Part 25 (1/2)
Mamie continued. ”What you have to realize, Rose, is that I'm not adventurous. Laura is your natural companion for adventures. You can't charm me into joining you. It's not that I'm timid, it's just that I hate failure, and hate to be uncomfortable, and I don't particularly enjoy effort. I'm a lost cause.”
Rose looked at the floor. She thought, ”Whereas Laura is just lost.”
The day before, Laura had gone with Grace to see George Mason off at the station. Mason was taking Sandy's remains-a collection of carbonized bones-back to his family. Afterward Laura had talked to Rose, in a wispy voice. She told Rose what she knew about Sandy's home-his six brothers and sisters. One brother was the head of the night s.h.i.+ft at the sawmill. Another was an engineer in a railway workshop. His father was a shop steward at the carpet factory. Laura talked about the year Sandy had spent working in that factory, about his school, with its tattered books and sour hallways. Sandy's mother was a teacher at a similar girls' school. The family had tenuous respectability-all of them had stayed in school till fifteen.
Rose said to Mamie, ”Laura has had adventures I can't even imagine. She's even been in love. Her heart is broken.”
”Laura hasn't been lucky, has she?”
”No. Sandy. Her mother ...” Rose looked hard at Mamie. ”I suppose you've heard that her father's back?”
”I've heard that he's ill.”
”Yes. That's what's finally roused Laura. In a couple of days she is going In to get The Gate.”
”The miracle dream.”
”I've had it three times now.” Rose could feel her face softening. ”It's extraordinarily beautiful. It is proving a little controversial, though. At Fallow Hill it carried off any of their patients who were close to death, or ready to die. It can't be dreamed near anyone critically ill or injured who has any chance of recovery. What it does is tell whoever dreams it that there's something beautiful to go on to after death. It tells it with such conviction that very sick people just let go of life. But it's excellent for chronic illness, pain, madness, and misery. I'm glad Laura's father has persuaded her to get it for him. Of course he's hoping it'll help her.”
”Is your mother planning to catch it too?”
”No. Ma is going farther In to get Drought's End. She's going to perform it at the Rainbow Opera. What Founderston needs after the fire is a balm of rain-and the dream's sloppy romance, and little white horses.”
”You forget I haven't had any of these dreams.”
”Oh,” said Rose, feeling awkward. She did keep forgetting that Mamie's mother hadn't let her daughter go to a dream palace.
Mamie was looking sly and thoughtful. ”Is Drought's End a master dream?”
”I didn't know you knew anything about that.”
”I know all about it, despite my lack of firsthand experience.”
”I don't think it is a master dream.”
Mamie rearranged herself and seemed to change the subject. ”Well,” she said, ”I'm getting on a train tomorrow night. My father is sending me off to our summerhouse.”
”Alone?”
”The servants will be there.”
”Does your father think you need a holiday?”
”No.” Mamie stared into Rose's eyes.
Rose searched her friend's face. Mamie was looking sphinxlike, though she still had her eyebrows. She was trying to tell Rose something, to tell without actually saying.
”Or,” said Rose, ”does he just think you'll be better off out of Founderston?”
And Mamie said, ”That must be it.”
It was Rose who remembered the film, five days after the fire. Chorley developed it, and they all sat down to watch it.
Laura saw that Nown had cranked the camera a little too slowly, so that the film's action was fast, the captives and rangers jerky and insectile in their movements. There was shutter flicker, as though the camera were peering through eyes that were blinking away tears. But there were the huts, the barracks, the canvas-walled rooms of the Depot.
”How did you get this?” Chorley said.
”I didn't,” Laura said. ”I was here.”
”We sent someone,” said Tziga.
When Nown had been shooting the footage, Laura had been lying in Sandy's arms within the circle of Foreigner's West. They got up and folded the blankets, and she gave up one life for another. Nown had betrayed her. He was heartless. He should have told her what he must have known. He'd always carried her, but-in a way-he'd made her walk. Her long, hard journey might have been simple and short if only he'd said: ”The Place is the same thing I am, a Nown-that's something you need to know.”
Chorley said, ”I'll take this to the Grand Patriarch. I imagine he'll want to present it to the Commission.”
”Make a copy first,” Tziga said.
Grace said, ”I hate having to rely on that old man to get things straightened out.”
”We're not relying on him, we are consulting with him,” Chorley snapped.
Laura thought how strange it was that her aunt was still able to imagine things being ”straightened out,” as though all that had to happen was that Cas Doran be exposed and the Regulatory Body encouraged to mind their own business. Grace seemed to think that if those things were accomplished, then dreamhunters would be able to get back to their prospecting and performing in peace. Rose and Chorley and Tziga wanted Doran stopped and punished. They wanted to weed out corruption. Was Laura's aunt right to look to a time beyond that, to order and everyday life?
Laura thought nothing could be mended. And she was sure she was thinking just as straight as her aunt Grace. So which of them was right?
The family agreed that Laura shouldn't be left alone. But only Rose understood what that meant. As soon as her cough eased, Rose had taken to climbing into Laura's bed. She didn't try to watch with Laura, to stay awake and stare into the dark-she slept, but she was there.
The night they screened the film, Rose fell asleep almost the moment she put her head on her pillow. She woke after an hour or two, from a dream in which she wandered along red-painted hallways, unable to open any of the doors because their handles burned her hands.
”Nightmare?” said Laura, from the other side of the bed.
”Yes. There's never any fire in my nightmares. Just heat.”
”I still have nightmares where I'm thirsty.”
Rose turned over and tried to see her cousin. There was a little light coming in the window from the street, enough so that the shadows of the flowers on the frosted-gla.s.s lamp on the nightstand were visible. Rose could see the lumpy shadow that was her cousin, and the glimmer of Laura's eyes. Because it was dark, Rose felt a little daring. She said, ”Have you thought that you could make your sandman again?”
”He let me down,” Laura said, her voice flat.
”He couldn't help it.”
”Not in the fire. Before that.”
”So you won't make him again because you're mad at him?”
”I won't make him again because I can't make Sandy.”