Steven Harper - Nightmare

"You want me to come with you?" Ara said.

"You know slavers. I don’t," Tan said. "And thank god for that. I’d much rather deal with killers."

At seven o’clock Ara was in her pleasure garden. The fountain made pleasant noises and the pear and orange blossoms smelled exquisite. Usually the place felt quiet and relaxing, but now there was an undercurrent of tension and she felt an urge to keep looking over her shoulder. Twice she spun around expecting to see a looming dark man with a hat that hid a leering face and both times she saw nothing. When Ara felt a presence at the edge of her turf, she had to muffle a scream before she realized it was only Tan.

"Please come," Ara called.

Tan appeared, and the Dream rippled briefly around her. "You look nervous."

"Let’s just get started," Ara said. "I have a contact at Dreamers, Inc. Take my arm and I’ll move us."

Tan obeyed. Ara closed her eyes and cast out her senses. Dreamers, Inc., kept a permanent presence in the Dream, and the pattern of thought was familiar to Ara. She located it and focused on it. They were here but she wanted them to be there and they would be there now . The familiar wrench cut through her and she opened her eyes.

The brown desk and the red Oriental carpet stood in the middle of a stark, white space. There were no walls, no ceiling, no doors or windows. Just empty whiteness with a room-sized square of colored silk in the middle of it. A human man, thin and spare, sat behind the desk with his hands primly folded on the blotter. An inkwell and quill pen sat to one side of a small sign that read Welcome to Dreamers, Inc.. Everything about the space and the man said receptionist. Ara knew that there were actually close to a hundred receptionists on duty at any given moment to field and direct the countless mundane inquiries the company received every day, but the human mind was not geared to register hundreds of receptionists and thousands of questioners occupying the same space, and Ara’s subconscious automatically filtered out what her conscious couldn’t deal with. Everything she didn’t need was relegated to background whispers.

"May I help you?" asked the man in a reedy voice.

"My name is Araceil Rymar," Ara said. "This is Inspector Lewa Tan. I need to talk to Marco Clark. Is he in the Dream?"

"No," the man replied promptly. "His shift begins in twenty minutes. Would you care to wait or leave a message?"

"Tell him that I need to speak with him immediately."

"To Dream Engineer Marco Clark," the man said. "Message begins: Araceil Rymar needs to speak with you immediately. Message ends. Is that correct?"

"Yes, thank you." Ara took Tan’s arm and with a wrench they were back in Ara’s pleasure garden. Birds twittered and bees buzzed among the blossoms.

"Couldn’t you tell yourself if this Marco guy was in the Dream?" Tan asked. Her voice once again was full of rich, low tones.

Ara shook her head. "I’ve only met him in the Dream, never in person. We’ve never touched, and I’m not good at finding people I haven’t had physical contact with. Marco can find me, though."

"So where now?"

"Let’s try Silent Acquisitions. They deal exclusively in slaves, so there’s a good chance Dorna passed through them at one time or another."

Another wrench and they were standing in another receptionist foyer. This time the rug was blue and the desk was a chrome and steel fortress and the person behind it was a red cone with four flexible arms and three eyes, but it was still clearly a receptionist foyer. A hovering sign behind the creature read Silent Acquisitions, Ltd.: Where Your Tastes Are Met.

Ara again introduced herself and Tan. The cone narrowed its eyes. "Are either or both connected with Children of Irfan?" Its voice was like a spoon plopping in cold pudding.

Uh oh , Ara thought. "Why do you ask?" she said aloud.

"Please answer the question," the creature plopped. "Are one or both you connected with the Children of Irfan? Please answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ There are no lies in the Dream."

"Yes," Ara was forced to say. "We both are."

"I am sorry, but I am not allowed to speak with you."

"But-"

"If you wish to leave a message for a particular party," the creature went on, "you may hire a courier ship with a hardcopy missive. Good day."

The reception room vanished, leaving behind the featureless plain that was the default condition of the Dream.

"Rude," Tan observed. "What brought that on?"

"Probably me," Ara said grimly. "The Children-including me-have bought, stolen, swindled, and tricked a hell of a lot slaves out of that company over the decades. We’ve probably cost them billions in revenue by now. Silent Acquisitions seem to have adopted a new policy of identifying Children and then refusing to communicate with us so we can’t trick any information out of them. Bastards! Filth doesn’t even begin to describe what they do."

"I agree," Tan said, "but we need to stay focused on the other job."

Ara let out a long breath. "Right. Sorry. I just hate slavers. Buying and selling sentient creatures is about the lowest anyone can-"

"You church, me choir," Tan said. "Can we go?"

"Right, right. Let’s try the Silent Partners and see what they have to say."

The Silent Partners, it turned out, didn’t know of any strange murders. Neither did DreamShapers. They were about to visit Quietude, Ltd., when Ara felt a presence brush her mind.

"Marco!" she said with delight. "He’s in the Dream. Hey, Marco! My turf, all right?"

The pleasure garden appeared around them. Ara was dressed in her green robe with the close-fitting hood. She put Tan in a similar one, but blue. They both sat on the lip of the fountain, waiting. After a brief interval, a yellow sphere of light the size of a basketball whizzed over the garden wall and hovered in front of Ara. Her face showed her pleasure.

"Marco," she said. "I’m glad you could talk to me. This is Inspector Lewa Tan."

"Good morning," the sphere said in a voice reminiscent of ringing bells. "Or is it not morning on Bellerophon?"

"It’s evening for us," Ara told him. "Listen, I know you’re probably busy, so I’ll be fast." She gave a quick explanation of the Dream murders. "Can you find out if there were any similar happenings among Dreamers, Inc.?"

"I know there were," Marco said in his bell-like voice. "It was nine or ten years ago."

Tan stood up, excited. "Can you put me in contact with the investigator in charge of the case?"

"Perhaps. I will have to go through appropriate channels. Please wait."

The ball vanished with a pop of inrushing Dream energy. Tan waited with ill-disguised impatience.

"Marco’s good," Ara said. "He knows a lot of people."

"My drugs are going to wear off soon," Tan grumbled. "What species is Marco, anyway?"

"Human." Ara scratched her nose. "He’s a practicing Zen Buddhist. When I first met him twenty-some years ago, he looked as human as you or me but now …" Ara shrugged. "I sometimes wonder what’ll happen when he reaches Nirvana."

The ball popped back into being. Standing beneath it was a small, dark-complected man in a linen suit. He had a thin mustache, small black eyes, and equally black hair scattered with silver.

"Ara, Inspector," Marco rang out formally, "this is Ken Rashid, Chief of Security for Dreamers, Inc. Chief Rashid, this is Mother Ara and Inspector Tan, both of the Children of Irfan."

They all exchanged greetings, and Marco said, "I imagine you have little time left in the Dream with much to discuss, so I will leave you. Ara, it was good seeing you. Please visit me again when you have time."

"I will, Marco," Ara said. "And thank you."