Waking in Dreamland (9 page)

A heavy arm circled Roan’s throat and pulled him back onto his feet, and locked his neck against another arm. Roan clawed at his unseen captor, who felt as big as a wall. The sandy ground was unsteady, and Roan ended up strangling himself further as his feet were kicked out from under him. Another huge figure shimmered into existence from the wavering nothingness ahead. How many of them were there? He squinted, trying to see around the edges of the effect. Good, only two.

The second man, slighter and shorter, appeared and aimed a fist for Roan’s middle. Roan pulled up his legs, painfully putting all his weight on his arms and his neck, but it had the effect of pulling his captor’s face down into the path of the other man’s punch. The big man staggered, growling a curse. Roan jerked his head upward and his elbows back, taking his opponent in the chin and the ribs at once. The man let him go as the breath was knocked out of him, and fell on top of Roan into the sand. The second man aimed a kick for Roan’s head, but Roan had softened the sand enough to swim through, and burrowed out hastily to a more advantageous position several paces from the mysterious shimmer. He pulled out his red-leafed pocket knife and opened it out into a fighting staff eight feet long. With the staff in his hands, he assumed a defensive stance, waiting for them to come on.

The first man staggered painfully to his feet. The second sidled quickly, trying to get behind Roan. They seemed to be practiced fighters. He must not underestimate them.

Roan moved to get the high dune at his back. He turned on his heel, maneuvering to keep both of his foes in sight. Could he get past them? He was more lightly built than either of them. He might be able to run up to the top of the dune and signal for help. Roan edged partway up the hill, and ran into a field of influence.

It felt slightly sticky, like waxy steam. The guards hadn’t been left behind—they had been traveling
with
the party of scientists. This was part of the fold in reality where the others were hiding. Roan felt with one hand for the edge of the sensation, and followed it farther and farther with a growing sense of panic. There was no edge. The waxiness had closed in all around him. He tried to push through it, and rebounded back, as if he’d hit a giant elastic band.

“Come on, you, take your medicine,” the second man said, beckoning with both hands. He had a gravelly voice and a sadistic glint in his small eyes.

“Are you licensed health practitioners in an approved PPO, HMO or other recognized umbrella managed-care entity?” Roan asked, snapping out terms he’d read in an account of a recent hallucination that a citizen of Mnemosyne had had. He sidestepped off the high ground and started moving, keeping his staff ready.

“Huh?” the second man asked, squinting at him, confused. The first looked confused, too, but he controlled his face better.

“You keep your remarks to yourself,” he snapped at Roan.

Their guard had dropped momentarily, and Roan learned what he had already assumed. These men weren’t part of the charmed circle. None of the influence that held him came from them. They weren’t in charge of their own destinies. After many years’ experience Roan had developed an instinct for power sources. These two men were brawn, and nothing else. They were the first energy-saving measure that Roan was aware of Brom using, and the first barrier he needed to break down.

The first man lunged for him, and Roan spun the staff in his hands, fetching him a crack over the shoulder. The thug howled and jumped back. The second man took the opportunity to try and get behind Roan, who promptly backed up against the unseen wall. It remained solid, which meant the scientists hidden inside weren’t going to come out and help their hired thugs. That protected Roan as well as them, and he took advantage of the shield their cowardice offered him. The reality inside the sticky circle was free of the waxy feeling. Roan summoned up his own will.

He wouldn’t harm his opponents if he could avoid it. He pressed his imagination to come up with a physical form that couldn’t attack him, but was still alive and aware. Aha! He thought, triumphantly. The obvious choice!

Matter felt pliable and plastic around him, and he extended the sensation outward until it touched and enfolded the two men. The natural resistance of anything or anyone to alteration not the whim of the Sleepers manifested itself, and the men wailed and writhed as they changed. They rooted into place and grew taller, stretching out thinning arms to the sky. Their skin darkened and coarsened. In a moment, he was alone in the desert with a pair of handsomely leafed-out oak trees. He lowered his staff and gave a relieved sigh. The alteration was painless, but ought to last a while. Now to deal with the cowardly scientists still hidden in the cloud. He prodded the waxy barrier with a tentative forefinger.

A twanging reaction slapped him backward, smack into the opposite wall. Roan stumbled to keep his feet, and raised the staff again. The trees continued to twist, but instead of growing, they began deforming and growing shorter and thicker once again. The ruffians were changing back into human beings. So soon? A face appeared on the trunk. As the stiff bark softened, it saw him and sneered. The other one grew arms, and wrenched footlike roots out of the sand to step slowly and ominously toward him.

Roan ducked a branch that reached for his throat, and dodged behind the other tree-man. Their sanity measure must be fairly high. Even if they weren’t capable of controlling the reality around them, they had a good grasp of personal identity, which meant Roan wouldn’t be able to change them into anything for long. He wouldn’t make that mistake a second time. Once again, he was impressed by the level of planning Brom had put into his mission.

Roan nipped in and out as the two tree-men lumbered in a clumsy circle, trying to catch him with awkward branch-hands. He needed a diversion to get a chance to examine his prison, and find a way out. He couldn’t change himself, and any change he threw on his assailants wouldn’t last. But perhaps he could fool them. Roan whipped up a miniature sandstorm until his enemies could no longer see him clearly, then he built himself a disguise. The two other figures continued to shrink and thicken. He formed a tree-shaped shell out of the swirling sand, and pointed a branch into each of the others’ faces.

“Hurry,” he cried. “Grab him! I’ll help!”

In the whirling dust, each of the ruffians could see a tree-shape and a man-shape. Naturally, both lunged for the man-shape he could see, and in a moment were flailing wildly at one another. Roan grinned. They might be turning back to flesh, but their wits were still wooden.

Roan took the opportunity to slip below ground again, darting beyond the confines of the circle. He emerged from the sand behind a number of people in white-and-blue laboratory coats standing with joined hands in a ring around the two combatants and the sand shell he had just left. Most of the apprentices seemed to be under twenty-five years old, but looked so weary they might have been double that.

“No, you idiots!” shouted an apprentice. “He’s there. In the tree!”

“Not any more,” Roan said.

All the apprentices started when he spoke. The nearest glanced back over his shoulder and saw Roan. His eyes widened and he goggled like a fish.

“Don’t hurt me,” he begged. He was very thin, with hollow cheekbones and big, staring, red-rimmed eyes.

Roan manifested a quick air pie, which he mashed into the other’s face with a deft, practiced twist of the wrist. The gooey cream dissipated in seconds, but the surprise move had the effect of making the man let go of the others’ hands to claw at his face. The magical invisibility instantly died away, and the sandstorm abated. The ruffians, standing clutching one another’s throat in the middle of the circle, gawked at them. In the cleared air, Roan built up influence, and buried the two men in the sand up to their necks.

“I won’t hurt anyone,” Roan said, firmly, turning to the apprentices. “Now, back away from the others. All of you, separate!” Using his staff, he gestured them into a line just out of arm’s-reach of one another. “Now, we’ll wait here until the contingent from the palace arrives.”

Most of the men and women went meekly where he sent them, but the skeletally thin one in the most ornate coat stood his ground. It took Roan a moment to recognize Brom. The chief scientist had shed his elegant weight for travel. The placid, submissive expression he had worn in the court was gone. In its place, Roan saw cold ruthlessness and confidence. The very edges of reality trembled where they touched him. “Oh, no,” Brom said, with an easy smile that was frightening combined with the coldness in his blue eyes. “You won’t stop us, young man.”

Roan hefted the staff. “I must, and I will. Where is the Alarm Clock?”

“Gone.” Brom laughed, a brittle sound that chilled the air around them. For a moment, the desert heat abated, and Roan shivered.

“No, you won’t stop us.” Brom sat down on a golden chair that suddenly materialized behind him. The seat reminded Roan of the king’s throne in Mnemosyne, except that this one was bigger and so plain it was clinical. He also noticed that a chunk of the surrounding dunes and plants was suddenly missing, as if something had taken a huge bite out of them. Brom didn’t care what he changed or hurt so long as he got what he wanted. The sand oozed to fill in the gaps like blood filling a wound.

“That was clever of you, to confuse my men. I didn’t think you had the strength to change them,” the chief scientist said, regarding Roan with a wry smile. “Trees. That was merciful. A flaw. Mercy wastes time. I would have left them so they couldn’t possibly come after me again. Like this!” He put his fingertips and thumbtips together to form a circle, and pushed it toward Roan.

A lash of energy hit Roan, staggering him backward. He heard buzzing in his ears, and felt a slight tingling all over. Brom was trying to prove his superiority by changing him. At first, Roan was angry, and then wondered if this arrogant man really could do what had never been done before. He wished with all his heart that Brom would succeed. But he didn’t, and the astonished look on the other’s face told him he didn’t expect that.

The failure made Brom stop to think. Roan took that brief moment of inactivity to dissolve Brom’s chair under him, making the chief scientist do a pratfall in the sand. As Brom tumbled, Roan jumped for him, changing his staff into a rope as he went. If he could subdue Brom, the others would almost certainly remain docile. Once Bergold and the bicycles arrived, Roan would make one of them lead him to the Alarm Clock, and send the others back under guard to the king. Help couldn’t be far away.

To his surprise, Brom’s ectomorphic form hid the wiles of a dangerous fighter. Quickly, the chief scientist leaped to his feet. Roan tripped him to the ground again, readying influence to bind his arms and legs. Brom slipped the loop of influence, grabbed up a handful of sand and shoved it into Roan’s face. Roan threw up his hand to protect his eyes, and missed the low blow that struck him in a sensitive and unprotected place. As pain shot outward from the center of his body, Roan dropped bonelessly to the ground with a heartfelt moan. Brom laughed, a hollow sound from high above.

Fighting the agony, Roan grabbed upward at Brom, clutching him in a wrestling hold. His grip was weaker than normal, but Brom really wasn’t a match for him. He was tough, furious, and knew plenty of very dirty tricks, but he was already panting. He couldn’t last very long. He was out of shape, having spent much more of his life on scientific study than on physical education.

“Will you surrender?” Roan asked. “Just wait here, and we’ll explai—”

With a fierce, feral look, Brom bent his head and bit him on the wrist. As the tendons in Roan’s wrist slackened, Brom kicked out at him, aiming at the crotch again. Roan had to let go to dodge, but he went at Brom again, this time getting a chokehold from the side. Brom struggled, snarling and striking out. Roan held on doggedly. He would have to subdue Brom. Then he could round up the others—no, he couldn’t. He had to keep them separated or they’d form the crucible again. Better to tie them to individual trees. He’d have to grow some.

One of an apprentice’s flailing fists, by design or accident, struck him in the kidney. Roan gasped in agony and sank slowly to the ground, on fire from the pain in his back. The chief scientist stepped over him, his robe hem slapping Roan in the face.

“You lot,” Brom panted, pointing at the two heads poking out of the sand. “Get those men out, and prepare to leave.”

“No!” Roan protested, bracing himself weakly on his hands and knees. “In the name of the king—”

Brom turned and kicked him hard in the belly. Roan fell flat. The apprentices hastily dug at the sand. As soon as the bullies’ arms were free, they helped pull themselves out, swearing colorfully enough to leave streaks on the air.

Willing himself to ignore the pain, Roan forced himself to kneel, then stand up. Brom was waiting a few paces away, the corner of his mouth curled in a smile.

Roan’s rope-staff was on the ground behind Brom. He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled it to him. The rope whisked straight for its master’s hand, upsetting Brom, who fell over backward into the sand with a roar.

“Don’t stand there like statues!” he shouted at his apprentices as he floundered. “Reform!”

“Stay,” Roan commanded them. His voice sounded thin, and he put more force into it. “As of an hour and a half ago, you’re in defiance of the will of the king. Any other action you take is a direct contradiction of his orders.” The young apprentices looked from one to the other, and so did the two big guardsmen. Both Roan and Brom spoke with authority, and they didn’t know which to obey. Roan built on his advantage.

“You probably left the hall too soon to hear that this project has been terminated,” he said reasonably. “If you return now, the Minister of Science will hold you harmless in any wrongdoing—”

With a snarl, Brom made a soundproof glass cage form around Roan while he stood up and restored his dignity. Feeling his own influence strong in this place, Roan thinned the glass to air and walked out of it. The real battle of wills was beginning. He studied Brom, wondering how strong-minded he was. While Roan might question Brom’s wisdom in creating a monstrosity like the Alarm Clock, he couldn’t fault the man’s sanity, and in the Dreamland that was where power lay. To control the stuff of dreams, one had to know one’s own parameters, not to say limits. With sufficient strength of will, there were no limits, save those of the Sleepers themselves. Roan reached out for pliable matter, and threw armloads of influence at Brom.