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Chapter 28

The drum roll heralded the warm voice of the announcer over the dining room.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sure you've been waiting impatiently for these last few awards. For the award for Best Performance by a Female Dinner Guest, the winner is . . ." Chuck heard the sound of an envelope being torn open. "Princess Leonora!"

The assembled guests, all in tuxedos and evening dresses, cheered wildly. The princess, who had finished her dinner, was helped out of her chair to accept the gold statuette of a stylized man holding a fork. Smiling and waving, she exited the room. An unseen orchestra played her out. The drum roll resumed.

"And now, for Best Performance by a Male Dinner Guest, the award goes to . . . Chuck Meadows!"

"Huh?" Chuck said, caught off guard. A bevy of smiling waiters and waitresses descended on him, pulled him to his feet, shaking his hand. He clutched the statue, beaming at the crowd. He'd never won anything before. "Uh, thanks! Thanks so much!"

"Stay where you are, Master Chuck," the announcer said, "because the final award of the evening, the one you've all been waiting for, the award for Best Table is . . . the Keir Party! Let's all give them a big hand!"

The audience went wild. Best Guest statuettes were presented to each of the diners. Chuck, holding his two awards and waving to the crowd, let the ladies precede him out the doorway. Pipistrella sauntered out, throwing kisses to everyone. They shrieked out her name and threw flowers at her feet. Persemid followed a few steps behind, nodding and smiling shyly. They walked out of the restaurant doorway into a balmy evening in a hail of flashbulbs that left their eyes dazzled.

"Oh, look!" Pip exclaimed, walking toward the open door of a long, black car. "They've brought us a limousine!" She floated across to it and was handed inside by a large man in a black uniform. Chuck and Persemid were just behind her.

"That's really nice of them," Chuck said, gesturing to Persemid to precede him.

"Wait!" cried Sean. "There's no floor!"

For the one split second before he started falling, Chuck thought, I believed in that floor until he said that.

His stomach rose up against his windpipe in a sickening lurch as his feet dropped out from under him. Chuck flailed his arms around, trying to grab onto anything. With a hoarse cry, he started turning head over heels. His heart pounded like a drum. He was falling slowly into a bottomless pit, just as he'd always had in his most terrifying dreams. He had never stayed asleep long enough to find out what happened when he hit bottom. He'd always awakened gasping. But this was real. He was really here. He could die.

Persemid was screaming as she fell past him. Without thinking, Chuck threw out an arm to catch her. It stretched out like a chunk of rubber under her weight, but she slowed, then sprang upward into his arms. Their Best Guest statuettes tumbled down into the darkness. Loud danger music started to play, filling the air around them with tension.

"I probably wouldn't like you very much in the Waking World," Persemid said, clinging to him, "but I'm glad you're here now." Her nervousness created a solid steel shield between them. The cold on his belly made him flinch back, almost dropping her.

"Don't do that!" he said. Searchlights raked them with white light, making his head spin.

"I really don't want to sound paranoid," Persemid said, her voice rising with hysteria, "but I think someone is trying to kill us."

They were falling so slowly Chuck hoped they might survive hitting the ground, but how far below them was it? He couldn't see anything, and the white lights disoriented him. The danger music, heavy on the horns, started to get on his already shredded nerves. Chuck couldn't think.

"Shut up!" he yelled wildly. The music only grew louder.

"Stop it," Persemid snapped. "It's going to get worse while we're tense. Try and calm down."

"Calm down? I can't calm down. We're falling to our deaths!" he shouted over the music. "This is a dream state. Can't we transform into birds or something, and fly up?"

"Can you concentrate on birds right now?" she demanded. Chuck looked around him. Now they were falling feetfirst, their hair whistling upward from the force of the wind. The tossing beam illuminated jagged rocks. His throat tightened with fear.

"No, I can't."

"Well, I can't either! So forget about it!"

"I thought you learned stuff like this when you came here!" Chuck yelled. "You keep saying that I shouldn't know this or that because this is my first time here."

"Did you come here to learn how to think in a life-or-death crisis?" Persemid asked.

"No! I came here to learn about myself!"

"Well, so did I!" Persemid said, her eyes wild with fear. "And one of the things I haven't learned yet is how to deal with being in a crisis! That much I know. I'm secure in that knowledge!"

Chuck's racing brain flashed through all the statistics he knew about death by falls from high places. Suddenly, he felt that they were slowing. They halted in midair. Chuck breathed a few times, to convince himself he really wasn't falling any longer. Persemid shifted. Her grip tightened, almost throttling him.

"You're strangling me," Chuck said, pulling aside his shirt. "Loop your arm through there. It'll give you a better grip, and I'll be able to move my head."

Persemid gave him a strange look, but she put her hand through the hole in his chest and wiggled her fingers. "This is creepy," she said, putting her meaty arm all the way through and locking her arms around him. "It really doesn't hurt you?"

"Well, it does," Chuck admitted, "but not from having you hang on it. I'm just all achy inside. My problem."

Persemid sounded soft and sympathetic for the first time in their acquaintance. "It'll get better," she said.

"Has it for you?" he asked. A passing searchlight lit up her face. He knew she was starting to say "None of your business," but stopped herself.

"A little. This trip has been good for me. I really resented like mad having more of you with me. I had hoped to have Keir to myself, too."

They laughed. Chuck felt the hole in his chest starting to close up just a little.

"Stop that," Persemid ordered. "I don't want to be stuck to you forever. Now how do we get out of here?"

"If we can't do it ourselves, wait for someone to help us," Chuck said, amazed by how reasonable he sounded. He felt around him, hoping there was a hand- or foothold within reach. He tried not to believe it was impossible that he was suspended in midair. He didn't want whatever was holding him to give way again.

"This isn't the first time something like this has happened," Persemid said, in a low voice like a whimper. "Don't think I'm crazy."

"I don't," Chuck said. "I've been thinking along the same lines for a while, what with things falling on us, the train nearly crashing . . . What does Keir tell you?"

"The wolf?" Persemid said, fondly. "He shows me pictures in my head. He never shows me danger or death. Just peace and the resolution of my problems." Her voice hardened. "Not that it's any of your business."

"Keir never tells me about trouble, either," Chuck said. "He just lets me fall into it. Like this. 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."

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