The Dreamfields Read online

  The Dreamfields

  Kevin Wayne Jeter

  What is Operation Dreamwatch? Why is a group of severely disturbed teenagers kept in a comatose state in a heavily guarded and isolated military base? The official explanation given to Ralph Metric and his fellow dream watchers is that these children are undergoing psychotherapy through the control and observation of their dreams. But Ralph begins to suspect a more sinister purpose. Gradually, he discovers the horrifying truth and understands the deadly purpose for his own nightly vigil in “The Dreamfields.”

  The Dreamfields

  by K.W. Jeter

  This was the dream of Arthur. He thought there was come into this land griffons and serpents, and he thought they burnt and slew all the people in the land, and then he thought he fought with them, and they did him passing great harm and wounded him full sore, but at the last he slew them. When the king awaked he was passing heavy of his dream.

  —Sir Thomas Malory, Morte d’Arthur

  PART ONE

  The Base

  Chapter 1

  Something had struck the earth and it wouldn’t stop ringing. Or so it seemed. Ralph Metric took another pull at the beer can sweating in his hand and watched the heat waves shimmer on the rocks and sand beyond the glass. Below the glaring window the air conditioner whined.

  “I just think it’s kind of strange,” came Stimmitz’s voice again. It cut through the aural haze produced by Bach cantatas dribbling into the room at low volume. “Don’t you? Strange, a little?”

  “Huh?” Ralph turned, from the window. A phantom desert in green and purple slowly ebbed from his vision, revealing Stimmitz sitting in the dark end of the room. On one of the bookshelves behind him the reels of his tape deck inexorably rotated.

  “Strange.” The too-angular legs shifted their positions, like some part of a mantis flexing. “Don’t you think it is?”

  Somehow I got lost here, thought Ralph. While I was looking out the window? I can’t even remember what we were talking about. “Strange?”

  The word itself had gotten a little fuzzy from repetition, and beer. Bach, too. He discovered he was running his thumb around the top of the beer can at the same speed the tape reels were going around. He switched the beer to his other hand and slid the first into his pocket. “What’s strange?” he said.

  “Oh. You know.” Stimmitz looked past Ralph towards the window.

  “Operation Dreamwatch, the whole thing. The uniforms and the pretend-military bit. I mean, if they really want discipline so tight, why’d they hire people . . . like Glogolt, for Pete’s sake. That jerk’s been here longer than any of us and he still hasn’t learned how to do the regulation knot in his tie.” Stimmitz’s eyes shifted a fraction of an inch and refocused on Ralph.

  “Glogolt’s got quite a stack, of deficiency notices.” Ralph interposed the beer can between Stimmitz’s eyes and his own and took another swallow.

  “Yeah, but they don’t get rid of him. So they must have some kind of use for him, right? But what good is somebody like Glogolt? Or any of the people here, for that matter.”

  Ralph laid the cool damp of the beer can against his cheek and said nothing. Stimmitz was poking at a group of thoughts that had been wadding up in Ralph’s gut for some time now. About the size of a basketball, thought Ralph glumly. That’s how they feel.

  “I mean, this is an expensive set-up,” Stimmitz’s mouth moved again beneath his hardening eyes. “This all costs money, a lot of it. How come there’s so much Muehlenfeldt money being dumped into this project while there’s a war going on?”

  “Muehlenfeldt money?” Through Ralph’s mind flashed a brief image of the distinguished Senator M. cranking a printing press in a dank basement.

  “Of course. This whole thing’s bankrolled through their Ultimate Foundation.”

  “So? Somebody’s got to pay for it.”

  “Yeah, but why?” A slight increase in the volume of Stimmitz’s voice eclipsed the murmuring Bach cantata. “What’s the whole project doing here? What’s it for?”

  “It’s for 125 dollars a week,” said Ralph with beer-laden profundity. “Plus room and board.”

  “Come on.”

  “Yeah, well, they told us what it’s for, didn’t they? Therapy, right? For all those messed-up little juvenile delinquents over there at the Thronsen Home.”

  Stimmitz was quiet for a moment, then spoke very softly. “Do you believe that?”

  A thin layer of Bach crept through the room for several seconds. “I guess so,” said Ralph finally. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “I went into Thronsen yesterday,” said Stimmitz. “Helga and I did. We cut a hole in the perimeter fence and went into the main building—”

  “Hey, you’re not supposed to do that.”

  Stimmitz looked annoyed, then shrugged. “Sometimes you have to do things you’re not supposed to.”

  “So what’d you find?” Ralph’s curiosity had started to unfold a little.

  From the tape came a soprano solo, then the chorus again, sounding as if from a great distance. “Maybe I’d better not tell you just now,” said Stimmitz. “Maybe later.”

  “I hate that,” said Ralph in disgust. “I hate it when people do that. Teasing you with some crummy little secret, and then they won’t tell you.”

  “You probably wouldn’t believe me, anyway. Not yet at least.” He seemed to be drawing away from the conversation. “You’re still operating out of a whole different universe.”

  The last sounded like something Stimmitz had always talked about before, but to which Ralph had never paid attention. “Don’t start that.” He leaned over to deposit the beer can on a low table already crowded with empties. The can slid from his grasp and dropped the last inch to the table top. A few drops of warm fluid splashed out of the little opening and flecked his hand. “All this talk about universes—” He paused to hold down a belch, “—is just a way of avoiding the real problem.” Which is? mocked a portion of him that the beer hadn’t reached. He ignored it and headed for the bathroom. A couple more empty cans fell over on the floor as his feet hit them.

  “Just remember,” said Stimmitz as Ralph crossed in front of him, “what went on today. While you were here.”

  “Sure.” Ralph pushed open the door. “Remember this conversation always. Changed my whole life.”

  “Seriously.” Stimmitz’s voice followed him into the smallest room of his apartment. “In case . . . uh, something happens. And I don’t get around to talking to you about this again.”

  Ralph nodded and closed the door without saying anything. What was that all about? he wondered.

  When he came out, the Bach cantatas tape had ended. The loose end of the tape fluttered as the take-up reel continued to spin. The chair in front of the bookshelves was empty.

  Ralph went to the tape deck and switched it off. Small lights died and went out. “Stimmitz?” he said, turning around.

  The room was silent except for the air conditioner. Outside the window the desert still vibrated with heat.

  “Hey. Where are you? Hey, Stimmitz, where’d you go?” He pivoted slowly in the center of the room.

  “What’s the matter?” Stimmitz came back into the room from the apartment’s miniscule balcony. He had been standing to one side where Ralph couldn’t see him. “What’s wrong?” he said, sliding the window shut behind himself.

  “Nothing.” Ralph kneaded his forehead with one hand. Something during the last few seconds had dissipated the gassy alcoholic haze produced by the beer. Maybe his universe is catching up on me? “Just don’t—go around disappearing like that, OK?” From the floor he picked up his uniform coat with the green and gold Opwatch patch on the sleeve.

  * * *

  As
he crossed the base, he was aware that to anybody watching from one of the apartment buildings, it would look as if he were now shimmering with heat waves, too.

  That’s all right, thought Ralph. As long as you’re in phase. He trudged on towards the base’s Rec hall.

  Through its door of dark glass he could see a few of the other watchers.

  The sweat on his forehead and along his arms chilled as he pushed open the door and stepped into another air-conditioned area.

  “What’s up, Ralph?” Slouched in one of the sagging, upholstered chairs, Kathy Foyle continued to gaze dispassionately at a section of newspaper. A bit of nail came loose from the rest and she took her forefinger away from her mouth. A lock of her dark hair straggled in front of one ear.

  “Nothing much. About the same.” The exchange had become a ritual with them, a section of meaningless time that had formed into a loop and kept splicing itself in. There were other loops as well, Ralph knew, which were capable of multiplying into whole days.

  The rest of the newspaper lay on the unused pool table in the middle of the room. The table’s felt had become gritty with the little bit of the Californian desert that came into the room every time the door was opened. Ralph’s fingertips left little marks as he picked up the L.A. Times’ front page.

  XIMENTO FRONT PENETRATED

  Hill B-12 Taken, Says Pentagon.

  Where was that? The name sounded Mexican to Ralph, though he hadn’t been aware that the fighting had spread that far north. Considering his only mild curiosity, the text below the headline looked too dense to penetrate. He laid down the paper, then headed along the hall’s main corridor to pick up his mail.

  He peered into the little box set into the wall with all the others. There was nothing except an offer to join some record club—he got a lot of those; he was on somebody’s list somewhere—and his weekly copy of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party Agitant. A mimeographed note was stapled to the low-grade paper. It stated that if he didn’t send a couple more dollars, they would regretfully have to let his one-month trial subscription come to an end. The same note had been stapled to every issue he had received for the past six months.

  He took a quick glance at the paper—SUPPORT SOCIALIST MARTYRS OF XIMENTO!—then dropped it and the record-club offer into a waste can and walked back to the main room.

  Kathy was gone but Fred Goodell was now sprawled in one of the chairs, gazing out the glass door and scratching between the creases of his sweat-stained Opwatch dress shirt. His bored-ferret face looked up at Ralph. “You on tonight?”

  “Yeah,” said Ralph. He lowered himself into one of the chairs. The tired upholstery sighed even under his thin frame. “This is my Monday.”

  Goodell nodded. “Two more nights for me.” The watchers’ shifts were staggered through the week. “Then I’ll be off.” The conversation dissolved into silence.

  I’d better go fix myself something to eat, thought Ralph vaguely. And then go to sleep for a while. Rest up for another eight hours on the dreamfield tonight. After half a year on this job, there were still times when spending the night wandering around in other people’s dreams seemed like an unnatural thing to do.

  Chapter 2

  “All right, men.” Operations Chief Blenek paced back and forth in front of them with his clipboard held behind his back. “Straight through, tonight. No heroics. Just do everything by the manual, the Opwatch way. All right?”

  “Oh, brother,” muttered Chuck Fletchum, and slouched lower in his folding metal chair next to Ralph. “They must be running those World War Two bomber squadron flicks on TV again.”

  Ralph said nothing. He could recall the week that one of the local stations had scheduled a batch of 1940s’ spy movies, and the pudgy functionary had actually shown up at the pre-shift briefings wearing a belted trenchcoat.

  Blenek had fallen silent and was now glaring at the two dozen men in front of him, his small eyes set to impale whomever he had heard talking; they fastened on Glogolt, who was a couple of chairs ahead of Ralph.

  “What was that smart remark, Mr. Glogolt?”

  “Didn’t say anything,” mumbled the accused. He shifted his sacklike bulk, a small mountain of flesh encased in a wrinkled jumpsuit.

  “Look at those shoes,” snarled Blenek, pressing his case. “When was the last time you took a rag to them? And pull up your zipper—you’re a mess.”

  Ralph leaned back and studied Glogolt—he was a mess. He always looked as if he were somehow disintegrating inside his clothes, as if the effort to retain human shape had become too much for him. It made one tired just to look at him. Stimmitz is right, thought Ralph. What good is there having somebody like that around!

  He looked over at Stimmitz sitting with his chair pushed against the wall of the briefing room. The eyes in the impassive face focused somewhere beyond the room. Ralph wondered what he was thinking. One of Stimmitz’s hands gripped the edge of his chair, his knuckles tensed white.

  The voice of one of the other watchers broke through Ralph’s attention.

  “Come on, Blenek, get on with it.”

  Blenek’s eyes swept over the group again, then narrowed. They became two thin gauges of the anger he obviously felt over the difference between Operation Dreamwatch as it was and his fantasies of it. Clashing universes, Ralph found himself thinking—a phrase picked up from Stimmitz.

  “This just came over from the Thronsen Home,” said Blenek sullenly. “They’ve started a new pattern some of you guys might observe tonight. In it, the kid is accused of shoplifting a candy bar, kid denies it, shopkeeper hits kid and searches him, in doing so tears the new jacket the kid’s mother gave him, shopkeeper turns into kid’s mother, and then it segues into one of the ‘angry parent’ cycles. Got it?” Blenek had worked himself back into his original gung-ho mood. “Let’s keep an eye out for it and get some reports in on it. Show the brass we’re not just sleeping around here.”

  He placed his clipboard under his arm and rocked back on his heels. His wide belly tautened his Opwatch uniform. “Okay, move out—time to get on the line.”

  As they crossed the short open space between the briefing room and the line shack—the grounds of the base were lit blue by moonlight and the desert’s numerous stars—Ralph glanced over at the group of female watchers sauntering out of their own briefing room. In a few moments they would be on the dreamfield of the girls in the Thronsen Home.

  At a distance of fifty meters or so, Ralph could just recognize Kathy.

  She waved briefly to him, holding a lit cigarette. It didn’t appear to him as if she had combed her hair since she had woken up last—one of her regular shortcomings, Ralph conceded. He looked, but didn’t see Helga Warner in the group.

  He turned away and followed the other men into the line shack. The building housing the PKD Laboratories’ Field Insertion Device wasn’t a shack at all, but the largest cubic pile of cinderblocks and concrete for miles around. “Shack,” Ralph had decided, was probably just more pseudo-military lingo.

  As he stepped into the building’s doorway, a pair of distant screams sounded from the sky. He looked back and up. Two pale luminous jet trails were vanishing into the south. Another midnight terror-bomb run, probably, down to the Brazilian front. Maybe Blenek should put in for a job over at the Air Force base, thought Ralph. He pulled the door shut behind himself.

  The towering banks of electronics were softly humming as he passed by them. The air inside the building was sharp with ozone. Blenek scowled at him and made a mark on his clipboard as Ralph stepped past him. The last vacant strap was at the end of the thick cable dangling from the lofty ceiling. He grabbed the leather loop and felt the cold metal contact point settle against his palm. The permeating electronic hum grew louder.

  Blenek paced slowly alongside the line of watchers, who were hanging onto the line’s straps like bored subway passengers. He glanced from them to his clipboard and back again, until he seemed satisfied that everyone was there. Pivoting on his
heel, he waved up at the control booth. “Okay, Benny, take ’em on out.”

  Nothing happened. The man in the little glass booth several meters above their heads remained absorbed in a half-eaten sandwich and a paperback book. He had his feet up on the controls that would activate the line and send the watchers out onto the dreamfield.

  “Hey, Benny, come on!” shouted Blenek. “What’re you doing up there?”

  “What does it look like?” said Goodell, who was standing closest to Blenek. He took Blenek’s pencil out of his hand and flung it up at the glass booth. It ticked against the glass and fell back to the floor. Benny lowered his feet and looked down at them.

  “Come on!” Blenek waved his clipboard, a stiff rectangular bat flapping around his reddened face. “Throw the switch, dummy!”

  Benny’s mouth moved, forming words they couldn’t hear, but his hands travelled across the control board anyway. The electronic hum whooped up in pitch and held its new note. The fluorescent lights suspended from the ceiling dimmed, reminding Ralph of the electrocution scenes from old prison movies, then the entire building, Blenek, and Benny up in the control booth, faded into grayness.

  The dreamfield faded in. The familiar sidewalks and storefronts of a semi-rural small town solidified around the watchers holding onto the line’s straps. From a blue sky the fields eternal midafternoon sun shone upon them, but they cast no shadows upon the street’s surface.

  The humming noise from the shack’s electronics back in the real world faded and then ceased entirely. One by one, the watchers let go of the leather straps. The line hung motionless for a moment, then snaked upwards, gathering speed until it vanished in the limitless sky above them.

  One of the watchers yawned and stretched his arms. “If I stand around here,” he announced, “I’ll cork off in about ten seconds. Let’s go.” He motioned to his observation partner, and the two of them slowly started away from the group.