The Dream Widow (23 page)

Wilson lay on his back for a moment. He tried to slow his breathing and control the massive, shooting pain in his head. He rubbed his temples with both hands and glanced at the scar on the inside of his left arm.

“None of this is real. Why would I have an implant?”

He closed his eyes, visualized a frozen lake, and chanted the recovery poem. His left arm cooled and the pain faded away like a fire covered with blankets.

Still strangely out of breath, he got to his feet and wandered into dark tunnel. The sight-trick worked also, and illuminated the concrete walls and rectangular spaces. Wilson found nothing in the dozens of empty rooms apart from a palm-sized paper box.

He walked back to the sunshine at the entrance. Red and white paper crinkled loudly as he inspected the small box. Thin silver material lined the inside. Strange, square characters made up of many detailed lines covered the front and back along with a single word: “Hongtashan.” Wilson found four characters that he was fairly certain were a year. Two horizontal lines probably stood for “two”, followed by a zero, an unknown character, and three horizontal lines. So the box came from “two-zero–something–three”?

Wilson pushed the delicate paper into his jacket. He dangled his legs off the concrete ledge and meditated again. His throat was parched. How could this be part of the system? What use was a feeling of thirst to the machinery?

The valley lay below his feet. On his left grassland spread beyond a narrow split in the mountains.

Wilson squinted at the plains and thought he saw a clump of tiny black and white dots. He slid off the ledge and followed a dusty ridge down the mountain.

He stepped onto the plains in the deep purple of dusk. A large black tent sheltered behind a rise. Many ropes secured it, probably from high winds, and square yellow flags flew from the wooden poles. Not far away wandered a herd of over a hundred long-haired, black and white goats.

Wilson smelled cooking meat. His mouth watered and he walked closer.

“Hello? Anyone home?”

A bark came from behind a stacked wall of rocks. An ugly black dog––the spitting image of the one back at Station––galloped toward Wilson. It barked and snarled only feet away. Wilson held up his hands but the dog kept barking.

Voices mumbled inside the tent. A flap swished open and a young boy stepped outside.

He wore a dark blue robe that brushed his knees, black trousers, and a blue skullcap. At seeing Wilson his eyes opened wide, but the boy quickly smiled. His white teeth contrasted sharply with his tanned face.

“Nan owa ga de-le?”

“I don’t understand,” said Wilson, as politely as possible.

The boy walked closer, still smiling, and repeated the phrase.

“Sorry, I don’t know your language. Do you speak Anglan?”

The boy sighed and shook his head like a mother at a stubborn child. He threw a rock at the ugly dog and shushed it, then waved Wilson into the open flap of the tent.

Wilson ducked his head and crouched inside. A leg of goat roasted over a fire and the air was full of flowery, heavy spices.

“Ik ming zi lo?”

The deep voice came from an old man half in the shadows. A faded red turban covered his head and he wore a gray robe lined in sheepskin.

Wilson shook his head. “Sorry. Do you speak Anglan? Kompren mia lingvo?”

“Ik ming zi lo?” said the man, louder this time. He leaned forward to the fire.

Wilson gasped. Even with the dark tan and strange clothing, he recognized the narrow, bearded face of Father Reed.

“Cat’s teeth! What happened to you, Father?”

The boy and Reed continued to ask him questions in the strange, mumbling language. They gave up eventually and instead used gestures to invite him to sit down. Wilson guessed they considered him either a mental defective or a lost foreigner.

The boy gave Wilson a bowl of thick white soup and a plastic spoon. Inside the bowl floated chunks of meat, red vegetables, and dark green leaves. It tasted bland but Wilson finished all of it.

“This is either a dream or a part of the program,” he said. “Why should I have to eat?”

Both Reed and the boy stared at Wilson, spoons halfway to their mouths. They glanced at each other then continued eating. Wilson decided to keep quiet.

As night fell the boy left momentarily––Wilson guessed to check on the sheep and goats. The strange version of Reed mumbled a few phrases at Wilson. He waved him over and motioned to a bedroll in a bright red and yellow pattern.

Wilson had been strangely tired all day and during the meal all the muscles in his body felt exhausted and sore. He unrolled the bedding and fell asleep, wondering if he would dream while inside a dream.

He woke with the sun in his face.

Immediately he thought the pair had abandoned him, then recognized the sandy trough from the day before.

“What? This is where I was yesterday.”

He climbed out of the ditch. The tan mountains and pale blue sky all looked the same. Across the narrow valley was the same dash dot dot of the abandoned caves.

“That’s a long way to carry me.”

He walked along the dusty valley in the cool sunshine. Instead of climbing to the caves he angled his path to the right. A narrow dirt trail wound up to the break in the mountains––the pass into the spreading grassland. Not far away stood the dusty black tent with its guy lines and poles with square yellow flags. The same herd of goats and sheep wandered nearby.

“Hello? Did I do something wrong?”

The ugly dog sprang from the same pile of rocks and barked. The tent flap whirled open and the boy walked out.

“Nan owa ga de-le?”

He spoke to Wilson with the same smile and curiosity as before and without a trace of recognition on his face. Inside, Reed wore the same strange outfit and asked the same questions in the unfamiliar language. The boy served the same mutton soup and Reed offered the same red and yellow bedroll.

Wilson fell asleep. After a minute or hours, he woke in the same ditch and under the same cold sunlight.

He closed his eyes and sighed. “Cat’s teeth.”

THE DAY REPEATED when he slept. He didn’t know how to escape.

A facet of the controller system had looped upon itself like a snake swallowing its own tail. Was it to protect Reed, the facility, or just his own stupid, bad luck?

Wilson had many opportunities to ponder these questions. He had an abundance of time and nothing else. Shepherd Reed and the boy owned few worldly goods and Wilson had found no other humans in his exploration of the mountains.

He had not been able to travel far. Any exercise brought piercing headaches, weakness, and pain over his entire body. Even with the help of the implant tricks, he always collapsed from fatigue before making it through the mountains or over the plains. Once his eyes closed from sleep or lack of consciousness, the day began again.

Each morning brought an identical struggle––the same exhaustion, the same mountains and valley, the same smile from the boy, the same odd language.

If someone back in the real world––back at his body in the cavern––would lift the circlet from his head, he could escape. As the days turned into months Wilson was shocked that it hadn’t happened, but he could have been wrong. Someone could have removed the silver band and caused the entire problem with the loop.

He gave up exploration and settled into the same routine. Each day he walked through the heat straight to the black tent and studied the strange language that Reed and the boy spoke. He learned the boy’s name was “Rogspo.” Reed went by “Shaba.”

The pair had no books or paper. Wilson couldn’t save anything from day to day, but he wanted something to write on just as a mental exercise. He experimented with different materials and finally used charcoal to mark words on the inside of his jacket or on rocks outside the tent. Everything disappeared overnight, of course.

Reed had little patience for his questions but the boy was eager to help. Wilson quickly learned words for everything inside and outside the tent. The problem lay with abstract concepts. Even with diagrams, explaining the right word became a struggle. He turned the problem on its head and began to teach the boy English.

Between language studies Wilson reviewed the implant tricks. When he used them, the boy would always stare at Wilson like he’d flown down from the Moon. Wilson taught him how to throw a knife and fight hand-to-hand, but it was more for Wilson’s practice than the boy’s. After all, the boy had to start from the beginning every day.

He thought about Badger and Station under attack, but mostly Badger. As his language skill increased he told the boy and shepherd Reed about her, and about his friends.

Before he slept he repeated the number of days over and over in his mind. When he woke it became his first thought.

On this night he spent a few hours watching the stars. He’d stopped mulling over questions such as where the fake pinpoints of light came from, and satisfied himself with learning the new language and controlling his daily exhaustion through meditation. Reed had explained to him weeks ago that it seemed like a disease called “altitude sickness” that happened only to outsiders.

As he lay flat and covered himself with a blanket, Wilson whispered the day’s number to himself and closed his eyes. He woke under the same uncaring sunlight.

“Four hundred,” he whispered.

Today would be different. He was determined to make that happen.

He could have walked through the valley to Reed’s tent blindfolded, guided by the same smells of lavender and dust, the same brown hawk that screamed over the pass, the same dreary yellow flowers.

The boy poked his head out of the tent. “What are you doing?”

Wilson shrugged. “I’m lost.”

“But you speak well. Are you an outsider?”

“I’m lost. I should be somewhere far, far away.”

The boy smiled. “Come in and rest.”

Wilson sat on the wool rug across from the old, bearded shepherd. He decided it was time to take a chance.

“Good day, stranger,” said shepherd Reed.

“Good afternoon, Shaba,” said Wilson.

The old man squinted over the fire. “The boy told you my name?”

“No, but I know everything about you.”

“What things?”

Wilson cleared his throat. “You’ve been here for two years, helping the boy with the herd.  You can’t remember anything before those two years. Somehow you and the boy can understand each other. Now you are dark and tanned, but when you came to the valley you were as pale as a cloud.”

Reed frowned. “Which side are you from? The government or the people?”

“You stay in this place,” continued Wilson, “Because you don’t want to leave. You do the same things day after day, even though you don’t know why you’re here. You’ve never told the boy this, but you’re waiting for something.”

Reed slowly took out a wooden pipe and small cloth bag. He packed the pipe bowl with tobacco from the bag and lit it with a burning ember from the fire. He puffed on the stem until the leaves began to smolder, then handed the pipe to Wilson.

“You know everything about me, but there’s something you don’t understand––yourself.”

“What are you talking about?”

Reed shook his head. “You are like a water-bug on the surface of what is real, always looking up, never searching for the meaning. Something is broken in your heart.”

“What is this crap? You’re stuck here just like me.”

“I don’t know this word ‘crap.’ I say those things because your body fades and flickers at times like a ghost.”

“The dream tiger,” said the young boy.

Wilson pulled a mouthful of fragrant smoke from the tobacco pipe and handed it back to Reed. He opened his mouth and blew a pair of rings in the air. “What’s a dream tiger?”

The boy slid closer to the glowing fire. “When the medicine does not work, when a mother has lost a child, when the young lovers cannot marry, they climb the mountain to fight the dream tiger. Sometimes they come back, but are ashamed to say what happened. The ones who stay on the mountain ... we find the bodies later.”

“Did they kill themselves?”

The boy shook his head. “The dream tiger. They did not understand how to meet her.”

“Well, it’s good for a laugh. If I fail I’ll just wake up again.”

The boy shook his head. “You will fail or succeed completely. There is nothing else.”

“Boy, how do you know so much?” asked shepherd Reed.

The boy tilted his head. “Stories from the old people.”

“I’ll leave right now,” said Wilson. “Show me where to start climbing.”

“What’s the hurry? Rest well tonight and leave tomorrow,” said Reed.

Both he and the boy stared as Wilson laughed too loudly.

“Sleep’s not an option,” he said.

REED USED A BLACK PAN to fry cakes filled with red chilies, mutton, and bitter, strong-tasting cheese. He wrapped them in a small cloth bag along with a water skin.

The boy Rogspo unwound an embroidered yellow belt from his waist and handed it to Wilson.