Sandy sat down and gazed up at the spines of the books. After a moment he heard the front door open and went to relay Mr. Hame’s message to the nurse.
Later, the sun went down and Sandy followed the light out onto the veranda in order to keep reading a book he’d discovered, a book with a title irresistible to him. Laura’s father found him frowning over The Seven Principles of Self-Reliance. Tziga Hame sat in a chair opposite him.
“How is she now?” Sandy said.
“She’s sleeping. Her feet have been lathered with some smelly ointment and properly, professionally bandaged. When the nurse left us, Laura told me about her ordeal.”
“She told me too.”
Tziga nodded. “I hope you’ll stay, Sandy. I mean—you must.”
Sandy bit his lip for a moment, then his irritation and the sense he had of himself being salt of the earth got the better of him. “I can’t just hold my breath, even when someone I care about is convalescing,” he said. “I have to earn a living.”
“I wanted to talk to you about that. And about Laura.”
Sandy was speechless. Was Laura’s father trying to talk to him about his “prospects”—whether he could support his daughter? Laura’s father didn’t sound stern, or prying, he didn’t seem embarrassed either, and if he was joking he was being remarkably deadpan.
Tziga went on. “There’s a dream I’d like to have again. I doubt I can catch it myself. I don’t have the strength anymore.”
Sandy realized that he wasn’t being asked about his intentions toward Laura. He also understood that Tziga Hame’s scars and smashed-in cheekbone were signs of a more serious, invisible injury. “I must be kind to him,” Sandy thought—though the notion of trying to be kind made Sandy feel he was trying to stuff his big feet into small shoes.
“Just listen.” Tziga smiled, a sweet, fey smile. “Let me finish before I forget how I began,” he said. Then, “Master dreams are all somehow brutal, even when they’re beautiful. I couldn’t manage The Gate now myself, but Laura certainly can. And Grace tells me you show great promise …”
V
The Gate
1
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.”
“Yes,” said Chorley, eager.
Dr. King seemed startled at the interruption. He slapped the tabletop. “Exactly! We know how the Place can be used, but not why it’s there. Do you realize that that is opposite to our views on human life? For instance, as a man who believes in the material rather than the spiritual, I know that my fundamental purpose in life is to father children and teach them the skills for survival. To, in short, do what a mother cat will for her kittens. A human version of that. So—you and I must continue the species—”
“Oh dear,” said Chorley, “you and I?”
Dr. King patted Chorley’s hand. “No, my dear man, you with your charming wife, and I with mine. But that description of why we are here doesn’t give any clues about how we should actually live our lives—the uses of our lives. How many times are we confronted with a thing for which we have a use, but no knowledge of its nature? Its purpose? That’s what the Place is to us.”
Again King made a raid on Chorley’s scone. Chorley didn’t dare take a bite of it himself. Momentarily distracted by this, he found, when his attention returned to what Dr. King was saying, that the man was talking about Aristotle.
Chorley was bemused. Hadn’t they agreed that there had been enough theological and philosophical thinking about the Place? And now King was bringing up a philosopher.
“You are familiar with Aristotle?”
Chorley, in his impatience, quoted part of a song he’d learned at the University—or rather in the bars and cafés around the University. “Aristotle, Aristotle, was a demon for the bottle.”
Dr. King gave him a wry look. “Was ‘demon’ the word you learned?”
“No, I substituted ‘demon’ for the word I learned. Of course I know Aristotle. Greek philosopher. Taught Alexander the Great. Disapproved of plays, because he thought that, if people enjoyed the villains in plays, that would encourage them to behave badly. The Grand Patriarch would like him.”
King laughed his vigorous, shoulder-shaking laugh and reached for some more scone. “Would you like your own?” Chorley said, and turned to seek a waiter.
“Oh no! No!” King desisted. “Now—why I mention Aristotle is that, with the Place, investigators are reduced to the same state of knowledge as the ancients. We really don’t have any scientific methods we can apply. There are so few fruitful experiments. Yes, we have brought out bottled air and burned it. Yes, we’ve collected soil samples and performed chemical tests. But what of it? Chemistry won’t do it.
“Aristotle invented an early system of classification, with a place for everything: animal, vegetable, and mineral. For instance, in Aristotle’s system, put simply, man is a two-legged animal without wings. A chicken, on the other hand, is a two-legged animal with wings—”
Chorley, annoy
ed by this detour, said flippantly, “And Long John Silver, having only one leg, wouldn’t be a man?”
“Well—yes—but do we count his parrot? Its legs and wings?” Dr. King chortled.
Chorley wondered whether he dared to call a waiter over and order himself another scone. He didn’t want to embarrass King, whose trespasses were rather charming. In most situations Chorley was the one licensed to be less formal. But King was making him feel a little stiff and starchy. That was why he’d made his silly remark about Long John Silver—only to get a witty comeback.
King said, “Aristotle is useful in the case of the Place because we can use him to ask very simple questions about it. Shall we try?” He began, “What is the Place made of?”
“Land,” said Chorley. “Plains, hills, riverbeds—land.”
“Good! What does it contain?”
“Vegetation. Dead pasture, brush, and trees. There are no animal remains, which is very strange.”
“No, no!” Dr. King waved his remnant scone back and forth, as if by sowing the tabletop with crumbs he might encourage a crop of little scones. “Let us ignore what the Place lacks. Aristotle would have you start with what a thing has, not what it lacks.”
“So the missing leg doesn’t count, but the parrot does?”