In Your Dreams (45 page)

‘You're strange,' said the Girl of His Dreams. ‘Did you summon me here to watch you knock yourself out with obsolescent scientific equipment?'

‘You're her, aren't you? My dream girl.'

‘You say the sweetest things.'

‘Yes, but you're
her
, aren't you? The one that came persecuting – came to talk to me a week or so back. You told me to buck my ideas up and get involved and stuff.'

She nodded. ‘You were wearing red paisley pyjamas,' she said, with a very faint grin.

‘You're her,' Paul said, with a sigh of relief. ‘Right, please listen carefully, because we need to get this right—'

‘We? Am I part of this? What are we doing, then? Will it be like that time when you had three glasses of red wine on an empty stomach, and you had this dream where we were on this tigerskin rug on the beach at Mustique—'

‘No,' Paul said with a faint quaver in his voice (and he was thinking:
Some dreams I wish I could remember when I wake up
). ‘Look, you're a Fey, right? A good Fey.'

She frowned. ‘Depends on what you mean by good. If you mean it like in the phrase
a good Catholic
, then no, probably not.'

Paul shook his head; just as well it was only a dream, since his real head would've hurt like hell. ‘There're two sides in this civil war thing, yes? Good Fey and Bad—'

‘Ah.' She smiled. ‘You mean
good
as a synonym for
on the losing side.
Yes,' she added before he could interrupt. ‘I'm a Fey and I'm on our side. What of it?'

Paul breathed out. ‘In that case,' he said, ‘could you possibly give me a lift to somewhere?'

She frowned. ‘Depends. Where?'

‘Don't know.' Not the best answer. ‘What I meant to say was, there's somewhere I need to go, but I don't know how to find it or how to get there. I'm not even sure it's possible to get in there if you're awake. Can you help me?'

Her frown turned itself inside out and became a smile. ‘You're out of your tiny mind, you know that? Do you seriously want to go back to Countess Judy's castle?'

‘Of course I don't
want
to,' Paul growled. ‘But I think it may be the only option. I need to find out where she stores her Source – you know, the poor bastard who's dreaming her.'

‘Find him, right. Then what?'

‘Then,' Paul muttered, ‘wake him up.'

The Girl of His Dreams let out a low whistle. ‘What's come over you all of a sudden?' she asked curiously. ‘All the time I've known you, you've been this timid little wimp. Now you're talking about storming the enemy stronghold and killing the queen. Have you been on one of those self-assertiveness weekends or something?'

Paul shook his head. ‘It's her or me,' he said. ‘She's going to kill me if I don't get her first. Look, if I get through this ghastly mess in one piece, I promise I'll go back to being a spineless piece of cheese, if that's what you want—'

‘No, not at all. Besides, it probably didn't occur to you, but if you get the snuff, I die too. Helping you would probably be a good move for me at this point.'

‘Fine,' Paul said, ‘great. Can you do it? Get me there, I mean?'

‘Oh, I can get you there,' she replied. ‘That's easy. Keeping you alive for more than two seconds once we've got there is going to be the challenging part, particularly now you're so brave and resolute and all. There're no half measures with you, are there? Straight from not saying boo to geese to strangling lions with your bare hands.'

Paul looked her steadily in the eye. ‘Please,' he said.

‘Oh, all right. Just this once – it's entirely against my better judgement and it'll all end in tears, but why the hell not?' She raised her right arm in a graceful, dramatic sweep, then paused. ‘Just one thing,' she said. ‘You do realise, don't you, that when we're over there, your physical body'll still be here?'

Paul shrugged. ‘I hadn't, actually,' he said. ‘Will that make much of a difference?'

‘Think about it,' she replied, not unkindly. ‘For a start, supposing you find this Source. How are you planning on waking him up?'

‘Oh,' Paul said.

‘That's all? Oh?'

‘All right: oh dear, that's not going to work, then, sorry to have bothered you. Is that any better?'

‘There's no need to get all snotty with me,' she said. ‘I'm not the one who never thinks things through. What you need,' she went on, ever so slightly patronising, ‘is a dream telescope.'

‘A what?' Paul was about to ask; but he was interrupted by a sharp blow to his groin. He yelled.

‘Baby,' said the Girl of His Dreams mockingly. ‘Well go on, look at it.'

The cause of his profound discomfort proved to be a long brass tube with bits of glass in each end. ‘For looking at the stars,' she explained. ‘When we get there, look for the Great Bear, third from the right. It usually works.'

Paul knew that he had that bewildered-half-to-death expression on his face, but he couldn't help it. ‘Excuse me?' he said.

‘Idiot,' she said. ‘When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true, right? To a certain extent, anyway. And please be careful with that thing; it's old and fragile, and I had to sign for it when I checked it out of the stores. I take it you know how to find the Great Bear?'

‘I think so.'

‘He thinks so. Fine, just crane your neck back as far as it'll go and search for something that looks like L. S. Lowry's idea of a rotary cultivator.'

‘Third from the right?'

‘And straight on till morning. Sorry, forget I said that, it'll only confuse the issue. Ready?'

‘I've had a better idea,' Paul said, as she raised her arm again. ‘How'd it be if you drew me a map of how to get there, and I just—'

The light that surrounded her flared out and smothered him. At the same moment, he fell upwards, like a suddenly weightless Australian. The world exploded, then closed around his head like a plastic bag.

‘—Got the bus or something.' Paul wobbled, waved his arms for balance, steadied himself. He was in total darkness, apparently alone. The telescope was still in his left hand.

Crane your neck back
, she'd said,
as far as it'll go.
He did that, then slowly lifted the telescope to his eye. Through it, he could see a sprinkling of white dots, like dandruff on God's collar. To begin with they were just a random scattering but he concentrated until the shape of the Great Bear emerged from the jumble. He counted, three from the right. ‘Wish,' he said, ‘wish wish
wish
...'

Something hit Paul so hard in the small of the back that he fell over onto his knees. It was only when the lights abruptly snapped on that he realised it was his own body, catching him up and embracing him like a large, friendly dog.

The disturbing thing was, he recognised the place. He'd been there before, in dreams. Mostly it looked like a hospital ward, a huge one with lines of beds stretching away out of sight in all directions, each bed with a chart and a name tag clipped to the end rail, and someone asleep between the cold, crisp white sheets. But it put him in mind of other things, too: a morgue, a battery-chicken farm, and also the stockroom at the back of a shoe shop. There was something industrial about the sparse cleanliness, the silence, the order. Somebody used this place to store valuable stock-in-trade, and wasn't making any false economies when it came to upkeep.

At least he hadn't triggered any alarms, or any that he could hear; but what would the Fey need with electronics, anyhow? It was inevitable that they were monitoring Paul, and surely they'd be here any minute to whisk him off to the dungeons of Grendel's Aunt – the real ones this time, not the prettified imitation he'd found himself in before. Maybe if he was really lucky he might have thirty seconds in which to identify and find Judy di Castel'Bianco's dreamer and wake him up. He glanced up and down the rows. He'd never been much good at quantity surveying; his mental counter only went up to six, and anything over that was just
lots
. At a guess, though, there were somewhere between thirty thousand and a million billion of the poor bastards. Even if they had the names of the parasites they were playing host to printed neatly on their clipboards, thirty seconds wasn't really long enough, was it?

Idiot.

Yes, well.
While he was here, he might as well do
something
. If he could wake just one of them up, that'd be a Fey colonist switched off at the mains for ever. Paul doubted whether it'd do the woken Source any good, but you can't have every damn thing in this imperfect world.

All right, then, one sleeper chosen at random. Out of all these.
Um
.

Most of them, Paul noted idly, were women; young women, mostly, which made sense, since presumably the main quality you'd be looking for in your Source would be durability. Women live longer than men, and the younger you catch them, the longer they're likely to last. If he'd been there doing scientific research, he might have speculated as to whether a male human could only dream a male Fey, or whether it didn't matter a damn. As it was, he resolved his decision-making problem by closing his eyes and pointing.

The specimen he discovered he'd chosen was a little thin wisp of a thing: dark, wiry hair, a pointed face, thin lips that moved as she breathed, just as Sophie's did. In fact, the resemblance was striking, except that Sophie, though as thin as a politician's excuse, wasn't that scrawny. Rather, she looked as Sophie might have done if she hadn't eaten for a week—

Christ
, Paul thought. For quite a while, he couldn't move at all, even though every heartbeat that rocked his body reminded him of the passing of that painfully finite resource, time. When he unfroze, he came close and peered down at the girl. Definitely; but so starved and drawn it made him ill to look at her. Then he noticed the IV drip plastered to her arm; just enough to keep her alive, presumably, but too weak to wake up. Thorough, the Fey, and quite methodical.

‘Sophie.' His voice echoed disastrously, like a fart in a cathedral. ‘Sophie, it's me. For God's sake wake up. Please. Now.'

A tiny little grunt, like the sound of a far-distant pig; then she stirred slightly and rolled over. She was lying on her left arm. She often did that, and then woke up with pins and needles and a really bad temper for the rest of the day. Sowing the seeds of carpal tunnel syndrome, too. After all, what'd be the point of rescuing her from this place, this fate that might even be genuinely worse than death, if she ended up with permanent cramp in her little finger?

‘Sophie,' he repeated, trying to make his voice loud, but it wouldn't cooperate. Every inherent instinct was against it (
Paul, keep quiet; Paul, don't you dare make a sound or I'll take you straight home again
). ‘Please,' he added, just in case she was ignoring him because he was being bossy and overbearing. ‘Fucking hell, Sophie, what've they done to you? Please wake up, they'll be here any minute, I haven't got time—'

And then it occurred to Paul to wonder: whose Source was she, anyway? Who was in her dreams right now, drawing off her life like beer from the wood? Not that it mattered, but ...

‘Mr Carpenter.' The voice made Paul spin round, almost losing his balance as his feet lost traction on the hard, tiled floor. ‘Please step away from the bed immediately.'

‘You,' was all he could find to say, even though it was scarcely original, not to mention a disrespectful mode of address to use to a partner, to her face. ‘You did this to her.'

Countess Judy nodded, her face grave and still. ‘Ms Pettingell was assigned to my department,' she said. ‘Also, she is, like yourself, the property of the firm. She's my personal assistant. And that,' she added severely, ‘is none of your concern. Please step away from the bed.'

‘She's dreaming you. She's your Source.'

‘Correct.' Countess Judy took a step forward and, just for a moment, looked down at the sleeping girl. ‘She looks so fragile, doesn't she? Waiflike, vulnerable, almost beautiful in a vague, pre-Raphaelite way. Pity she has such a vile temper.'

‘There you go,' Paul said grimly. ‘Sweet and sour Source.'

Perhaps he shouldn't have said that. ‘If you don't step away this instant,' Judy growled, ‘I shall have no alternative but to call security and have you restrained.'

‘But why?' Stupid question. ‘I mean, what did you need her for? You must've had a dreamer already, or how could you have been there before we joined?'

Countess Judy clicked her tongue, a suffering-fools-gladly sort of noise. ‘My previous Source died,' she said, in a bored voice. ‘She was a hundred and six, after all. Most fortunately, her last illness was diagnosed early, so I had enough time to find a replacement. Ms Pettingell should ensure me at least eighty more years before I have to go through that particular chore again. I will give you one last chance, Mr Carpenter. Otherwise—'

But Paul shook his head. ‘You don't dare,' he said. ‘If you could touch me, you'd have done it already. But you can't – you're scared she'll wake up. That's right, isn't it?'

‘Absurd,' Countess Judy replied, but her voice had risen a semitone or so. ‘I am simply trying to spare you the consequences of your stupidity. You can't possibly understand the issues involved. And even if you did succeed in waking Ms Pettingell up, the consequences for you would be most regrettable.' She shook her head, as though in disappointment. ‘I can see – it hasn't even crossed your mind that she wouldn't want to be woken up. For a human, the sheer joy of dreaming one of us is – well, quite beyond the power of language to describe. You would destroy her, Mr Carpenter, and yourself as well.'