The Dream Widow (11 page)

Reed nodded.

“Now,” said Jack. “I’ll show you how to access the systems.”

“HIS EYES ARE CLOSED,” said Badger. “Is he still alive?”

A sound like blades on a grindstone vibrated the air.

“I am.”

Wilson touched the curved glass. “Was that you, Father?”

“I just said it was.”

“Sorry. How do you feel?”

“It’s hard to explain. All I can say is that it’s like suddenly becoming a discarded orange peel. I’m completely separated from the real world and from the body you can see. I’m standing on the shore of an ocean, looking at you through what Jack tells me is an old type of display.”

“That’s good.”

“Good? That’s not how I’d describe the situation.”

Wilson sighed. “I mean, it sounds like everything’s gone as expected.”

“Nominally.”

“I guess Jack can teach you how to control the systems in Station now.”

“Especially the reactor,” said Badger.

“What are you talking about? We’ve already spent hours going over operations and the interface. Honestly––I’m exhausted. Is that even possible without a body?”

Wilson shook his head. “But you’ve been in the dome less than ten minutes.”

“That can’t be right,” said Jack. “Wait––now I remember. It’s been so long since we’ve had more than one controller. Time passes at a different rate when we talk to each other. It’s a direct circuit, that’s why it seemed like hours. Pretty interesting design, if you think about it. The human brain has to be sped up to talk to the systems in the base. It’s like putting a rocket on a Ford Escort, though.”

“What’s a Ford?”

“A kind of car in the old days.”

“Like a wooden cart,” said Reed.

“No, no. Gas-powered.”

Wilson shrugged. “A gas-powered wooden cart?”

“If you don’t cut the jibber-jabber I’m leaving,” said Badger.

The low-pitched alarm bell tolled and the cavern snapped into darkness. Two seconds later the alarm abruptly cut off and the lights returned.

“What now?”

“I had to cut Jack’s audio and reroute the power,” said Reed. “He’s not responding.”

A RUSHING STREAM OF PEBBLES whirred under the sea-green Impala. The summer night whipped past the window, full of the buzz of nighthawks.

Jack bobbed his head, his chin making small circles in front of the wheel. He kept his eyes on the speeding wedge of light in front of the car.

“Show me the way to go home,” he sang. “I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”

A woman with raised palms shone in the headlights and Jack jerked the wheel. The Impala hit a shallow ditch and the car spun like a top through the loose gravel. Branches whipped across the windshield and the car slammed to a stop.

A flashlight gleamed on Jack. His head was tilted back and his mouth open. A woman with hazel skin and dark pageboy hair pressed fingers to his neck. She turned off the flashlight and watched the stars turn overhead. The night became grey-blue and sunrise bled through the window glass.

Jack woke with a snort and rubbed his face with both hands. He turned the key but the starter clacked like an automatic rifle on empty.

He opened the door and saw the woman.

“Parvati!”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You followed me from Padre’s?”

Parvati shook her head. “This isn’t real. Your car, me, the accident. You’re not ‘where’ you think you are. You’re not ‘who’ you think you are.”

Jack rubbed his forehead. “I think I’m never drinking again.”

“That headache isn’t real.”

Jack reached behind Parvati and pinched her on the rear. “Was that real, Miss Smarty Pants? Talk crazy all you want. Tomorrow’s a Monday and I have to fix my car.”

She snapped her fingers and the Impala disappeared. Jack stared at the empty bushes and bent trail of crabgrass. He shook his head slowly and walked toward the road.

“Tea and coffee,” he mumbled. “Tea and coffee from now on.”

Parvati followed him along the sand-colored gravel.

“You’re dying,” she said. “The neurological mass of your brain is falling apart. In the real world you’d be singing like a drunken monk at dinner if Reed hadn’t cut the speakers.”

“But I can’t die now––they need me.”

Jack waved his hands and the green hedges of his English garden appeared. He turned to Parvati and shrugged.

“See? It’s all good. Everything’s fine. Tip-top.”

He sat in his brown La-Z-Boy and pulled out a portable display. Where his fingers touched it, a spider-web of fractures began to crackle across the glass.

“It’s called memory fragmentation,” said Parvati. “You’ve got thirty seconds.”

Billions of dust motes dropped from the sky and filled the air with gleaming pinpoints, each rotating through all the colors in the spectrum.

Jack dropped the screen. He stood in front of Parvati and held her hands.

“Whatever you are, and whatever I am ... I tried my best.”

The garden flashed with the light of a hundred tropical suns.

“I CAN’T BELIEVE IT,” said Wilson. “How did we lose him so fast?”

He stood with Badger beside the blue-tinted dome where Jack’s wrinkled and scarred body floated.

“I don’t know,” said Reed’s grinding voice.

“But he was talking to us just a second ago!”

“Jack’s dead isn’t he,” said Badger.

“More like a vegetable,” said Reed. “The connection is mostly gone. What’s coming through is an old religious song in Jack’s voice. I’ve cut access to the speakers and all the systems, but I’ll keep monitoring the channel just in case.”

Wilson rubbed his eyes. “Are you in control now?”

“Luckily, Jack taught me the basics. But I still need a few weeks to study each sub-system in detail.”

“Weeks in your time or ours?”

“My time of course. I suppose tomorrow by yours.”

“Good,” said Wilson. “I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

AN EVENING BREEZE thrummed across the roof of the tent. The Consul’s surgeon washed in a silver basin while Darius pulled up his trousers.

“It’s healing properly. Keep using the ointment and you won’t get an infection.”

“Healing but not healed,” said Darius.

“What do you expect, trekking through the mountains like this? If you’d stay put for two seconds your body might catch up.”

“I won’t be ordered about like that. Especially by a doctor.”

“That’s obvious,” said the surgeon. “I suggest you search for a medicine man among the prisoners. A poutice of sheep’s urine and masticated weevil should do the trick.”

“You don’t have to get mad about it. Which one of us is the wounded man here? I’ve got a right to complain.”

The surgeon rolled his eyes and dried his hands on a towel.

“Let’s talk about more pleasant subjects,” said Darius. “You’ve served the court of Her Grace for many years, haven’t you Sal?”

“To be more accurate, her family. When the court of her mother dissolved I joined Consul Nahid’s service.”

Darius rubbed the stump of his missing left thumb.

“Does she trust me?”

“As much as any lord trusts a senator,” said the surgeon. “What do you expect me to say?”

Darius shook his head. “As long as she understands my intentions.”

The surgeon took his green medical bag from the carpeted floor.

“The intentions of a man who’s been horribly mutilated by a savage girl, as horribly as any man can be? Those intentions are easily understood,” he said. “But remember the saying––the world is owned by man, but vengeance belongs to the gods.”

As the surgeon left the tent, cold air and rust-colored leaves whirled inside. Darius stared at the bandaged stumps on his hands.

“What a strange person,” he said.

A pair of black leather gloves lay on the folding bed. Darius slid them carefully over both hands. A metal spike extended from the thumb of both gloves, polished and curved like a lizard’s claw. The spike on the right-hand glove had been forged with a central eyelet. A leather thong through the eyelet could tighten the claw around the grip of a pistol.

A small hand-bell rang outside.

“Enter,” said Darius.

An orderly in a crisp green uniform opened the flap.

     “You win the wager, sir. That tribal is back.”

“I bet on a whim,” said Darius. “Honestly, I never expected him to look back.”

The orderly bowed. “Sir is very modest. Your predictions are always correct.”

“Take his weapons and have Felix bring him in.”

A soldier in a mottled green and brown combat uniform pulled a ragged figure into the tent. One hand held the tribal’s upper arm and the other rested on a black revolver in the soldier’s belt.

Darius nodded. “Thank you, Felix. Please remain for a moment.”

“Yes, sir.”

Darius crossed one leg over the other and watched the tribal. His metal claws tapped on the arms of the chair like delicate wind chimes.

The captive’s jacket must have been white in the past. Soot and mud permeated the cloth, as if the owner had rolled in the charcoal mud of a doused fire. Old bloodstains spotted the garment with bronze. Rips in the black trousers, emerald grass stains, and hundreds of pincushion seeds pointed to travel and sleeping rough. Over his grey ponytail the captive wore a floppy black hat with the white badge of a cross. A pink scar crossed his face from the bridge of his nose to his left cheek.

“Before you speak,” said Darius. “Consider the lives of your family.”

The captive cleared his throat. “I need to see them,” he said in English.

“For days we’ve followed what you claim are secret trail markers. Give me what I want and you may see them. Not before.”

The man rubbed his hands together rapidly. “The trail ends in hill country before a mountain range. I didn’t want to scare off anyone so I backtracked as quickly as possible.”

“How far?”

‘It’s over two ridges. You can’t make it before nightfall and still have time–”

“Don’t tell me how to lead an army,” said Darius. “You lost.”

The captive stared at him without flinching.

“What direction is it?” asked Darius.

“Bring my son and daughter.”

Darius tucked in his chin and flicked his tongue between his lips.

“Oh, I give up,” he said. “It’s too hard to resist.”

“What?”

Darius shrugged. “They’ve been dead for a week.”

The captive elbowed Felix in the jaw and grabbed for his pistol. Felix wrestled with him as Darius dove under the bed. He crawled under the side of the tent and ran hell-for-leather as a handful of gunshots blew holes in the canvas. A single, final shot followed seconds later.

ROBB HELD UP his hand as shots echoed through the yellow aspens.

The experienced hunter Carter and three teenagers––two boys and a girl––knelt in the leaves of the hillside. All wore dark brown jackets and trousers and carried crossbows. Soot-paste blackened any exposed skin on their faces and necks. Wooden masks brightly painted with fierce eyes and fangs dangled from their belts. The teenagers wore colored twists of cloth around the left sleeves of their jackets.

Carter brushed blonde hair from his eyes.“Let’s see who fired those shots.”

“It’s getting dark and we’re out of scanner range,” said Robb, in the red armband of a Runner.

Carter rolled his eyes. “Did you forget the sight-trick?”           

“Maybe he’s just scared,” said Nelson, a stout, dark-haired boy. A blue cloth was twisted around his arm.

“I’m not scared.”

Nelson pointed his chin at the fourth member of the patrol. An olive-skinned brunette with a long ponytail, she wore the white armband of a Medic.

“What about you, Lizzie––want to go home?”

The girl chewed on her lower lip and stared at Nelseon. At last she lifted the wooden devil’s mask and tightened it on her face.

“Good girl,” said Carter.

Robb slapped his thigh. “Hausen will kill us all if she gets hurt!”

“He’s right,” said Nelson.

“Maybe you brave boys should go back and knit some blankets to hide under,” said Lizzie. “I’m gonna take a look, my father be damned.”

“Sounds like we’ve got another Badger,” said Nelson. “Maybe we should call her Badger Number Two.”

“If I can call you Pigface the Pimple-nosed Bastard, then fine,” said Lizzie.

Carter grinned and gave a thumbs-up to her. “I’ll take point.”

He led the others up the hillside through a forest of white-barked, sunshine-yellow aspens. At the top Carter scanned an open valley and eastern forest for a few moments. He pointed at a flock of starlings ballooning from the trees. The dark birds flew south across the valley.