Terra (13 page)

As such, when Lbbp’s comm started beeping beside his sleep-well, just a spectrum or so after he’d dozed off, it took him quite a while to figure out where he was and what was going on.

Blearily, he tumbled to the floor, got up and groped for his comm.

-
Yes?
he asked.

-
You are Postulator Dfst-sh-Kshchk-sh-Lbbp?

-
What? Er, yes, yes I am. I think.
It was very unusual for anyone to address Lbbp by his full name. He himself hadn’t heard it spoken in orbits. He had to think about it for a little while to be sure it had in fact been his own name he’d just heard and not that of some other Lbbp. Lbbp wasn’t a particularly unusual Fnrrn name. Not so as to be exciting or noteworthy.
Erm . . . might I ask why? And who are you?

-
This is an artificially intelligent vocal communication from Hrrng Preceptorate Information Traffic Control. Please wait while you are connected to an organic representative.

Lbbp groaned and stretched. What could InTraCon want with him at this time of night? He hadn’t been using the Source to do personal stuff at work . . . Not much anyway. Nothing that would merit this sort of intrusion. He was mentally rehearsing the strong words he was going to have with whoever spoke next, when they spoke.

-
Is that Postulator Lbbp?

No, it’s the Grand High Emperor Of The Outer Galactic Rim, now g’shb off and let me sleep,
thought Lbbp. -
Yes,
said Lbbp.

-
It’s Chfl here from InTraCon, sorry about the lateness of the call . . .

-
That’s perfectly okay,
said Lbbp, who found he didn’t have the energy to be angry.
What’s going on?

-
Well, Postulator, we were rather hoping you could tell us,
said Chfl apologetically.
Someone logged into your home network has opened a channel directly into the Lyceum data bank, but the thing is, they’re not taking any information out. They’re sending it.

-
What?
asked Lbbp, starting to wake up.

-
That’s not the strange part,
said Chfl,
it’s the stuff that’s coming in. It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before. It looks like . . . memories . . .

-
Memories?
said Lbbp.
Memories of what?

-
That’s just it,
said Chfl.
It looks like memories of things that couldn’t possibly have happened.

-
Memories of . . . couldn’t possibly . . .
Lbbp was beginning to wonder if he was properly awake yet.
I’m sorry, I don’t . . .

-
Perhaps I’d better show you. Do you have your slate there?

-
My slate? Yes, yes, I . . .

-
Just a blip . . . There, you should be seeing what we’re seeing now.

Lbbp stared at his slate. He was looking through someone else’s eyes. The image blurred and flickered, phasing from full colour to monochrome and back again.

He seemed to be flying, high above unfamiliar and yet very familiar terrain. It looked like everywhere he’d ever been and nowhere in particular. He was following some sort of blue avian creature, which had . . . was that someone riding on its back? What was going on?

-
Are you seeing this, Postulator?

-
Yes, yes I am, but I don’t . . . That animal, it doesn’t . . . There are elements from various avian species but they’ve just been thrown together into something that makes no evolutionary sense . . . That creature not only doesn’t exist, it COULDN’T exist . . .

-
So what are we looking at then?

-
I have no idea . . .
And Lbbp genuinely didn’t. He watched in utter bewilderment. The picture continued to phase and blur . . . He set his slate to save mode, recording the pictures so that he could study them properly in due course.

What WAS that animal? There wasn’t a single species of flying creature recorded anywhere in the galaxy that was big and strong enough to be ridden like a gnth-sh’gst. And who was that riding it? It looked like a child . . . in fact, didn’t he know that child . . .? Wasn’t he at the Lyceum with . . .

A voice was heard. The voice of whoever owned the eyes through which Lbbp was now looking.

-
Pktk, have I ever shown you my planet?

TERRA!

It was Terra’s point of view he was seeing on the slate, confirmed now as the eyes glanced down at the speaker’s own hands. She was also riding a great flying animal, green this time, and as she stroked the back of its head Lbbp saw those hands; small, pink, unmistakable, unique on the planet.

Lbbp ran to Terra’s room. The sleep-well was inactive and Terra was nowhere to be seen. Seized with panic, Lbbp ran back to get his comm. He had to raise the alarm, to set out in search of her, to . . .

He saw the image on his slate. It had changed. Pktk and Terra (through whose eyes he still saw) were now drifting in the vacuum of space, looking down on the planet Rrth.

-
Look, there it is,
said Terra’s voice.
Just the one moon I’m afraid. Shall we make some more?

Lbbp’s mind reeled. Rrth? Rrth was over twenty opticals away! She couldn’t have got there since last night! And no one could survive in space without an environment suit, you’d be dead in a few blips! This couldn’t be happening! It just couldn’t be happening! It couldn’t . . .

It WASN’T happening.

It wasn’t happening. Any of it.

The main room light was on.

Lbbp opened the door. There she was. Flat on her back, asleep with the Interface dome over her head. She was there, she was home, she was safe. The wave of relief almost banished Lbbp’s confusion. It returned after a moment.

Lbbp’s fingers fumbled with the comm.

-
Postulator? Are you still there, Postulator?
Chfl’s voice had been squeaking from the comm all this time. Lbbp hadn’t noticed. He answered him now.

-
I’m here. Look, I think I may know what’s going on and it’s nothing to worry about. I’ll explain everything when I arrive in the morning.

Lbbp switched off the comm and sat beside Terra’s sleeping form. The dome of her new Interface pulsed away.
Couldn’t wait, could you? Silly girl. Silly, brilliant girl.

He glanced down at his slate. Rrth now had a whole network of moons, of various different sizes and colours.

-
Shall we do another one or is that enough?
asked the Terra on the slate. The one in the room slept on peacefully.

It’s all going on in her mind as she sleeps,
thought Lbbp.
She sees things and has adventures as she sleeps. She goes to places that aren’t there, she sees creatures that have never existed. Things happen that don’t happen. What an extraordinary concept.

Fnrrns don’t dream. Not adult Fnrrns anyway. Baby Fnrrns have visions in their sleep, sometimes happy ones, sometimes scary ones, but as their minds mature and develop into sensible, logical Fnrrn minds, they grow out of such things and sleep each night in a state of soothing oblivion. Lbbp remembered how Terra would sometimes wake up crying and frightened when she was tiny, but that hadn’t happened for orbits now. Did she still dream? Do Ymns dream all their lives?

Lbbp was pondering how he might safely extricate Terra from the Interface when the machine itself solved the problem for him. With its test programme having long since run its course, and no further instructions forthcoming, it switched itself into standby mode. Lbbp’s slate went blank.

Terra smacked her lips and blinked. She peered sleepily up at Lbbp.

-
Oh dear,
she said.

-
Oh dear indeed,
concurred Lbbp.

-
I couldn’t wait,
said Terra pleadingly.
I just couldn’t wait to test our theory. But I fell asleep before it started working. Nothing happened.

-
Well, not exactly,
said Lbbp.

-
What?

-
I’ll tell you about it in the morning,
said Lbbp.
Now get back into your sleep-well and go to sleep!

Terra slouched guiltily back to her room. Lbbp watched her go. Go where? Once she was asleep, what adventures awaited her?

Lbbp was more than a little envious.

-
So go on then, what did happen last night?
asked Terra as she settled down to eat her configuration 6 the next morning.
Am I in trouble?

Lbbp put down his plate of configuration
II
and paused. -
Not in trouble, really, no . . . it’s just.

There came an angry hammering sound. They turned to look towards it.

Pktk was hovering outside the window, and he didn’t look at all happy. Pktk rarely looked happy, but this was a whole new level of not-happy that he seemed to be experiencing at the moment.

-
Well, you’re not in trouble with me, anyway,
said Lbbp warily.
Shall we let him in?

-
I think we’d better,
said Terra.

The window pane slid open and Pktk bounced angrily into the room, his bubble still active.

-
What did you do, Terra?
he asked as he bounced off the floor.
And how did you do it?
He bounced off the ceiling.
And most of all, WHY did you do it?
He bounced off the floor again, finally remembered to switch his bubble off and landed in a heap at Terra’s feet.

-
I don’t . . . understand,
said Terra, feeling hurt, confused and trying desperately not to laugh.

Pktk sat up. -
Last night when we were all asleep, my father’s comm goes off. Apparently there was some live visual feed coming over the Source, showing ME flying around on some sort of monster, then floating off into space! My mother wakes up screaming, running round the apartment shouting help help my baby’s in space, I wake up, she sees I’m okay and THEN starts screaming at ME, asking when had I been off in space and riding flying monsters without telling her, and then I look at the pictures on my slate and it’s me and YOU, you’re in space as well and what is GOING ON?

-
It’s on the Source?
asked Lbbp, a note of panic in his voice.

-
It’s all over the Source!
said Pktk.

-
WHAT’S all over the Source?
asked Terra, confused and distressed.
Could one of you please tell me what you’re talking about?

Lbbp sighed, picked up his slate and retrieved the recording from the previous night. -
This,
he said, and handed the slate to Terra.

Terra watched, Lbbp waited, Pktk watched them watching and waiting and fidgeted with anger and anxiety.

Terra watched the blurring, phasing images. It all looked weirdly familiar for something so indistinct. Then suddenly she knew where she’d seen these pictures before, and she felt horribly exposed, almost violated.

After a few moments, Pktk found he could contain himself no longer. -
Well?
he asked.

-
It’s my dream. My dream from last night. Oh no, the Interface . . .

-
You confused the Source,
said Lbbp.
Not an easy thing to do. You plugged your brain right into the Lyceum data bank and then started deluging it with images from your unconscious mind.

-
You still dream?
asked Pktk, incredulously.
Terra, you still dream? Like a baby?

-
Yes,
said Terra
, and that,
she said, pointing to Pktk,
is why I’ve never told anyone.
She turned to Lbbp.
When I was tiny, I learned how everyone dreams when they’re very very young but that you’re supposed to grow out of it as you get older. Well, I never did . . . I kept waiting for the dreams to stop but they kept coming. At first I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want people to think I was still a baby . . . you know what it’s like when you’re little, you want to grow up as soon as possible.

Lbbp nodded. Terra went on: -
And by the time I realised that it’s different for Ymns, that we just keep on dreaming our whole lives, well, then I didn’t want anyone to know because there were already so many things about me that were different to everyone else. I didn’t think they needed to know about this one.

Lbbp was saddened by the thought of Terra having to keep something so innocent a secret for so long. -
You could have told me,
he said.
I thought you knew you could tell me anything . . .

-
I just thought you’d worry, or worse than that,
Terra said, with a pointed look at Lbbp
, I thought it might arouse your scientific curiosity.

She knows me too well,
thought Lbbp.
Much too well.

-
I was afraid that if I told you about the dreaming, next thing I knew I’d be in your lab at the Life Science Hub with wires poking out of my head,
said Terra, with a smile.

-
So instead of that, you did it to yourself by accident. What a family,
laughed Lbbp. He looked Terra right in the eyes.
If there’s ever anything on your mind, you can always tell me. We don’t need to keep secrets from each other.

Pktk had been silent for so long they’d both rather forgotten he was there. He spoke, and they remembered.

-
Wait,
said Pktk . . .
you’ve got your own Interface? How did you get your own Interface?

-
It’s a long story,
said Terra.
But yes, it does have spaces for my ears.

L
bbp noticed the clock; epoch-shattering scientific breakthrough or no epoch-shattering scientific breakthrough, they were late for the Lyceum. The Lyceum had a list of circumstances under which lateness could be excused. Lbbp was fairly certain that epoch-shattering scientific breakthroughs weren’t on that list.

They hurried to the window and floated away as quickly as they could. Lbbp came with them; it might be necessary to make some sort of excuse for their tardiness, he thought, and besides, he also had the distinct feeling he hadn’t heard the last of this dreaming business. If the images had ended up on the Source, why by now they could have been seen by . . .