Part 2 (1/2)
The police handwriting expert peered at the two letters, the one that began ”Dear Sir, Please publish this letter” and the other beginning ”The time has come for the Regulatory Body to submit to judgment ...” He said that the writer was left-handed, and secretive. ”Look at those backward-sloping letters.” He said that the stationery was the same for both letters but that one page was more yellowed than the other, was perhaps the top sheet of a pad that had sat around in sunlight for some time. It was export-quality linen paper, manufactured in a certain paper mill in the south. The letters had probably been written at a desk equipped with a writing set, because the ink was blotted with sand. The handwriting was highly distinctive, fluent, and not-the expert thought-a disguised hand. ”But, it seems to me that the handwriting is more mature than the composition of the letter-the bad grammar and poor punctuation.”
Having given his opinion, the handwriting expert was shown from the room. Cas Doran, the Detective Inspector from Founderston Barracks, and the Director of the Regulatory Body were left alone.
The Detective Inspector said, ”Before we ask Grace Tiebold in here, we should think about charges.”
Doran closed his eyes, saw darkness, winced, and opened them again. His mouth and jaw were sore. It hurt him to speak. ”What can she or Mason be charged with? There is no crime called 'grievous mental harm.'”
”Perhaps there should be.”
”Certainly not,” said Doran. ”We'd then have this Lazarus and his allies bringing criminal charges against the Regulatory Body and the Department of Corrections.”
At this the Detective Inspector merely cleared his throat. Then he said, ”So, you believe this Lazarus has allies?”
”Yes. The letter says, 'We have overdreamed' and 'It has come to our attention.' But I doubt that 'we' is George Mason and Grace Tiebold.”
”Mason and Tiebold could be charged with disturbing the peace,” said the Detective Inspector.
Doran shook his head. ”There are regulations that cover safe practices in dream palaces, just as there are regulations that govern how many fire escapes any new building must have. But the regulations haven't thought to ban Soporifs from sleeping in dream palaces. Though-believe me-that's about to change.”
The Detective Inspector sighed. He would have been much happier if he were closer to an arrest.
The Director of the Regulatory Body said, ”Shall we speak to these dreamhunters now? Mason first, I think.”
George Mason was cooperative-and no real help at all. He spent only half an hour in Doran's office, then was sent to join the dozen other dreamhunters who had been at the Opera. They had all taken prints of Buried Alive. They were to be transported to Doorhandle and then into the Place so that they could attempt to overwrite the nightmare with something harmless.
The Place was where the dreams came from. It was a territory infinitely more vast than the hundred or so square miles of the mountain range it encompa.s.sed. A limitless, lifeless place, a landscape of plains and rolling hills covered in white gra.s.s and scrub, where leathery leaves still hung on bone-dry trees but fell if touched; a silent, windless, waterless landscape, where time had apparently stopped. Only a very few people could actually enter the Place. Most, on approaching its invisible borders, would only find themselves going on up into the temperate rain forest of the Rifleman Mountains. Perhaps one person in three hundred was able to pa.s.s through into the Place, and of those, only a very few were any good at catching the dreams they found there. These became dreamhunters and made their livings-or their fortunes-from dreams caught, and carried out, and shared with others.
When she was shown into Cas Doran's office, Grace Tiebold was still wearing her dreamhunter's finery, though the peac.o.c.k-print train of her gown had been trodden to tatters by both the police and the people the police had protected her from. Doran saw that Grace had a bruise on her jaw, as well as the now familiar self-inflicted scratches on her cheeks. And, of course, it hurt her to speak.
The first thing Doran did was push one of the letters across the desk and under her nose. ”Is this your schoolgirlish false officialese?” he asked. Then, in mocking imitation, ” 'It has come to our attention ...' ” He waited, then said, ”I believe you left school at twelve to work in your father's tobacco shop?”
The dreamhunter's eyes flicked up to his face. She showed fright. Then she stared at the letter and looked puzzled. ”I don't recognize the handwriting,” she said. She seemed surprised.
”Should you?” asked the Detective Inspector.
She hesitated. Then, ”No,” she said, finally.
”And how does this letter strike you?”
”It's demented, fantastical,” Grace said. ”The writer is defending an act of terror. An act of spectral terror. But apparently, according to the letter, you people all deal in terror too.”
”You know what we do,” Doran said. ”There's nothing you don't know about what we do.”
Grace looked into his eyes. She was exhausted, bleak, but she seemed to have recovered from her moment of fright. She said, ”I doubt that.”
”The Intangible Resources Act provides for the use of certain sorts of dreams, including nightmares-punishments that cause pain but not injury-'for the public good.' I'm sure we can agree that this is something you already know.”
”I know it,” Grace said. She gestured at her own nail-marked cheeks, then at Doran's injured mouth. ”But-is this pain without injury?”
”There were no precautions. No restraints.”
”So you strap your prisoners down, then give them nightmares?”
Doran leaned back in his chair. ”Mrs. Tiebold, are you defending yourself? You seem to be saying that inflicting a virulent nightmare on the general public is no different from the controlled use of nightmares on convicted criminals.”
”It wasn't my nightmare!” Grace Tiebold's eyes blazed. ”This Lazarus used me! Me and George.”
The Director of the Regulatory Body spoke up then. ”Why did you ask the Soporif George Mason to lie in with you?”
”I've been having difficulty falling asleep. George went In with me to catch Homecoming. We even have a witness. Jerome Tilley was at the site with us, catching it too. Jerome had a booking in Westport for a feast day performance at the Second Skin Theater. George and I walked back to Doorhandle with him, and George drove us all to Founderston. He dropped Jerome at the station and me at my house. Three hours later I met my daughter and niece for lunch, then we went home, changed, and came out to the Opera. I'm sure George can account for all his movements that afternoon too. We didn't hike back In- days In-and catch that nightmare. We are not Lazarus. I'm very sorry that this person chose to spill his nightmare out on my penumbra. And I'm sure George is very sorry that he made it difficult for everyone to wake up.”
Doran made a steeple of his hands and gave Grace Tiebold a little pinched smile over the top of them. ”That wasn't your penumbra-it was Lazarus's. Perhaps five hundred yards. Lazarus wanted your audience, Mrs. Tiebold, not your powers of amplification. Lazarus is very probably a more powerful dreamhunter than you.”
”Where has he been hiding himself all this time?” Grace said.
”Has he been hiding himself?” Doran said, as though she knew who they were talking about.
”Tziga's dead,” Grace said, and dropped her gaze. ”I'm tired, Mr. Doran. I don't know anything more. I want to go In and erase this, if I can. And first I want to go home to wash and change and check on Rose and Laura.”
”Rose is spending today in the company of my wife and Mamie,” Doran said. ”The girls go back to school tomorrow.”
Grace glared at him. ”You might have mentioned that first. And if Rose is with Mamie, where is Laura?”
Doran spread his hands and shrugged. ”I thought you might know.”
”Laura will have the nightmare too. She might not realize it until she falls asleep.”
”Your daughter told me that Laura didn't sleep. But we are looking for her,” Doran said.
”Good,” said Grace, and turned her face away.
”That will be all for now,” said the Director of the Regulatory Body. ”Some of my people will escort you to your house, then take you on to Doorhandle.”
”Thank you.” Grace Tiebold got up and nodded to the Detective Inspector, who said that he'd like her to come and see him once she was back. At the door the dreamhunter turned and asked, ”How is President Wilkinson?”
”He is recovering well,” Doran said.
”I'm glad to hear it. We need him,” Grace said.
Doran smiled again, his mouth performing a kind of spasm of involuntary glee that opened the wounds on his lips. Here was evidence that, despite the nightmare, Plasir's apprentice Gavin Pinkney's little bit of ”coloring” had been absorbed and remembered. Doran risked saying, ”Yes, we do need Wilkinson, and it's such a pity his term is nearly up.”
”Yes.” Grace hovered in the doorway, frowning. ”Eight years does seem far too short a term for such a constructive President. Or, at least, that's what I think.”
Grace was feeling very foggy when she left Cas Doran's office, but once she was out in the cold morning air, she remembered something she'd noticed while she was there. Something much more important than what a shame it was that Garth Wilkinson was shortly to retire. She had recognized the stationery on which Lazarus's letter was written. The paper was expensive, and probably plenty of well-off, or very particular, people liked to use it. It was expensive and elegant, like everything of Chorley's-for it was Chorley's. Grace's husband wasn't much of a letter writer and tended to make all his plans on drawing paper in his workshop. So the stationery sat in a boxed block on the desk of Summerfort's library, in full sunlight, often for weeks-and for months once the family packed up at the end of summer and went back to Founderston. The paper of the letter had been yellowed, and printed with a paler mark, a star shape, where Chorley's fossilized starfish paperweight had sat while the sun shone and turned the page yellow around it.
”Laura,” Grace thought, again. For the letter showed her niece's lack of punctuation and, as Doran had so descriptively put it, her ”schoolgirlish false officialese.”