Waking in Dreamland (32 page)

“Don’t!” Leonora said, lifting a warning finger out of the midst of her all-enveloping garment. “Not one word!”

Chapter 20

They took to the road again. The delay had been annoying, but Roan was relieved to have found a further sign of the gestalt, although not enough to be satisfactory to all. Spar was perturbed about the loss of his guards’ uniforms, muttering darkly about a lack of discipline, and laughingstocks. Roan missed his old boots most of all. He had had them for years, through numerous adventures, including the second Changeover. Those boots conformed to every arch and curve of his feet. The substitutes he had made out of slips of fig bark and mudcloth were simply not the same, although, Roan thought, looking down at them, they could grow on him after a while. Their clay origin enabled them to model themselves to a maker’s design. They were already taking on the appearance of formal shoes, more suited to his personality. Soon, they might be black leather, with comfortable insoles and extra wide toe boxes.

Suddenly, another pair of feet, in identical makeshift shoes, appeared on top of Cruiser’s stirrups. Roan found himself riding pillion behind another man, who glanced back over a shoulder. It was him—Roan! There were two of him on the horse’s back, both clad in printed cloaks and trousers. Roan flinched in surprise. He hopped backwards off the saddle.

The second man pulled the horse over to the side of the road. Roan walked around to stare up at him. The other man looked down at him solemnly.

“I could be looking in a mirror,” said the man on the horse.

“How strange,” Leonora said, reining Golden Schwinn to a halt beside them. She looked from one to the other. “Which of you is the real Roan?”

Roan felt a moment of doubt. Was he in his own body, or not? It was strange seeing himself doing something, and not feeling his muscles move.

“I think he is,” Roan said, pointing.

“He is the real one, I’m sure of it,” the double said, at the same time. And his motions were identical to those Roan had seen himself make reflected in mirrors and windows, but from this man, they looked more deliberate.

“How would we know?” Roan asked, still staring in bewilderment. “I’ve lived all my life thinking I was an original person.”

The double peered at him closely and touched his own cheek, then reached out and almost touched Roan’s. He hesitated, drawing his hand back. “You do look more real than I do,” he said.

“I was going to say that to you,” Roan said. He felt a strange sense of disorientation, as if he was floating in space. If he faced the genuine Roan, who was he? And where did he come from? Perhaps the changeless person he had always been was a distant shadow of this man. It was possible. There was a historian’s theory that every person had a doppelgänger somewhere in the world who exactly resembled him. And this man certainly did. Chance had simply dictated that they had never met until now. The legend also said that you had to kill your doppelgänger, or he would kill you. He felt a thrill of terror. Roan knew he couldn’t kill himself. Was he about to die?

“Are you sure?” It was Leonora’s voice, but it came from another young woman of stunning beauty riding up on a twin to Golden Schwinn. This Leonora had red hair, high cheekbones and long, almost slanted eyes. When he looked for his princess, she had just acquired the same characteristics.

“I . . . I think so.” Roan studied his twin. “You’re the real one. You must be. But then, who am I?”

“No, you are real,” the other said, just as earnestly. He dismounted and threw the reins to Roan. “I’m not. I couldn’t be. We shouldn’t have met. I . . . I’ll go away. Please don’t harm any of the others.”

Roan looked at him, puzzled. “So the legend isn’t true?”

“I hope not,” the other said, so sincerely Roan had to believe him. They breathed identical sighs of relief.

The second Leonora took a moment to study the first one’s costume critically, even though she was robed in the same billowing white. The first princess straightened her skirts with a surreptitious use of influence so it resembled a gown instead of a tent dress. They exchanged nods, royalty to royalty. Roan sensed a little influence was exerted on each side, to make sure each looked her most beautiful while under scrutiny from a discerning eye. Roan knew that Leonora—his Leonora—was frightened, but her training kept her from showing it. Meanwhile, other duplicates were appearing. Two Mishas, long and lanky, gazed at each other in bemusement. Two Alettes gawked.

“Leave, foul spirit!” Spar shouted, drawing his sword. He jumped off his steed. “Go on, get out of here, or I’ll split you!”

“You get away,” the captain’s double yelled, with equal volume. He brandished his own sword, and set it ablaze. “You unnatural beast, you! I’ll kill you, and then you can’t kill me.”

“Sir, stop them!” the Lums shouted, calling for Roan’s attention. “Captains, don’t!”

“Halt!” the Roans cried, rushing in between the Spars, reaching for their sword hands. “The legend is a lie! He can’t harm you. Don’t fight!”

But the Spars maneuvered around them like so many posts in a tilting yard, and ran at one another with an angry war cry. The princesses cringed and covered their eyes. The Spars raised their swords, and brought them down in a killing blow—

—On empty air. The blades passed straight through their bodies, and into the ground between their feet. The Spars were insubstantial to one another. They stared at the buried blades in disbelief, then began laughing loudly from relief.

“You!” Spar barked, gasping in breath with a big grin on his face. “Look at that! We couldn’t’ve bashed each other if we’d tried!”

“Split each other! Good thing we couldn’t do it!” the other howled. “There’d be four of us.” Their knees collapsed under them, and they sat down on the ground, still laughing.

The second Roan looked up at the first, and put out a hand to touch his arm. The fingers disappeared into the dark-printed sleeve as if into shadow. Roan’s double withdrew his hand with a worried look.

I’m the ghost, Roan thought, and just as surely knew that his double was thinking the same thing.

The two Colennas, friendly at once, sat down on the side of the road and compared the contents of their purses. Clearly, she, or they, didn’t believe in the legend. The Felans stood nearby, arms crossed, talking in low tones, sharing a smug joke at the expense of others in the party.

“This is no time to be beside yourselves,” Bergold said, blinking large orange eyes. There were two of the plump historian, both of them currently giant owls perched on horseback. The wise heads turned in almost full circles to catch everyone’s attention. “We need to put our heads together and concentrate on our mission. It’s convenient that there are twice as many of them. Heads, I mean.”

“But what about our doubles?” Lum asked. “I mean, he’s all right. I mean, he’s me, but . . . are we a party of twenty instead of ten?”

“We’re two whole parties now,” Spar said. “Let’s split up into two groups. We can cover more ground this way.”

“Right,” the second Spar said. “Brom can’t stay hidden with two of us on the trail. Let’s get moving.”

“We can’t really do that,” the Bergold on the left said.

“We’ve been thinking about this matter quite a bit,” the Bergold on the right added. “One or the other of us is a reflection caused by influence.”

“That we could have guessed,” the Felans said in unison. Their eyebrows were thickly shaggy on their foreheads. The right brows climbed up toward their hairlines in emphasis.

“That’s also why we can’t touch one another. We are the mirror as well as what is reflected in it. This has happened before. It’s recorded in the royal archives. For example, I know that the duplicates, whichever you are,” the owl nodded its beak at the two Roans and the two Mishas, “can touch both of anyone else, though not each other, so it will be difficult to decide who was originally with whom.”

“Fascinating stories of mistaken identity,” the other owl said, warming to his topic. “In one really interesting record—”

“Are they around here forever?” Felan shouted, interrupting Bergold.

“Certainly not,” the owls told him sternly. “Don’t shout. Our hearing is excellent, even though we have no external ears.”

“The doppelgänger effect is temporary,” the righthand Bergold said. “That is why we can’t act as two groups. Sooner or later the doubles will vanish, possibly stranding some of the “real” party who got mixed up with them. I beg your pardon,” he said to the left-hand Bergold, who bobbed his feathered head to show no offense was taken. “We’d best go on all together.”

Eighteen people and two owls set out again, each side by side with his or her double. At first, Roan thought the road seemed crowded, then he began to see advantages in redundance. The Lums rode ahead, watching for “weirdness.” Both Roans looked for signs that had been left for him from ahead. Six guards, instead of three, kept watch for threats, with hands on sword belts. The others talked among themselves, some shyly, others with animation. An occasional traveler, passing by on foot or steed, stared openly at the long file of identical faces, and stepped up the pace, lest the effect be contagious. The other Roan must have caught his thought, because he gave him a sidelong grin. Should they pretend to menace the next person they saw, and curse him with twinness? It was really rather nice. Roan almost wished the effect would last. If Brom’s power was growing stronger, they would need more help to defeat him when they caught up with him at last. On the other hand, there were two Leonoras and two Colennas they’d have to protect, dividing their attention unnecessarily.

The princesses were carrying on a lively discussion about fashion, upon which, not surprisingly, they agreed completely. Roan only listened with half an ear. He was still hoping to find clear indications of Brom’s trail. The other Roan met his eyes occasionally to offer a silent shake of the head. He wasn’t seeing anything, either.

“. . . But I think the Nodite custom of printed headbands for babies is quite silly,” Leonora said, drawing an armful of draperies across her own forehead in illustration. “When they can’t even read them yet. . . . She’s gone!”

“She merged with you,” Misha said, hoarse with surprise. “Just now. When you had that cloth over your face. Horse and all, just moved toward you all of a sudden, and then there was only one of you.”

“Oh,” Leonora said in a small voice, her hands coming to rest on her saddle horn. “We were having such fun.”

Roan looked up and down the line. All the duplicates were gone. Ten had seemed such a large number at first. After the crowd and the double effect, the party looked so small and lonely. He felt vulnerable, out in the middle of nowhere virtually alone. Leonora urged Schwinn forward to ride beside Cruiser, and offered her hand to him. He took it, and gave it a grateful squeeze. What a wonderful woman she was. How terrible it would be now if she left to go home. He still worried about putting her in danger, but how he would miss her!

“Am I the right me?” Lum asked, prodding his arms uncertainly. “Nothing like that’s ever happened to me before.”

“I feel the same way, Corporal,” Roan said.

“It’s a good sign when you can enjoy your own company,” Colenna said, in a soothing manner.

Bergold said, scratching his feathered belly with a claw, “He knew everything I did. How very strange. I’ve never had such a meeting of minds with anyone before. I rather enjoyed it.”

Spar was very worried. “Could this be a sign that we’re about to ride into a Changeover?”

“No, it was a nuisance,” Bergold said with a sigh. “A friendly one, but a supreme time-waster on the whole.”

“It feels as if it was dragged here,” the continuitor said, testing the air. “Or pushed. There’s a strained sensation in the very fibers of the air.”

“It’s artificial, all right. Brom’s picking away at our psyches,” Colenna said.

“But how’s he getting here and going away again without leaving a trace?” Lum asked. “We’re not getting the constant thread of weirdness that we were getting before. I saw some distortion near where we ran into the nuisance, but that’s all. They’ve got to ride on the road, right? And they aren’t. Most things are normal, and they’re not leaving tire tracks.”

“If these distractions were pushed towards us, we don’t have an idea of from how far away,” Bergold said. “We’d have to search the whole wilderness, and we might never find the point of origin.”

“It
could
be natural. This might be connected to a very active part of the Sleeper’s mind,” Felan said, staring up at the sky and squinting at an invisible document in his mental archives. “I’ve heard of as many as five simultaneous . . .”

“Unlikely,” Colenna said, flatly.

“Well, it isn’t like when we were following the trail before,” Spar said, although visibly unwilling to contradict his beloved. “And we haven’t seen tire tracks since we passed near that cliff face.”

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that that rockfall was on top of them,” Felan said, sourly.

“Certainly not!” Colenna said. “These two nuisances so close together prove they’re still alive and active, and we are behind them. Isn’t that right, young Roan?”

Roan was grateful for her air of confidence. He felt very uncertain of himself. If they lost faith in him, they might turn back. Spar would insist that the princess accompany him back to Mnemosyne for safety. Roan would have the wish he had made a couple of days before of going on alone. He didn’t want that wish any longer, and didn’t care for the prospect of facing the gestalt on his own.

“We must have come too close to Brom,” Bergold said, half-lidding his orange eyes. “But when? Why didn’t we know he was nearby?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Leonora said, with absolute conviction and a confident look for Roan. “Now we’re certain he’s still ahead of us. That’s what we needed to know.”

“Hurry up, can’t you?” Basil shouted.

“I’m moving as fast as I can,” Taboret snapped, without looking at him. She dropped a block of nebulosity into place. “Think you can do it better?” She spurred her motorcycle smartly away from the front end of the road in a wide circle so she couldn’t hear Basil’s retort.