Nightmare (10 page)

  It was the Dream.

  Ara looked down. Her body felt perfectly solid and normal, as did the ground beneath her feet. This, she knew, was an illusion created by her own subconscious. Each particle of the earth she stood on, every molecule of air she breathed, was actually a sentient mind. Although every mind in the universe created the unconscious gestalt of the Dream, only the Silent could actually enter and use it. The whispers Ara heard were other Silent also in the Dream. If Ara desired, she could reach out to one or more of them, call to them.

  The Silent could also sculpt the Dream into whatever environment they desired. Usually Ara chose a pleasure garden, complete with fruit trees, musical fountains, and sweet-smelling flowers. The flat plain was merely the default. This time Ara left it as it was.

  Iris Temm and three other Children of Irfan had died while they were in the Dream, and the police were assuming they had been attacked and murdered there. Even the greenest student of the Children knew that injuries in the Dream were visited on the real-world body and that very few Silent had the concentration or strength to resist these psychosomatic wounds. Death by accident was not unknown in the Dream, but there was the matter of the substitute fingers. There was nothing accidental in this particular case.

  The difficulty lay in the Dream itself. The place left no crime scene. Without a conscious mind to dictate reality, it reverted to the simple, featureless plain Ara now occupied. Once Iris Temm was dead and her killer left the Dream, there would be nothing to indicate either person had ever been there.

  Or so the murderer probably thought.

  Ara closed her eyes and widened her other senses. Delicately she probed at the ground beneath her feet and the air above her head. When Iris Temm had entered the Dream and created an environment for herself, she used the subconscious minds that were closest to her physical body—her neighbors, other Silent, even the more intelligent dinosaurs, if some of the wilder theories about them were correct. Each mind made up a piece of Iris’s Dream. Since Temm had only been dead for an hour or two, most of these people should still be fairly close to her—and to Ara. This meant that Ara’s Dream body now existed in the portion of the Dream created from the same minds that Temm had recently used.

  And Ara could hear the echoes.

  Each mind Iris Temm had touched from the Dream retained an unconscious memory of the form she had given it, a telepathic recording of what it had been. Ara stretched her own mind outward, listening, feeling, touching.

  Duplicating.

  Ara was an expert in Dream morphic theory, meaning she had a deep, almost instinctive knowledge of how the Dream was put together. Ara was one of the few human Silent whose touch was delicate enough to recreate what someone else had done. She used that touch now.

  The plain warped and changed. Forms writhed upward from the ground and crawled across the sky. A moment later, Ara opened her eyes. An autumn forest stood around her. Gold and scarlet leaves decorated maple and oak trees, and the faint smell of smoke hung on the cool air. It was a relaxing environment with one strange feature—everything was translucent, ghost-like. The trees looked as if Ara might be able to push her hand through them, and the leaves looked like colored tracing paper. This was to be expected. The people whose subconscious minds Temm had used to create her Dream were beginning to forget what they had become for her. Still, it was enough to see what was going on.

Iris Temm herself sat beneath one of the trees talking with another Silent, a lizard-like karill from the Henkarill system. Here, Iris was vibrant and alive, her fair skin smooth instead of bruised, her face animated instead of still. Her movements were graceful and she was very pretty. But Ara could see through her as if she were a ghost.

  The voice of the karill was low, and Ara couldn’t make out what it was saying. Ara wondered why Iris called up a Terran forest instead of the talltrees on Bellerophon. Perhaps she had been born on Earth or had spent time there.

  Temm and the karill finished their business, and the karill vanished. Ara knew that once in the solid world it would doubtless begin transcribing their session, transferring letters, documents, financial accounts, diplomatic communiques, and other information into electronic or even hard copy. That was the primary function of the Silent, keeping the lines of communication open between planets and systems separated by thousands of light years and weeks of travel. All Children of Irfan were licensed and bonded, with oaths of secrecy not to reveal or share information that passed through their minds and hands. Temm would soon forget what she had seen, in any case. Short-term memory training was an essential part of the Children’s education program, including the "forget" reflex which kept transmitted information out of long-term memory.

No,
Ara thought with a small shock.
Iris will never be able to remember or forget anything again.

  The ghostly Iris Temm stretched, stood, and glanced contentedly around her forest. Ara was about to move a bit closer when she felt a ripple in the Dream, like a distortion in the air, and Ara recognized Inspector Tan’s presence, though the other woman hadn’t created a Dream body for herself. The presence requested permission to approach.

  "It’s ready, Inspector," Ara said. "Just come slowly. You’ll disrupt everything if you appear too fast."

  Tan faded into existence. The forest bent and rippled around her until she got her bearings and was able to insert her mind into the scene around her without forcing her own expectations on it and thereby destroying it. She looked around the forest with a sharp, practiced eye.

  "Temm’s over there. She just finished work," Ara said.

  "I’m impressed at the level of detail," Tan said, and her voice was deep and mellow, like a fine wine.

  "Thank you," Ara said, a bit mystified. Although Tan’s lips moved and Ara heard the words, Ara knew that it was all illusion created by her own subconscious. In the Dream, communication consisted of concepts transferred directly from mind to mind. Ara’s mind, however, expected sound and language, so it provided them for her. Thought became reality in the Dream. Apparently Tan’s conception of her own voice was different from reality.

  At that moment the light level dropped, as if the sun had leaped to the horizon. The leaves lost their bright colors and fell to the ground, leaving behind black, skeletal branches. A cold breeze stirred the papery leaves with a hiss and a rustle. Dread stole over Ara like a cold hand. Temm had noticed the change as well. Confused, Iris remained still, apparently concentrating in an attempt to change the landscape back. It didn’t work.

  "Who’s there?" Iris called in a frightened voice. "What are you doing to my turf?"

  Another gust of air whirled the leaves around in a tiny brown tornado. From behind a tree stepped a man. His back was to Ara and Tan, and all she could see was that he was tall, with a broad, strong build. He wore loose black trousers and a dark shirt. A wide-brimmed black hat covered his hair. Like the rest of the scene, he was translucent. Temm made a little squeak and stepped back.

Run, girl!
Ara thought, even though she knew how it had to end.
Get out of the Dream!

  "Darling," the man said. "I’m on my way. I’m coming for you."

  This didn’t seem to be what Iris Temm had been expecting him to say. "Coming for me?" she echoed, puzzled. "What do you mean? Who are you?"

  "I love you, you know. You’ve always known." He took another step toward her. "We’re going to make love in the flowers. The red ones."

  Tan grabbed Ara’s arm. "Let’s move to the other side," she hissed. "Maybe we can see his face."

  "You don’t have to whisper," Ara told her. "They can’t hear us. They aren’t really here." But she closed her eyes and gathered her concentration. A Silent’s relative position in the Dream was based solely on where she expected to be. Right now Ara was
here
and she wanted to be
there.
On the count of three,
there
would be
here.
One . . two ...
three.

  There was a slight wrench and Ara opened her eyes. She was standing less than two meters behind Temm. Inspector Tan stood with her. Distortions rippled through the forest, Temm, and the man, as if the scene were reflected in a pool and someone had thrown a pebble. The conversation between Temm and the man wavered and swooped unintelligibly. Ara cursed herself for not realizing this would happen.

  "Hold still," she ordered Tan. "It’ll clear sooner if you don’t move."

  After a moment, the scene settled. The man’s features, however, were shrouded in the shadow of the wide-brimmed hat.

  "—me alone," Temm was saying. "I don’t want you near me."

  The man lunged for her. Temm gave a scream and ran. Ara and Tan turned as one to follow her. Then both of them halted and stared. The bare trees came to life. They lashed downward like stiff snakes, trapping Iris Temm in a mesh of branches and bark. The wind rose and howled like a cold living thing. Temm struggled and tore at the branches but she couldn’t get free. Ara’s stomach clenched in fear and she had to remind herself that this was nothing more than a recording, that the trees wouldn’t—couldn’t—attack her. Temm’s scream wailed on the wind as the man in the wide-brimmed hat drew close to her.

  "You bitch!" he screeched, and smashed her across the face. She screamed again, and Ara noticed the branches had wrapped around her shins and forearms. "I want the flowers! Pretty flowers!"

  The branches stiffened and Temm screamed again. Ara realized tears were running down her face. She wanted to run, leave the Dream, or even look away, but she found she couldn’t. Inspector Tan’s face remained completely impassive. Iris Temm’s scream went on and on, mingling with the wind and the growls of the dark man.

  "I don’t want to do this," he cried to the skies. "Don’t make me do this!"

  The cold air sliced through Ara’s clothes and made the tears on her face feel like rivers of ice. Temm screamed one last time like a banshee howl. With a horrible sound that Ara knew she would never forget, the branches tore the limbs from Iris Temm’s body.

  The wind stopped. The branches snapped back upward with bony rattle, leaving the bloody pieces of Temm’s body behind. As Ara stared in horror, the dark man knelt beside the remains.

  "Why did you make me do that?" he said in a calm, chill voice. "You make me do it every time. Every goddamned time."

  He reached down and came up with a small, pink object. Ara’s gorge rose when she realized it was one of Temm’s fingers. A bit of yellow-gray bone poked out of the torn end. Temm’s sightless eyes gazed up at the black branches above them. Using the bloody end of the finger like a paintbrush, the man wrote something on Temm’s forehead.

  Tan leaped forward to get a look. Ara stood frozen where she was. The man flung the finger away and put his hands over his face beneath the hat. Then he vanished like a burst soap bubble. A split-second later, so did the ghostly forest and the body of Iris Temm. Ara stood on the featureless plain alone with Tan. Whispers fluttered on the empty air all around them. It was as if the entire thing had never happened.

  "Did ...did you see what he wrote?" Ara asked finally. Her throat was dry and she wanted a drink with more than just water in it.

  "Yes." Tan’s rich voice was flat. "It’s worse than I thought."

  "Why? What did he write."

  Tan looked at her. "The number twelve."

  Grandfather Melthine ran a hand through his silvery hair as Ara finished the story. They were in his study, a busy-looking office lined with bookdisks and comfortable chairs. Holographic models of spaceships floated just below the ceiling. Outside, the sun was setting, and purple shadows gathered among the talltree branches. The office was a bit stuffy—Melthine preferred to keep the windows shut. Ara occupied a deep armchair, and an empty glass sat on a table at her elbow. Her hands had finally stopped shaking. Inspector Tan sat rigid in another chair while her partner Linus Gray leaned against one wall. He was a tall, spare man, with ash-blond hair that was receding from a high forehead. Around his neck he wore a medallion of worked silver instead of plain gold, a symbol of his position as Inspector with the Guardians of Irfan. Tan, presumably, wore hers underneath her shirt.

  "This opens up a great many questions," Melthine said at last. "We need to discuss them."

  "You and Mother Ara are both experts in Dream theory," Gray said. "Whatever information you can give us will help."

  "The number twelve is significant," Tan said, voice raspy again. "Obviously."

  "You think Iris was his twelfth victim?" Ara asked.

  Tan shrugged. "Could be. Or he might write the number twelve on all his victims. No way to know yet. If we
assume
—" her emphasis on that word made it clear what she thought of the idea "—that the number twelve means he’s killed eleven other people, and if we
assume
he killed the other two finger victims, that would mean there are nine other corpses we don’t know about yet. I’ve already checked the databases. In the entire recorded history we have of Bellerophon, there isn’t a single incident in which a murder victim turned up with someone else’s finger sewn on."

  She sat back in her chair, as if exhausted by the long speech.

  "Which means the killer came to us from another planet," Melthine said.

  "No," Tan groused. "It only means we’ve made a lot of assumptions. He might be a native and he hid the other bodies. Or he dropped them off a balcony, fed the dinosaurs. But it looks like we need to operate on the theory that the same person killed all three women and that he’s going to do it again."

  "I’m not Silent," Gray said, "and I’m nowhere near an expert in Dream theory, but doesn’t a Silent’s landscape disappear when they leave the Dream or if they die while in it? Temm—and her forest—should have disappeared the moment she died. Why did her Dream body hang around after this hat guy killed her?"