Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet (58 page)

N ONE OF THE FASHIONABLE TERRACES ABOVE THE BAY AT CASTLEREAGH THERE WAS A HOUSE WHERE ALL THE MIRRORS
had been covered, and where, in the late afternoon following the funeral, only a few family members and close friends remained. The servants were gathering glasses and plates from under the chairs, on the windowsills, and from the top of the piano. No one expected a caller, given the time, and the funeral wreath on the front door.

One of the dead woman’s daughters went to answer the knocking. It was something to do. Something to distract her from her nagging misery.

On the steps stood a small, severe-looking woman, and a man in a long cape, who had his arms folded under it in a way that made an imposing triangle of his upper body.

The dead woman’s daughter stood aside and let the two in. She took them to her father, who was tucked in the house’s smallest downstairs room, drinking whiskey with his best friend. Then, because the room was so small, the daughter went out and closed the door.

“Judge Seresin,” said Marta Hame, “I’m very sorry for your loss. I hate to disturb you at this time, but I’ve come a long way and on desperate business.”

“Mitch, this is Marta Hame!” Dr. King said to his friend the Judge.

The caped man took a pace back and leaned against the door. He let his hidden rifle dangle, so that its muzzle appeared from under his cape, pointed at the floor.

“With a Temple guard!” said Dr. King. He was intrigued.

Marta Hame put her valise on the table, opened it, and lifted out her folded clothes balanced on the flat false bottom. She put the pile down, then produced the figure eight of film. “We’ll need to put this film back on a reel. It’s footage of the Depot, a prison camp in the hinterland of the Place, reached by a secret rail line. Cas Doran and his Regulatory Body have been loading captive dreamhunters with a dream that makes anyone who has it stupid and incautious with happiness. Doran has begun to use this dream to control people in the capital.”

The two men stared at her, mouths open.

“So far he’s contrived to have a dream-narcotized Congress pass legislation to extend the presidential term. And he is hunting down and trying to eliminate, or permanently dream-drug, anyone he thinks will spoil his plans.”

“I told you that vote was rigged,” Dr. King said to his friend. “And I’m sure the earlier appointment of the Speaker of the House was somehow rigged too.”

Marta said, “My niece, Laura, has been to that camp and can testify to its use. And anyone who has had a strong dose of the dream can testify to the fact that it is a gross abuse.”

“But, Miss Hame …” Judge Seresin said.

Marta blinked at him in surprise. She was already worried that he hadn’t leapt into action of some kind. Didn’t he believe her?

“Have you not heard?” he said.

“Haven’t you seen the newspaper?” Dr. King said.

Marta’s hand crept to her throat and clutched her crucifix. “I’ve been traveling by back roads and in locked train compartments. I’ve had no news.”

“The Place has gone,” said Seresin. “It just melted away. Any plan of Doran’s that requires dreams is doomed. Finished. Doran’s empire has fallen.”

“Poor sod,” said Dr. King, then chuckled.

Then the Judge jumped up and stuffed a chair under Marta Hame’s sagging legs. Dr. King poured her a stiff whiskey.

Marta knocked back the whole glass, grimaced, and said, “God be praised.”

They refilled her glass and shook the decanter at the Temple guard, who set his gun against the door and joined them.

“I’ll cable Wilkinson—who will quickly work out which side he’s on,” said Seresin.

“I’ll cable the Grand Patriarch, and my brother at Spring Valley,” Marta said, her voice already faintly slurred—she wasn’t a drinker. “And could you issue a warrant for Doran’s arrest?”

“I shall certainly be doing that,” said the Judge. “But perhaps we should all get on the next train to the capital?” For a moment he looked defeated and exhausted.

Dr. King said, “Yes, Mitch. That would be best.” He put his glass down and touched his friend’s hand.

The Judge nodded. He looked at Marta with solemn dignity. “I think I should see to this myself,” he said.

7

HE PRESIDENT, GARTH WILKINSON, REGARDED THE MEN IN HIS OUTER OFFICE — THE GRAND PATRIARCH AND HIS
secretary, Father Roy; Supreme Court Judge Seresin; Dr. King; and the resurrected dreamhunter Tziga Hame. He straightened his vest over his trim stomach, said, “I will be with you shortly, gentlemen,” and walked back into his own office, his inner sanctum, where his friend the Secretary of Labor was waiting for him.

“Karl,” said Wilkinson. “There’s one thing I think we should do right away, and that is get Doran’s name off the Prosperity Measures Bill. We don’t need to lose the ground we’ve made there.”

“So—you’re letting them have him?”

“I don’t have any choice.”

“And what about the repeal of the presidential term limits?”

Wilkinson sighed. “Well—we’ve landed on a snake there. But it doesn’t need to be a long snake, it might take us back only twenty spaces, since only the last vote will be discounted. The vote under the influence of that dream—about which you and I know nothing whatsoever.”

“What if Doran’s Colorist talks?”

“If Plasir keeps quiet about the coloring, then he’s guilty of
nothing but having a criminal friend. Or having misplaced his trust—as we have, Karl. We trusted Doran. How were we to have known he was such a villain?” Wilkinson put his hand over his heart and practiced a look of great disappointment. “And I doubt we’re in danger from Doran himself. Cas won’t say anything to further jeopardize his achievements.”

“What makes you think that?”

“He’s a patriot,” said Wilkinson.

They left the Presidential Offices in a cavalcade of motorcars and men on horseback.

Dr. King and Judge Seresin rode in the President’s own car. It was a five-minute drive to the Palace of Governance, where the Secretary of the Interior had his offices.

Wilkinson said to the two men opposite him, “I do not relish this task. Cas Doran is a personal friend.”

The car turned onto the embankment. Across the Sva, on the upstream end of the Isle, the tower of the Regulatory Body seemed to be throwing off seed. Paper was being tossed from at least two of its top windows. Sheaves of paper that fanned as they fell into the swampy garden below, or blew out over the river to lie, white, on the water.

“I wish someone would put a stop to that,” Dr. King said mildly. “That’s history.”

“The real tragedy is that thousands of people will be out of work,” Seresin said. “Everyone in those offices, and dream-hunters, rangers, the staff of dream palaces, and proprietors of dream parlors. All will be ruined.”

“Indeed. The social consequences are dreadful to contemplate,” said President Wilkinson.

The cavalcade pulled up at the Palace of Governance, and
they went into its lobby, which was already full of police. Garth Wilkinson and his bodyguard got into the first elevator. The Grand Patriarch, Father Roy, the Judge, and Tziga Hame all waited patiently. King rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet saying, “Oh—to be a fly on the wall!”

Doran was alone in his office. When the door opened and he saw Wilkie, he was pleased—and he was even more pleased when the President stepped into the room and shut the door on his escort, the police, and the handful of pallid and pop-eyed officials who were helping the police put Doran’s papers into crates.

“His Eminence and Judge Seresin will be here soon,” said Wilkie. “I’m very sorry, Cas.”

Doran opened his mouth to speak, but his friend held up a hand. “We have only a moment,” Wilkie said. “And I want you to know that I regard this failure as bad luck. Who could have guessed that the Place would choose this moment to vanish?”

Doran kept quiet but went on nursing the murky suspicions he had, because he didn’t believe in coincidences, only in hidden influence.

“Very bad luck,” Wilkie said, sounding like someone consoling a gambler after his favorite horse has taken a tumble at the Founders Day Cup. Then he said, “Oh—and that Hame is with them. I thought I should warn you since I know you regard him rather superstitiously.”

“He’s nothing now,” Cas Doran said through clenched teeth. “He’s a cripple, a fiddler from the old town. Curse him and his family.”

And then the door opened and that man came in with the other men. The Grand Patriarch was all dignity, and so were
his secretary and the Judge. The historian King was present too, which was something of a surprise to Doran. King—the bumptious twit—was so excited he was having to suck his lips in to keep from smiling. Tziga Hame had his eyes cast down as though he was embarrassed or ashamed.

Wilkinson said to them, “Secretary Doran was just saying that he has hopes of house arrest.”

Doran flushed. He wanted house arrest even less than he wanted to be shut up in a cell in Founderston Barracks. At home he’d have to endure his wife’s tears and recriminations. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want
her.
So—Wilkie was going to act sympathetic in private, then subject him to indignities. Like the indignity of having Seresin say to him, “Your charges will include abduction and conspiracy to abduct. They are too serious for house arrest.”