The Dream Compass [Book 1 of The Merquan Chronicle] Read online

  “In any case,” Webb said wearily, “I suppose we should try to get to him—preferably before the Government does.” There were seven somber nods.

  Quale’s throat rattled. “My word. A lifetime in this, and we still have not a glint where to find it—the Government, the Monitor.” She stared down at Webb’s mangled hand. “And don’t forget,” she told the aging revolutionary, “we are a service organization now. The Lynchburg Doctrine still holds. We quietly help the like-minded. Quietly. For this, no bombs. None of those whip traps you buy from that sadist. No one need die. Unless we locate the Monitor himself….”

  Webb groaned. “I know I’ve said this a dozen. But again I have that much, a glint. Not of where he is, but how to find him.”

  Weet sighed. “A new strategy?”

  “A new friend.”

  Quale rapped the edge of the conference table impatiently. “Rosenthal, we can only authorize a quiet, limited mission—to find Anton Takk and offer him aid or hiding among us.”

  “The Lynchburg Doctrine—” Webb stopped himself. The words had come out too angrily. He breathed deeply and started again. “I consider the Lynchburg Doctrine, as you all know, to be a tragic mistake—we sit here in a hole like a hutch of shivering rabbits. The Monitor found our Lynchburg Station by paid informant, and we can be fairly certain such a massacre will not be repeated here. We are becoming precisely what the Monitor wants—a chess club in hiding.”

  Virginia Quale raised her right hand. She paused during the silence that the gesture afforded, waiting for diplomatic words to come to her. “The Revolution, as you once fought it, is over. We can’t have you tossing hand bombs willy-nilly on the simplest of missions. Let’s put it to a vote.” Quale had studied the other faces around the table, and already knew she would win.

  Rosenthal Webb pushed through the outer hatch and stepped into a snow-blanketed forest on a mountainside. The white thermasuit and snow boots made him invisible on the landscape. The last daylight had vanished an hour ago. The snow was falling fast and wet, and Webb watched its angle to gauge the wind. The path to the mountaintop had disappeared in the new coverage, but he knew the way well from his nightly ritual.

  At the treeless top the visibility was low, but he could still make out the long purple spines of sister mountains all around. He remembered the old name, Blue Ridge. Webb dipped a hand into the snow, felt for the canvas tarp, and pulled it back, baring a thirty-foot panel of camouflaged wood, which was reinforced with steel strapping. He opened the three combination locks, heaved the wood covering aside, and drew out a hand-cranked winch, which he bolted in place on the lip of the box. The handle turned easily, clicking steadily as an eight-bladed windmill, spanning twenty-eight feet, rose above ground. The facing of the blades’ brass hub was imprinted with a circle of lettering: CRED FAIGING. Webb stopped once to release the gear lock, allowing the blades to teeter and then pinwheel methodically in the wet night breeze. Deep in the mountain a generator hummed and massive batteries charged.

  The whirling blades always revived memories of airplane propellers; Webb had actually seen one of the ancient birds fly once, three or four decades ago, a carnival curiosity patched together by some crackpot on the coastal dunes.

  Those were wild days. The Monitor was more a rumor than a ruler, he seemed to remember. A younger could hitch the old highways from New Chicago to the coast on a whim—even take hack from Government trucks if he had centimes to spread around or a bottle to share. But the bunkhouse riots of New Chicago changed all that, and the Monitor’s brutal Security force was born. The righteous men and women, who had gleefully flung petrobombs in the streets one day, had gone scrambling for the wilderness the next.

  Oh, these benign, rolling mountains had been so welcoming. Such a green and gentle refuge from which to administer a young person’s Revolution.

  When the windmill was fully extended, Webb rested. This was one of his few remaining physical chores, and he clung to it steadfastly. No, there was no more Revolution, just this damned “un-Government” to nurse along, quietly, discreetly, once in a while a clandestine mission to set in motion. “Revolution” meant raiding armories, didn’t it? And blowing bridges and stringing up a Badger or two from a lamppost in New Chicago? He regarded the half-fingers of his right hand. He coughed, spat into the snow, and wondered what evil was rumbling down in his lungs. There was no red in the phlegm. Not today, anyway.

  Webb turned north. There were four more windmills to set up.

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  3

  A Crossing at River 074

  A simple steel device was affixed to the back of Nora Londi’s neck with a leather collar, and she thought about it often as she trudged down, down, down. She had not seen it since it had been padlocked there five days before, but she retained an indelible image of its every mean contour. Its spring-loaded power reminded her of a bear trap: Metal muscles were persistently tensed, ready to drive a thick needle into her spinal cord at the flip of a trigger. A snap collar. Tied to that trigger was a ten-foot leather thong, grasped on the other end by the sweat-moist palm of Red Boss.

  It was the second day of their descent. Ironically, it seemed to the flatlander Londi, the downhill hike was hard work, every step a braking action to prevent a dangerous, headlong run down the rocky path. Red Boss belched out a hoof with every heavy footfall, and each jostle threw the mighty weight of his belly onto his strained canvas-weave belt. His sopping flannel shirt bore the red badge, a horizontal rectangle, of a Sector 4 Transport official. Behind him, the haughty pack llamas followed, murmuring. If Londi fell, she wondered, would Red Boss let go of the trigger thong? Could he react fast enough? And how sensitive was the trigger?

  The vegetation was getting jungly, and insects, horseflies mostly, whirred incessantly. Londi was losing the distinction between her own body odor and the smell of the rich earth. Her brown felt hat, a constant companion for six years, was developing a band of crusty, white salt deposits from her perspiration. Somewhere far below, inviting and invisible through the forest, was the steady, roaring River 074. Londi battled the temptation to ask for a sip from Red Boss’s canteen, wary of what brutal form of recreation he might invent during a trailside pause. She badly wanted to wash the taste of Red Boss from her mouth, or at least drown trying. Death was sounding not too bad.

  Red Boss had found exquisite pleasure in clamping the collar onto her neck. “You my dawg now, honey,” he had said, stroking her hair outside the holding cells of a town, really a rubble field, called Denver. “You my sweet little dawg for the next ten days. You like diggin’ with those paws of yours? Good—you gonna be a miner now. I’m gonna take you to your new home. Say ‘woof,’ honey, say ‘woof.’”

  Denver was pretty much the edge of civilization, and not a particularly civil one at that. It was populated mostly by salvagers, a dusty and sore-speckled lot who had no qualms about delving through irradiated wastelands for ancient treasures. There were riches to be found in places where the Government would not go. Beyond Denver there was nothing, save a prison-mining outpost somewhere among those black peaks that rose like a curtain along the prairie.

  From Denver they had driven southwest as far as the old highways would take them, Red Boss at the wheel of a dilapidated jeep, Londi manacled to the passenger seat. Then the auto’s four-wheel-drive came into play on a series of mountain trails, creek beds, and deteriorating macadam roads. Red Boss knew the way well and never consulted a map.

  They had abandoned the jeep the day before, and now the sunlight, blocked by the high ridge behind them, began to fail in midafternoon. The steamy air seemed to press at Londi’s eyelids, blurring her vision, and fatigue sent her staggering alarmingly often. Once Londi caught a glimpse of shadowy treetops below and thought she saw a human perched in a cliff-clinging spruce. The figure sprouted huge wings and glided into space. An eagle, perhaps. One of the llamas, as if in awe of the sight, gurgled, “Hoooooorrh.”

  That night,
Nora Londi’s shackle chain was wrapped around the trunk of a long-leafed pine. Her hat lay at her side, tired looking. Insects visited it happily. When Red Boss seemed hypnotized by the camp fire, she pulled at the chain silently and hard, positioning her wrists flat against the steel cuffs to prevent cuts. But the tree bark, it seemed, was the only thing sustaining any damage.

  The deadly collar was still in place, the leather trigger thong ending near Red Boss’s bedroll. Beyond that the five llamas drowsed, unburdened for a few hours. Still strapped to the largest llama, a 410-pounder named Diego, was a semiautomatic rifle in its leather holster.

  “Whadda ya doin’?”

  “My evening exercises, Bossman. Isometrics, y’know.”

  “That chain ain’t gonna give, no way, honey. And them cufflocks is solid Masters. I been doin’ this too long to get chancerous with prisoners.” His red beard ended in a ragged point, which bobbed comically when he spoke. Londi wondered if it had ever caught fire.

  “Gotta keep my arm muscles up, ready for that mining, Bossman. Could get flabby just workin’ my legs like this.”

  “Couple more days on the trail, honey, then it’s twenty years in a hole—pick swingin’, timber haulin’. All the arm work you want. But maybe you’d feel better walking the rest of the way there on all-fours. Hah. Like a dawg!”

  Londi leaned back against the pine and closed her eyes. The bark crackled softly against her skull. Her mind wandered to the rowdy, urine-scented streets of New Chicago, then to a guy she had met in some godforsaken Northland logging region—what Sector was that? Anton Takk was the fellow’s name, the bastard. Next she imagined a flock of human-size birds circling in the cool dark above the treetops.

  “Hey, honey, how ‘bout some sportin’ before we night out now?” said Red Boss, standing up.

  And then Nora Londi thought back, way back, to the boiling summer day she lopped the heads off of six men with a log chain.

  The roiling white river was a blinding spectacle when they emerged from the shadows of the forest. For the first time Londi could see both walls of the gorge, towering so improbably high; judging their scale and distance was impossible.

  A rotting dory of silver-colored wood was beached nearby, fastened to a rope-and-pulley mechanism set up eons ago for crossing the unruly River 074. The llamas were groaning nervously.

  “They don’t like the crossing, no sir,” Red Boss said, shoving Londi toward the boat. He tethered the llama harnesses to the stern while Londi boarded shakily. “It’s not that deep here, really, and llamas keep a better footin’ in the riverbed than humans ever could. I only lost two of the buggers to Oh-seven-four in all my years of Transport. Once you’re swept away in this water … downstream…” He shrugged and worked his little finger into his right ear. He withdrew the finger and examined the tip. “And if the rocks don’t kill you, the Indians will.”

  “Indians?”

  “Cannibals, wild pokers. They’ll gnaw yer bones ‘n’ put yer head on a stake.”

  “Your mama told you some stretchers, Bossman.”

  Red Boss shrugged again and tugged on the knot he had made. “All I know is, downstream from here is where I don’t go. All you have to show me is one head on a stake to learn that, an’ I’ve seen a dozen.”

  “The llamas are terrified of the river,” Londi said. “Couldn’t we ferry them across first—in the boat? Couple at a time, maybe?”

  “Maybe I should carry the li’l babes in my arms! Waste of time, coddlin’ yer work animals. Quiet, ya’ll. Less go!”

  Red Boss shoved off and stood in the center of the dory. Hand over hand, he pulled them into the rushing water. The llamas followed the dory, stepping tentatively into the current, growling and bleating, rolling their brown eyes wildly. The pulley rope quickly lost its slack as the river tugged at the little craft.

  Londi studied the boulders downstream. Indians? The river thundered away fairly straight for several hundred yards before disappearing to the right. She planted her booted feet against the bow supports and, as casually as she could manage, leaned back, laying her head at Red Boss’s feet.

  “Aw,” Red Boss drawled, “is the dawggie napping while Bossman works?”

  Londi had mentally rehearsed her next move hundreds of times: With a rapid gyration of the forearm, the deadly leather thong was wrapped four times around her wrist, making Red Boss’s end of the line powerless.

  Red Boss dropped the pulley rope and snorted: “Look, bitch—”

  Londi planted a palm against each wall of the dory and pushed. There was a creak as her arm muscles grew bulbous, then a thunderclap of shattering wood. Submerged in a dark storm of bubbles, Londi somersaulted over a stretch of stony river bottom and managed to stabilize her body somewhat in the violent current. The leather thong came freely now: Red Boss had dropped his end. She pictured the mechanism poised at the back of her neck, and wound the thong around her collar to hold the trigger lever flat—and, she hoped, harmless. A thought glinted through her mind: How curious to be underwater and not have breathing your first priority.

  She thrust her head up and gasped, sucking in air and foam. Londi gagged, her lungs afire. She tried again and grabbed pure air that time. Slightly downstream she saw a cluster of flailing furry legs. She gasped again. They had rounded the river bend, and the water was churning furiously. She tried to stand, but the current would have none of that.

  The riverbanks narrowed to a mere fifty feet, and the pounding current grew ever more violent. The banks were nothing but closely stacked boulders now piled up into narrowing walls, almost like masonry. Then, magically, all was at ease; there was no more clash of rock and foam, no more riverbed at all. Londi, five frantic llamas, and a fat man were airborne, delicately spat off the lip of a monster waterfall.

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  4

  The Dragon Fish

  “That’s not a real fish!” The challenge came from a smudge-faced six-year-old sitting cross-legged in the dirt among the children down front. This prompted giggles and a dissenting squeal, “It is too!” The dozen adults privileged with splintery folding chairs exchanged puzzled expressions: Perhaps it was not a real fish.

  Pec-Pec was pleased. He preferred audience participation; it provided a chance to improvise, adding a whiff of danger to a magic routine he knew much too well. He thrust his eyebrows up in mock surprise and fanned the fingers of one hand across his eyes, making them glow menacingly red. He blinked, and his pupils again were coal black.

  He swaggered to the edge of the tiny makeshift stage and planted his hands on his hips, glaring back at the fishbowl ontop of a pedestal. He crinkled his nose and silently, in exaggeration, mouthed the words, “Not a real fish.”

  More giggles.

  Pec-Pec leaped from the stage and grabbed the doubting six-year-old. Throwing the youngster gently over his shoulder, the magician marched back to the fishbowl. Linny Bartok howled in glee and terror. His mother, Suz, crossed her khaki-covered legs uncomfortably.

  Linny was on his feet again. The magician arched his back and neck down in a stunning act of contortion, like a curious giraffe, touching noses with the grimy tyke. Pec-Pec again mouthed the sarcastic words: “Not a real fish.”

  Linny stood frozen in his overalls. This dark-skinned stranger before him smelled of mint and coffee. His nostrils flared like the wings of a sea bird, and his chin, oddly, was clean-shaven. Most of his facial hair had been razored away in the fashion of men from the Southlands, except for a narrow, knotty mustache. From the top of his head fell a torrent of black braids, five of which ended in jewel-studded bands of gold.

  “I am Pec-Pec, the magic man,” came the deep, soft words. “I tell you, that is a fish, a real fish, a dragon fish from the lagoon behind my home far away. Take the fish.”

  The child examined the fish. Its body measured three inches, with long flimsy fins colored green, red, and gold.

  “Take the fish, I say.”

  Linny touched the bo
wl, hesitating.

  “Not the bowl—the fish. Take the fish.” Whispers hissed among the adults.

  Linny reached into the bowl. His hand was submerged, but he felt no wetness. The dragon fish surrendered to his grasp and he drew it out. It wriggled a little in the night air, and its iridescent fins wafted lazily, as if they were still aloft in water.

  “Is it a fish?” asked Pec-Pec.

  “It’s a fish.”

  “Tell me: Is it a real fish?”

  “It’s a real fish,” the child squeaked.

  “Put it on my tongue, little boy.” A long, red V-shape snaked from Pec-Pec’s mouth, and Linny obeyed. The dragon fish disappeared into his mouth and Pec-Pec swallowed. The magician swayed his head meditatively until his braids formed a curtain over his face. He placed the side of his head on the rim of the fishbowl, and the audience heard a tiny plop. The dragon fish had fallen from the magician’s ear.

  Lights out at Camp Blade had been hours before, but Pec-Pec’s night was not done. One kerosene lamp illuminated his tiny home, the back of a battered city-style delivery truck. The juggling torches were fitted with new burn rags and packed away. He had downed two bowls of his fiery bean soup and rinsed the utensils. The two wallets appropriated during the night’s performance were plucked empty and now were under a foot of mud in the parking lot. The folding chairs and stage were strapped to the truck’s roof, and the water and fuel tanks were full. The magician was ready to vanish. Almost.

  Tapestries covered the walls. His folding cot was open, comforter, blankets, and pillow in place. He sat on the edge wearing a black robe, the fishbowl on his knees.

  “Dragon fish, will you come with me?”

  The fish was a prize, undeniably. But the longer he rambled the countryside with the glowing water-being, the more he came to feel awed, even uneasy, about its surreal talents.

  Pec-Pec dipped in with both hands and drew the creature to his lips. He sucked it in, savoring the coppery taste. The patterns in the tapestries danced, then dissipated, and the truck fell away. He was the moon now: He could go where the moon went, know what the moon knew.