Part 22 (1/2)
Rose's next partner came to claim her. She gathered up the hem of her dress; he took her hand and led her onto the floor and into a crisscrossing, lively contra dance. It was fun, and all Rose's hours of practice came back to her. No one on the floor seemed lost or clumsy. The girls were all weaving their way deftly backward past their partners, their hair bouncing, their heads turned back over their shoulders. Rose saw Mamie, wearing a look of determination and concentration but doing fine. She saw Laura, who was dancing not with Sandy but with a tall, fair-haired army lieutenant. Laura was easy to spot, in her vivid dress, flying, light on her feet.
The next dance was a waltz. And Laura danced with Sandy, scooped against him so that he seemed to support half her slight weight. Rose's partner was a proficient dancer, but so shy and formal that Rose had a hard time not laughing her way through the whole thing. He talked about the weather, and the heat of the room. She wished he hadn't mentioned the heat. Her close-fitting, pearl-encrusted gown was proving hot and heavy. She was going to be cooking before the night was through.
One of the ushers delivered a note to Cas Doran and pointed out the men, bowler hats in hand and standing partly concealed by pillars in the entranceway. Doran made his way around the edge of the dance floor.
His daughter galloped past, part of a group of couples skipping counterclockwise within the clockwise movement of a greater circle of dancers. Mamie looked at him as though he was guilty of some terrible treachery to her. He slowed down and stared after her as she was swept away. He was annoyed-his wife had promised and a.s.sured him that, ultimately, Mamie would enjoy this ball. It didn't appear to him as though she was enjoying herself.
The Regulatory Body officials had delivered one of the rangers who were the source of the reports that, all evening, had been aggravating the Secretary of the Interior. They had secured a quiet room in the Palace. Their chief closed that room's door, and they all gathered around the tired man.
”I want you to explain these reports,” Doran said, and produced two of the telegrams. ”I know you've been told to be careful in your communications. But in this instance you've been so careful that you've left us in the dark.”
He placed the telegrams in front of the ranger. The top one read: AGENT SEEN FILMING THE DEPOT STOP GAVE CHASE BUT LOST INLAND STOP.
”How is it possible that your people pursued this cameraman but didn't manage to catch him?” Doran said. ”You were, after all, selected for your strength and stamina as well as your discretion.”
Every ranger had once hoped to be a dreamhunter. All had enjoyed moments of elation at their Tries. They had crossed the border! Each one of them had imagined being rich and famous, but all had found themselves unable to catch dreams. There were no famous rangers, and all were wageworkers for the Dream Regulatory Body. Some did a little better in private deals they made with various dreamhunters, but none were rich. Rangers did tend to suffer from a sense of thwarted ambition, so it had been no trouble for Secretary Doran to recruit men eager to take on extra risks-and vows of secrecy.
”The man was faster than we were, even carrying his camera,” the ranger said. Then he straightened in his chair. ”I want to give a report, Mr. Secretary, not offer excuses.” He began: ”At five-thirty p.m. on February the twenty-eighth, rangers McIndoe and Butler first spotted a man standing around one hundred and fifty yards from the outbuildings of the Depot and cranking the handle of a movie camera. As we watched, he came closer. Rangers McIndoe, Butler, Carter, Hollander, and myself-”
Cas Doran looked at one of his officials, who supplied the ranger's name, ”McIntyre.”
”We approached him,” said McIntyre, then paused and pa.s.sed his hand across his face, pressing hard, as though to wipe something off. ”Secretary Doran,” the man said, ”the cameraman seemed to be wearing some kind of suit.”
”A uniform?”
”No.” The ranger seemed reluctant to say what he'd seen.
”Please go on,” Doran said.
”He was wearing an all-over, skintight, glistening gray suit of some kind.”
”Knitted,” one of the officials added; he had obviously heard the story earlier.
”I didn't say knitted,” the ranger snapped.
Doran knew that the navy was trying to develop garments to keep bodies warm in cold water, and he supposed it was possible that someone enterprising might have invented a protective, water-conserving suit to be worn deep Inland.
”Not knitted, not rubber, not any of those things you've speculated about,” the ranger said, glaring at the Body officials. ”I want to say that it-” He broke off and scoured his face with his hand again. Then he finished, very softly, ”-that it wasn't even a suit.”
”Wait,” said Doran, though no one had spoken. He walked around the room a few times.
After the riot at the Rainbow Opera, several members of the fire watch had claimed that a ”glistening, gray, monstrous man” had shorted out the power board and smashed all the doors on the private balconies. Cas Doran paced and thought. He thought that Arthur Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles was only a dog daubed with luminescent paint and howling with pain. He didn't believe in monsters, he traded in them, at least in monstrous dreams. He knew that impressionable people could be made to believe things that weren't true, could be tapped for fear of the unknown-as if dread was the groundwater of humanity and all any intelligent master of men had to do was sink a well.
Doran rounded on the ranger. ”You've been manipulated. You're a superst.i.tious lot-you rangers and dreamhunters. You make myths faster than you make money.”
”All right,” said the ranger, then added, ”sir.”
”Perhaps you couldn't catch him because you were afraid of him,” Doran said, insinuating.
”We ran after him. He slung the camera over his shoulder and took off-like a horse.”
”Oh-not like a flying horse?” Cas Doran's voice dripped sarcasm.
The ranger went red. ”He went Inland, west, at a forty-degree angle to the rail line. He didn't have any water with him. Or none we could see. He may well have had a cache of supplies somewhere. But we immediately posted guards at the tower, and over the cable car. He can't possibly have gotten his film out again. There's no danger of that.”
”Laura Hame is out there in the ballroom, dancing, a picture of health. And yet I was a.s.sured that she couldn't have used the cable car either.” Doran swooped on the ranger, slapped his hands down on the arms of the man's chair, and leaned over him.
The man cowered back into his seat.
Doran shouted, ”There is obviously another pa.s.s through The Pinnacles that you lazy incompetents couldn't find! A route that wouldn't have required years of work and thousands of dollars of engineering to open!” He snapped upright again, releasing the arms of the chair so quickly that it teetered and the man flailed for balance before the chair came down again on all four legs. His voice quiet again, Doran asked one of the officials to fetch Maze Plasir. ”As for you,” he said to the ranger, ”you can get back to the Depot, immediately. And I will arrange for you to supervise several months' worth of supplies on your journey.”
”Are we to be under siege, then?” the ranger asked, and flinched when Doran looked at him.
”There you go again,” said the Secretary. ”Imagining yourself surrounded by monsters.” He signaled to several officials, who helped the man up and led him out.
Maze Plasir appeared, fanning himself with a lady's ivory-and-rice-paper fan. He took one look at Doran's face, sat himself down, and waited.
Doran said to his men, ”I want that Soporif you've been promising me.”
One replied, ”We've had him under constant observation since he began performing at Fallow Hill. But he's never on his own. He's even been sleeping in the same bed as the Hame girl.”
”Ah, young love,” said Plasir. ”How inconvenient.”
”He dressed for the ball tonight at his uncle's apartment. His uncle was there.”
”You could always have taken his uncle too,” Doran said.
”We didn't have the manpower, Mr. Secretary.”
”Tell your detail to be a little more daring,” Doran said. He dismissed them. When the door closed, Plasir said, ”Are you about to put your plan into action?”
”Yes.”
”And you will tell me when you need me to go In and catch a master dream to provide your household with some shelter?”
”My house and the houses of my allies are safe. Out of range. I'll need you to have some strong dream as a safety measure. In case some dreamhunter actually thinks to go on the offensive. I imagine that a small capsule of one of your master dreams could withstand the wide sweep of Laura Hame's?”
”Yes. If you keep me close, I can keep you safe,” Plasir said. ”But, Cas, I'd much rather we made a slow start and experimented with the dosage of Contentment. This has all been so long in the planning that you should act only on your timetable.” Plasir's posture and tone were casual, but he was trying to warn his friend.
”I don't have time.”
”This isn't about Tziga Hame's return, is it?”
”No. I've made inquiries. He's under treatment for epilepsy. There are no epileptic dreamhunters.”
”True.”