The Dream Compass [Book 1 of The Merquan Chronicle] (6 page)

Takk rubbed his eyes, wondering if he would have to dash for the truck. He had not refueled yet—a stupid mistake—and he tried to remember what the gas gauge had read. “What are you talking about? I just need a room. My money’s good….”

“Well, that’s the number-one right there,” Moberly huffed, keeping her voice low. “Your money. A Government man pays by Government chit. Cash? Hah!”

“Hey, I’m new—just hired. Don’t even have all my papers yet.”

Moberly’s face softened, and she walked farther into the room. The workroom was a maze of ceiling-high shelves burdened with items in disrepair—coils of ragged wire, engine parts, plumbing fixtures, gears, unidentifiable machinery, and the odor of rust and oil. Takk followed. Moberly stopped at one shelf and poked at the keys of an antique adding machine that was missing its metal shell.

“Most of the Supply drivers—the real ones—trade on the side,” she said. “Maybe tobacco or coffee, maybe machinery. The nervy ones—maybe even books, although I’d never touch ‘em.” She glanced up at Takk and turned away again. “One day some guy’s gonna come in with an adding machine just like this—only it’ll have a full set of key springs, which this one doesn’t. Or somebody’ll have drive belts ‘n’ gaskets for that generator in the corner. That’d be nice—another generator.”

“Yeah,” said Takk. “Another generator. That’d be nice.” Takk began to wonder about her emotional stability.

“So the more bits and pieces you have,” Moberly said, “the better chance you have of puttin’ things together. The more parts you have that’ll fit someday. You, you’re a liar and a runner. And whatever you’re running from or after, that’s the one thing you have and, well, of course you don’t have it. Or you wouldn’t be running.”

“I’d just like a room, please. That’s what I’d like to have.”

“You have a room,” she said. “Just be gone before daylight tomorrow. And stay away from the guests. Some of ‘em are Government—real Government—and all of ‘em like to gossip.”

Takk shrugged, trying to look as if he did not understand, and turned for the door.

“You don’t have long, you know,” she said to his back. Takk stopped and watched her pick her way to a metal box the size of an oil drum. The upper face of the casing bore four rows of faded keys and a plexiglass panel that protected the emerging paper. Moberly tapped her finger on the smudgy print.

“Anybody with a wireless knows your description, that you killed a Badger. And nobody hides in this world—nobody.”

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“Rosenthal Webb, you are fifty-five years old. You tend to limp when the humidity’s high—we’ve all seen it.” Virginia Quale motioned around the conference table. “We agreed to this mission—with much debate and mountainous reservations—and, well, I’m sorry, but there are younger and stronger men. They have more endurance and agility. It’s hard fact, Rose.” She flushed. “Rosenthal. And you’re a man of hard facts.”

Webb, too, was reddening. A tiny wildfire was spreading across his cheeks and forehead and he was helpless to stop it. He detested what he thought of as Quale’s motherly nature. And with logic on her side it was all the more exasperating. His words came slowly, in measured tones calculated to sound frighteningly controlled, as if any more resistance might bring an explosion of fury. His being eliminated from one mission was not the only thing at stake—if he lost this one, he would never be granted another. Cranking windmills for the rest of his life.

“I am aging,” he said. “Yes, by plumb, I am. You could not really say that I am going soft, though. I am strong. I work out daily, even through the winter. You all know that. The younger men, well, most of what they know about fieldwork they have learned from me and they have a small fraction of my experience.

“And there is the matter of our field contacts, people who have known me for years. Some of them only I am aware of; they will deal with no one else.” He pointed for emphasis with his left index finger, and seven sets of eyes followed the motion. “We are privileged with an insulated existence. We can forget that out there, in real life, trusting a stranger is risking your life.”

“May I interject?” asked Winston Weet. “I grant you the physical ability, even if some at our table will not. I am older than you, Rosenthal, and I am soft. And I concede the need for the mission, and I voted for it. I don’t doubt that Takk is bumbling badly and is about to be caught, or that he will very likely take some good people down with him. But I want to bring up another point. I am a scientist, and perhaps I consider causes and effects differently from some people and—oh, that doesn’t really matter.” Weet cleared his throat. “What do you say to the skeptic who wonders if you didn’t create the need for this mission in the first place? You did send Anton Takk a wheelbarrow load of money.”

Webb stood and pushed his chair back. Virginia Quale flinched, and Webb himself wondered if he could refrain from shouting. “The money,” Webb said, “merely served as assistance to a project already set in motion by Anton Takk. The young man is very resourceful. He had an entire warehouse at his disposal. He even has the services of a printing press for forgeries.

“But money, I gully, from what Takk said in the letter, was going to be a problem. From our distance, it was the assistance that could travel fastest without being detected—a coded wireless transmission to New Chicago, and from there, the actual money was hidden in a direct shipment to Camp Blade. Money—it was juss five thousand centimes, not ‘a wheelbarrow load’—is the most versatile of tools for what Takk was needing to do. But anyway, no—it’s a situation of Takk’s creation.”

“You seem to take Takk’s letter at face value now,” said Quale.

“I have believed all along that the essence of the letter is true,” answered Webb, “although I am aware of a couple of blatant lies—probably used to protect friends.”

“What lies?”

“Well, about Ben Tiggle for one—the warehouse manager.” Webb’s face darkened. “I have known him for a long … long … time. Now he has disappeared.”

“I do wish Mr. Takk had just stayed put,” Quale said.

“Virginia,” Webb responded, “you’re starting to sound like the Government.”

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Lunch at Subbo’s Restaurant, considered that month to be New Chicago’s most stylish dining spot, was being paid for by the Government. That fact was the only thing about the meeting that Gould Papier did not find distasteful. To Papier’s left sat his boss, an obese senior deputy of Transportation named Glenn Wig, who was known to be quite indiscreet in public with his flatulence—both physical and verbal. Wig was ordering another bottle of the house red wine.

The other man at the table was a stranger, a Security officer introduced to him as Inspector Mick Kerbaugh, a slender man who seemed to Papier to represent the opposite of Wig’s characteristics but in an equally detestable way. Kerbaugh bore a stylish left-temple ponytail (did no one dare wear one on the right side?), and the rest of his head, apparently shaven just that morning, formed a large angular dome. There were two pronounced flat surfaces, looking like armor plating, that made up the left and right sides of his forehead. Kerbaugh wore that popular, overbearing cologne that Papier likened to a physical assault, and his white cotton tunic ended fashionably at the knee.

Papier himself felt more at home with his yellow-gray hair combed back, and all of his tunics brushed the ankles modestly and ran to the darker colors. This was a way of dressing considered among New Chicago’s older professionals to be satisfyingly unchic.

The Transport information officer had developed over the years a functional way of listening to his rotund boss’s blatherings: Papier tended to daydream until certain important phrases were used, or until Glenn Wig employed a particular tone of voice that mustered his attention. And just then Papier found his sensibilities being roused from a daydream.

Wig was saying: “…and so then I says just this morning to the minister of Security, ‘Hey, as a matter of fact I just got off the phone with my information officer an’ he’s had direct contact with this Anton Takk, seen him and smelled him in person—hah, I mean, he’s a Northlander, right?—and what’s more, my beloved Gould Papier knows the western sectors like he knows his own pud.’ So Gould, did I serve you well on this one or what?”

“Well, I’m not sure, Mr. Wig. Just how did this conversation resolve itself?”

Wig leaned into the table toward Papier as if to deliver the punchline of a particularly bawdy joke. His second and third and fourth chins folded into one another like a compressed accordion. He downed the last of his wine and set the glass to the side just as the waiter was opening the new bottle.

“Are we being a little slow today, Papier?” asked the Transport deputy. He paused for a tiny belch, the fumes from which wafted toward his employee’s nostrils. “We need a Transport official—someone of appreciable distinction and authority—to accompany Mr. Kerbaugh in his pursuit of this ne’er-do-well, Anton Takk. Not only is he a runner, but now comes to light that he’s a murderer too.”

Papier began to fidget, and Wig continued, “I believe you will find it a welcome relief from the rigors of your office duties. Think, Mr. Papier, what an opportunity to strike a highly visible blow for good and order—laying waste this reprobate!”

“Actually…” Kerbaugh interrupted and let the silence hold court for a moment. From the single word, Papier recognized the hard-core Southlander twang, much thicker than would be found among most New Chicagoans. “Our orders are not to lay waste anyone for the moment,” the Security man continued. “Primarily, we want to follow him closely and analyze how and why he makes every move. If an individual gives him aid, that individual must be incapacitated to prevent recurrences. If Government regulations are too lax, they must be improved. We have already found out, for instance, that Transport documents are being forged much too easily. Once we know who all of Mr. Takk’s friends are, well…”

Wig fell back and his brow wrinkled defensively. “You couldn’t think that some Northland log-buster scratched out those Transport forms with a quill!”

“Of course not,” said Kerbaugh. “But the fact remains that a forger available to Takk has that capability, and we must change our systems and stay five steps ahead of the reprobates. I have already begun making inquiries into the location of the illicit press.”

“But what if I don’t want this assignment?” asked Papier.

“If that were so,” responded Wig, “I wouldn’t be so unpatriotic as to say so. You and Mr. Kerbaugh are leaving town this evening. Please don’t worry about your current duties, my boy. Tim Kittleworth is moving into your office right now—temporarily, of course.”

Glenn Wig then broke wind loudly, and all conversation in Subbo’s Restaurant died. His two companions flipped open their menus simultaneously, and Papier wondered if he could manage to eat anything at all, whether or not it was paid for by the Government.

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Nora Londi awoke to the odor of wet fur, and she found that she had been using a llama for a pillow. The room was round and the walls curved outward, prompting Londi to imagine that she was inside a large pumpkin. Three round windows, too small to crawl through, let three beams of light into the room. The only other opening was a large circle in the center of the ceiling, and that, Londi decided, had to be the door. Except that there was no ladder.

Londi sat up groggily, head humming with pain, and scratched at the little scabs on her neck. She remembered something about a miniature snake. On the far side of the room a nude, dark-skinned woman crouched, her hands against the floor and her eyes attentive. Their gazes locked, and the crouching woman launched into an unintelligible monologue of sonorous syllables and a pleasing cadence: “Ooo-ooong, ooo-oonga…”

Londi listened for several minutes. There were three llamas in the room, behind her, and the one she had been sleeping against craned his neck up, mesmerized by the chanting woman’s voice. This was the largest of the llamas, the one named Diego. He still wore the empty rifle holster.

The llama began to speak in a gutteral counter-rhythm, a hauntingly similar voice: “Hooorm, hooorma, hooorm, hooorma…” The woman against the wall responded, more enthusiastically than before, and the give-and-take quickly grew to a frantic, reverberating exchange.

“Hey,” Nora Londi shouted, and the interplay stopped, leaving a ghostly echo. “Uh, sorry, but do you speak English? That’s all I know.”

The tiny woman seemed to understand the question. She shook her head from side to side and then opened her mouth to show what seemed in the half-light to be the stub of a mangled tongue. The dark woman flattened a palm against each cheek and rested, as if waiting for the next move. The llama Diego twisted his head in Londi’s direction, regarding her for the first time.

“Damn,” said Londi, massaging her forearms, “for a blue minute I thought you had a conversation going.”

“A conversation,” the llama responded. “A conversation going.”

Londi rolled onto her shoulder away from Diego and came to rest in a squatting position much like Loo’s. “What?” was all she could manage.

Diego’s lips worked against each other meditatively. He settled closer to the floor and placed one forepaw over the other. “Human … talk,” the llama said, his words clear yet halting and hollow sounding. “Many talks … I know. You make a sound, I make a sound just like.”

Londi remained motionless, and her eyes darted between Diego and the small woman against the opposite wall, both of whom seemed unperturbed. Londi rocked back onto her rear and permitted herself a nervous laugh.

Diego repeated the laugh—same pitch, same cadence, a ghostly mirror of Londi’s own voice. She had heard of this kind of thing, mimicry. But it only happened with birds, didn’t it? And this seemed to be more than mindless repetition: The llama acted as if he had some idea of what he was saying—unless there was some remarkable training behind all of this, and the beast was just spewing words.