Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet (33 page)

HEN LAURA WAS UP AND ABOUT AGAIN, AND CHORLEY, GRACE, AND ROSE WERE BACK AT SUMMERFORT, THERE
was a family conference.

Sandy Mason sat in on it, looking at once embarrassed and pleased with himself. For a time they talked about the Regulatory Body’s secret railway and the happy captives at the Depot. Laura hadn’t told anyone but her father that she’d been caught, and held, and how she’d made her escape. She did tell them she’d been seen, and possibly recognized, but didn’t say that Cas Doran and his cronies might be surprised to see her alive after she’d vanished from the remote and isolated compound. Laura and her father didn’t discuss the possibility that she was in danger. And it crossed Laura’s mind that her father—still sometimes muddleheaded with fits—hadn’t even considered it. She didn’t raise the subject, because she didn’t want to have to hide again.

Laura’s father was, himself, tired of hiding. At the meeting, Tziga said, “If I reappear in Founderston, the Regulatory Body will, no doubt, feel uncomfortable. But since I only want to visit medical specialists, and not darken the Body’s doorways, they’ll soon get over it.”

“We should all return to Founderston,” Chorley said. “You’ll get better care. And Laura must talk to the Grand Patriarch
about this Depot. We should put the problem in his hands—for now.”

Grace frowned. She said, “I agree that Laura should go back. Late summer is a very good time for her to return to work. All the regular healing dreamers supplying the hospitals and nursing homes are out of the city enjoying their vacations. It makes sense for Laura to go back when there’s less competition, and when she can do so in a kind of disguise.” Grace looked at Sandy. “And this is where you can help. The best thing you can do for Laura is form a temporary partnership with her. You can catch the same dreams and sell yourselves together—two dreamers for the price of one. You can say you’re boosting each other, and then maybe—with smaller houses, and less supervision—your performance won’t strike anyone as
too
remarkable. Laura’s Buried Alive pushed her penumbra out to about five hundred yards. I think it must have blown her wide open.”

Tziga said, “At some point Laura’s figures must become official.”

“Yes,” said Grace. “Just because we have to deal with Cas Doran and his bloody Depot and whatever the hell his plan is, that doesn’t mean that Laura’s future is finished. Or mine, or Sandy’s. When the Regulatory Body is straightened out, there will still be—well—a Regulatory Body. We’ll all still be dreamhunters. Laura will have to work according to the advantages and constraints of her power. What we need for now, so that nobody will suspect she acquired her big penumbra by catching Buried Alive, is a way for Laura to ease into work until she’s recovered enough to catch The Gate—which, when I shared it twelve years ago, gave me another twenty-five yards.”

“When you catch The Gate, you can offer it to the sanatorium at Fallow Hill,” Tziga said. “I can make the arrangements for you.”

Grace and Tziga had, it seemed, taken their cue from Laura. Sandy was now completely in their confidence. Chorley trusted him—up to a point—but resented the fact that his own fatherly authority had been usurped by Laura’s actual father. Tziga seemed to think he was up to making decisions for his daughter despite the fact that he’d always been impractical, and was now confused and forgetful.

Chorley watched Grace and Tziga handling Sandy Mason and thought, “Grace is ambitious for Laura. She’s so focused on Laura’s future that she’s overlooking present problems.”

“So,” said Grace to Sandy. “Will you work with Laura for a time? Does that suit you?”

Sandy blushed and nodded.

Laura looked at the floor and smiled. Then she got up. “If that’s settled, can Sandy, Rose, and I go to Farry’s? There’s only
invalid
food here.”

“Fine, fine,” said Grace, and waved them off.

When the young people had gone, Grace said, “I’m so pleased Sandy’s gotten over the business of the letter. Now that he’s seen Tziga, he thinks he got it all wrong and she was writing to her father.”

“Why do you say ‘he thinks she was’ instead of ‘he knows she was’?” asked Chorley.

Grace looked irritated. “Fine—
knows
she was, if you like.”

Tziga said, “The point is that Sandy isn’t angry with Laura anymore and can be called on to help her.”

Chorley did agree that Laura’s well-being was important, and that the young man seemed to be important to her well-being. He would like to feel as settled as Grace seemed to feel about the subject of the letter Laura had asked Sandy to deliver. But, no matter which way he looked at it, some things refused to become clear. Sandy supposed now that Laura’s letter must have been to Tziga. But the letter had come from
the lighthouse, where Laura was staying
with
her father, so she would hardly have been writing to him.

Chorley had always supposed that Sandy Mason was the one who had helped Laura carry his movie camera from Y-17 in the Place back to Summerfort the previous winter. But, if so, why wasn’t the boy
with
her when he and Rose arrived? Sandy Mason didn’t strike Chorley as particularly well bred or bashful. Laura had been in the bath when Chorley and Rose arrived, and Chorley was convinced that if he arrived at Summerfort
now
to find Laura bathing, he might well find Sandy Mason in the damn tub with her!

So the question remained, who was Laura’s letter to? And who had carried the camera? Apparently there was some shadowy agent whose existence no one but Chorley seemed ever to notice, as someone sensitive to drafts notices the least touch of cold moving air.

Grace got up and stretched. “I’m so glad that’s all settled. It’s time Laura got on with actually being a dreamhunter—instead of a spy for the Church.” She gave her husband an indulgent smile. “And how
is
your investigation going?”

“Slow, puzzling, and possibly pointless,” Chorley said. “I have one more person I want to talk to. Then—like the Commission of Inquiry—I’ll ponder my findings. Such as they are.”

2

N A WARM DAY IN EARLY FEBRUARY CHORLEY SAT IN A CAFE IN UNIVERSITY SQUARE. THE ESTABLISHMENT WAS
surprisingly busy, since commencement was still over a month away. Chorley had an appointment with Dr. Michael King. He’d reached the stage in his investigations where what he wanted was to chew the fat with any intelligent person prepared to really
think
about the Place. He’d decided that the historian Dr. King was his man.

King arrived half an hour late. He bustled in, scanning the tables, spotted Chorley, and gave him a wave, his raised hand making a little wriggle as if to mime smoke going up a flue. Then he swerved and pounced on a table near the door, and one student at that table. “Mr. Jones! Where is that thesis you’re supposed to have finished and turned in?” he said, in a loud, friendly tone.

The young man got up. “I came to see you about it—” he began.

“Yes—and a colleague of mine caught you putting curses on my closed door!”

“I wasn’t cursing you, sir. I was just annoyed not to find you there, because I wanted to put my paper into your hands personally.”

“Mr. Jones, did you, or did you not, wish a pox upon me?”

“No, sir. I only wished a pox upon your closed door.”

King laughed. It was a silent, wheezy laugh, but his shoulders bobbed up and down. He put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “If you don’t have your paper with you, why don’t you run off and get it? I’ll be here for the next hour talking to this gentleman.” He pointed at Chorley.

The student hurried out. King came over to Chorley, beamed at him, and offered his hand. They shook hands. King called for more coffee. “That lad,” he said, “wants to see his paper safely in my hands. He must think that he’s done something astounding.” He chuckled some more. “Now, before you tell me why you wanted to meet me, I must pass on a hello from Judge Seresin. He said that you were one of his cleverest students. And the laziest.”

Chorley remembered his old professor Seresin, who was now a judge at the Supreme Court and, incidentally, the Head of the Commission of Inquiry into the Rainbow Opera riot. Chorley had disappointed Professor Seresin. “I didn’t complete my degree,” he said. “I fell out a third-floor window while drinking with some friends. I don’t remember it at all. I wasn’t hurt. Apparently I landed in a freshly turned flower bed and got up and wandered away. There were dozens of witnesses, and a fuss, and my father put me on a boat to Europe. And that was the end of my studies. I had a full year in parts foreign, then my father died and it turned out we didn’t have any money.”

The coffee came, a double order, since Chorley had ordered for himself shortly before King arrived. Chorley had also ordered a large savory scone. King eyed it. “Please help yourself,” said Chorley, pressing the plate forward.

“No, no,” said King and slid the plate back beside Chorley’s elbow. “And so, when you discovered that your father hadn’t left you anything, were you ever tempted to Try?”

“I arrived back during the first of the rush. It was like a gold rush, wasn’t it?”

“Yes and no. So many people were stopped right away. It was as if they discovered that, despite there being gold in the ground, they weren’t physically able to
dig.”
King’s fingers fluttered, then made a little foray toward Chorley’s scone. They broke a piece off. The fingers conveyed the fragment to his mouth; he glanced down at it, apparently surprised, then opened his mouth to accept it.

Chorley said, “I thought then that the whole dreamhunting thing was a little vulgar. I mean—citizens were carrying blankets and pillows into the People’s Park on summer nights. Founderston was my town, and it changed almost overnight. I felt somewhat resentful.” He shrugged. “So I didn’t go near the border till I went with my wife, shortly after we were married.”

“And you found that you couldn’t go In.”

“That’s right, I couldn’t.” Chorley piled three sugar lumps into his coffee. “I read your chapter on the Place in your
History of Southland.
It struck me as one of the most lucid things written about it.”

“You flatter me. And surely there are dozens of even more lucid paragraphs buried among official twaddle and statistical stuff in the Dream Regulatory Body’s records?”

“I’m not going to bother the Body.”

“Why not?” King was giving Chorley a shrewd appraisal.

“The Grand Patriarch has given me this task. I’m supposed to think about the Place.”

“That’s fine. That’s not a novelty,” said King, and his hands pounced again on Chorley’s scone. He broke off a big piece and continued to talk, gesturing with the fragment and scattering crumbs around the table like a priest scattering drops of holy water in blessing. “Plenty of people have
thought
about the Place. But really intelligent debate hasn’t been possible because feelings run so high. The Church preaches against dreamhunting. Dreamhunters feel defensive. And the Regulatory Body tries to smooth things over by behaving like a strict parent toward dreamhunters—in public, at least. All the discussions are about whether the Place is good or bad, and how it should be used.”