Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (26 page)

David touched
his hand to the wall, and tried to imagine how West might have felt
the first time he heard the slumbering thoughts of Ahken. In the
yawning deeps of his mind, David was sure now that he could hear a
voice, rambling and disjointed, a deep-seated fear spreading
through him. He felt West’s hand on his, “It’s the building David,
everybody dreams. Don’t dip your fingers unless you’re ready to
fall in.”

Stanwick placed
the jar of pisco gently on the floor, and stepped up to the wall,
pressing her cheek against the cold surface, spreading her arms
wide and stroking the stars with the palms of her hands, “Don’t
listen to a word he says. Dive in if you dare.” She reached out and
grabbed Charlene’s wrist, pulling her enthusiastically, pressing
her palm to the glardium.

West knelt down
by the oak chest, opening two latches and lifting the lid. He
lifted two small bundles out of the chest and placed them on the
floor beside him, then he closed the lid of the chest and pushed it
back against the wall in the corner of the room.

“You’re going
to play through a recording of my experience of the battle for
Allim, the Leechborn Wars, and the Mythologue. Once you get the
hang of controlling the hopper, you’ll want to skip a lot, because
if you don’t, events will play out in real time, and the recording
covers a pretty vast expanse of time.”

Stanwick
stroked the back of Charlene’s hand with her fingertips, but she
spoke loud enough for David to hear her, “You’re going to
understand what the people around you are saying, because West
understood, but don’t waste your time talking to anyone in the
hopper. They’ll respond, but as soon as you go off script, your
brain will fill in the blanks with junk and assumptions, so you’ll
basically be talking to yourself.”

Charlene
nodded, “So it’s like a dream?”

Stanwick
smiled, “I’ve never had your dreams Charlene, but I doubt it.”

Loosening a
wide silk cord from one of the bundles, West spread what appeared
to be a black blanket on the floor. He stood up and stepped away
from the blanket, “It’s going to feel disorienting. The first time
on the hopper, it can take anything up to a couple of minutes for
your brain to register what’s happening, because the most recent
memory will create a sort of feedback loop. It will feel as if
nothing has happened, and your instinct will be to step away from
the wall. If you can, fight that instinct and rather imagine
yourself stepping away from the wall.”

Stanwick
whispered in Charlene’s ear, “Seriously, don’t listen to him.
Imagine yourself falling through the wall, being swallowed whole in
a tidal wave of glardium.”

Charlene was
already lost in the rills though, millions of connections forming
through the touch of her skin, Stanwick’s voice a distant beckoning
amongst a heady cosmos of dreams. When she spoke, she struggled
against the echo of her own voice, her speech slurring, “Would I
hear this without the leeches?”

She felt
Stanwick’s hand on her cheek, pressing her face into the cold
vacuum of empty space, “You would feel nothing without the leeches.
Time will come when you’ll wonder how you ever felt anything
without them.” Stanwick’s voice was inside her head though, not a
sound, but a rattling tin reverberation of a thought. She could
feel Stanwick’s hand on her back, fingertips stroking the curve of
her spine, “Without the tongues of Antrusca to give them voice,
their thoughts and dreams are poured forever into the abyss of
night.” Charlene opened her eyes, unnerved by Stanwick’s closeness,
but when she blinked, she realized now that Stanwick was nowhere
near her, rather she was leaning against the wall by David,
watching West unwrap a second blanket.

West clapped
his hands together, “Okay, you’re both going to need to bare your
skin to your shoulders.”

David threw up
his hands in protest, “What am I just going to rip the neck open on
my t-shirt?” He tugged the fabric about his throat, trying to
demonstrate that what West was suggesting was more or less
impossible.

Stanwick shook
her head, “You could just take it off, you know, like a normal
human person might.”

David flushed,
uncomfortable with the thought of two women seeing his slovenly
physique. He bunched up the material and ripped it with his teeth
and hands, pulling it into a ragged cape over his shoulders. He
glanced jealously at Charlene, whose outfit was much more
accommodating to the task.

West pulled
what looked like a chrome neck pillow out of the chest and placed
it on the floor. Charlene came over to where he knelt, “Is that
it?”

“This is one
part. This rests behind your neck, and the flat side attaches to
the wall.” He turned the metal to show Charlene the flat backside
of the device. “The glardium weave,” he pulled the corner of one of
the black cloths, “covers your face, and attaches to the wall. It’s
very lightweight, easy to breathe through.”

“I get pretty
claustrophobic.” David confessed.

Stanwick raised
her hand as if she were about to strike him, and David flinched
instinctively, throwing his elbow up in front of his face. Stanwick
grabbed his elbow with one hand, and slapped his face with the
other, “You aren’t that man now David.” She slapped him again,
“You’ve got to stop thinking like that pathetic sap you’ve been
your whole life. Just give it up okay? Let the little guys take
control of the mother ship.”

David clenched
his jaw, obviously, and impotently furious. He knew she was right
though. Stanwick hadn’t hurt him, he was just reacting
habitually.

Stanwick picked
up her jar of pisco and swigged again, “Now, before we begin,
Charlene I believe you wanted to know what happened to Ahken?”

“Yes.”

Stanwick licked
her lips, sipping again, “You may not recognize him in the hopper.
He has changed a great deal over the years, but he has stayed true
to his dreams. In march, Ahken Kith Tiarsis was gunned down, right
here in New York, by Dr. Julien Beach.”

Charlene positioned
the metal pillow behind her neck as she pressed her back to the
wall. She could see David out of the corner of her eye, struggling
to find a comfortable position for his device, and she felt sure
for a moment that Stanwick was about to slap him again. Without
warning, West threw one of the blankets at David’s face, and he
became completely still and silent, like a bird plunged into
immediate night with a towel around its cage.

Charlene rested
her head back, feeling the cool of the metal against the bare skin
of her shoulders and the crook of her neck. West stood in front of
her now, holding the blanket in front of him. He reached forward,
and Charlene could see that the material was quite translucent. He
flicked his wrists, opening his fingers, and Charlene felt the
silky fabric wrapping about her face.

“How do I start
it?” She could see both Stanwick and West through the fabric,
surprisingly clearly, “What am I supposed to do? How do I make it
work?”

West sat down
on the floor, crossing his legs and leaning his weight back on his
arms, “It’s going to feel disorienting. The first time on the
hopper, it can take anything up to a couple of minutes for your
brain to register what’s happening, because the most recent memory
will create a sort of feedback loop. It will feel as if nothing has
happened, and your instinct will be to step away from the wall. If
you can, fight that instinct and rather imagine yourself stepping
away from the wall.”

It occurred to
Charlene that she’d heard West say this only minutes ago, and
thinking about those words, she started to wonder about what she
was experiencing. She imagined stepping away from the wall, and she
felt the room move about her, even though she was aware of the
weight of her body still pressed against the wall. She could hear
West’s voice now, although as she looked at him, she could see that
his lips weren’t moving.

“The first
thing you’ll see is the room you are in right now, with us standing
watching you. It’s going to feel like nothing is happening. You’ll
probably be able to hear me talking to you at first, although that
will depend on how relaxed you are; if you’re feeling comfortable
about the experience, your brain might block out auditory input
immediately …”

West stopped
talking, and Charlene started to laugh, amused by how easy the
experience was to control once the floodgates of comprehension had
burst. She stepped forwards, and it felt as if she was leaving her
body behind her. She turned to look, and sure enough, there she
was, face covered in a blanket of stars. She turned to face West
and Stanwick, and they both sat motionless, waiting for her to
command them, or rather … She bent down close to West, touched his
face, apprehensively at first, then once she was confident that he
wasn’t about to move, she stroked his cheek and leaned in close
enough to see every pore of his skin. It wasn’t like a dream but
neither was it like reality; her eyes didn’t lose focus as she
moved closer, she could see every detail of West’s skin with
absolute clarity, even when she brought her face to within a
centimeter of his.

She looked at
Stanwick, her still body, motionless eyes, frozen, beautiful. She
didn’t dare step closer. She thought about the wall which she was
actually stood against, the rills, the leeches, the many ways in
which her mind was now opened to the other people in the room with
her. Surely, if Stanwick was touching the wall right now, she would
know exactly how closely she was being examined by Charlene. No
matter, Charlene wasn’t going to test those waters. Instead, she
thought about the gunshot, and the bullet tearing into the flesh of
David’s leg, and instantly, the room about her transformed, and she
found herself standing between Stanwick and David. The music
pounding was too much, she thought, and was about to raise her
hands to cover her ears when the music was suddenly silenced. She
heard the click, and the thunder of the gunshot filling the room.
This wasn’t what she had wanted.

The scene
reset, gun raised, finger pulling slowly, Charlene leaned close and
watched the tendons of Stanwick’s hand flex as the trigger clicked.
There was a burst of flame as the bullet left the gun, an almost
perfect ring of fire left in the wake. She thought of the Johnny
Cash song, and she stepped forward, leaning her face into the
glowing halo, waving her hand through the bullet.

Before the
bullet moved any further, the floor of the room started to fill up
with bodies, blood stained, beaten or worse, dismembered. The
fireball faded, pierced by shafts of bright daylight which burst
into the room from all sides. She could see the walls of the
apartment splitting at their seams, cracking with searing white
waves before she became completely overwhelmed and was forced to
cover her eyes. When she lowered her arm and peered about her, she
found herself standing in a vast courtyard, open to the sky, the
distant walls of a building curving about a scene of bloodshed and
war on either side of her.

She looked down
into a devastated face by her feet, bloodshot eyes staring skyward,
gaping mouth bearing bloodied gums and cracked teeth. She wanted to
scream, because the whole expanse of the courtyard was filled with
such ruination and slaughter. Stanwick was right; this was unlike
any dream Charlene had experienced. More stupefying in its
gratuitous detail, more hideous in its wanton savagery; the scene
around her was so far beyond Charlene’s worst imaginings. And where
were the perpetrators? Where were the vile instruments of such
annihilation?

Her field of
view moved unbidden, and she saw her legs pick themselves up,
stepping over a mound of bodies. West’s legs, she checked herself;
West’s body moving, West’s eyes seeing. She wondered that it might
be easier to stomach if she wasn’t seeing this from West’s
perspective, and as the thought occurred to her, West stepped out
in front of her and she was freed of that constraint. She watched
as West joined a huddle of five other people, three men, and two
women. The scene froze as Charlene stopped to try and get a handle
on what she was seeing. She experimented a little, directing her
mind’s eye, pulling the field of view up as far as it would go and
she found that anything beyond West’s line of sight left dark gaps
in her vision. She could turn the scene around, and see the
landscape behind him, but in the distance, there was inky
blackness.

She swooped
back down to ground level, and examined the faces of the other
members of the group. There was perhaps consternation, or
determination, but no signs of guilt there. No hand wringing
self-accusation. West looked much the same as he had done in the
living room of his apartment a few minutes ago, and Charlene
wondered if that was because of her own experience of West, or
because he had always looked that way. The other three men had a
strange familiarity about their faces, but she wasn’t quite able to
put her finger on why that was. She looked at the women now, moving
closer to them. Although she appeared to be a good deal younger
here, Stanwick’s eyes gave her away, that same piercing turquoise,
the almond curve of her eyelids. Her hair was lighter, and she
seemed shorter, less muscular, but it was still definitely Stanwick
Thrass. The other woman was also strangely familiar, strong
features, tall, blond hair tied off in a ponytail, Charlene knew
her face, but again, she couldn’t quite place her.

Allowing the
scene to recommence Charlene watched as Stanwick stepped towards
one of the men, throwing an arm over his shoulder for support as
she rolled her ankle, wincing in pain. West spoke, his eyes fixed
on Stanwick and the man … no, now that Charlene looked at him, she
could see that he was no more than a boy, “Ahken, there’s no more,
not out here at least. They’re waiting for us to take the fight to
them now. Look!” West pointed to the distant entrance to the
courtyard, where Charlene could see that thousands of civilian
fighters were pouring in behind them, “This is your army now. If
they dwell too long on this scene, they will every one of them lose
heart. You need to lead them. They’re here because of you.”