Part 16 (1/2)

Miss Greenwood's voice faded, and with it the somber strains of the accordion music. He heard the familiar static, the shus.h.i.+ng, the cadenced crackling. It was a language of sorts, but Unwin understood none of it. Then he stopped hearing the sounds and began instead to see them. The static had shape to it, dimensions; it rose like a waterfall in reverse and then froze in place. More walls leapt up, and in the one before him was a window, in the one behind him a door, and lining the other two were rows of books with blue and brown spines. The static spilled over the floor and made a carpet, made shadows of chairs and then made chairs.

The crackling sound was rain tapping against the window. The shus.h.i.+ng was the shus.h.i.+ng of secrets in a desk, and on the desk were a green-shaded lamp and a typewriter. A man was seated behind it with his eyes closed, breathing very slowly.

”h.e.l.lo, Mr. Unwin,” Edward Lamech said.

”Sir,” said Unwin, but Lamech raised his hand.

”Do not bother speaking,” he said. ”I cannot hear you. Nor, for that matter, can I be certain that it's you, Mr. Unwin, to whom I am speaking. In recording this session, I am merely preparing for one of many contingencies. I hope that I'll have the opportunity to place this file directly into your hands. If I do not, or if it falls instead into the hands of our enemies, then . . .” Lamech wrinkled his considerable brow. ”Then they will already have understood my intentions, I think, and none of it will matter anymore.”

Lamech opened his eyes. How different they were from those Unwin saw the previous morning. They were watery and blue, and very much alive. But they were blind to his presence.

Lamech rose from his seat, and a hat appeared in his hand. When he put it on, a matching raincoat fell over his shoulders. ”I don't know whether I've been able to explain very much to you,” he said. ”But since you're seeing this, then you've likely received my instructions and taken this file to the third archive. So you may understand a great deal. Time moves differently here, and that can be confusing to the uninitiated, but it will work to our advantage. I will tell you what more you need to know while we walk together. I have a few errands to run before I go to my appointment.”

He walked toward the door, and Unwin jumped aside to avoid him.

”In case you're wondering,” Lamech went on, ”I almost always begin with my office. We watchers work best when we stick to certain patterns. Some prefer a childhood home for their starting point, others a wooded place. One woman uses a subway station with countless intersecting tracks. My office is familiar to me, and I can reconstruct it with relative ease. These are only details, though, meaningless unto themselves. If you are seated, I suggest you stand at this time.”

Lamech opened the door. Instead of the hallway of the thirty-sixth floor, with its yellow light fixtures and bronze nameplates, Unwin saw a twisting alleyway, dark and full of rain. They stepped outside, and the door closed behind them. Unwin wished for his hat and found that he was wearing it. He wished for his umbrella, and that, too, was with him, in his hand and open. But as they walked the maze of high brick walls, he remained partly aware of the warmth of the blankets on the bed and of the softness of his pillow.

”All this is representational,” Lamech said. ”And arbitrary, for that matter. But it takes years of practice to achieve this degree of lucidity. Think of the alley as an organizational schematic. It's one I find especially useful. Here are as many doors as I need, and they serve logically as connecting principles. Some watchers work more quickly than I do, because they don't bother with such devices. But they have forgotten how to take pleasure in their vocation. There is something good about it, don't you think? The night, and the splash of the rain around us? We move unseen through the dark, along back ways and side streets. Forgive me if I indulge in the particulars, Mr. Unwin. A lot has happened very quickly, and I'm working this out as we go.”

The moon emerged from behind the clouds, and Lamech gazed up at it, grinning a little. Then it was gone again, and he drew his coat more tightly about his body. ”Miss Palsgrave's machine in the third archive is a wonder-we tell her when we're close to something important, something we may need to doc.u.ment, and she'll tune it to the correct frequency. She can even check in on you herself and follow you from one mind to another if necessary. The truth is, it's one of the few advantages we have over Hoffmann: the ability to record, review, correlate, compare. We don't always know what he's up to, but we can spot Hoffmannic patterns in the recordings of the city's dreams, then act to thwart his next move.

”This recording,” he added, ”may turn out to be especially valuable, and more than a little dangerous-to you as well as to me, I'm afraid.”

In the shadow of a junk pile, they came to a shabby door, blue paint peeling from its worn wooden surface. Lamech leaned close to it and listened. ”Here we are,” he said.

He opened the door, and bright light shone into the alleyway, gilding the wet bricks. Over Lamech's shoulder Unwin saw the impossible: a broad beach, the sea deep and boundless, and the sun, high and bright at the top of the sky. He followed Lamech out onto the sand. On this side, the door served as the entrance to a rickety beach house.

The heat was terrible. Unwin removed his hat and wiped his brow with his sleeve. He kept his umbrella over his head, s.h.i.+elding himself from the sun as they trudged toward the water.

Near the edge of the waves' reach was a heap of smooth black rocks. A round woman in a ruffled blue bathing suit leaned against them, watching the sea. When she saw Lamech coming toward her, she turned and waved at him. She wore a string of imperfect-looking pearls around her neck, and a few strands of gray hair protruded from under her white bathing cap.

”Edward,” she said. ”When are you coming home? I polished the silverware while I waited. Twice. You know how tired I get when I polish. Did you unplug your telephone again?”

Unwin remembered the cord left disconnected on Lamech's desk. So it was the watcher himself who had been responsible for that. He had wanted to make sure nothing would wake him during the recording.

Lamech removed his hat and bent to kiss the woman on her cheek. ”Working late tonight,” he said.

”Can't you bring your work home?”

He shook his head. ”I just came by to say good night.”

She looked at the sea, a trace of a scowl on her face. Her cheeks were red from the sun and the wind. ”The strange thing is,” she said, ”I don't even know if this is the real Edward I'm speaking to. I wanted so badly to see you that I may very well have dreamed you up.”

”No, ladybug, it's me. I have an appointment, that's all.”

”Ladybug?” she said. ”You haven't called me that in years.”

Lamech looked at his feet and tapped his hat against his leg. ”Well, I've been thinking a lot about the old times. You know, a couple of kids in the big city, working bad jobs, dancing to the radio at night, drinks at the corner bar. What was that place called? Larry's? Harry's?”

The woman fingered the roughly formed pearls of her necklace.

”Sarah,” he said, ”there's something else. I just want you to know-”

”Stop. We'll talk about this in the morning.”

”Sarah.”

”I'll see you in the morning,” she said, her voice firm.

Lamech frowned and took a deep breath through his nose. ”All right,” he said.

The wind was picking up; it made the ruffles of Sarah's bathing suit flutter and teased the gray curls at the edge of her cap. She was looking at the sea again. ”This dream always ends the same way,” she said.

”How's it end?” Lamech asked.

She was quiet for a while. ”Edward, there are leftovers in the icebox. I have to go now.” She stood straight and ran her hands down her sides. Then, without looking back, she jogged away toward the water, her pearls swinging back and forth around her neck. Clouds had risen up over the edge of the horizon, and the sea appeared choppy and dark.

”Come on,” Lamech mumbled. He turned and starting walking back toward the beach house.

Unwin stayed where he was, watching as Sarah strode nimbly into the water. When she was in above her knees, she dove forward over a wave and began to swim.

”Come on,” Lamech said again, as though he had known that Unwin would stay.

Unwin folded his umbrella to keep the wind from taking it and hurried up the beach after Lamech. He could feel the softness of the sand beneath his feet, but his shoes left no impression.

Lamech's raincoat billowed and snapped in the wind. He stuck his hands in his pockets and drew his coat close about him. His shoulders were hunched, his head down. He did not look back.

Unwin looked back. He could no longer see Sarah-she had vanished into the water. A great wave was forming on the horizon. It churned and swelled and boiled, gathering the sea to itself as it rolled toward the sh.o.r.e. Unwin quickened his pace, but he could not take his eyes off the wave. It was tall now as any building, its roaring louder than the traffic of citywide gridlock. Gulls flew over its crest and screamed. In the smooth window of its broad face Unwin could see animals swimming-fish, and starfish, and great heaving squid. They went about their business as though nothing strange were happening, as though they were still deep in the ocean instead of hurtling toward dry land. The wind was saturated with the stink of their briny world.

Lamech was at the faded blue door now. He opened it, and Unwin followed him back into the alleyway, opening his umbrella over his head. Lamech left the door open long enough to watch the wave's shadow blanket the beach. Then he closed it.

”I try not to peer too often into her sleeping mind,” Lamech said. ”It is an occupational hazard of ours, to learn too much about the people we love. But on those occasions when I have met my wife on her own territory, so to speak, I have always been amazed at the vastness of events under way there. I admit that it frightens me a little.”

He stuck his hat back on his head and walked off down the alley. Unwin went after him, fighting the urge to stop and shake the sand out of his shoes.

FOURTEEN.

On Nemeses There is no better way to understand your own motives and dispositions than by finding someone to act as your opposite.

Their route along the worn brick pathways of Lamech's dreaming mind grew ever more strange and circuitous. They ducked beneath rusting fire escapes, pa.s.sed through tunnels that smelled of algae and damp earth, hopped gutters br.i.m.m.i.n.g with filth. Twice they crossed deep ravines on makes.h.i.+ft bridges of steel grating. Down below, Unwin could see other alleyways, other tunnels, other gutters. The place was built in layers, one maze stacked upon another-a peculiar choice, Unwin thought, for an organizational system. Why not a house, or even an office building, if anything were indeed possible? If Lamech could use doors to travel from one dream to another, could he not also use file drawers?

But the watcher appeared perfectly at home here; he traversed the convoluted byways of his phantom city with a prowess that belied his age and his girth. How terrible that Unwin could not warn him of what was ahead. But even if he could speak to Lamech, even if he could bend time as these alleys bent s.p.a.ce, he would not know what to say. The engine of the watcher's destruction was still veiled to Unwin. Could a dream kill a man? Could it strangle him where he sat sleeping?