Father Roy sat down at the kitchen table and spoke in a very gentle voice to Chorley, Tziga, and Rose. "Come on, we're all going for a ride."

"If I'm going out, I should get dressed," Chorley said.

"Naturally. Let's see how quick you can be," Father Roy said.

"Race you!" shouted Rose to her father. They jumped up, jostled each other into the hall, and thumped up the stairs.

"I'm an invalid," Laura's father said, and drew his robe protectively around himself. "I'm excused from making efforts."

Laura closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

Father Roy summoned his escort, unlocked Chorley's darkroom, and manhandled Plasir and the one limp and one groggy official to the cars outside. He then went back to the darkroom and gathered up an armload of film canisters, including the one the Body officials had located. "I'm taking all these in case we need decoys at some stage," Father Roy said.

Laura was alarmed. "Didn't the Commission reconvene today? Isn't this almost over?" Her throat began to hurt. She was going to cry again.

"No. That's why we missed you when you came to find us. His Eminence and I were cooling our heels at the Palace of Justice. When your uncle and father didn't turn up with you, we simply imagined you'd gotten word."

"Word of what?"

"Word that the meeting was postponed because the convening judge, Seresin, was 'unavailable.'"

"No," said Laura. "No. This can't go on. Someone has to put a stop to it."

Chorley and Rose came downstairs. He looked very spruce, as usual, but reeked of cologne. Laura could see that his jacket was dewed with it. Rose had her shirt b.u.t.toned up wrong and was wearing all her favorite necklaces-amber, coral, carved ivory, crystals, jet, pearls-together. She said, "I ate so much I had to be sick." She spoke in a loud whisper, perhaps meaning to speak only to Laura.

Chorley looked at the stack of films in Father Roy's arms. "Are we having a screening?"

Laura went to get her father, and while she was in the kitchen she poked her head around the back door and told Nown to follow her. "There are steps down to the river around three sides of the Temple. You'll be able to find a place to hide. My task now is to sleep and take care of Da and Uncle Chorley and Rose." She spoke to the s.p.a.ce between his hat and the top fold of his scarf. His gla.s.sy surface was in shadow, and, without reflected light, the visible segment of his head was just an absence, something watery rather than airy on which the hat seemed to float.

"There were weapons," Nown said. "When there are weapons, I should stay at your side."

"I don't feel safe without you, true. But I think I am safe at the Grand Patriarch's Palace. And his people need my protection."

"Yes," said Nown.

Behind Laura, Father Roy said, "Miss Hame, we should go."

Laura gave Nown a beseeching look, then pushed the door shut.

She helped Father Roy get her father up. Tziga walked, slow and shaky, leaning on both of them. As they went along, he said to Laura, "The thing about this dream, darling, is that even though the man is blissfully pleased with himself, it's the wasps eating the apricots that are most present. Those wet sh.e.l.ls of fruit still hanging on the branches. It's as though the dream uses the man's eyes like a camera to show us something more real than the story he's telling himself about what a fine person he is."

"Da!" Laura was floored by surprise and admiration. "You're yourself."

"Not really. But I am a dreamhunter."

Laura kissed her father's hand.

"Also-when Rose and I were bouncing the eggs, I had a seizure. Didn't she tell you?"

"She didn't."

"She and Chorley must have carried me up to bed. The fit seemed to shake the dream loose a little."

Father Roy helped Tziga into his car. Laura climbed in beside her father and cuddled up to him. She whispered, "The dreams are memories, Da, like Uncle Chorley always thought. Human memories from a time in the future. But the Place itself uses them to try to talk. It shows us what it finds meaningful."

Laura's father peered at her, puzzled.

"The Place is a Nown, Da."

Tziga opened his mouth but didn't say anything for a long moment. Finally he said, "Whose?"

"I don't know."

6.

N TUESDAY MORNING LAURA WOKE FROM A LONG, REPEATED CYCLE OF THE GATE. SHE OPENED HER EYES. SHE FELT her whole body breathe in and exhale the dream's radiance. Then the person beside her in bed said, "Am I where I think I am?"

Laura sat up and studied Rose. Her cousin looked affronted. She lifted the covers and said, "You let me get into bed wearing shoes."

"Sorry," said Laura. "It was an emergency. You were an emergency."

"I certainly was," Rose said, with feeling. Then, "Who can I sue? Who can I kill? Show me my enemies and I will burn them to the ground!" She propelled herself out of bed, then had to throw the blankets over her head and burrow in the covers for a shoe.

Someone knocked on the tall double doors of the gloomy bedchamber. A nun put her head around the door and said if they would wash and dress she would see them in to breakfast.

Rose began to straighten herself out. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair. She rubbed her mouth, which was still crusted with food. She found a mirror and inspected the crocodile skin on her neck, the indentations of all the beads she was wearing. Then she stood stock-still. "You pointed a gun at Maze Plasir!" she said. And then, in an elated squawk, "You have your monster back! He was dressed like a cabbie on a cold night. He scragged Plasir!" She laughed.

"Come on," Laura said. "I want to hear what the adults are planning. Dear G.o.d-let them have a plan."

The adults looked grim. But they were all there-everyone Laura could have hoped to see. Her father, in pajamas and a knitted gray shawl. Uncle Chorley, his jaw set and nostrils white. Grace, who looked frightened.

Laura's aunt Marta was there, and her Mrs. Bridges was taking plates from servants at the door and carrying them to the table.

George Mason was there too. The car sent to meet Grace at the Doorhandle border had pa.s.sed him in the village. He had been on his way to Mrs. Lilley's for Sandy's trunk. Grace had persuaded him to come along with her. He was sitting beside Laura, and, as he pa.s.sed her a plate of m.u.f.fins, he said, "The Regulatory Body stalked Sandy-I know it. I don't care what it takes; I'll see Doran pay."

The rest of a crowded table was taken up by Erasmus Tiebold, Father Roy, and a half dozen other priests.

Maze Plasir was at the breakfast too, though Chorley had pointedly removed his b.u.t.ter knife from beside his plate.

Plasir wasn't eating.

Erasmus Tiebold was asking Plasir questions. "I imagine Doran has himself, his allies, and the Founderston Barracks at least out of the range of this dream, or covered by other dreams. But how long does he mean to keep it up? My cousin Chorley's household had it very strongly-were they targeted? Or are all Founderston's citizens lying around gathering moss and gorging themselves?"

Plasir leaned back in his chair and looked at his hands. He said, "You can't win."

"If the whole city is in the same shambles that my cousin's house was, then I can't see what Doran hopes to gain, or how he hopes to get away with it."

"Can't you? For a start, the film and the girl can be kept from the Commission. You might still have the evidence in your possession, but who will be interested in it?"

Father Roy had a lightweight edition of the Founderston Herald open before him. He also had yesterday's papers from Westport and Canning and other smaller towns in the south. He said, "It is reported here that Congress voted to abolish the two-term limit on the presidency."

"And then there's that." Plasir gloated. "You're in the Temple, and the dreams you need to catch to keep people safe are in the Place-two localities far apart. You have only four dream-hunters in this room, and one of them is an epileptic."

Rose put down the m.u.f.fin she was picking at and pushed aside her teacup too.

Plasir looked around the table, his eyes glittering. He said to Erasmus Tiebold, "And, unless I'm mistaken, Your Eminence, you have been chewing Wakeful. Why? Are you so reluctant to share any dream that you're drugging yourself to save yourself from Miss Hame's charming specialty?"

Laura gazed at Plasir with amazement. He could make anything sound corrupt. The Gate was her "charming specialty."

"Please remove him," Chorley said.

The Grand Patriarch nodded to one of the priests, who called on some of the Temple guards. Plasir got up and gave them a nasty smile. He said, "Face it-you're finished." He was led out.

When the door had closed, Grace said, "He's right about some things. All they have to do is get us-me, George, Laura. Then we're finished. You can't go on chewing Wakeful forever."

"I thought that Wakeful could give me eighty sleepless hours," Erasmus Tiebold said.

"Not safely," said Tziga. "With a dream inside you it can. Without a dream you'll become gloomy, angry, and possibly dangerous within sixty hours."

"Then you'll develop an irregular heartbeat," Chorley said. "It's hearts that need sleep."

The Grand Patriarch looked disturbed. It was his first sign of worry.

"Drought's End is useless," Grace said. "I have to catch a master dream. Laura's The Gate will be good for another four days, possibly more. I have to catch something to spell her, and buy us some more time."

"My penumbra won't go anywhere near protecting the whole palace," George Mason said. His face creased with unhappiness.

Chorley said, "We have to focus on the film."

"The Commission is-out of commission!" Grace shouted. "What good is your b.l.o.o.d.y film?"

The Grand Patriarch winced. "Please, Mrs. Tiebold." There was something about his expression that made Laura think he was scolding her aunt for a lack of refinement.

Laura put her hands over her ears. She sat for a moment and listened to her blood roar. She concentrated on not being sick. All the food on the table smelled awful, the eggs sulfurous, the m.u.f.fins soapy with baking powder, the milk fatty. Food had been tasting funny to her for days, but now it was as if it were poisonous.

"Hey!" said Rose suddenly, very loud, and interrupting everyone. She leapt up and put her fists on the table, leaned across it and over the newspaper Father Roy was reading. She grabbed the paper and turned it-she had been reading it upside down. "Listen," she said, and read out a death notice. "Seresin, Kathryn (nee Kralls). March 14, 1907, at the age of fifty-five, after a short illness. Beloved wife of Judge Mitch.e.l.l Seresin." Rose looked around the table. "The Commission didn't reconvene because its head wasn't in town. He would have been at his wife's deathbed. And he'll be at her funeral, in Castlereagh, this coming Friday. We can take the film to him!"

There was a short, electrified pause. Then everyone started talking.

7.

O ONE WHO SAW THE LARGE PARTY THAT ARRIVED AT FOUNDERSTON CENTRAL STATION THE FOLLOWING DAY would have thought that they were engaged in a desperate plan. The group stood under the great clock suspended from the cavernous ceiling of the main concourse. They were well-dressed and well-equipped, with bags and picnic baskets and travel rugs. Among them they had a number of large film canisters, fastened in buckled carrying straps.

As they waited, they were met by men who, it seemed, had been sent ahead to buy train tickets. The men approached the group, tickets were produced, words exchanged-but no money, no tips. The party stood watching the clock; then they moved as one out onto the platform and, after a quick round of farewells, dispersed to different trains.

George Mason wasn't with them. He had left in the early hours by car. He was to travel by the back roads of Wry Valley to the border west of Doorhandle, where he planned to go In and catch Plasir's specialty dream, Secret Room-a master dream.

Marta and Tziga got on a train going south. Their tickets would take them to the spa in Spring Valley, where invalids often went to bathe and drink from the mineral springs. With the Hames were a priest, one of the Grand Patriarch's most trusted men, and a stolid Temple guard. Marta carried a copy of the film, the long strip of nitrate removed from its reel and wound in a figure eight into the false bottom of her narrow valise-a bag of a shape that no one would suppose could store a reel of film. Marta and Tziga intended to check into the spa, where Tziga-another decoy-would stay. Marta would take a boat-supposedly for a day trip across the lake-escorted only by the Temple guard. On the opposite side of the lake was a small but picturesque mountain village, from which a road wound down fifty-five rough miles to the far side of the mountains that divided Southland. A weekly coach service ran on that road, delivering mail and other goods to farms and settlements along the way. Marta and the Temple guard would catch that coach, then the train again from a small station south of The Corridor. The train would get them to Castlereagh by Friday evening.

Two priests carrying a reel each boarded the express to Westport. Both reels were unexposed film-decoys.

Chorley and Grace got on the Westport local. They too carried films. One was of the sand-sculpting compet.i.tion, the other of a pod of blackfish stranded on So Long Spit. The couple would leave the train at the small stop near Marta Hame's house, where they would be met by Marta's Mr. Bridges, with a car. They would take the car, skirt the capital on country roads, and meet the border to the Place just east of Doorhandle. Grace would go In and try to catch The Gate. Chorley meant to drive on through the Rifleman Pa.s.s to Sisters Beach, where he would stay with his daughter and wait for news.

Rose represented the group's backup plan. She left the concourse of Founderston Central Station and boarded a local for Sisters Beach-alone. She carried an overnight bag and a hatbox containing a wide-brimmed, flower-trimmed hat.She was in first cla.s.s, as usual, and as soon as she got on the train she locked the door of her compartment.

Laura was to stay in Founderston, at the Temple, to dream The Gate and hold the fort till Grace-or George Mason if Grace was unable to make it back in time-relieved her.

That was the plan.

Laura was allowed to accompany the others to the station to see them off. When they got to the divider between platforms 5 and 6, she hurriedly kissed her cousin, then turned to plead with Father Roy. "Could I please, please, see my father onto the train and settled in?"

"Very well," said the priest. "But be quick."

Laura unfolded a travel rug and tucked it around her father's knees. She gave her aunt Marta some hasty instructions on how to mix elder-flower cordial to his taste.

"Yes, yes, child," Marta said. She gestured at the priests waiting for Laura on the platform. "You should go. You must understand that, if this were a game of chess, you would be the king."

"I don't play chess."

"Don't draw it out," her father warned. "It only makes saying goodbye more difficult." He caught her eye. She was still fussing around him, rearranging his pillows. Their heads were together. He said, "What's on your mind, Laura?"

Marta said, musing, "Founderston must be full of dreamhunters wondering why business is falling off. If Erasmus could only gain their confidence ..."

"Contentment will have erased any dream that isn't its near equal," Tziga said to his sister. Then, to his daughter, "What is it, love?"

She kissed his cheek. "I should go." She kissed her aunt too and wished them both good luck. Then she said again, to her father, "I must go."

Laura left the compartment and turned away from the door she'd come in by. She hurried up the train, into the second-cla.s.s compartments, which were full. She went along, peering into the compartments and through their windows, which looked out onto the train on the track beside theirs-the Sisters Beach local. Finally Laura saw what she was looking for, her cousin, a solitary figure clutching a candy-striped hatbox. Laura pushed into a compartment. She said, "Excuse me," to its occupants, then stretched over them to haul down the window. She leaned out and waved.

Rose got up and opened her window.

The people behind Laura were protesting and pulling at her clothes.

"Wider," Laura said to Rose.

Rose leaned her weight on the window and forced it open. Laura gripped the luggage rack above her, stepped onto the windowsill, and climbed out the window of the train she was on. She straddled the gap. Rose leaned out and helped her through. They tumbled together into Rose's compartment. The hatbox fell off the seat, lost its lid, hat, loose satin lining, and reel of film. Rose got up and slammed the window shut to cut off the sounds of indignation: "Well I never!" and "Of all the nerve!"