’. He didn’t imagine for a second that Tziga had intended to make a crossing.

The Director said, ‘I’m sorry that, at this point, I can’t be of more assistance. But if you have further cause to feel concerned — that is, if Mr Hame doesn’t appear within the next few days at Doorhandle, as usual …’

Chorley said, ‘Thank you,’ and put the paper back on the Director’s table and got up.

‘I’ll have the post at Doorhandle send a wire as soon as Mrs Tiebold and Miss Hame emerge,’ the Director said. He stood too. They shook hands and Chorley left.

LAURA AND GRACE
were back within three days. A car dropped them at the front steps of the family’s house in Founderston. The driver carried their hats and coats and knapsacks into the hall, then Grace closed the front door on him in a definite but not ill-tempered way. Rose ran down the stairs and hugged her mother and cousin, crushing them together in her embrace.

‘Sorry for being away so long,’ Grace said to Rose. ‘Laura needs a bath.’ She pushed Rose and Laura towards the stairs. ‘Please see to it, Rose. I’ll organise a meal.’

Chorley had already organised a meal and baths, but didn’t like to talk over the top of Grace, who clearly had urgent things to say to him. She was more tired than he’d seen her for years. She was pale and had shiny concavities of dry skin on her lower lip.

‘Go on,’ said Chorley to Rose and Laura.

‘Where is Da?’ Laura said.

‘I told you not to expect him,’ Grace said, testily.

‘Why shouldn’t I expect him? He should be here,’ Laura said.

‘He’s not here, Laura,’ Chorley said. ‘We’ll discuss it later.’

Laura looked from uncle to aunt. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Once you’ve got your stories straight.’

‘Sweetheart, we’ll tell you everything we know, once we’ve had a talk and between us — yes — sorted out fact from — from other stuff,’ Chorley said.

Laura glared at them, but let her cousin lead her away.

LAURA LAY IN
her bath, peeling a mandarin. Several other mandarins floated around her, bumping against her body and the sides of the bath.

Rose was sitting on the floor, her back against the full-length mirror, her hair clinging to its misty surface.

Laura had just come to the end of her account of her first dream.