Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet (60 page)

IT WAS THREE DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS, AND THE FAMILY WAS AT SUMMERFORT. CHORLEY HAD JUST FINISHED SHOOTING A FILM, HIS FIRST TWO-REELER, AND WAS SHUT UP IN HIS DARKROOM, EDITING IT. HIS THREE JACKS-OF-ALL-TRADES—SANDY, SANDY’S BROTHER THE ENGINEER, AND LAZARUS—WERE KNEELING ON THE LAWN AROUND A NEWSPAPER, ON WHICH RESTED A DISMANTLED CAMERA. THE CAMERA HAD BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR SOME EDGE FOG ON THE FILM, AND THEY WERE TRYING TO WORK OUT WHERE THE LIGHT HAD LEAKED IN.

The newspaper, disregarded by the men, carried a headline that, three days before, had made everyone in the family very happy:
PRISON REFORM BILL PASSES—HARD LABOR
abolished.

Grace was upstairs, getting her granddaughter off to sleep so that her daughter could study.

The afternoon was still and humid, the air filled with the abrasive music of hundreds of cicadas, and one violin. The violin belonged to a four-year-old boy, who stood, shoulders back, his instrument tucked under his chin, playing. He was practicing legato, his bow moving smoothly and never leaving the strings. His performance was watched by his grandfather, who sat on a stone seat at the edge of the lawn, back to the hazy, hot blue of the bay.

The cousins, Laura Mason and Rose Hame, were on the veranda. Between them was a table covered in books and papers.

Laura was using her cousin to test the wording of title cards for the finished film. Chorley liked to have as few title cards as possible. That morning he and she had watched a rough cut and worked out where it was absolutely necessary to add those six or so seconds of darkness and white words.

Laura hunched, chewing on the end of her big, flat builder’s pencil. Then she pounced, scrawled for a moment, and raised the sheet of paper to flash it at her cousin.

Rose read: “Pat Slocum—General of the Heroes of Dog Alley.”

“That’s not bad. But is it worth interrupting the action for?” Rose said.

“He’s a dumpy little dandy who swaggers, so we know ‘General’ and ‘Heroes’ are ironic,” Laura said. She frowned at what she’d written, chewed her pencil some more, then had another inspiration. She scrawled more words and held them up.

Rose read: “The Commander in Chief of the mighty forces of Dog Alley—General Pat Slocum.”

“Change his name to Pat Potts or something,” Rose said. “Unless Da’s done the cast credits already.”

Laura was about to answer when Rose lifted her book and flashed its title—
Southland Constitutional Law.
She said, “I’m having enough trouble with this without the Dog Alley Gang.”

Laura gathered up her sheets of paper. She went in search of another victim. She stood behind her son and flashed title cards at her father.

“I’ve forgotten the film’s plot, darling,” Tziga said, “so I’m not much use. But I like ‘mighty forces.’”

And, at that moment, the ground began to shake.

Laura dropped into a crouch and put her arms around her son. She watched her father’s slow realization that this violent noise and vertigo wasn’t the beginning of one of his fits but was external to him. Tziga didn’t try to stand up. He clamped one hand on the edge of the stone seat and rode it as it rocked and shuddered.

Laura could hear glass breaking. She looked back at the house.

The panes in the dining room windows were exploding, one by one. The windows had jammed in their warped frames and were bent and bowed. Laura saw that Rose was trying to crawl to the front entrance. Trying to get into the house and upstairs to her baby. But Laura could see Grace already had the baby. Grace was sheltering in an open door on the upstairs balcony, her back against the doorframe, her head and shoulders curved protectively over the lace-swathed bundle of her granddaughter.

Chorley staggered out the front door and pulled Rose back in under its solid frame.

The ground between Laura and the house cracked, the fissures only inches wide but showing stretched fibers of grass roots. The gravel on the new driveway jumped like popcorn in a hot pan.

And then the shaking stopped. Sound seemed to ebb all the way out of the world. The silence that followed the quake was like a presence—some vast, demonstrative, living thing.

In the Sisters Beach firehouse, a siren wound up into a long, wobbling shriek.

Laura saw that her father had held on to his seat with only one hand; he still had the book he’d been reading in the other, his finger shut into it as a place marker.

Sandy ran up to her. They both took a good look at their boy, Sandy squeezing his arms as if to check for injuries, she
brushing his fine, red hair back from his face and peering into his black eyes.

Rose was already up on the balcony. Grace gave her the baby, who was howling louder than the fire siren.

Lazarus called, “Is she all right?”

“She’s fine,” Grace shouted down. “She was fast asleep. She’s only angry because I woke her.” Then, “Where’s Chorley?”

Lazarus and Sandy’s brother pointed at Chorley, who came out where his wife could see him and waved to her. “I’m going to go down into town and take a look around,” he said.

“Take your camera,” Grace and Rose said together.

Laura’s son was trembling. She rubbed his arms. “Wasn’t that strange?” she said in a bright voice, hoping to reassure him.

“It’s all over now, son,” said Sandy.

The boy looked from one parent to the other, his eyes round and bright. He said, “Was the ground angry? Was it trying to get up?”

GLOSSARY

claim
Whenever a
DREAMHUNTER
finds a new dream, he or she must register it with the
DREAM REGULATORY BODY
and stake a claim on it. A claim will give a dreamhunter one-year exclusive rights to perform the dream. However, any dream that the Dream Regulatory Body chooses to classify as a
DREAM FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD
cannot be claimed.

Colorist
A Colorist is a secret persuader who will insert into another
DREAMHUNTER
’s performance some impressions at the dream’s beginning or end, when the audience is less fully absorbed in the performance. The audience absorbs the Colorist’s impressions and thinks these are their own thoughts or feelings. A Colorist’s dream is usually a print of a dream taken from a
GIFTER
, who has altered it to deliver a desired message. Coloring is illegal.

dream for the public good
A dream deemed too valuable for commercial use alone, usually a healing dream, will be classified as a dream for the public good by the
DREAM REGULATORY BODY.
The Department of Corrections also classes
THINK AGAIN DREAM
s as dreams for the public good. Any
DREAMHUNTER
may catch a dream for the public good and can perform it in a
DREAM PARLOR
or a
DREAM PALACE.
But each time the dream is caught, the dreamhunter’s contract
with the Dream Regulatory Body rules that the dreamer must spend several nights dreaming it in a hospital. Exceptions to this are dreams such as Convalescent One and Starry Beach, discovered before the formation of the Dream Regulatory Body; anyone can catch them and negotiate their sale at market prices.

dream palace
A larger building, often purpose-built, in which dreams are performed is a dream palace. According to
DREAM REGULATORY BODY
regulations, to qualify as a dream palace the building must have over fifty beds. Dream palaces are often round or ovoid and consist of several tiers, balconies with bedrooms opening off them. In the center of the palace auditorium is the dais, where the dreamer sleeps. Only
DREAMHUNTER
s with large
PENUMBRA
s perform in dream palaces. Dream palaces are a vital part of the life of Southland; attendance of dreams is a social occasion, and most fashionable people own formal nightwear. The Rainbow Opera is Southland’s largest and most magnificent dream palace. It was built for Grace Tiebold.

dream parlor
Any place with fewer than fifty beds dedicated to the performance of dreams is a dream parlor. Many of the hotels and hostels on Founderston’s Isle of the Temple became dream parlors during the early years of the industry. Dream parlors can have as few as five beds. Tickets to attend general exhibition dream parlors are much less expensive than those to
DREAM PALACE
performances, though there are specialist dream parlors with prices dependent on the market for their dreams. Maze Plasir, a
GIFTER
, is the proprietor of an expensive and exclusive dream parlor on the Isle of the Temple.

Dream Regulatory Body
Established in 1896 under the Intangible Resources Act, the Dream Regulatory Body (also known as the Regulatory Body or just the Body) is a department of the Secretariat of the Interior, and the responsibility of the Secretary of the Interior, Cas Doran, who was the main author of the Intangible Resources Act. The Regulatory Body employs
RANGERS
to patrol
THE PLACE.
The Regulatory Body also holds Tries to identify new
DREAMHUNTERS
and undertakes the testing and training of successful candidates of each
TRY.
All dreamhunters,
DREAM PALACES
, and
DREAM PARLORS
must be licensed by the Body. The Body also has contracts with other government entities to supply dreams for health care and for programs of education and rehabilitation in Southland’s prisons.

dream sites
Dreams are sometimes found in general areas in
THE PLACE
and can be caught by a group of people. This is the case with Wild River and is one of the reasons that it is used to test the successful candidates of each
TRY.
But some dream sites are very confined; their dreams are hard to discover, and can often be caught by only a particular kind of
DREAMHUNTER.
Maze Plasir’s Secret Room is a confined-site dream. So is Tziga Hame’s The Gate. That dream’s site was so confined that Hame could claim never to be able to find it again.

dream trails
Roads, paths, and scratchy routes in
THE PLACE
, dream trails usually lead to popular, tried and tested dreams.

dreamhunter
Anyone able to enter
THE PLACE
, catch one of the dreams to be found there, carry it back into the world,
and share it with others is a dreamhunter. Dreamhunting has been an industry in Southland for twenty years and is a major form of entertainment and therapy.

Gifter
(or
Grafter)
A Gifter is a
DREAMHUNTER
who can take his own memories of a real person’s face and manners and graft them onto the characters in the dreams he catches. Gifters are usually employed by people who want what they can’t have, or who have lost someone they love.

healer
Any
DREAMHUNTER
who can catch and convey vividly the great healing dreams is a healer.

Hame
Any
DREAMHUNTER
with a big
PENUMBRA
is known as a Hame. The name comes from Tziga Hame, possibly the greatest dreamhunter.

loaded
A
DREAMHUNTER
with a freshly caught dream is sometimes said to be loaded. Each dream is like a charge, discharged over a number of sleeps.

map references in the Place
On maps of
THE PLACE
, the main references are bands and sections. Because the Place is vast, and its interior unexplored, it is mapped in bands from either end. Each band represents a three- to five-hour journey on foot, depending on the terrain. From Doorhandle the Place has been mapped from bands A to I. The Tricksie Bend end is less thoroughly explored, and has been mapped only from Z to U. From the Doorhandle border one enters Band A; from Tricksie Bend one enters Band Z. Each band is divided perpendicularly into sections. The sections are a kind of longitude to the latitude of the bands. The sections begin with 1 to the west of Doorhandle and minus 1 to the east, and
the same at the Tricksie Bend end, so that the map will work if its references
were
ever to join in the as yet unpenetrated interior. Grace Tiebold’s first dream, Pursuit, is at A minus 1, In and a little east of Doorhandle.

master dream
A dream that can erase other dreams, a master dream is particularly powerful and vivid. Examples are Buried Alive, Secret Room, and Contentment.

mounter
Any
DREAMHUNTER
who can
OVERDREAM
another and erase the dream he or she is carrying is a mounter.

Novelist
Any
DREAMHUNTER
who can catch a
SPLIT DREAM
is a Novelist. The people who share a Novelist’s dream will sometimes pick up one point of view and sometimes another, or switch back and forth all night between the two. Split dreams are richer and more complex than other dreams. Grace Tiebold is the most celebrated Novelist dreamhunter.

overdream
When a powerful and fully loaded
DREAMHUNTER
, especially one having a
MASTER DREAM
, erases another dreamhunter’s performance, this is known as over-dreaming.

penumbra
A
DREAMHUNTER
’s projection zone is known as his or her penumbra, a term borrowed from astronomy, where it describes the partial shadow the moon casts on the face of the earth during a total eclipse. (The “umbra,” or totality, is the dreamhunter himself or herself, asleep and haloed by the shade of a dream.) An average public performance-sized penumbra is around eighty yards. Some dreamhunters, such as Maze Plasir, have small penumbras and still have good careers because they have other specialties, and their projection
zones deliver hypnotically intense dream experiences. Grace Tiebold has a three-hundred-yard penumbra. Tziga Hame’s, at four hundred, is the largest on record. Grace Tiebold and Tziga Hame cannot sleep just anywhere when
LOADED
with a dream.

the Place
The territory where the dreams come from is called the Place. It is infinitely more vast than the hundred or so square miles of the mountain range it encompasses. Only a very few people can enter the Place. Of these, some become
RANGERS
and some
DREAMHUNTER
s who can make their fortunes from dreams caught, carried out, and shared with others.

No one has established how long the Place was there before being discovered. Protected by its own remoteness, and the sparse population of the Rifleman Mountains, the Place had its first verifiable appearance on a day in November 1886 when a young violinist named Tziga Hame disappeared from a coach traveling between the village of Doorhandle and Sisters Beach.

rangers
Employees of the
DREAM REGULATORY BODY
, rangers patrol
THE PLACE
, maintain its trails, and perform search and rescue when necessary. Rangers are those who find that, although they can enter the Place, they can’t catch dreams.

Soporif
Anyone who is close to a Soporif
DREAMHUNTER
when he falls asleep will fall asleep with him. Soporifs often work in hospitals, enhancing the effects of anesthetics. For example, Soporifs can be helpful by entering the operating room before the surgeons and their assistants and lying down
near the prepared patient. George Mason is Southland’s best Soporif.

split dream
A dream that has two points of view is a split dream. Only a
NOVELIST
will be able to catch both points of view at the same time and deliver them to the audience. Examples of split dreams are Homecoming, the Second Sentence / Sunken, and Grace Tiebold’s famous first split dream, Pursuit.

Think Again dream
A dream classified by the Department of Corrections as a
DREAM FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD
and used for educating and rehabilitating prisoners is a Think Again dream.

Try
Twice a year, in the fall and spring, the
DREAM REGULATORY BODY
holds Tries, at which people, the majority of them teenagers, attempt to enter
THE PLACE.
Only one person in three hundred will cross over into the Place.

Wakeful
A purple-red fibrous paste, Wakeful is a powerful stimulant with a pleasant perfume. It is dangerous if used for too long or in large doses.
DREAMHUNTERS
often chew Wakeful to stay awake when they have walked days into
THE PLACE
to catch a dream they don’t want to waste before they have an audience.