Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

  “I don’t know,” I answer. There is also the fact that I concentrate as I do to fill my emptiness. As she has said, though, there is something in dreamreading that has me possessed.

  “Perhaps the problem is in you,” she says.

  “A problem in me?”

  “I wonder if you need to unclose your mind. I do not understand things of the mind very well, but perhaps yours is too firmly sealed. The old dreams need to be read by you and you need to seek the old dreams.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “That is dreamreading. As the birds leave south or north in their season, the Dreamreader has dreams to read.”

  Then she reaches out across the table and places her hand on mine. She smiles. A smile that promises spring.

  “Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams.”

  In time I take up each old dream, and conscientiously give myself over to it. I select a skull from the long shelves and carry it to the table. She helps me, first, to wipe off the dust with a dampened cloth. With meticulous care, she then polishes it with a dry cloth until the skull becomes like sleet.

  I gently place both hands upon the skull and stare, waiting for a warm glow to emanate. When it reaches a certain temperature—like a patch of sun in winter—the white-polished skull offers up its old dreams. I strain my eyes and breathe deeply, using my fingertips to trace the intricate lines of the tale it commences to tell. The voice of the light remains ever so faint; images quiet as ancient constellations float across the dome of my dawning mind. They are indistinct fragments that never merge into a sensate picture.

  There would be a landscape I have not seen before, unfamiliar melodic echoes, whisperings in a chaos of tongues. They drift up fitfully and as suddenly sink into darkness. Between one fragment and the next there is nothing in common. I experiment with ways to concentrate my energies into my fingertips, but the outcome never varies. For while I recognize that the old dreams relate to something in me, I am lost.

  Perhaps I am inadequate as a dreamreader. Perhaps the light has dimmed, the language eroded over untold years. Or again, are these dimensions of a different order? Does there exist an intractable chasm between my waking time and the dream time of the skulls?

  I watch the disparate fragments float up and disappear, without comment. To be sure, the skulls also show me scenes well within my ken. Grasses moving in the breeze, white clouds traveling across the sky, sunlight reflecting on a stream—pure unpretentious visions. In my mind, however, these simple scenes summon forth a sadness that I can find no words for. Like a ship sailing past a window, they appear only to disappear without a trace.

  I read and the old dream slowly loses its warmth, like a tide receding, claimed back into the cold white skull it was. The old dream returns to its ageless sleep. And all the water of vision slips through the fingers and spills to the ground. My dreamreading is an endless repetition of this.

  When the old dreams are spent, I hand the skull to the Librarian and she lines it on the counter. In the pause I rest, both hands on the table, and unravel my powers. I have found that at most I can read six skulls in a night. More than that and my concentration fails; the dreams garble into noise. By eleven o’clock, I can scarcely stand from fatigue.

  At the end of each session, she serves coffee. Occasionally we share biscuits or fruitbread she bakes at home. We do not speak as we eat.

  “Am I hindering your dreamreading?” she asks me. “Perhaps your mind is hard shut because I cannot respond to you?”

  As always, we sit on the narrow steps that lead from the Old Bridge down to the sandbar. A pale silver moon trembles on the face of the water. A wooden boat lashed to a post modulates the sound of the current. Sitting with her, I feel her warm against my arm.

  “It’s not that way at all,” I say. “It is something in me. My mind is turning away from me. I’m confused.”

  “Is the mind beyond you?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “There are times when the understanding does not come until later, when it no longer matters. Other times I do what I must do, not knowing my own mind, and I am led astray.”

  “How can the mind be so imperfect?” she says with a smile.

  I look at my hands. Bathed in the moonlight, they seem like statues, proportioned to no purpose.

  “It may well be imperfect,” I say, “but it leaves traces. And we can follow those traces, like footsteps in the snow.”

  “Where do they lead?”

  “To oneself,” I answer. “That’s what the mind is. Without the mind, nothing leads anywhere.”

  I look up. The winter moon is brilliant, over the Town, above the Wall.

  “Not one thing is your fault,” I comfort her.

  19

  Hamburgers, Skyline, Deadline

  WE decided to get something to eat before venturing off. I wasn’t really hungry myself, but who knew when we’d have a chance to sit down to a meal later. Anyway, the girl said she’d only had enough money for a chocolate bar for lunch and was starving.

  I maneuvered my legs into jeans, trying not to aggravate the wound, pulled on a shirt over my T-shirt and a light sweater over that, then a nylon windbreaker over that. Her pink suit wasn’t quite right for a spelunking expedition, but there was little in what was left of my wardrobe to fit her. I was ten centimeters taller than her; she was ten kilos heavier than me. I supposed we should get her a more appropriate outfit, but no stores were going to be open at this hour, so I got her to squeeze into my old GI-surplus flight jacket. Her high heels presented a problem, but she said she had jogging shoes and galoshes at the office.

  “Pink jogging shoes and pink galoshes.”

  “You seem to like pink,” I said.

  “Grandfather likes it. He says I look pretty in pink.”

  “You do,” I said. And she did. Chubby girls in pink tend to conjure up images of big strawberry shortcakes waltzing on a dance floor, but in her case the color suited her.

  I dragged my knapsack out from under a pile of bedding, and after checking that it too hadn’t been slashed, I packed it with a small flashlight, a magnet, gloves, towels, a large knife, a cigarette lighter, rope, and solid fuel. Next I went into the kitchen and scavenged bread and cans of corned beef, peaches, vienna sausage, and grapefruit from the holocaust on the floor. I filled my canteen with water, then stuffed all the cash I had in the apartment into my pocket.

  “This reminds me of a picnic,” said the girl.

  “You bet.”

  I stopped to take a last look at my scrap heap of an apartment. Once again, life had a lesson to teach me: It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy. Sure, I’d gotten tired of this tiny space, but I’d had a good home here. In the time it takes to swill two cans of beer, all had sublimed like morning mist. My job, my whiskey, my peace and quiet, my solitude, my Somerset Maugham and John Ford collections—all of it trashed and worthless.

  The splendor of the fields, the glory of the flowers, I recited under my breath. Then I reached up and pulled the breaker switch to cut the electricity.

  I was in too much pain, physically, to reflect more deeply on closing this chapter in my life. I hurt too much and I was too tired. Better not to think at all than to think halfway.

  We got into the elevator, went down to the basement garage, and put our things on the back seat of the car. I didn’t even bother to look for hidden pursuers. They could be waiting in a stakeout, they could be tailing us, what did it matter now? And anyway, who the hell would they have been? Semiotecs? The boys from the System? That friendly tag team? Was it to be fun and games with all three? I love surprises. If they had a job to do, they could damn well do it.

  I didn’t want to drive the car, the way I was hurting, but the girl didn’t know how.

  “Sorry. But I can ride a horse,” she said.

  “That’s okay. You may need to ride a horse yet,” I said.

  The fuel ga
uge read almost full. I nosed the car out. Winding our way out of the residential backstreets, we got to the main drag. It was surprisingly busy for this hour, mostly taxis. Why were so many people out racing around in the middle of the night? Why couldn’t they just leave work at six o’clock, go home, and lights-out by ten?

  But that, as they say, was none of my business. OPEC would go on drilling for oil, regardless of anyone’s opinion, conglomerates would make electricity and gasoline from that oil, people would be running around town late at night using up that gasoline. At the moment, however, I had my own problems to deal with.

  I sat there at a red light, both hands on the wheel, and yawned.

  To the right of us was a white Skyline. In it sat a young man and woman, on their way to or back from a night on the town, looking vaguely bored. Duran Duran blared from the car stereo. The woman, two silver bracelets on the hand she dangled out the window, cast a glance in my direction. I could have been a Denny’s restaurant sign or a traffic signal, it would have been no different. She was your regular sort of beautiful young woman, I guess. In a TV drama, she’d be the female lead’s best friend, the face that appears once in a café scene to say, “What’s the matter? You haven’t been yourself lately.”

  The light turned green, and in the time it took the truck ahead to gear up, the white Skyline zoomed off with a flamboyant show of exhaust.

  “Watch the cars behind us, will you?” I told the chubby girl. “Tell me if you think anybody’s following us.”

  The girl nodded and turned around. “Do you think we’re in for a chase?”

  “No idea,” I said. “Just curious. How about a hamburger? It’d be quick.”

  “Fine.”

  I pulled the car into the first drive-in burger place I saw. A waitress in a red micro-miniskirt fastened trays to our windows, then asked for our orders.

  “A double cheeseburger with french fries and a hot chocolate,” said the chubby girl.

  “A regular burger and a beer,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t serve beer,” said the waitress.

  “A regular burger and a Coke,” I corrected myself. What was I thinking?

  While we waited for the food to come, no cars entered the drive-in. Of course, if anyone were really tailing us, the last thing they’d do is drive into the same parking lot with us. They’d be somewhere out of sight, sitting tight, waiting for our next move. I turned my attention to the food that had arrived, and mechanically shovelled hamburger with its expressway-ticket-sized leaf of lettuce down the hatch. Miss Pink, on the other hand, relished each bite of her cheeseburger, while daintily picking at her fries and slurping her hot chocolate.

  “Care for some french fries?” she asked me.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  The girl polished off everything on her tray. She savored the last sip of hot chocolate, licked the ketchup and mustard from her fingers, then wiped her hands and mouth with the napkin.

  “Now, then, about your grandfather,” I said, “we probably ought to go to his underground laboratory first.”

  “Yes. There might be something to give us a lead.”

  “But do you think we’ll be able to get by the INKlings? The ultrasonic repel system is broken, isn’t it?”

  “It is, but there’s a small device for emergencies. It’s not very powerful, but if we carry it with us, the INKlings will stay away.”

  “Good,” I said, relieved.

  “The battery only lasts for thirty minutes, though,” she added. “After that, it has to be recharged.”

  “How long to recharge?”

  “Fifteen minutes. But for just going back and forth between the office and the lab, we should have time to spare.”

  Okay, better than nothing. We left the drive-in, and stopped at an all-night supermarket for a couple cans of beer and a flask of whiskey. Whereupon I immediately drank both cans of beer and a fourth of the whiskey. There, that took the edge off things. I recapped the whiskey and passed it to the girl, who packed it in the knapsack.

  “Why do you drink so much?” she wanted to know.

  “It makes me feel brave,” I said.

  “I’m scared too, but you don’t see me drinking.”

  “Your ‘scared’ and my ‘scared’ are two different things.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  “As you get older, you don’t recover from things so easy.”

  “And as you get older, you also get tired?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “you get tired.”

  She turned toward me, reached out her hand, and touched my earlobe.

  “It’s all right. Don’t worry. I’ll be by your side,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  I parked the car in the lot of her grandfather’s office building. Shouldering the knapsack, I felt the wound throb sharply. Like rain, the pain would pass, I told myself, and loped after the girl.

  At the entrance to the building was a muscular young watchman who asked for her resident’s ID. She produced a plastic card, which the watchman then inserted into a tabletop computer slot. After confirming her name and room number in the monitor, he flipped a switch to open the door.

  “This is an extraordinary building,” the girl explained to me as we cut across the large, open floor. “Everyone in the building has some secret that needs protecting. Important research or business dealings, stuff like that. That’s why all this security. They check you at the door, then they watch you with TV cameras to make sure you reach your room. So even if someone had been following us, they wouldn’t be able to get to us inside.”

  “Do they know that your grandfather dug a shaft through the building?”

  “Probably not. Grandfather had the office specifically designed to connect directly to the sub-basement at the time the building went up. Only the owner of the building and the architect know about it. The construction crew was told it was a ‘media well,’ a communications cortex that would house fiber-optic networks later. I think the blueprints are fudged also.”

  “I bet it must have cost.”

  “I’m sure it did. But Grandfather’s got oodles of money,” said the girl. “Me, too. I’m very well-off. I multiplied my inheritance and the life-insurance money I got on the stock market.”

  She took a key out of her pocket and opened the elevator door. Back into that overgrown vacu-pac elevator.

  “Stock market?”

  “Sure, Grandfather taught me the tricks. He taught me how to choose among all the information, how to read the market, how to dodge taxes, how to transfer funds to banks overseas, stuff like that. Stocks are a lot of fun. Ever tried?”

  “Afraid not,” I said. I’d never opened a fixed-term compounded-interest account.

  The elevator moved at its requisite impossible ascending-or-descending speed.

  “Grandfather says that schools are too inefficient to produce top material. What do you think?” she asked.

  “Well, probably so,” I answered. “I went to school for many years and I don’t believe it made that much difference in my life. I can’t speak any languages, can’t play any instruments, can’t play the stock market, can’t ride a horse.”

  “So why didn’t you quit school? You could have quit any time you wanted, couldn’t you?”

  “I guess so,” I said. “I could have quit, but I didn’t want to. I guess it didn’t occur to me to do anything like that. Unlike you, I had a perfectly average, ordinary upbringing. I never had what it takes to make a first-rate anything.”

  “That’s wrong,” she declared. “Everyone must have one thing that they can excel at. It’s just a matter of drawing it out, isn’t it? But school doesn’t know how to draw it out. It crushes the gift. It’s no wonder most people never get to be what they want to be. They just get ground down.”

  “Like me,” I said.

  “No, you’re different. I can tell there’s something special about you. The emotional shell around you is so ha
rd, everything inside has got to be still intact.”

  “Emotional shell?”

  “That’s right,” she said. “That’s why it’s not too late. After all this is over, why don’t we live together? It’s not like we’d have to get married or anything. We could move to Greece or Finland or somewhere easy-going like that and pass the time riding horses and singing songs. We’d have plenty of money, and meanwhile you could be reborn as a first-rate human being.”

  “Hmm.” Not a bad offer.

  The elevator came to a stop. She stepped out and I followed. She walked at a fast pace, as she had the first time we met, the click of her high heels echoing down the long corridor. Before my eyes, her pleasing wiggle, her flashing gold earrings.

  “But suppose I took you up on the offer,” I spoke to her back, “you’d be doing all the giving and I’d be doing all the taking. That doesn’t strike me as fair.”

  She slowed her pace to walk beside me.

  “There’s bound to be something you can give me,” she said.

  “For instance?”

  “For instance, your emotional shell. That’s something I really want to find out about. I want to know what it’s made up of and how it functions and stuff like that.

  “It’s nothing to get excited about,” I said. “Everybody has more or less of an emotional shell—if that’s what you want to call it. You’ve never been out in the world. You don’t know how the mind of the ordinary person works.”

  “You act as if you’re worthless!” exclaimed the chubby girl. “You can shuffle, can’t you?”

  “Of course I can. But that’s just a matter of practice. Not so different from using an abacus or playing the piano.”

  “That is not all there is to it,” she said. “Everyone thought that way at first. That with the necessary training, anyone—anyone who passed the tests, that is—could shuffle. Even Grandfather thought so. Well, twenty-six people happened to have the same surgery and training, and all of them got the ability to shuffle. In the beginning, there weren’t any problems—”

  “Hey, I never heard about any problems at all. I heard everything went according to plan.”