There's hope. We haven't crashed yet."

Something slapped him smartly on the cheek. Chuck flinched, then put out a hand to feel. It was a rope! He grabbed for it and held on with both hands. Persemid clasped her arm through him tighter.

Chuck looked up and tugged on the rope. Its end stretched upward into the darkness.

"Climb up!" cried Hiramus's voice.

"I haven't scaled a rope since high school gym class," Persemid growled below him.

"I have," Chuck said, gritting his teeth. "I went on these-ugh!-wilderness encounter sessions with my eldest son." He threw one arm up over another, letting his body and Persemid's swing like a pendulum to give him momentum. It was an effort. He tried to convince himself that the two of them weighed no more than a feather, but his arms weren't convinced. Upward they inched, until Chuck's questing hand found nothing to grab onto.

"There isn't enough rope to get us back up there."

"Pull it up behind you and throw it up here!" shouted Keir.

"That's impossible," Persemid said.

"Don't say it," Chuck said hastily, afraid they'd start falling again. "Don't believe it. Believe it'll catch something. I'll get us up there." With her clinging through his chest, he held onto the end of the rope with his knees, coiled up the rest of the length onto his shoulder with one hand, and flung it upward. It caught on something. He hoped the people at the top would hang on tight.

When he shinnied up, he found it hadn't gone all the way to the top yet. Doggedly, he gathered the loops again and kept going. The group shouted encouragement. Their voices were growing nearer with every upward pull. When Chuck was almost in sight of the others, Persemid extracted her arm from his chest.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Keeping your secret," she told him impatiently, wrapping an arm around his neck as she tugged his shirt into place.

"Thanks," he said, surprised by her thoughtfulness.

"Just don't drop us," she said, huge-eyed in the shadow from the spotlights. "That's all I ask."

Within a couple of yards, they saw faces just above them. Strong arms reached down to haul them up onto the intact section of sidewalk.

"Whew!" Keir said, dusting Chuck off. "I thought we'd lost you." He became a wolf and leaned affectionately against Persemid's legs. She knelt to put her arms around him and hugged tightly.

"Where did that rope come from?" Chuck asked. Sean pointed at Hiramus.

"He had it. It came out of his wee bag."

Hiramus looked modest. "It is always better to be prepared."

"You saved our lives," Chuck said, grabbing his hand. The older man withdrew from Chuck's vigorous handshake as though pulling his hand out of a bucket of fish entrails.

"It's nothing," Hiramus said, coldly.

"It's impossible," Morit said.

"Why should it be impossible?" Persemid asked. "This plane is full of nightmares as well as dreams. Why can't there be something out there that means to kill us?"

Morit scowled, refusing to meet her eyes. He hadn't been talking to her. The words had slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them when the Visitor walked in. Again.

Morit and his henchmen used all their influence to create a bottomless pit outside the exit, working one by one until they were all exhausted. It was the best trap possible. It was foolproof! How could it not have been deep or dangerous enough? But only two of the Visitors had fallen into it, and they'd come out, with no ill effects except for arousing the woman's ongoing bad temper. He was going to have to start all over again.

Blanda had been upset with him ever since they'd returned to the train. Morit couldn't understand why. Wasn't he trying to set them all free? Scare off Visitors forever, and they'd be able to live happily ever after in a world only manipulated from the outside, where they'd have the freedom to obey or disobey Sleepers' dictums as they chose. Attacking Visitors wasn't the perfect means of sending a message, but he had so few avenues to the Waking World. How he hated having it rubbed in his face that he did not direct his own destiny. But he'd put a scare into these Visitors, small comfort that it was.

"I think we should sit down and have a meeting, all us Visitors and our friends," Persemid insisted, going on as though Morit was paying attention.

Keir-the-wolf nudged at her legs until he had steered her away from the others. He looked up deeply into her eyes.

"Don't try to tell me that there's nothing to be worried about," Persemid said, responding to the silent appeal. "Look, this isn't the first time something has happened. Yes, I do think I'm in danger.

Aagh!" She threw up her hands, circling around the wolf to return to the group. "What about those people who attacked Chuck in Yore? Or who kicked Sean on the Rock of Ages?"

"Yes," Hiramus said, worry turning the corners of his mouth down like those of his mustache. "We have to be careful."

"Oh, but people get belligerent in pubs all over the world," Sean argued. "And as for the kick, well, I might have been imagining that." He seemed reluctant to believe in a malign force.

"Someone might be out to get us," Persemid insisted.

"Or it could all be at random," Chuck said. "I was warned the astral plane was not to be taken lightly."

"Oh, I don't think anyone means us harm," Pipistrella said, with an air that suggested she was above such considerations.

"Yeah, but you're clueless," Persemid snapped at her.

"But who could want to kill us?" Pip asked, reasonably. "The Dreamland was created to help us, not hurt us. Isn't that right?" She appealed to Bergold.

"That's true," the Historian said. "I'm sure you ran into nightmares, not malicious intent, Mistress Persemid. The archives show over nine thousand species of detrimental dreams.""If it was accidental, how come it keeps happening?" she asked. Chuck found it hard to disagree with her. And there was the shadow that dogged him. He glanced at Hiramus. He wanted to talk with Persemid in private. He had a theory about the sinister, bearded man which he didn't want to air in public. "This is going nowhere. Chuck and I will have to be the vigilant ones, since none of you will take it seriously."

"We have only a short time remaining here to figure it out," Chuck pointed out, wanting to bring this uncomfortable meeting to an end as swiftly as possible. "I have until the moon reaches the horizon." He was no closer to Enlightenment, his body was falling apart by inches, and now he had to worry if someone was seriously trying to kill him.

"It's a puzzle," said Bergold. "Perhaps you have about you something that attracts misfortune, like a trouble magnet, for example. You should search your bags."

While they were going through their luggage, the engineer came through the train car handing out mimeographed sheets of paper and yellow pencils with pink erasers at the top.

"Here are problems you have to solve," he said. Chuck read the first line. "If Engineer A leaves Rem at twelve noon going sixty miles per hour, and Engineer B leaves Reverie going forty miles per hour, when will they meet?" He made a face.

"Word problems! I hate word problems," Persemid protested.

"And you have only a short time to figure it out," the engineer said, urgently. "We need to know!

Hurry! Please!"

Chuck studied the piece of paper. At one time he'd been good at these. He could figure out the pieces of the equation from the question just by looking. This was different. The train schedule was in the form of a crossword puzzle. He had to solve that before he could put the answers into the first question. He bent over his test. His scribbled calculations looked like gibberish. He couldn't even understand what he was writing while he was writing it!

The conundrum left Chuck feeling as though he was even farther from Enlightenment than before.

"This is no more than a Math Anxiety Dream," Bergold said, trying to calm them. "It's probably quite simple. Now think, everyone."

"That's right," Sean said. "He didn't say we couldn't share the answers."

That cheered up the group. They bent over their papers, pencils in hand.

Simple, eh? Chuck thought, lifting his head to stare out the window. The train, rounding a sharp bend in the moonlight, looked like it belonged in a preschool. It consisted of brightly painted, blocky wooden cars, held together with shiny rivets. There was even a wooden smokestack on the engine. It looked comforting, enabling him to relax enough to think. Wistfully, Chuck wished for the simplicity of his youth, where no one was trying to hurt him. Then he thought of how he had come to shed the regret-filled steamer trunk in the Meditation Gardens. I don't want that back, he thought, belligerently.

I will figure things out for myself!

With firm intentions, he whizzed through the first problem. It was, as Bergold had suggested, easy.

They all compared answers. To the party's relief, they all came out with approximately the same answer. He finished the second one. Chuck read the third one aloud.

"If five nightmares chase five Visitors across five provinces, how many will each Visitor have to deal with?" Chuck stopped. He didn't like the sound of that. The others had fallen silent, too. Persemid was concentrating, biting her pencil with worry.

"One," Pipistrella said, unexpectedly. "Isn't that the purpose of our trip? One each?"

Sean laughed long and hard with relief. "Leave it to a direct thinker to know the answer." He tossed his paper onto the table. "I've had enough of tests and trials for one day."

Chuck was all too glad to follow suit. "I'm with you, brother. We're alive now, and that's all that counts."

Chapter 29

Chuck woke to a glorious scene outside his cabin window. High mountains swept up to blue heavens, the color that could break one's heart with its beauty. A broad, deep river ran alongside the track. Bald eagles flew over its surface, picking bright silver fish from just below the surface. Deep green forests bordered the stream. It was so nice and refreshingly real after the phony buildings of Ephemer.

Suddenly, the scenery halted. There was nothing beyond the forests but blank whiteness. Men and women in smocks and berets stood stubbornly not far from the tracks with their arms folded tightly against their chests. The train screeched to a halt. Chuck went to see what was going on.

"It's an artists' strike," the conductor said. "They are holding a work stoppage because the resort keeper hasn't paid them. They've painted over the tracks. Wiped them clean out of existence. We're halting here until the dispute can be resolved." Chuck could tell it hurt the conductor to have to alter his precious schedule. He pulled down the window in between the cars and leaned out to listen to the argument taking place.

"Oh, come on!" a solidly built man in a green boiled-wool suit was pleading. "You must finish this mountain."

"No," said the key artist, a slender man with a wisp of beard and beautiful, long hands, which he held out against the innkeeper's protests. "Not until our needs are met."

"But there are climbers trapped up there! They can't come down until you paint in the other slope, with the piste you promised me. And look," the burly man said, noticing Chuck and other passengers hanging out the windows of the train, "you are holding up the railroads."

"Look, we have our expenses, too," the lead artist said. "Do you think scenery paint is cheap? Espe- cially since you want it three-dimensional. With atmosphere?" He made a dramatic, mocking gesture.

"They can stay up there until Changeover, for all we care. If they've got influence of their own, they may not want to come down to your awful little establishment."

"We know which of your amenities are illusory, and which aren't," one of the female artists pointed out. "Pay up!"

"Oh, all right," the innkeeper said, resentfully. He reached into his jerkin pocket and came up with a large round bag tied at the top. The coins inside jingled as the man reluctantly handed it over.

The lead artist accepted it from him. In his hands the bag became heavier and longer, and the outlines of the objects within it changed from round and flat to long and thin. He opened the bag and started handing out tubes of color to his crew. The lead artist squeezed a huge dollop of blue onto his palette. Taking his brush, he sketched five or six quick lines in the air that spread out like watercolors on wet paper. In the distance, the tiny figures on the top of the peak started moving quickly towards the stripes of paint. Chuck watched, agog, as they began to ski down the lines.

"Good morning!" Keir said, appearing at his side. The only concession in dress he made to the chilly air was a scarf around his neck.

"How can they do that?" Chuck asked. "Those mountains are far away, but he just drew in the right slope, and it connects! Isn't the scenery real?"

"Certainly it is," Keir said. "It's all done with forced perspective."

"It's not a backdrop?"

"Oh, no. It's real landscape. Three-dimensional. Look out there." Chuck followed Keir's pointing finger, and squinted. On the new mountainside, fresh out of the artists' brushes, he saw small chalets with smoke rising from their chimneys, colorful sleighs drawn by waist-high reindeer, and dozens of people skiing. He spotted three men in lederhosen lean over to blow on alpenhorns, sending their melancholy mooing out over the valley.

"Incredible," Chuck said.

"Artists are a common feature of the comprehensive tour. After all, isn't the tradition to go from place to place admiring fine works of art? These are landscape painters. You have a rare opportunity to see them in action."

The train's whistle blew a sharp blast.

"They've painted the track in again," Keir said. "We can proceed now."

With his new perspective in mind, Chuck enjoyed watching the scenery as it appeared stroke by stroke on the whiteness beside the train. He waved to the artists if they looked up. Some of them waved back. Others, conscious of their dignity, or just too busy, nodded and kept working. To judge by the expanse of nothing running alongside the train, they had a lot to get done.

He went to look out the other side. There, the great massif of the Mystery Mountains was, as always, very much in evidence. That seemed to change little, if at all, as though it was the frame for the constantly shifting work of art within it that was the Dreamland.

Chuck's musings cut off suddenly as the train zipped into a tunnel. The steam whistle keened a lonely note that turned into a frightened howl in the newly confined space. Spooky voices emitted a sinister laugh into his left ear.

"Mwah ha ha hah!" Chuck jumped and yanked up the window. Desperate for the safety of daylight he couldn't wait for them to emerge on the other side. The vibration in the tunnel echoed in his chest.

He thought he heard clockwork noises coming from inside his own body. His hands flew up, seeking the source of the tick-tock-tick-tock. Maybe that was the reason why he felt so unhappy and out of place in his own life. He was a robot! All of these dreams had been induced to make him think he was real, just to see what he would do and how he would react. That's why he was flawed. His mainspring was running down.

Daylight blinded Chuck momentarily as the train emerged from the tunnel. The tick-tick-tick sounds continued, louder than before. Chuck thought he glimpsed the hint of circuitry in the hollows between trees and under the surface of rivers. The mountains were nothing but huge constructs! If he was a robot, he should rebel against his makers, end his travels now and go back.

But the sound shifted gradually into the comforting clickety-tat of the train on the rails, easing Chuck's fears. The mechanical pulse no longer resonated inside him. He was only human, and grateful to be so. He could even see himself silhouetted on the bank they were passing. Due to a trick of the light, he was casting a double shadow. Chuck grinned. One of him had wavy hair, the other smooth.

Then he realized the absurdity of the notion. A double shadow? Someone must be behind him!

Startled, he glanced around, looking for the other figure. There was no one there. Suddenly, Chuck didn't want to be alone. He made for the sitting-room car.

"There, do you see?" Bergold was saying as Chuck came into the carriage. The little Historian was pointing out of the window. The train was going over a stream, giving them a good view upriver.

Dozens of bridges spanned the water. Some were only a couple of ropes spread with planks. Others were wrought-iron footbridges, stone humpbacked spans, and complicated suspension bridges. The modern bridge closest to the train was clogged with a variety of vehicles from haywains to Ferraris, all heading into the west. Underneath one end, Chuck could see a green-skinned troll talking with three bearded and horned goats.

"Bridges arise in the Dreamland as a matter of course," the Historian continued. "Then, we build more. Every new connection helps us perform our function more efficiently. Bridges also give us confidence. Sleepers know we feel better if we have a way to retreat from a situation. You will see that especially in areas like this, where two provinces meet."

They traveled through an area busier than they had seen before. Spans and arches crossed over the railroad tracks, carrying still more traffic. A small brass sign on the side of the railway cut read oneiros-somnus. The sound of the train changed slightly as it rolled onto a different kind of bridge than any of the others before it. Its solidity reminded Chuck of the ones around the Rock of Ages.

It needed to be that hardy. When Chuck looked down into the crevasse over which they were passing, his heart sprang into his throat. The one the train had almost fallen into on his first day was a dimple in the landscape compared with this one. He swore he could see two levels of cloud before he spotted the shining silver river far below. He swallowed hard and clutched at the seat frame. But this bridge felt as secure as a mother's lap. His anxiety was all in his own head.

He did notice what Bergold had once told him, that most of the population centers were close to the borders. Atop the headlands, tall steeples and skyscrapers pointed toward the sky. Nearer by was a cluster of small storybook-quaint villages. Beside the large one over which they were passing, thousands of bridges crossed the gap. They looked as thin as strands of spider web. The minute figures of people walked back and forth on them between the two provinces, maybe just to prove to themselves that they could.

Not too far over the border, the train sped up, racing through, past the towns and into the flat green countryside beyond. Idly, Chuck glanced out of the window at the way ahead and clutched his seat arms.

"We're going straight into the water!" he shouted. There were no tracks going across the broad body of water. The weight of the train would drag them down to the bottom. There was no time to jump. They would all drown. What was the engineer thinking?