Thomas Perry - Shadow Woman

She let herself savor the moment, the world so dark and quiet around her, but her feelings so bright and hot and clear. She was so glad she had found out that this was allowed. But then she sensed that off in the dark beyond the pool, there was some kind of disturbance. Maybe someone was coming. “No, not yet,” she pleaded. “Just a little longer.” But Pete seemed to lose his solidity, to slip away from her. She reached for him.

Jane felt cold. Why had the water turned cold? She slowly rose toward consciousness to investigate her surroundings and opened her eyes to a terrible sense of loss. Then she was suddenly, abruptly, wide awake. She was shocked—frightened—not by the dream but by the realization that she was the dreamer. It was an enormous relief that it had not happened. She had not committed adultery, thrown her marriage away. She had not betrayed Carey. She had not done anything at all.

She sat up, as careful not to touch Pete as though he were a rattlesnake that had slithered in beside her for warmth, and extricated herself from the sleeping bag. She felt deeply depressed as she slipped her jacket on and walked across the cold stone shelf to retrieve her boots.

The Old People had studied dreams the way they studied every other event that passed before their eyes. When somebody awoke from a dream, he would immediately do his best to interpret it and fulfill whatever command it had brought him. Something was bothering the dreamer, something he had not given sufficient attention to while he was awake. Now that he was conscious again, he had to correct the oversight—overcome the inertia, the fear, or the inhibition that had prevented him from seeing clearly before. If Jane had lived in the Old Time, she would have been required to wake Pete up and demand that he act out the dream with her to set her mind at rest.

As she tied her boots, she looked over at Pete Hatcher. He was lying on his side facing her, his eyes closed and his jaw slack in sleep. He would be one of the seventeen men on the planet who looked good when he was asleep. She fought off the urge to resent him. None of this was his fault. She was just lonely for her husband, and she had been alone with Pete so much that her misguided subconscious mind had somehow drafted him to stand for Man. No, she thought. The dream had been too convincing and too specific for anything so abstract. Pete was an attractive guy who had the morals of a stallion and had made it disconcertingly clear that she was the one he wanted. Some part of her mind obviously had not taken her refusal as final but had been mulling the offer over.

She found her watch in her jacket pocket and consulted it as she strapped it to her wrist. It was only four o’clock, but she wasn’t going to crawl back into that sleeping bag with him right now.

She heard the distant screeching of birds. She cocked her head to listen, but she could not identify their kind. She did sense that they weren’t singing, they were frightened. Something must have come too close to their nesting place. She heard the wings of a flock of them passing overhead in the dark. It was too early for the birds she knew to fly.

“Pete!” she said. “Get up. It’s time to move.”

It was dark and still and cold, and as Jane and Pete rolled their sleeping bags and ponchos and put on their jackets, she could see thick clouds of steam puffing into the air from their nostrils.

Hatcher whispered, “Why are we in such a hurry?”

“Some birds woke me up,” she whispered back. “I think something scared them.”

As Jane gathered the pine boughs and carried them below the trail to hide them, she knew that she was not being foolish. This was unfamiliar country, but she had begun to get used to the sights and sounds, and the birds were behaving strangely. When she had removed every sign of the campsite, she used the last pine bough as a broom to sweep the rock shelf, then all of the footprints that led to it from the trail.

Jane set a brisk pace as they moved up the trail in the frigid predawn stillness. She led Pete northward, past thickets of berry bushes in alpine meadows, up rocky inclines that skirted the treeline. When the sky began to take on a blue-gray luminescence and she could see objects in depth, she began to hear other birds. She listened to them as she walked, trying to detect any sudden calls from behind that might be warnings. When the sun had turned the peaks to her left a dull orange, she said, “Are you up to a little run?”

Pete said, “Ready if you are.”

They jogged until the sun was high, going single file on the narrow footpath. Jane listened harder for sounds that came from behind but heard nothing. When she saw a mountain that might be Iceberg Peak on her right, she stopped running and walked while she studied the map.

“Where are we?” asked Pete.

She pointed to the spot. “What we want to look for next are more glaciers: Ahern Glacier, Ipasha Glacier, and then Chaney Glacier, all middle-sized, close together on the right. Then we take a fork in the path. It looks like a good five miles from here.”

“It’s rough country,” said Pete. “Are you planning to run all the way to Canada?”

“I wish we could,” she said. “I’ll probably feel better when we’ve passed that fork in the trail—one more chance to send a tracker in the wrong direction.”

“Do you seriously think somebody could have followed us this far?”

“I honestly know some people could do it. I don’t think it’s likely that these people made all the right decisions and did it, but I’ve decided that it’s stupid not to minimize the risks.”

“How do we do that?”

“Move faster, stop less often, and keep traveling as long as the light lasts.”

Pete walked along beside her, ducking now and then to shrug a branch past his shoulder. After a moment she realized he was trying to get a close look at her face, so she turned it to him. “Something wrong?”

“I was just having a fantasy.”

“Pete …”

“It was about dancing. Honest.”

“Pretty tame, for you. It must be the lack of oxygen up here.”

His hands came up to gesture as he described it. “See, we’re at this ballroom. It’s got one of those old-fashioned spinning balls in the center made out of mirrors. The light is dim, except for that. I’ve got a tuxedo on. You’re wearing—”

“A blue business suit.”

“A black velvet dress: straps, just low enough to hint that the endowment is adequate.”

“ ‘Endowment is adequate’?”

“Nice tits.”

“Sorry I asked. Are we done yet?”

“No. I walk up to your table. You smile. You stand, you hold out your right hand—”

“And wave good-bye.”

“No. I take your hand. The music begins.” He hummed a waltz as he walked, his eyes closed. Jane waited, but he kept humming, the waltz going on and on.

She looked at his face. “Is that smile supposed to make me uncomfortable? Pete?”

“Sssh. Don’t interrupt my fantasy. I finally got to lead.”

She stared at him for a moment, then the laugh fought its way out and she slapped his arm. He opened his eyes and shrugged happily. “A guy can dream.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I apologize. I’ll let you make the decision. Do you want to get to Canada quickly, or do you want to stroll along like this for a few hours, sleep on a frozen rock in a forty-knot wind, and maybe get killed?”

“Lead on,” he said.

She pulled ahead of him again. For the rest of the morning she tried a new routine. When they were in thick cover among the evergreen trees she walked, striding along with a purposeful gait, trading the time lost for the chance to catch her breath. But when the trail led them up into grassy fields or onto bare, rocky ridges, she broke into a run, taking them across the open ground as quickly as she could. She never let herself forget the rifle.