Laura crashed into the worktable and turned to see what was coming. For an instant the doorway was full of the Body man, his gun raised and pointed right at her, then a shadow slammed into the man, snapping him in the middle so that his knees bashed his head. The doorway was empty.
Laura emerged to find Nown standing over the felled man. Nown was still, erect and calm, not like a combatant but like a ceremonial sentry. He said, “I have rendered them unconscious.” He’d clearly dealt the same way with her pursuer.
From the street Laura heard an unmistakable noise—the squeal Rose used to make as a child when she was angry about not getting her own way. Laura looked for the revolver. She picked it up and went to the door. She peered out.
Plasir was struggling with Rose, who’d sat down like a stubborn toddler and was kicking her legs.
There was a barge out on the Sva. The man at its wheel was watching the struggle. Laura heard him shout, “Hey! You there!”
Laura ran down the front steps, hurried up to Plasir, and pointed the gun at him.
Rose stopped struggling and stared at Laura with big eyes. “He’s a nasty little thing, but I don’t think you should shoot him, Laura,” she said.
“She won’t,” said Plasir. His eyes were darting about, between the gun, the barge, and the door to Laura’s house. “What did you do with those Body men?”
“I shot them,” Laura said, and eased the hammer back a little.
Plasir released Rose and backed away, his hands raised. “I didn’t hear any shooting,” he said, but looked uncertain.
“Don’t go another step,” Laura said. “You are to come with me.”
“You won’t shoot me.” Plasir continued to edge away. “There are too few of you,” he said. “You can’t win. You’d better just leave the city.”
Laura raised her voice, and called, “Nown!”
Rose said, “Oh—your monster! Do you have him again?” She cackled and shook her finger at Plasir, then gaily began to call too, “Nown!” Nown!”
Nown came along the embankment. He noticed the agitated barge man, gave him a wave with his gloved hand, then advanced on Rose, Laura, and Plasir. Laura kept her eye on Plasir, who saw that the reinforcement she’d summoned was a man bigger than he was. He turned to run.
Nown went by Laura, gently relieved her of the gun, then closed on Plasir, caught him in a few swift bounds, pinned him, picked him up, and carried him back to the house.
Laura put her arm around her cousin, helped her up, and followed.
Plasir had gone completely limp. Nown carried him to the darkroom, took the key from Chorley, and put Plasir inside. Laura saw that Plasir was shocked and passive. He was staring at Nown, trying to penetrate all the wrappings to see why the body that had grappled him had been so unnaturally hard. He peered but seemed to wince away too, as though, much as he wanted to know what was under the wrappings, he was also afraid of knowing.
Nown picked up the unconscious official and put him in the darkroom too. He closed the door and locked it.
“Who is this?” Chorley said to Laura. “Why is he wearing all that? Is it snowing?” Then, distracted, “Rose, your robe is torn.”
Laura took her uncle’s arm. “Let’s get something to eat and drink. My friend here will check on Da and bring Rose a clean robe.”
“All right,” said Chorley, and contentedly went with his daughter and niece into the kitchen.
A few minutes later Nown came through the room, handed Rose a robe, and said, “No, thank you, I’m a little busy,” to Chorley’s friendly offer of a cup of tea. Then he went out into the yard, returning with the other unconscious man. He disappeared with his bundle into the hallway, this time to stay out of range of Chorley’s happiness-hampered but still too lively curiosity.
At three in the afternoon, Father Roy turned up with several cars as an escort. Laura let him in and showed him her father, Rose, and Chorley, who had opened every can and jar of preserves and were at the kitchen table enjoying a long, large, messy lunch. She told Roy about Plasir and the two unconscious officials locked in her uncle’s darkroom. She handed over the revolvers. “I’m putting all this in your hands,” she said. “I have a dream that will clear space in Doran’s grid of Contentment. I only want to get my family back. Please, can you tell someone to meet Aunt Grace when she comes out of the Place? Can you bring her to me so that she can be safe too? The dream she’s gone to catch isn’t a master dream.”
Father Roy sat down at the kitchen table and spoke in a very gentle voice to Chorley, Tziga, and Rose. “Come on, we’re all going for a ride.”
“If I’m going out, I should get dressed,” Chorley said.
“Naturally. Let’s see how quick you can be,” Father Roy said.
“Race you!” shouted Rose to her father. They jumped up, jostled each other into the hall, and thumped up the stairs.
“I’m an invalid,” Laura’s father said, and drew his robe protectively around himself. “I’m excused from making efforts.”
Laura closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
Father Roy summoned his escort, unlocked Chorley’s darkroom, and manhandled Plasir and the one limp and one groggy official to the cars outside. He then went back to the darkroom and gathered up an armload of film canisters, including the one the Body officials had located. “I’m taking all these in case we need decoys at some stage,” Father Roy said.
Laura was alarmed. “Didn’t the Commission reconvene today? Isn’t this almost over?” Her throat began to hurt. She was going to cry again.
“No. That’s why we missed you when you came to find us. His Eminence and I were cooling our heels at the Palace of Justice. When your uncle and father didn’t turn up with you, we simply imagined you’d gotten word.”
“Word of what?”
“Word that the meeting was postponed because the convening judge, Seresin, was ‘unavailable.’”
“No,” said Laura. “No. This can’t go on. Someone has to put a stop to it.”
Chorley and Rose came downstairs. He looked very spruce, as usual, but reeked of cologne. Laura could see that his jacket was dewed with it. Rose had her shirt buttoned up wrong and was wearing all her favorite necklaces—amber, coral, carved ivory, crystals, jet, pearls—together. She said, “I ate so much I had to be sick.” She spoke in a loud whisper, perhaps meaning to speak only to Laura.
Chorley looked at the stack of films in Father Roy’s arms. “Are we having a screening?”
Laura went to get her father, and while she was in the kitchen she poked her head around the back door and told Nown to follow her. “There are steps down to the river around three sides of the Temple. You’ll be able to find a place to hide. My task now is to sleep and take care of Da and Uncle Chorley and Rose.” She spoke to the space between his hat and the top fold of his scarf. His glassy surface was in shadow, and, without reflected light, the visible segment of his head was just an absence, something watery rather than airy on which the hat seemed to float.
“There were weapons,” Nown said. “When there are weapons, I should stay at your side.”
“I don’t feel safe without you, true. But I think I am safe at the Grand Patriarch’s Palace. And his people need my protection.”
“Yes,” said Nown.
Behind Laura, Father Roy said, “Miss Hame, we should go.”
Laura gave Nown a beseeching look, then pushed the door shut.
She helped Father Roy get her father up. Tziga walked, slow and shaky, leaning on both of them. As they went along, he said to Laura, “The thing about this dream, darling, is that even though the man is blissfully pleased with himself, it’s the wasps eating the apricots that are most present. Those wet shells of fruit still hanging on the branches. It’s as though the dream uses the man’s eyes like a camera to show us something more real than the story he’s telling himself about what a fine person he is.”
“Da!” Laura was floored by surprise and admiration. “You’re
yourself.”
“Not really. But I am a dreamhunter.”
Laura kissed her father’s hand.
“Also—when Rose and I were bouncing the eggs, I had a seizure. Didn’t she tell you?”
“She didn’t.”
“She and Chorley must have carried me up to bed. The fit seemed to shake the dream loose a little.”
Father Roy helped Tziga into his car. Laura climbed in beside her father and cuddled up to him. She whispered, “The dreams are memories, Da, like Uncle Chorley always thought. Human memories from a time in the future. But the Place itself uses them to try to talk. It shows us what it finds meaningful.”
Laura’s father peered at her, puzzled.
“The Place is a Nown, Da.”
Tziga opened his mouth but didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally he said, “Whose?”
“I don’t know.”
6
N TUESDAY MORNING LAURA WOKE FROM A LONG, REPEATED CYCLE OF THE GATE. SHE OPENED HER EYES. SHE FELT her whole body breathe in and exhale the dream’s radiance. Then the person beside her in bed said, “Am I where I think I am?”
Laura sat up and studied Rose. Her cousin looked affronted. She lifted the covers and said, “You let me get into bed wearing shoes.”
“Sorry,” said Laura. “It was an emergency. You were an emergency.”
“I certainly was,” Rose said, with feeling. Then, “Who can I sue? Who can I kill? Show me my enemies and I will burn them to the ground!” She propelled herself out of bed, then had to throw the blankets over her head and burrow in the covers for a shoe.
Someone knocked on the tall double doors of the gloomy bedchamber. A nun put her head around the door and said if they would wash and dress she would see them in to breakfast.
Rose began to straighten herself out. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair. She rubbed her mouth, which was still crusted with food. She found a mirror and inspected the crocodile skin on her neck, the indentations of all the beads she was wearing. Then she stood stock-still. “You pointed a gun at Maze Plasir!” she said. And then, in an elated squawk, “You have your monster back! He was dressed like a cabbie on a cold night. He scragged Plasir!” She laughed.
“Come on,” Laura said. “I want to hear what the adults are planning. Dear God—let them have a plan.”
The adults looked grim. But they were all there—everyone Laura could have hoped to see. Her father, in pajamas and a knitted gray shawl. Uncle Chorley, his jaw set and nostrils white. Grace, who looked frightened.
Laura’s aunt Marta was there, and her Mrs. Bridges was taking plates from servants at the door and carrying them to the table.
George Mason was there too. The car sent to meet Grace at the Doorhandle border had passed him in the village. He had been on his way to Mrs. Lilley’s for Sandy’s trunk. Grace had persuaded him to come along with her. He was sitting beside Laura, and, as he passed her a plate of muffins, he said, “The Regulatory Body stalked Sandy—I know it. I don’t care what it takes; I’ll see Doran pay.”
The rest of a crowded table was taken up by Erasmus Tiebold, Father Roy, and a half dozen other priests.
Maze Plasir was at the breakfast too, though Chorley had pointedly removed his butter knife from beside his plate.
Plasir wasn’t eating.
Erasmus Tiebold was asking Plasir questions. “I imagine Doran has himself, his allies, and the Founderston Barracks at least out of the range of this dream, or covered by other dreams. But how long does he mean to keep it up? My cousin Chorley’s household had it very strongly—were they targeted? Or are all Founderston’s citizens lying around gathering moss and gorging themselves?”
Plasir leaned back in his chair and looked at his hands. He said, “You can’t win.”
“If the whole city is in the same shambles that my cousin’s house was, then I can’t see what Doran hopes to gain, or how he hopes to get away with it.”
“Can’t you? For a start, the film and the girl can be kept from the Commission. You might still have the evidence in your possession, but who will be interested in it?”
Father Roy had a lightweight edition of the Founderston Herald open before him. He also had yesterday’s papers from Westport and Canning and other smaller towns in the south. He said, “It is reported here that Congress voted to abolish the two-term limit on the presidency.”
“And then there’s that.” Plasir gloated. “You’re in the Temple, and the dreams you need to catch to keep people safe are in the Place—two localities far apart. You have only four dream-hunters in this room, and one of them is an epileptic.”
Rose put down the muffin she was picking at and pushed aside her teacup too.
Plasir looked around the table, his eyes glittering. He said to Erasmus Tiebold, “And, unless I’m mistaken, Your Eminence, you have been chewing Wakeful. Why? Are you so reluctant to share any dream that you’re drugging yourself to save yourself from Miss Hame’s charming specialty?”
Laura gazed at Plasir with amazement. He could make anything sound corrupt. The Gate was her “charming specialty.”
“Please remove him,” Chorley said.
The Grand Patriarch nodded to one of the priests, who called on some of the Temple guards. Plasir got up and gave them a nasty smile. He said, “Face it—you’re finished.” He was led out.
When the door had closed, Grace said, “He’s right about some things. All they have to do is get us—me, George, Laura. Then we’re finished. You can’t go on chewing Wakeful forever.”
“I thought that Wakeful could give me eighty sleepless hours,” Erasmus Tiebold said.
“Not safely,” said Tziga. “With a dream inside you it can. Without a dream you’ll become gloomy, angry, and possibly dangerous within sixty hours.”
“Then you’ll develop an irregular heartbeat,” Chorley said. “It’s hearts that need sleep.”
The Grand Patriarch looked disturbed. It was his first sign of worry.
“Drought’s End is useless,” Grace said. “I have to catch a master dream. Laura’s The Gate will be good for another four days, possibly more. I have to catch something to spell her, and buy us some more time.”
“My penumbra won’t go anywhere near protecting the whole palace,” George Mason said. His face creased with unhappiness.
Chorley said, “We have to focus on the film.”
“The Commission is—out of commission!” Grace shouted. “What good is your bloody film?”
The Grand Patriarch winced. “Please, Mrs. Tiebold.” There was something about his expression that made Laura think he was scolding her aunt for a lack of refinement.
Laura put her hands over her ears. She sat for a moment and listened to her blood roar. She concentrated on not being sick. All the food on the table smelled awful, the eggs sulfurous, the muffins soapy with baking powder, the milk fatty. Food had been tasting funny to her for days, but now it was as if it were poisonous.
“Hey!” said Rose suddenly, very loud, and interrupting everyone. She leapt up and put her fists on the table, leaned across it and over the newspaper Father Roy was reading. She grabbed the paper and turned it—she had been reading it upside down. “Listen,” she said, and read out a death notice. “Seresin, Kathryn (née Kralls). March 14, 1907, at the age of fifty-five, after a short illness. Beloved wife of Judge Mitchell Seresin.” Rose looked around the table. “The Commission didn’t reconvene because its head wasn’t in town. He would have been at his wife’s deathbed. And he’ll be at her funeral, in Castlereagh, this coming Friday. We can take the film to him!”
There was a short, electrified pause. Then everyone started talking.
7
O ONE WHO SAW THE LARGE PARTY THAT ARRIVED AT FOUNDERSTON CENTRAL STATION THE FOLLOWING DAY would have thought that they were engaged in a desperate plan. The group stood under the great clock suspended from the cavernous ceiling of the main concourse. They were well-dressed and well-equipped, with bags and picnic baskets and t
ravel rugs. Among them they had a number of large film canisters, fastened in buckled carrying straps.
As they waited, they were met by men who, it seemed, had been sent ahead to buy train tickets. The men approached the group, tickets were produced, words exchanged—but no money, no tips. The party stood watching the clock; then they moved as one out onto the platform and, after a quick round of farewells, dispersed to different trains.
George Mason wasn’t with them. He had left in the early hours by car. He was to travel by the back roads of Wry Valley to the border west of Doorhandle, where he planned to go In and catch Plasir’s specialty dream, Secret Room—a master dream.
Marta and Tziga got on a train going south. Their tickets would take them to the spa in Spring Valley, where invalids often went to bathe and drink from the mineral springs. With the Hames were a priest, one of the Grand Patriarch’s most trusted men, and a stolid Temple guard. Marta carried a copy of the film, the long strip of nitrate removed from its reel and wound in a figure eight into the false bottom of her narrow valise—a bag of a shape that no one would suppose could store a reel of film. Marta and Tziga intended to check into the spa, where Tziga—another decoy—would stay. Marta would take a boat—supposedly for a day trip across the lake—escorted only by the Temple guard. On the opposite side of the lake was a small but picturesque mountain village, from which a road wound down fifty-five rough miles to the far side of the mountains that divided Southland. A weekly coach service ran on that road, delivering mail and other goods to farms and settlements along the way. Marta and the Temple guard would catch that coach, then the train again from a small station south of The Corridor. The train would get them to Castlereagh by Friday evening.
Two priests carrying a reel each boarded the express to Westport. Both reels were unexposed film—decoys.