The Dreamfields

Chapter 6

It felt good to be back in L.A. The farther away from the base the Greyhound had travelled, the better Ralph had begun to feel. He knew that whoever was behind Operation Dreamwatch—Stimmitz’s remarks about the mysterious Senator Muehlenteldt echoed in his head—was certainly powerful enough to get at him just as easily as in the desert. But there was still the sensation, the release of a knotted gut, of having somehow escaped a trap. At least L.A. was something of a home base, familiar ground that didn’t tremble in the heat, but lay comfortably swaddled in its gray air.

He walked out of the bus terminal and headed for the row of taxis at the curb. Tucking his canvas bag under his arm. he opened the first one’s door and slid into the front seat beside the driver. “That all you got?” said the driver, glancing at the bag.

“Yeah, I’ll hold it.” Through the canvas Ralph could feel the stiff manila folders he had stolen from the Thronsen Home. He gave the driver his parents’ address, and they pulled out into the downtown traffic.

“What happened there?” asked Ralph. One of the towering office buildings had what looked to be a giant hole chewed out of one corner, with warped girders protruding into the air. He twisted around to stare at it as they went past. Trucks and bulldozers were clearing away a small mountain of rubble that blocked one of the streets at the foot of the building.

“One of those damn Ximento crazies,” said the driver, scowling. “Wired himself up like a bomb and set himself off in the men’s room on the thirtieth floor.”

“Really?” Ralph felt a familiar unease at not knowing what everyone else seemed to know. He’d once considered subscribing to Time. “What for?”

“Who knows? Maybe the guy had something against pay toilets. Hah.”

The uncomfortable feeling went away as it always did when he realized nobody else seemed to know anything either. Anyway, he thought, I know more than they do. Just enough to be scared.

Several minutes later, he was standing on the sidewalk in front of his parents’ house. The taxi’s engine faded away, the noise swallowed by the residential street’s relative peace. The neighborhood had deteriorated a little since he was a kid—a couple of the houses were abandoned, with broken windows and spray-painted graffiti—but, in general, had resisted the complete decay that radiated from other parts of the city. He lifted his canvas bag and headed up the little path that bisected the front lawn.

The front door was unlocked. Ralph stuck his head into the house and listened for a moment. He could detect the faint, barely audible hum of a television set in one of the rooms. Closing the door softly behind himself, he peeked in the living room—empty, except for furniture—then went down the hallway and looked in the den. His parents were there, both silently watching the television. “Hello,” called Ralph from the doorway of the room.

Mrs. Metric turned her head toward him. The garish colors from the pre-embargo Japanese portable glinted from the oval lenses of her glasses.

“Ralph,” she said, showing no surprise or any other emotion. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m on vacation.” He crossed in front of them and sat down in an armchair at right angles to both them and the television.

“That’s nice.” She and Ralph’s father continued to watch the screen.

Some type of game show was on.

“Yeah.” Ralph shifted in the overstuffed chair, feeling somehow uncomfortable. “I just thought I’d spend some time looking up some people.”

“Oh?” She didn’t look at him. “Who?”

“Uh, just people I . . . used to know.”

Several seconds passed, filled with the faint hysterical squealings from some woman on the television.

“Would it be all right,” said Ralph, “if I borrowed one of the cars? The Ford?”

“Oh, sure.” His mother waved vaguely at the doorway. “The keys are hanging on the bulletin board in the kitchen.”

“Thanks.”

“There’s still some of your clothes in your old room.” She seemed to be talking to the television. “Doesn’t look like you brought very much with you.” Somehow she had noticed his small canvas bag.

“Okay.” The sound from the television grew even shriller. Ralph pushed against the arms of the chair, feeling the uneasiness growing in his limbs.

“Uh, anything new?” he said, almost desperately. “Hear from Linda recently?” That was his sister.

“She’s fine. George got stationed at El Toro, so he sees her and the baby every weekend. He’s radio-controlling a Soldier Joe right now.”

“That’s the big three-ton model,” said Ralph’s father. His voice rumbled up from some depth in his chest. “With the plasma howitzer.”

“He says he’s seen quite a lot of Brazil on his view screen.” Mrs. Metric nodded for emphasis. “Even piranha fish in the Amazon River.”

“How about that.” Ralph stood up. “Well, I’m going to be on my way. Maybe I’ll stop back by tonight.”

“That’s fine. We’ll be right here. We’re not going to go anywhere.”

He crossed the room, picked up his bag from where he had left it in the doorway, then looked back at his parents. The source of the uneasiness he felt became apparent to him. The expression on their faces as they sat absorbed in the television—absence of expression, really, on the border of the inanimate—was the same as he had always seen on the watchers back at the base. And sometimes in his own mirror. A shudder moved across his shoulders and arms. He turned away and headed down the hallway.

In his old bedroom he found a fresh shirt hanging in the closet and, tucked away on a shelf, a shallow rectangular box he had forgotten all about. He knelt beside the open closet and lifted the cardboard lid, revealing a sheaf of paper. On the topmost sheet was his own name, neatly typed beneath the manuscript’s title. He lifted out the thin bundle and flicked through the pages of crisp black typing and the slightly blurred carbon copies.

It was supposed to have been a science fiction novel. He had already started on it and was about a quarter of the way through when he had taken the night job at the Juvenile Hall south of L.A. Then his life had bogged down and he had wound up with Operation Dreamwatch out in the desert.

He put the lid back on the box. Science fiction, he thought, shaking his head. What’s the point of writing it when you find yourself living it? He stood up, laid the carton back on the shelf in the closet, and stripped off his shirt.

When he had finished buttoning the fresh shirt, he picked up the canvas bag and laid it on the bed. He zipped it open and took out the two battered manila folders. The booking slips, made whenever the kids had been arrested, had the addresses of their parents on them. He located the most recent slip in each folder and jotted down the addresses on a piece of scrap paper. Folded into a square, the paper lay in his shirt pocket against his heart as he left the room.

His parents were watching the same game show, or maybe a different one, as he stepped into the kitchen and took the ring of keys from the board next to the bright yellow wall telephone. He pulled the front door shut behind himself without them hearing.

With a hamburger in one hand and vanilla milkshake balanced precariously on the seat next to him, Ralph maneuvered the Ford through the Harbor Freeway traffic. There was a certain elemental pleasure to the car’s motion in and out of the lanes—what he supposed he would feel if he had ever learned to dance. He braked for a bus wheezing through its gears ahead of him, whipped the Ford into a small gap in the next lane, cleared the corner of the bus by inches and caught his milkshake as it started to fall over. Pleased with himself, he pulled on the plastic straw, drowning the last of the hamburger’s dry gray meat.

The sight of L.A.’s harsh sun on the bending vistas of asphalt and concrete was so familiar and comfortable that it compressed and decreased his fear. A smooth-edged ball in his gut, the fear was now heavy, but at least bearable for the time being.

The last of the milkshake gurgled up the straw and he tossed the empty container on the car’s floor. Pulling the scrap of paper from his shirt pocket, he studied the first address, then glanced up and saw the sign for the exit he wanted. He cut across two lanes and barely made it into the mouth of the exit.

The offramp was a long curving descent into another, darker world. The freeway had been coated with the sun’s glare. Below it, the light was shut out by the massive cubes of the Nueva Esperanza Housing Project, like the walls of some smoothly machined canyon. The Ford cruised slowly down the project’s main avenue with its dividers of yellow grass and stunted palm trees, as Ralph searched the high windowless walls for the right building number.

He strained to make out the stencilled numbers, buried under layer upon layer of slogans and names in the fluorescent spray paints with their oddly kinked style of lettering. Ghetto baroque, thought Ralph. Some of the words were meters high and would have required some kind of primitive mountain-climbing skills to accomplish. He envisioned the wiry Nueva teenagers rappelling down the faces of the buildings, propelling themselves from side to side with squirts of paint like gravityless space explorers in old ’50s science fiction flicks. He shook his head to get rid of the image and saw the number of the building for which he was looking.

The Ford managed to squeeze into an open space at the curb between two rusted, immobile hulks. A covey of dirty-faced children peered at him through the smashed windshield of one of the old cars as he got out of the Ford, locked it, and crossed the sidewalk to the building’s entrance.

His foot didn’t quite clear the top of a mound of trash lying in the doorway. The mound shifted and grumbled, opening one blood-rimmed eye for a moment. Ralph walked faster into the dark lobby.

Inside, he studied the list of names and apartment numbers posted between the two elevators, each bearing an Out Of Order sign. For a few uneasy seconds, the poorly-lit space brought back the memory of the inside of the Thronsen Home. But the air here was sour-smelling with the cramped miasma of old people’s diseases and the dry odor of envelopes and checks for too little money from the government offices downtown. A squat woman wearing sneakers and a thin shawl scuttled away from the mailboxes, glancing nervously at Ralph before she disappeared into a stairwell. As he reached into his shirt pocket and took out the scrap of paper, he turned back to the list.

That must be the one, he decided, comparing the name on the paper with one in the middle of the list. He re-pocketed the paper and headed for the stairwell. A short man with some kind of a sheaf of newspaper in his hand was talking to a hard-faced teenager slouched against the wall.

His legs were starting to ache by the time he reached the fifth floor. The building’s stale odor was even worse in the upper hallway. He walked slowly, scanning the doors. He heard one open after he passed by, then quickly close again.

One of the metal numbers, a five, dangled head downwards on the door at the end of the hall. After a moment’s hesitation he brought his hand up and knocked.

Muted footsteps came from inside the apartment, then the door, spanned by a chain, opened a few inches. A woman’s suspicious face peered out at him.

“Mrs. Alvarez?” Ralph had already planned what he would do. He reached into his pants pocket, brought out his wallet and flipped it open to his Opwatch ID card—the way cops in the movies did. “I’m from the, uh, California State Correctional Research Commission. Like to talk to you about your boy, Ruben.” That had been the name on one of the folders.

The woman’s eyes flicked from the open wallet to his face. Her expression didn’t change.

“You are Mrs. Alvarez, aren’t you?” He returned his wallet to his pants.

She nodded. “What’s Ruben done now?” Her voice was sullen and resentful.

“Nothing. I just want to ask—”

“You can’t do nothing ’til I talk to Mr. Hahey at the Legal Clinic.” Her chin lifted and her eyes narrowed.

“Ruben’s not in any more trouble, Mrs. Alv—”

“It’s his probation officer,” she interrupted angrily. “He causes all the trouble. Why can’t he let Ruben alone?”

“I just want to ask you some questions—”

“Sending him from this place to this place to this place. When’s he coming home?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Alvarez. I just—”

“What kinda questions?”

Ralph took a deep breath. “When was the last time you heard from Ruben?”

A shrug. “He writes every week or so.”

He had expected that. “What does he say in his letters?”

“Not so much. He don’t write so good.”

“Does he say anything about the Thronsen Home? Anything about the treatment program he’s in?”

“He says he’s lonely out there in the desert. And he misses Angela—that’s his girlfriend. Por vida, he says.”

“Anything else?”

“I think he said in his last letter he won the ping-pong tournament. They gave him a coke for a prize.” She tilted her head and inspected him harder. “Hey, what’re you asking these questions for?”

Ralph swallowed and tried to smile. “We’re attempting to find out what the parents of the children in the Operation Dreamwatch program think of it. Sometimes the parents get feedback from the kids that the people who run the program aren’t aware of.”

“Yeah, a mother always knows.”

He nodded. “What do you think of the program he’s been sent to? This Dreamwatch thing?”

She looked suddenly tired, as if the mask had faded for a moment to reveal the fatigue beneath the skin. “I don’t know.” She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “I don’t know anything about it. I guess it’s okay. Ruben’s gotta be someplace, I know. He’s kind of a wild kid. He gave me a black eye once, and broke his sister’s arm. That was the last time he was home.” She sighed. “Maybe if his father hadn’t left when he was a baby . . .”

“But you feel the project’s all right? There’s nothing wrong with it?”

Another shrug. “I didn’t understand when Ruben’s P.O. told me about it. Something about dreams—I don’t know. But if it changes Ruben just a little bit, that’d be nice. Just so he didn’t blow up all the time. Then he’d be a good boy.”

“But you’re sure he’s okay?” persisted Ralph. “Nothing’s happened to him?”

“Naw, he’s okay. Hey, look.” She went away from the door, then returned with an object she handed to Ralph across the chain. “He sent me that last week. He made it in woodshop.” She smiled proudly.

It was a short piece of pine board, varnished so inexpertly that little half-beads of clear yellow had formed around the bottom edge. The words TO MY LOVING MOM had been crudely incised into the wood. It looked just like all the shop projects he had seen in the Juvenile Hall where he had once worked. He started to hand it back through the door’s narrow opening but Mrs. Alvarez waved it away.

“You keep it,” she said. “Then you can tell them at the Juvenile Court that Ruben’s not a bad boy. And you can show them that.” A kind of childlike hopefulness had filtered into her voice.

He hesitated, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell them.” She’s probably been disappointed so many times, he thought. A couple more lies won’t hurt.

As he headed down the stairwell, Ralph passed the man with the bundle of newspapers he had seen in the building’s lobby. Their eyes met for a moment, then the short man continued trudging upstairs. Ralph noticed that the papers under the man’s arm were copies of the Revolutionary Worker’s Party Agitant. He hurried down the dark steps before the man could come after him and ask him to subscribe.

Chapter 7

The other address was in an expensive suburb north of the city. Ralph left the Ford at the curb with the neatly stencilled house number on it and walked up the little stone path winding across the trimmed lawn.

The house itself looked like a Spanish mission that had melted in the sun and spread out over the landscape. He pressed the doorbell, heard the muffled chiming on the other side of the high wooden door, and waited.

After a minute he rang again, but still no one came.

He turned to walk back to the Ford but a faint sound of splashing water stopped him. His feet sinking in the lush grass, he circled the house and came to a small wooden gate in the cinder block fence that extended behind the house. Stretching on his toes, he peered over the gate and saw a large, irregular swimming pool, like a blue gem cut in two, set in the landscaped yard. A woman’s head moved surrounded by ripples through the water, her brown hair trailing. “Mrs. Teele?” called Ralph.

The woman glanced up, saw him, then turned over on her back and swam slowly towards the other end of the pool. “Just leave it at the front door,” she shouted over the splashing of her arms and legs.

“I’m not delivering anything, Mrs. Teele.” Ralph held his open wallet above his head. “I’m from the California State Juvenile Treatment Department. I’d like to talk to you about your son, Thomas.”

“Thomas?” she floated to the edge of the pool and hoisted herself halfway out of the water. “Oh, you mean T.J.,” she said, her face losing its puzzlement. “How’s he doing?” With a splash she was out of the pool and reaching for a towel draped over an aluminum and plastic garden chair.

Her tan was so dark that she seemed to be some species of seal with legs.

“That’s what I want to talk to you about.” He put his wallet away.

Mrs. Teele walked towards the gate, the towel draped over her shoulders. “Why ask me? You’ve got him. Isn’t he still out there in the desert someplace?”

“That’s right,” said Ralph. “He’s still committed to the Operation Dreamwatch program. We’d like to know if there’s been any communication between you and your son—anything Thomas might not have wanted to tell the staff at the Thronsen Home. Does he write to you?”

She wiped a damp tendril of hair away from her brow. “I think he writes every week or so. I’m not sure. Haven’t really felt like opening my mail for the last couple weeks.”

“Well . . . when you do read his letters, do you ever sense anything wrong? Anything that just seems funny about them?”

“Wrong?” She laughed. “Listen, I don’t know what they’re doing to my kid out there, but anything’s better for T.J. than letting him back out on the street. It took thirty-eight stitches to put his head back together after that last stunt of his. The car was totalled, of course, but we had insurance on it, at least.” Her voice had changed by the last words, making them harsh and steely.

He had to look hard before he could see the faint tracery of lines around her eyes and mouth. They betrayed her real age and the tension beneath the skin. “So you think he’s okay, then?”

“Sure.” A quick nod of the head. “Look, you got any more questions? I usually take a nap, or go shopping, or something, in the afternoon.” She pressed the fingertips of one hand against her brow.

“No,” said Ralph. “Wait a second. Has Thomas sent you a package or anything recently?”

“Let me go see.” She walked to the house, slid open a glass door, and stepped inside. In a few moments she returned with a narrow, flat parcel, still wrapped with brown paper and twine. She tore it open to reveal a varnished pine board.

“Isn’t that sweet?” she said, the same hard tone cutting under her words. “ ‘To my loving mom.’ ” She handed the board over the gate to Ralph.

He glanced at it, then back at her. “Can I keep this? It might, uh, help us with our study.”

“Go ahead. What do I want with a piece of junk like that?”

“That’s true. Well, thanks for your cooperation.” He started to turn away from the gate.

“Hey. Wait.” She smiled at him. “How come everybody’s asking about my kid today?” Her voice was relaxed again, the harshness pressed back inside of herself.

Ralph stiffened with her words. “Who else was asking about him?”

“I know there isn’t any connection, of course. Just a funny coincidence, is all. You right now, and then that other guy this morning—or was it yesterday morning? I’m not sure.”

“What other guy?”

She blinked, surprised at his sudden intensity. “A little short guy. Real dwarfy. He was selling subscriptions to some weird newspaper. Hold on, I’ll get you the sample copy he left.” With an apprehensive glance over her shoulder at him, she ran into the house and returned with the folded newspaper.

He reached over the gate and took it out of her hands. It was the latest issue of the Agitant. A brief image shot behind his eyes, of a bundle of the same issue clasped under the arms of a short man in Mrs. Alvarez’s building. Ralph gripped the paper together with the pine board in his hands. “What did he ask you about your son?”

“Oh. Gee—I don’t remember. Just the same kind of thing you asked, I think. He said he was doing a paper for some college class he was in.” She slowly backed a few steps away from the gate.

Hold on, he told himself. Don’t let her think anything’s wrong. He swallowed, then forced a smile.. “That is . . . kind of a funny coincidence, all right.” He nodded and started away. “Thanks for your help, Mrs. Teele.”

“Sure,” she said. “Watch out for the bougainvillea behind you.”

He threw the board and the paper beside him on the seat of the Ford and drove for several blocks. When Mrs. Teele’s house was out of sight, he pulled over to the curb and killed the engine.

As he had suspected, had known in fact, the two varnished pine boards were identical. Right down to the wood grain, he thought, turning each over in his hands. Even the blobs of varnish at the bottom were the same.

They must have some kind of factory that stamps them out.

The boards clattered as he tossed them onto the floor of the car. He picked up the paper and unfolded it. After a few minutes of examining the rough-edged newsprint, he threw it on top of the boards. It was just like any other issue of the Agitant he had ever seen—the same as the ones that came every two weeks to his mailbox at the base. He started up the car and headed for the freeway back into the city.

A little while later, he parked the Ford in a hamburger stand’s parking lot and watched the five p.m. rush hour traffic creep along a nearby section of freeway. Meditatively, he sipped at a milkshake.

Now what? he thought. There was something wrong about Operation Dreamwatch—something big enough for someone to murder in order to hide it—but he was going to have a hard time proving it to anyone else. He couldn’t just march into the L.A. office of the FBI, toss the two identical boards on the counter, and expect much of a reaction. Probably put me down as just another crank, he thought. Must get dozens every day.

He looked up through the windshield and watched two plasma jet trails trace through the late afternoon light. A sudden urge rose in him, an urge to just get on the freeway and head north. The traffic would thin in a little while, and then he’d be able to make pretty good time. Oregon or Washington, he thought. Maybe even Canada. The desire to get away, to forget everything about Operation Dreamwatch . . .

But they’d find me. He squeezed the greasy hamburger wrapping into a ball in his fist. They’d figure I’d found out something when I didn’t come back to the base, and they’d find me somehow. No matter where I hid. And then they’d kill me. Just like Stimmitz and Helga.

He knew there wasn’t any choice now. He either found some kind of proof about Operation Dreamwatch, something solid enough to get the proper authorities into it, or else he didn’t—and could start waiting for his own death. They’ll find me out sooner or later, he grimly told himself.

He picked up the copy of the Agitant again and studied it. Tracking down the parents of the two kids whose folders he had taken hadn’t revealed anything new to him, beyond the continuous forgery of letters to allay any suspicion by the parents. The newspaper was now the only thread he had left to follow.

Somebody, he thought, is poking into the same things I am. But the Revolutionary Workers Party? I don’t get it. Why would they be interested?

Two possibilities came into his mind. The little group of radicals was also aware of something being wrong with Operation Dreamwatch. Or they were a front for whoever was behind the Opwatch project.

Ralph considered the last. Yeah, that makes sense, he decided. They could have been talking to the parents of the kids in the Thronsen Home just to see how well their cover-up is working.

But either way, the RWP was the only point in the foglike mystery he could move towards. He opened the Agitant and located a column headed “Activist Calendar.” There was to be a public forum tonight at the RWP headquarters in L.A., with somebody named Peter Vallejo talking on “Ximento—The Facts Behind the Myth.” Ralph memorized the headquarter’s address and closed the paper.

That’ll have to do for a start, he thought. He rolled down the Ford’s window and stuffed the trash from his meal into the mouth of a container shaped like a malevolently grinning clown.

Chapter 8

The front yards of the little frame houses were choked with weeds. Most of the windows were broken, showing like transparent teeth beneath the rough boards that had been sloppily nailed over them. As Ralph parked the Ford at the side of the narrow street, the old street lights came on, spreading weak yellow splotches in the twilight.

He got out, locked the Ford, and headed back along the cracked sidewalk to the busier street he had turned off. The small vacant houses remained silent, as though they were the discarded husks of their former occupants. Where did they all go? thought Ralph as he walked past.

Probably all been squeezed into one of the Nueva buildings.

At the corner of the block stood a large sign depicting the planned extension of the Muehlenfeldt Center that would soon take the place of the little houses. In an already vacant lot up the street, Ralph had seen some of the bulldozers and cranes waiting behind a chain-link fence. The buildings in the picture on the sign looked like quartz crystals or something—great slabs of concrete and glass rearing into a sky bluer than any ever seen in L.A. Nice stuff for Martians, maybe, thought Ralph. He turned away from the sign, waited for a break in the traffic, then dashed across the street.

The headquarters of the Revolutionary Workers Party was in a dingy, two-story brick building. Ralph was sure he had found the right address—there was a large poster in one of the upper windows: VOTE RWP IN ’84! in red letters that glowed from the lights in the room behind.

The lower part of the building, he saw as he stepped up onto the curb, was occupied by the Red Star Candy Store.

Behind a dusty plate glass window protected by a folding metal lattice, a few scattered candy boxes lay amid the corpses of small insects on their backs. There were no lights on in the store.

To the right of the store window a narrow door opened onto a flight of stairs. The inside of the door was covered with the same poster as in the window upstairs. Ralph looked inside, saw another light at the top of the stairs and heard voices muffled by another door.

There were more posters lining the walls of the stairwell as he climbed up. The colors were faded, depicting causes and heroes and dates back through the seventies and even into the late sixties. One, the earliest he could make out in the dim light from above, was for a rally against some war in— some place he had never heard of. I wonder if they managed to stop it, he thought idly as he mounted the last few steps.

The door at the top swung open under his hand. A flood of light poured out and revealed a large room filled with books. They were arranged on plywood shelves lining the walls and stacked on makeshift tables with folding sawhorses for legs. A sign on the wall read PROGRESSIVE BOOK STORE. A man with a pipe was sitting behind one of the tables with a little metal cashbox on it. He glanced up from the book he was reading as Ralph stepped in from the stairwell.

Ignoring the man’s eyes on his back, Ralph stood in front of the nearest shelves and pretended an interest in the books. There were several copies of each title, most still shiny with the look of new books that had never been opened. Some were a little faded and covered with a fine layer of dust.

He pulled a book from one of the shelves. A bushy-bearded face glared at him from the cover. He put it back and took another. This had two men on it, one with a precise goatee and the other with a shock of black hair and small glasses, gazing up at him from the depths of ancient photographs. Ralph opened the book and pretended to read, while sneaking a careful survey of the rest of what he could see of the RWP headquarters.

Through a wide doorway to the rear of the bookstore, he could see rows of metal folding chairs facing an unoccupied podium. More of the posters he had seen coming up the stairs lined the walls of the empty meeting hall.

Behind him, someone came in from the stairwell and called hello to the man with the pipe. Ralph put the book back on the shelf and glanced over at the table. The newcomer, a girl in jeans and a service-station wind-breaker, was talking animatedly to the man. They both were laughing and ignoring him.

Maybe he wasn’t watching me to begin with, thought Ralph. Maybe I’m getting nervous for no reason— at least so far. A little bolder, he swung his head around. Through a doorway on the other side of the bookstore another room was visible, its windows overlooking the street outside. The room was occupied by battered wooden desks and surrounded by shelves filled with yellowing stacks of Agitant back issues.

Several party members were clustered around one of the desks, sipping coffee from plastic cups and talking. A girl in a pullover sweater too large for her was talking on a phone in the room’s corner and writing something down on a yellow notepad.

Ralph suddenly perceived that the room he was looking into was in fact L-shaped, with its far section hidden from view. He was craning his neck to try to sight whatever was around the room’s bend when he felt something strike him just below the shoulder blade.

His breath became something solid in his throat for a moment. He whirled around, saw nothing, then looked lower and saw a face grinning up at him. It was the short man he’d seen in Mrs. Alvarez’s building. And Mrs. Teele said he’d been around there, too, thought Ralph. Looking at the man’s round face and uneven teeth, Ralph felt the knot in his throat swell and grow tighter. Does he remember seeing me? he wondered uneasily.

“Haven’t seen you at our public forums before,” said the man brightly.

He continued to grin up at Ralph.

“Uh . . . no.” He squeezed his voice out into the air. “I’m new in L.A.”

“Well, we’re always glad to see some fresh faces around here.” The smile evaporated, and the man sighed. “Sometimes you get a little, you know, wax museum feeling around here. Know what I mean? Same old people all the time.” He fell silent for a moment, then beamed at Ralph again. “Just curious?”

“Huh?” He wasn’t sure he’d heard right.

“Did you come just because you’re curious, or are you, you know, into political stuff?”

“Well—”

“I mean, it’s all right,” said the short man. “Lots of people start out just curious, and then become interested, I guess you’d say.” He clapped Ralph with enthusiasm on the arm. “So stick around. Peter is really a great speaker. And he knows this Ximento matter from the inside out—he was in Brazil a couple of years ago for a conference.” He paused, looking as if he were waiting for something to be said.

“Sounds interesting, all right,” said Ralph.

“And we’ve got a good pamphlet on the subject, too. Just a dollar. Sometimes it’s hard keeping the printed stuff up to date, the way things go so fast. Sometimes a whole issue’s forgotten before you have anything to show people about it. But we were already researching this before the Front started moving north, so we just had to kind of rush it into print, is all. It’s over there on the table. I’d buy you a copy, so you’d have it to read, but that’s sort of frowned upon. It’s supposed to be the sign of a . . . well, serious person to buy their own literature.”

“I’ll have to get a copy.”

“Yeah, do that. You’ll enjoy it.” He glanced at the watch on his wrist.

“Hey, almost time for the forum to start. I’d better go make sure we got enough chairs out. See you in the meeting hall in a few minutes.” The short man turned and hurried away.

He didn’t recognize me, thought Ralph as he wandered over to one of the book-covered tables. He didn’t make the connection. The room was filled with people who had entered from the stairwell while they had been talking. The crowd was clustered into groups conversing, or individuals looking over the bookshelves by themselves.

Ralph found the knot gone and air pouring into his lungs again. At least he had penetrated this far safely—although nothing had been made any less mysterious yet. From the table, he picked up a thin pamphlet with the word “Ximento” in the title. Not very much for a dollar, decided Ralph, putting it back down and heading for the entrance of the meeting hall.

“Hey, buddy. Give me a hand with this, will you?”

He stopped and turned towards the voice. A door he hadn’t noticed before stood open, revealing a large kitchen. A huge, ancient stove, like a squared-off battle ship, and deep iron sinks stood beneath the bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The short man was pointing to a massive cylindrical coffee urn standing on a counter by the door.

“What’s the matter?” said Ralph.

“Help me carry this thing into the other room.” The short man grabbed one of the urn’s handles. “It’s for refreshments after the forum.”

Ralph shrugged and stepped into the kitchen. He grunted as he lifted up on the urn’s other handle. “Maybe you should’ve moved it first,” he said, “and then—” He stopped, sensing the door suddenly closing, shutting off the sounds of the crowd in the bookstore. Letting go of the handle, he stepped backward away from the short man. A dull noise he barely heard and a wave of pain swept over him from the back of his head.

“Hell,” somebody was saying as Ralph staggered into the counter. “Not like that—you can break somebody’s skull like that!” He couldn’t lift his head, and saw only the dark and swimming floor as he groped his way out.

A pair of boots—they looked like old battered military issue—stepped into his vision.

“Hey, get him!” another voice said. How many were there in the room?

“Don’t let—”

“For Pete’s sake.” Somebody grabbed Ralph, pinning his arms to his sides. “Give me that thing.”

“Careful.”

The room tilted on its side, darkening from red to black.

“Hey. Come on. Wake up.” The voice sounded familiar somehow.

Ralph started to raise his eyelids but the first narrow crack of light bounced off the back of his skull like a mallet. He clamped his eyes shut again, his head throbbing with his pulse. “Go away,” he said.

“No, no. Come on,” coaxed the voice.

It was no use. Consciousness welled up in him with each imploding wave of his blood. Where had he heard that voice before? He gripped the sides of the cot he was lying upon and ran his tongue over his dry lips.

“What’d he hit me so hard for?” He groaned.

“We’re sorry about that.” A different voice, a woman’s. “We didn’t know....”

He grunted, braced himself and opened his eyes wide. Yellowish electric light clamored like a siren in his skull, then faded into a dull headache.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Ralph lifted his head and turned it to one side. He found himself looking into Stimmitz’s face. For a few seconds their eyes met, then Ralph laid his head back upon the cot. “Go to hell,” he said. A cold and bitter current seemed to pour out of his chest like a tide as he stared up at the ceiling.

“Hey, man, it’s not what you think—”

“I don’t care,” said Ralph in disgust. “I don’t care how you did it, or why you made me think you got torn to pieces on the dreamfield. I don’t care about any of that stuff. Real cute trick, all right.” He swung his legs over the edge of the cot and sat up, pulling his head down between his shoulders to ease the clanging in his head. Past Stimmitz he could see two or three other people in the room. “Do you mind if I leave now?” he said, the corner of his mouth bending into a snarl. The bitterness had become clearer, refined into a sense of betrayal and anger at having been fooled for so long, whatever the obscure motivation for the fraud had been. No more, he thought. I’ve had enough.

“You are Ralph Metric, aren’t you?”

“Come on.” He kneaded his forehead without looking up. “Cut it out, Stimmitz. I don’t know what all of this has been for, what the point was of making me think you were dead and everything, but enough’s enough.”

A few seconds of silence passed. “I’m not Michael Stimmitz,” the other said quietly. “I’m his brother Spencer.”

“Huh?” Ralph jerked erect. “What? His brother! You’re kidding.” He looked into the other’s face. The differences became obvious—a thinner nose, closer set eyes than the Stimmitz he had known out at the Opwatch base. “I . . . he never said he had a brother.”

Spencer Stimmitz shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t think you needed to know.”

“I don’t get it.” Ralph’s anger had drained away, leaving his former confusion. “Why’d you hit me over the head?”

“We didn’t know who you were.” Just behind Spencer was the short man. “We thought you might be one of Muehlenfeldt’s agents.”

“Me? I thought you were.” Ralph looked past Spencer at the others crowding the small room. The short man was there, looking more grim-faced than he had in the Progressive Bookstore. Towering over him was the man whose battered Army boots he had glimpsed in the kitchen, the one, he guessed who had knocked him out. There was something subtly wrong about the wide-staring eyes and the hands fidgeting inside the pants pockets. I’m lucky my skull’s still in one piece, thought Ralph. If it is.

Leaning against a door, arms folded, was the woman he had heard speak a moment ago. For several seconds he stared directly into her face.

He had seen her before—carrying a camera in the desert outside the Opwatch base.

“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling at him. “We were a little hard on you. But you know we can’t take any chances.”

The way she said the words you know disturbed him. Before he could open his mouth to say anything, Spencer broke in again.

“It’s a good thing I came down here.” He emitted a quick, barking laugh. “They were talking about how to get rid of your corpse.”

“Great,” muttered Ralph. He carefully shook his aching head from side to side, but nothing became any clearer. “This may sound stupid,” he said at last, “but what’s going on around here? Who are you people, anyway?”

No one spoke for a moment. “Hey,” said Spencer, glancing back at the others, “maybe you hit him too hard. It’s affected his memory.”

Scowling, the man with the army boots brushed Spencer aside and stood in front of Ralph. “Maybe,” he said darkly, “this dude’s diddling around with us.” He pursed his lips and spat.

Ralph looked at the gob of spittle dead-centered between his feet, then back up as the man brought his hand close to Ralph’s face. A slight metallic whisper and a knife with a long blade flashed across his vision.

He stared at the distorted reflection of his face in the shiny blade, until an understanding of its macabre purpose swept like a hot electric wire into his mind. The cot slid into the knife-wielder’s knees as Ralph scrambled backwards across it. He flattened himself against the wall. “Are you crazy?” he shouted. “Get him away from me!”

“Come on,” coaxed the short man, tugging at the other’s arm. “Put it away, Gunther. Not now.” The big man looked sullen but with another small noise, the blade disappeared. “He gets nervous,” the short man said, turning to Ralph.

“Just keep him away from me.” Ralph braced his shoulders against the wall to stop their trembling. He stood there, working at breathing for a few moments before he spoke again. “I don’t know who you people think I am, but I wish you’d let me in on it, too.”

The woman and the three other men exchanged glances. I’ve blown it, thought Ralph, watching them. They’re probably mulling over the corpse-disposal problem again.

“Aren’t you Ralph Metric?” said Spencer, looking puzzled. He held up a wallet that Ralph recognized as his own. “You’ve got a California driver’s license and an Operation Dreamwatch ID that says you are.”

He nodded without speaking.

“Well, then you can relax.” Spencer shrugged and spread his hands open. “This is it. I mean, we’re the Alpha Fraction.”

“The what?” Ralph was beginning to wonder if something had been knocked loose when they had hit him. Every new piece of information seemed to make things even more confused.

“The Alpha Fraction. Didn’t my brother tell you to come find us?”

“You know, don’t you,” said Ralph slowly, “that your brother’s dead.”

He watched the other’s face.

“We’ve assumed that.” Spencer’s voice remained level and calm. “But he wrote us about you in his last letter.” He pulled a dirt-creased envelope from his hip pocket, unfolded it and extracted a photograph.

Ralph took it from the outstretched hand. It was a black-and-white shot of himself, taken sometime without his knowledge on the Opwatch base: a colorless, two-dimensional Ralph Metric frozen in front of one of the buildings out in the middle of the desert. Probably just wandering around, he thought, studying the photo. As usual.

He turned the picture over. On the back were several lines in the late Michael Stimmitz’s precise handwriting. Spence— Possible recruit, name of Ralph Metric. Should be able to trust him: Will be filling him in gradually, & send him on to L.A. if nothing turns up here. M.

“So that’s what it was all about,” murmured Ralph. He tapped the picture with his forefinger.

“What’s that?” said Spencer.

“All that stuff your brother talked about. Just before . . . what happened to him. Universes, and stuff. He was trying to recruit me, but he didn’t have time to tell me everything before he was killed. That’s what he was trying to do.”

“He didn’t say anything about the Alpha Fraction?” asked the short man.

“No,” said Ralph. “Nothing.”

The man sighed. “Let’s go upstairs and see if there’s any coffee left. This is going to take a while.”

Ralph pushed himself away from the wall and stepped around the cot.

He held out the photograph to Spencer, who didn’t appear to see it.

“Do you know how Mike died?” said Spencer.

“I was there. I saw it.” He watched as Spencer nodded and turned away, expressionless. Someone touched his arm. He turned and saw beside himself the woman he had first seen in the desert, now making a small gesture with her hand.

“He’ll be okay,” she whispered, glancing at Spencer’s back disappearing through the room’s doorway. “He was still hoping, is all. About his brother.”

The relief Ralph had felt at the small light penetrating the accumulated mysteries was muted. He followed the woman out of the room and up an unlit stairway.

Interlude: Somewhere in a Corridor of Power

Although the city roared ceaselessly below, it was quiet aboard the jetliner. The carpet was like an ankle-deep sea, temporarily calm. Seamed with age, Senator Aaron Muehlenfeldt’s face was reflected in the circular window as he looked down upon the scattered four a.m. traffic on the freeways. Pinpoints of red and white light were wandering among the great L.A. buildings.

“It’s ready, sir.”

The senator swivelled his high-backed leather chair around to face a young man on the other side of the oval desk, his face as fixed and emotionless as the shoulder-patch on his sleeve. He rested his hand upon the controls of the tape recorder. Muehlenfeldt waited for him to speak again.

With brisk efficiency, the young man opened a manila clasp envelope and laid its contents out on the desk. “This was recorded,” he said, “about an hour ago, using one of our devices planted at the Revolutionary Worker’s Party headquarters. Through voice-print analysis we’ve identified the voices of the members of the group called ‘the Alpha Fraction.’ ” He slid a large black-and-white photo across the desk.

Muehlenfeldt picked it up, carefully holding it by the tips of his brown-spotted fingers. It snowed a short man waiting in line at a hamburger stand. All the features in the shot were foreshortened, compressed together by the telephoto lens that had been used.

“That’s Mendel Koss,” said the young man. “He’s been acting as head of the group since the elimination of their colleague Michael Stimmitz last week.” He slid another photo cross the desk. “That’s Spencer Stimmitz, the younger brother of the late Michael.”

The senator glanced at the pictures, then picked up the next one that came towards him.

“That’s the woman called Sarah.” The young man hesitated. “We haven’t been able to ascertain a last name for her yet. There’s only one other member of the group, a man by the name of Gunther Ortiz, but his voice isn’t on the tape. So he was either not present or remained silent.”

The photos adhered to each other as the senator pushed them aside.

“On the phone,” he said in his resonant, cello-like baritone, “you mentioned another person being there.”

“Yes, that’s right.” The young man extracted another photo from the envelope and pushed it towards the senator.

It was a blow-up of an Operation Dreamwatch FD card. Not much could be told from the blurry face-shot. He tossed it on top of the others.

The young man tapped the reel of recording tape on the machine in front of him. “From the conversation we’ve identified this other voice as that of Ralph Metric. He’s one of the watchers at the base.”

One of the senator’s snow-white eyebrows arched upwards. “A watcher? What’s he doing in L.A.?”

“He’s on vacation, I believe.”

“Come on.” Muehlenfeldt slapped the desk top. “What’s he doing there? Seems like quite a lot of initiative for a watcher to take.”

“We’re aware of that.” The young man pulled from the envelops a sheet of paper crowded with words and numbers. “We contacted the base and they wired us the record of his serotonin/melatonin activity monitoring. It’s been well below the necessary levels since he was hired over six months ago. We’re checking now to see if he has any abnormalities in his past history that we might have overlooked before.”

“Have the monitoring equipment checked out, too.” The cello’s strings grated. “First that Stimmitz person got past them, and now this one.”

In a small book the young man scribbled a note.

“Now what’s all this about?” said the senator irritably, waving a hand at the tape recorder.

“At approximately two-thirty a.m., quite some time after the weekly public forum at the Revolutionary Workers Party headquarters was over, the members of the Alpha Fraction and Ralph Metric were picked up by the device we have planted in the meeting hall. We assume they had previously been in a part of the building where we don’t have a device yet.”

The senator grunted and shook his head in disgust, but said nothing.

“From their recorded conversation,” continued the young man, “it appears as if Metric had had no previous contact with the group and was up to this point completely ignorant of its existence, let alone its purpose. Most of the discussion consists of the group members filling him in on the nature and past history of the Alpha Fraction, thus confirming much of what we had already found out about them.” He arched his eyebrows as his hand hovered over the tape recorder’s play button. When the senator nodded, he pushed it. “The first voice is that of Mendel Koss,” he whispered quickly.

A small clattering noise and a voice, slightly tinny from electronic imitation, emerged from the machine. “ . . . you see, Ralph, if we didn’t need another person—because of what happened, you know, to Mike—I’d probably tell you to get out of here and forget all this.”

Another voice, a woman’s. “But we need your help.”

“That’s the woman named Sarah,” the young man said to Muehlenfeldt.

“Well, just what is it you’re trying to do?” Another man’s voice, sounding puzzled.

“That’s Metric.”

A cough, and the voice of Mendel Koss spoke again. “We’ve been . . . kind of investigating the Operation Dreamwatch project for quite a while now—”

“Who’s we?” Metric’s voice. “The RWP?”

“No,” said Koss. “Just the Alpha Fraction. The rest of the RWP, both the local and the national organization, doesn’t even know we exist.”

“How come you call it a ‘fraction’?” asked Metric.

A second passed before Koss answered, a trace of impatience evident in his voice. “That’s just what organizations like the RWP call their committees. They have an Executive Fraction, and Publications and Fund-raising Fractions, and stuff like that; it’s instead of calling them committees. Just the way they’ve always done it. ‘Alpha?’ I don’t know—that was Mike’s idea. Had to call it something, I guess.”

“It was all Mike’s idea,” came another voice. “He created the fraction. He was the first one to suspect there was something strange going on out there with Operation Dreamwatch.”

“That was Spencer Stimmitz,” said the young man. “He was referring, of course, to his brother.” The senator nodded and leaned a little closer to the machine.

“You see,” continued Koss’s voice, “Mike had quit the RWP. He had doubts about the effectiveness of the party and the work it’s been doing.

“While he was at loose ends, he hired on with Operation Dreamwatch. He was one of the first to be recruited. It wasn’t too long before the little odd things about the project started to pile up in his mind, enough to really raise his suspicions about the whole thing. He got in touch with the few of us in the RWP that he trusted—”

“He wasn’t sure about the rest of the party,” interrupted Sarah’s voice.

“He didn’t want to hazard tipping our hand to any agents and infiltrators in the party. That’s always a problem in groups like ours.”

“Helga Warner was one of you?” said Metric.

“She hired on with the project,” said Koss, “because Mike felt that the two of them might be able to find out more.”

“Did they?”

“Not much more than you have already. Or at least not anything that got back to us before they were killed. We knew their plans for going inside the Thronsen Home, but yours is the first word we’ve gotten about what’s actually in there.”

“Do you know what it means?” Metric’s voice seemed to rush from the tape recorder. “The kids on ice and everything?”

“Hell,” said Koss. “Who can tell what somebody like Muehlenfeldt is doing with all this stuff.”

“How do you know Muehlenfeldt’s really behind it? Maybe the senator doesn’t know what the Opwatch people are doing with all the money he gives them from his foundation.”

“That’s something we are sure about.” Sarah’s voice was grim. “Mike had sneaked into the base commander’s office and found a whole file of memoranda from Muehlenfeldt. Nothing that gave away the project’s real purpose, of course, but enough to let us know that Muehlenfeldt’s been personally directing it from the beginning.”

“Don’t you think you’re kind of outmatched, then?” Metric’s voice rose in pitch. “I mean, that guy’s got billions. If Operation Dreamwatch is his pet kick, and he doesn’t want anyone to know what’s going on, how’s your little fraction going to find out? Let alone stop whatever he’s doing with it.”

“We’ve got plans,” said Koss.

“Like what?”

“Well, it’s getting kind of late—”

The young man pushed another button on the tape recorder. The voice of Mendel Koss came to a halt in mid-sentence. “That’s all the important part,” he said.

“They left the RWP headquarters and dispersed. Metric went with Spencer Stimmitz to get some sleep and to be briefed on the Alpha Fraction’s plans.”

The senator leaned back in his chair. “Let’s hear that tape, then.”

“I’m afraid,” said the young man slowly, “we don’t have a device planted at Stimmitz’s apartment. He has quite a bit of electronics expertise, and it was decided that the chances were too great of his detecting anything we tried to put in there.”

“So you still don’t know what they’re planning?”

The young man hesitated a second. “No.”

“Or anything about the other group?”

His lips compressed, the young man shook his head.

The senator’s fingers laced together and rested on the desk top. “I assume, though, that you have plans for finding out.”

“Uh . . . yes. Yes, we do. We’ve just about completed the preparations for a means of breaking the fraction open. We’re . . . very hopeful about it.”

“Fine,” said Muehlenfeldt quietly, the cello strings whispering their lowest note. “I suggest you hurry with it.”

His face bloodless, the young man nodded, picked up the tape recorder, and headed quickly for the rear of the plane.

When he was alone, the senator stood at the jetliner’s window and looked down at the city below. Most of San Francisco was still dreaming.

Chapter 9

Spencer pocketed the key and pushed open the door of his apartment.

“There you go,” he said, waving his hand grandly as Ralph stepped inside.

Pushed against one wall was a tired-looking sofa half-covered with old magazines and newspapers. “You can bed down here.” Spencer jumbled the papers into a loose stack and dropped them on the floor. “I think I got some extra blankets in one of the closets.”

While he disappeared into the back of the apartment, Ralph looked around the front room. A small pagoda of dirty cups and saucers tottered on a low table constructed of plywood and cement blocks. The walls were randomly spotted with pages torn from books and other sources. Ralph stepped over to one and found himself looking at a yellowing newsphoto of a kneeling man engulfed in flames. Blurred oriental faces watched with varying expressions. He glanced at the picture next to it—a glossy publicity still of a grinning dog captioned, Rin-Tin-Tin—before turning away from the wall.

Carrying a mound of wadded-up blankets, Spencer came back into the room. He tossed them onto the sofa and brushed the lint from his hands.

“That should do it.”

“Who’s Rin-Tin-Tin?” Ralph tilted his head towards the picture on the wall.

“Huh?” Spencer looked around and spotted the dog’s image. “Oh, yeah—that. He was a dog they made a whole bunch of movies about, long time ago. Mike used to go to film festivals at some of the universities around here and watch them. Rin-Tin-Tin movies were kind of a fad for a while, I guess. They really meant something to Mike, though—a lot of weird things did. He used to tell me that that stupid dog was closer to being human than most people. ‘At least he’s trying,’ he’d say.” Spencer fell silent, gazing across the room at the picture.

After a moment, Ralph spoke. “I’m sorry about what happened to your brother.” He coughed. “There wasn’t much I could do. I was pretty scared at the time.”

Spencer shrugged and exhaled noisily. “Yeah, well, who wouldn’t have been? Even Rin-Tin-Tin. That slithergadee thing sounded pretty fierce when you were telling us about it back at the headquarters. Forget it. Let’s go see if we can find anything in the kitchen.”

Ralph sat at a table littered with unidentifiable electronic parts and a soldering iron while Spencer rummaged in the refrigerator. He held a carton of milk to his nose and sniffed. “Should still be good,” he decided.

With his forearm he cleared a space on the table, then set down the milk and two unmatched cups. “Good for the stomach lining,” he said. “After all that damn coffee.”

Over the rim of his cup, Ralph watched as Spencer abstractedly pushed a couple of transistors around with his finger. They were different colors, like pills, and rolled across the table’s surface, waving their small end wires.

“How well did you get to know Mike?” said Spencer, not looking up.

“While you were out there at the Opwatch base.”

“Not very well,” said Ralph, “it’s not the kind of place where you make much contact with anybody.” Or anything, he thought to himself.

“You know, Mike was okay. As older brothers go. He was—let’s see—a junior in high school when I was in sixth grade; the school psychologist diagnosed me as hyperactive, because I threw a blackboard eraser at one of the teachers and talked a lot. So anyway, they were going to give me these pills. Doctor’s dope, right? It’s legal as long as they want you all zonked out. But when Mike heard about it, he loaded me on the back of this little motorcycle he had, and we rode it all the way to San Diego.

“Checked into a motel—he gave the desk clerk some story about us being part of a rock group and the rest of the band hadn’t shown up yet. We waited a couple of days, then he called our parents and said we’d come back if they wouldn’t make me take the stuff.” Spencer picked up one of the transistors and laughed, shaking his head. “He told me later that he didn’t do it because he actually cared for me that much. It was just a matter of principle for him.”

Ralph set his cup down. “You must have felt pretty bad when you saw those pictures Sarah took.”

“What pictures?” Spencer’s brow creased in puzzlement.

“The ones Sarah took out in the desert. By the Opwatch base. You know, of that big bloodstain on the ground.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Spencer. “Sarah’s never gone out to the Opwatch base. We decided it might raise too much suspicion if any of us were seen poking around there. And I don’t think Sarah even owns a camera.”

Frowning, Ralph watched his forefinger circle the rim of the empty cup before him. When telling the Alpha Fraction about Michael Stimmitz’s death and the other strange things that had happened at the base, he hadn’t mentioned spotting Sarah aiming a camera at the bloody spot. He had assumed the others knew about it—that she had gone out there on the group’s orders and had reported to them on what she had found. But she didn’t, thought Ralph. They don’t even know she went out there.

“You okay?” said Spencer.

“Yeah.” Ralph nodded. “I must’ve gotten confused—thinking about something else. Everything’s been going so fast, it gets hard to keep track.” So what’s it mean? persisted his thought. Something else is going on with these people— or at least with one of them. With an effort, he pushed Sarah’s now enigmatic face from his mind. “Tell me about this plan,” he said. “That I’m supposed to help you people with.”

Spencer pushed aside his own cup and the empty milk carton. He drew an assemblage of electronic parts to himself and studied it. “Remember the Opwatch recruiting office downtown?” he said, poking a finger at one of the soldered wires. “Where you first signed on with them?”

“Sure. What about it?”

“We’re going to bug it.”

Ralph stared at him for a moment before he could say anything. “That’s ridiculous.”

The wire pulled loose and Spencer looked up. “Why do you say that?”

“Are you kidding?” said Ralph. “For Pete’s sake, that office is nothing but a closet with a desk and phone stuffed in it. You’re not going to be able to pry any secrets out of a place like that—there wouldn’t be any.”

“We’ve got reason to believe differently. There’s more to that little office than you’d think. Our plan’s worth a try, at least.”

“You people are crazy.” Ralph’s disappointment had turned into anger. “This sounds like a pretty good way to get picked up by the police for no good reason.”

“Hey, we’re not asking that much from you,” said Spencer. “It’ll be safe. If anything goes wrong, you’ll have plenty of time to clear out.” He pulled another wire loose. “Of course, if that’s too much for you . . .”

Ralph snorted, but felt blood tinge his face. “When are you going to try to do this?”

“Now that you’re here, we’ll probably pull it tomorrow night.”

“What? Isn’t that kind of soon?”

“We’ve got everything ready,” said Spencer. “And besides, we don’t have much choice. We’re running out of time. If we don’t get some kind of lead pretty soon, whatever’s building up with Operation Dreamwatch is going to go off. It might already be too late to do anything about it.”

“Great,” said Ralph sourly. “In that case, why bother?”

“It’s the only game in town,” said Spencer, looking up from the device in his hands and staring directly into Ralph’s eyes. “Don’t you smell it? Mike could. And so can the rest of us now. Whatever’s going on out there in the desert is something big. And something—” He stopped, then went on, his voice lower in pitch. “Different.”

Something cold tensed the skin on Ralph’s arms. “What do you mean?”

“Doesn’t it strike you that way? Some of the odd things about Operation Dreamwatch. Like all those kids you found in the Thronsen Home, all kept unconscious, and those dreams they put them through. Mike told us about those. It’s not just that that stuff seems inhuman—people have done crueller things, I suppose—but doesn’t it all seem, well, non-human, too?”

He’s crazy, thought Ralph, a sick fear opening in his stomach. But the eyes that met his from across the table were sane. “Go on,” he said.

“Have you ever looked at pictures of rich people? Really looked? I don’t mean people who just have some money, but the ones who have so much they’re like whole nations inside their own skins. The ones with the power. Have you ever noticed something odd about the way they look?”

“Maybe,” said Ralph carefully.

Spencer’s voice became taut as a wire. “If beings from another star wanted to take over this world, use it for something without our knowing, who would they take the place of, substitute themselves for? Any dumb schmuck out on the street? No—the super-rich. The ones with the power.”

“You gotta be putting me on,” said Ralph. “I mean, I used to read all that science fiction stuff, too, but I never let it affect my thinking.”

Casually, Spencer tilted his head to one side. “Accounts for a lot of twentieth-century history.”

“Maybe, but I still don’t believe it.” He had almost convinced himself that Spencer had been kidding him.

“Okay, so you explain why the ones with all the money look different from the rest of us. Think they eat the stuff or something?”

Through the window over the sink, Ralph could see the sky beginning to lighten. He exhaled and rubbed his eyes. “This is more than I can take right now. I have to get some sleep.” He got up and headed for the front room.

“My brother used to say that the only reason anybody slept more than four hours a day was because they had nothing better to do.” Spencer picked up the soldering iron and switched it on.

And look where it got him, thought Ralph. He was almost irritable enough from fatigue to say it out loud, but refrained. With his shoes off, he nested the blankets around himself on the sofa and fell asleep.

A dream filled with great sliding fangs chased him back into consciousness. He opened his eyes and let the sight of the cluttered room press back the darkness inside.

Spencer wasn’t in the apartment. A note was taped to the refrigerator.

While one hand scraped the crusts from the corners of his eyes, Ralph held the note with the other, read it, and tossed it on the kitchen table. Yawning, he shuffled back to the refrigerator and pulled out another nearly empty milk carton. Half a loaf of rye bread was already on the table, nestled among the electronic parts. He sat down and started to eat, propping his head up with one hand.

Must be noon at least, he thought, watching a dusty shaft of light fall into the room. As a child he had always felt a sense of uneasiness or dread—even sin—at getting up so late. Probably worried that the rest of the world was going to sneak something past me. The feeling had dissipated while at the base.

He took another slice of bread, got up, and sat on the edge of the sink.

Through the window he could see another apartment building and a section of street with cars parked along it. Somewhere near the RWP headquarters, his parents’ Ford was still waiting for him. I should go get it, he thought suddenly. I should get out of here as fast as I can.

Things had gone so fast yesterday that he had been sucked along with the Alpha Fraction’s momentum without thinking. But in this harsh, still light, a part of him was scared. A premonition of pain and trouble increasing with no end, except death, in sight. Get out, he thought again, gazing at the street.

Not yet, he told himself. He went back to the table and drank the rest of the milk straight from the carton. There would be, he knew deep within himself, time enough for giving up later, after everything possible had gone wrong. Right now it all still felt too good to be awake and plotting in L.A. As far, he thought, from the base and its sleepwalking death as I can get.

He heard the apartment’s door open. “Spencer?” he called as he headed for the other room.

It wasn’t. Sarah, carrying a large brown paper bag, pushed the door shut behind herself with her foot. “Hi,” she said casually. Balancing the bag in the crook of one arm, she brushed her hair to one side of her face with her free hand. “Where’s Spencer?”

“Out some place.” Ralph shrugged. “His note said he’d be back in a little while.”

She nodded and walked past him into the kitchen. Setting the bag amid the clutter on the table, she began distributing the groceries inside it to the cupboards and refrigerator.

From the doorway, Ralph watched her in silence for a few moments.

When she bent down to put some cans in one of the cupbards below the counter, her long golden hair fell forward over her shoulders. She brushed it back with the same motion of her hand and slight toss of her head. He wondered why something about that should disturb him, until he remembered. The first time he had seen her do it was out in the desert, when she had straightened up, holding the camera. The bloodstain had been right at her feet.

“You people must be rich or something,” said Ralph finally. “Spending all your time on this Alpha Fraction stuff and still being able to buy groceries.”

Sarah glanced at him sharply while her hands folded the empty paper bag into a flat square. “We don’t spend all our time on it,” she said.

“Spencer is the only one who doesn’t have a job. The rest of us pay his rent and buy his food so he can spend his time building the electronic equipment we’re going to use. He’s pretty good at that stuff—he built the alarm bypass his brother used to get into the Thronsen Home.” She turned away and slid the folded bag into the little space between the refrigerator and the counter.

“Do you make much money as a photographer?”

Her brow creased as she stared at him. “I run a turret lathe,” she said. “At one of the Army contractors downtown. Where’d you get the idea I was a photographer?”

“Maybe,” he said, “from when I saw you out by the Opwatch base. Taking pictures of that spot on the ground.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She crossed the kitchen and pushed past him, but he caught her by one wrist. Angrily, she jerked her hand free, pivoted in the middle of the front room, and glared at him. The pieces of paper tacked to the wall fluttered.

“Look.” She put fists on hips. “It’s none of your business, okay? Just forget about it.”

Ralph leaned back against the inside of the kitchen doorway. “I thought we were all supposed to be on the same team now.”

The anger flared in her eyes. “All right,” she said quietly. “That’s why I’m asking you not to tell the others. Believe me.”

He watched as she turned and left, pulling the door shut behind her.

The sound of her footsteps faded. I don’t believe her, he thought.

Distractedly, he studied the space she had occupied in the middle of the room and wondered how he was going to tell the other members of the fraction.

The door swung open again and Sarah walked back into the apartment.

“I’m sorry,” she said, standing only a couple of feet away from Ralph. “I shouldn’t have blown up at you—maybe it’s because of all the pressure we’re under. I guess I didn’t like the idea of being spied on.”

“What were you doing out there, though?” said Ralph. “And why didn’t you tell the others?”

She took a deep breath before speaking. “I was out in the desert because I’d had a feeling about Mike—I knew something had happened to him. I got that crummy old camera from a pawn shop and drove out near the base. It didn’t take me long to find the bloodstain. I’ve got kind of a knack for finding things. Or at least things that concern people important to me. It was only after I got back to L.A. and had the pictures developed that I realized they couldn’t help anything. I couldn’t even explain them, and it was too late to do anything for Mike.”

“Wouldn’t the others have understood if you’d told them?”

“I wasn’t worried about Spencer and Mendel.” She paused for a moment. “It’s Gunther that scares me. Something’s happening to him. We all thought he was stable, but the tension seems to be pushing him back into his army memories. He was given a psychiatric discharge before he joined the RWP.”

Ralph nodded, remembering the stories he’d heard of certain wards in the veterans’ hospitals where they kept the ones who’d been totally consumed by war’s guilt and horror. Even from over a viewscreen it had been too much for some. So that’s what’s wrong with Gunther, thought Ralph. You can see it in him— all the burning villages and towns, and the screaming South American children compressed in his gut.

“That’s why I didn’t tell them,” said Sarah. “I was afraid Gunther might go off the deep end if he thought that one of us had betrayed something he identified with. No telling what he might do.”

“All right,” said Ralph. “I won’t tell the others.” He turned away. A few seconds later, he heard the door open and close again, and he was alone, wondering how important Michael Stimmitz had been to her.

Some time later, Spencer returned. He was carrying a small box that rattled and clinked with some type of electronics’ gear. “I phoned Mendel,” he said. “It’s all set for tonight.” He went into the kitchen and set the box down on the table. “Anything happen while I was out?”

“Sarah came by with some groceries,” said Ralph.

Chapter 10

The moon shone above the blue mercury-vapor street lamps.

Sandwiched between Mendel at the wheel of the van and Spencer on the other side, Ralph watched the L.A. streets flick past. In the rearview mirror, he could see the rows of electronic equipment banked along the van’s interior walls. Mendel steered hard around a corner and all three sets of shoulders bumped into one another.

“Okay,” said Spencer, straightening up. “Now here’s the deal. We’ve already managed to get a tap on the computer terminal at the Opwatch recruiting office. It’s what’s called a vector tap—that’s like a long-range bug without wires. We’ve gotten a printout of all of the Opwatch programs on the duplicate terminal here in the van. Got the picture so far? Now, everything we’ve gotten through the tap up to this point hasn’t been very revealing—mostly just material requisition records and stuff like that. But we’ve discovered the existence of a Master Historical Program, Limited Access, which should contain the data we’re looking for. That’s what you’re going to help us get.”

“What do you need me for?” said Ralph. “As long as you’ve got a tap on their computer, why not just pull out what you need, like the other programs?”

“Ah. Not so easy.” Spencer shook his head. “There’s a lock on that program. Limited access, right? Before the Master Historical Program can go through the Opwatch computer, and then into our tap terminal, the locking device has to be deactivated.”

“And you want me to do that?” Ralph stared at him. “You think I’m a cat burglar or something? I can’t sneak in there and flip the switch or whatever it is any better than one of you could.”

“Wrong. You’re the only one who can.” Spencer grinned. “The program lock isn’t in the Opwatch recruiting office.”

Ralph felt exasperated. “Then what are we going there for?” he demanded. “And what’s so special that only I can do?”

“The program lock isn’t in the recruiting office,” said Spencer. “And it is. They’re got a field projection device there, a miniature version of the ones out on the base. The little one in the office creates a separate dreamfield of about three square meters. The locking device for the Master Historical Program is in that space, that pocket universe.”

“Wait a minute. How could that work? I thought the dreamfield was a projection of the people who are hooked into it through their subconscious. Like the kids out in the Thronsen Home. So who’s dreaming this little field?”

“The computer.” Spencer looked pleased. “Ingenious, really. One of its programs is a continuous analogue of a human dream. It’s as if part of the computer is actually dreaming of a nine-by-nine-foot room with the program locking device in it. To deactivate the lock, you have to get into that little dreamfield.”

“And I suppose you’ve figured out a way to get in,” said Ralph.

Spencer pulled a scuffed-looking briefcase from beneath the van’s seat.

He snapped its latches and set it open on his lap. Inside was a flat rectangular box made of gray metal. Two copper wires emerged from the sides and were formed into loops, resting atop a black plastic knob.

“This,” said Spencer, “is the way in. It’s a miniaturized version of the line shack out at the Opwatch base. It’s got enough power to put one person into a small field like the one we’re talking about. All you have to do is hold these two loops and turn the—”

“Hold it.” Ralph drew away from him. “What do you mean, you? Are you planning on me doing this?”

“You have to. You’re the only one who can.”

“How come? Why can’t somebody else do it?”

“Dammit,” muttered Mendel, hunched over the steering wheel. “Show a little backbone.”

Spencer’s grin had evaporated. “Uh, we found out something about what happens when you hire on as a watcher for Operation Dream watch; something they don’t tell you about. Some kind of surreptitious alteration, using microwave energy, is made in your brain chemistry, in order for it to be possible for you to go out on the dreamfield. They do it to you while you’re sleeping. Without that change, the insertion device—the line shack—doesn’t work at all. Mike was going to be the one who entered this little dreamfield and unlocked the program, but he was killed before I had the equipment ready. That’s why you have to go instead.”

Ralph felt something slide sickeningly under his gut. They did something to me, he thought. Without my even knowing it. Something in my brain is different. That’ll teach me. “Well,” he said weakly. “I guess I don’t have that much to lose. But I don’t know anything about computers—how am I supposed to get the damn thing unlocked?”

“There’s a radio circuit built in here.” Spencer lifted the device out of the briefcase. “See? A signal can still get into a field that small. I’ll be able to give you instructions.”

All three of them lurched forward as Mendel brought the van to a halt.

The empty briefcase slid from Spencer’s lap and fell to the floor.

“Sorry,” said Mendel, shutting off the headlights. “There’s Sarah.”

After a few seconds of peering into the darkness in front of them, Ralph could perceive the outlines of a car. It was several yards ahead of them in a corner of a deserted parking lot. One of its doors opened and Sarah’s silhouette headed toward them. She was carrying a small bundle in one hand.

Mendel and Spencer got out of the van as the figure approached. Ralph followed them and stood, tensed against the coldness of the night air. For the first time, he noticed the towering building the lot surrounded. The Muehlenfeldt Center, thought Ralph. It hung over them like a sheer mountain face, though its base seemed more than a mile away. The rest of L.A. was faraway and silent.

“It’s all set,” said Sarah. “The service elevator’s unlocked. That goes straight to the sixtieth floor. Here.” She held the bundle out to Ralph. “Put this on.”

He shook it out and saw that it was a pair of dark-colored coveralls.

ZENITH JANITORIAL SERVICE was lettered on the back.

“Where’s Gunther?” said Mendel.

“There was a note on his door,” said Sarah. “He’ll be here in a little bit.”

Ralph fastened the last button on the coveralls, then shook his pants leg farther down inside them. He listened to Spencer’s instructions, then, without saying anything—all his muscles felt tight but somehow good—he stepped out into the lot’s blue illumination and headed for the tower.

“Hey, this is a broom closet.” Ralph released the switch on the bottom of the device and waited for Spencer to answer. He had been ignored by the real janitors on his way up to this level and had had no trouble finding the right door. Now he stood in the little room’s darkness, surrounded by faintly odorous mops and cleaning compounds. His shin hit a metal bucket on wheels and something inside it clattered.

The device he carried in his hands snarled, then a tinny version of Spencer’s voice emerged. “ . . . course it’s a broom closet. Here it’s a broom closet. Stop wasting time.”

Ralph squatted down and balanced the device on his knee like a tray.

He grasped the two coils of wire in his hands and twisted the knob in the center with one finger and thumb. He felt a tiny sensation he recognized from the times at the base’s line shack, and the space became filled with a dim fluorescent light.

Setting the device on the floor—carpeted now instead of bare cement—he looked around. The room was the same size but the mops and cleaning supplies were gone. In their place was only a small panel jutting out from one wall, with a metal chair in front of it.

He picked up the device and sat down in the chair with it in his lap.

“Okay,” he said, thumbing the switch on the bottom. “Here it is.”

Somewhere, he thought, a computer is dreaming all this. The idea seemed to chill the room.

Spencer’s voice crackled into the silence. “All right. Give me the layout.”

Carefully, starting from one corner of the panel, Ralph described the controls. When he was done he sat back and waited.

After several minutes, Spencer spoke again. “Most of those dials are dummies,” came the voice from the flat metal box. “Some of them are alarm triggers. Here’s the real ones you’ll have to adjust. Count over three from the top right-hand corner. The second red one. Turn it . . .”

The directions went on for some time. Between the turning of knobs on the panel and other adjustments, there was no time to think. Finally, Spencer’s instructions ceased and Ralph sat back in the chair, lifting his hands from the panel.

“Looks good,” said Spencer. “Our tap on their computer shows the unlocking process nearly completed without any slips. Two last adjustments, though. These two knobs are spring-loaded, so you’ll have to hold them in the positions I give you until the Master Historical Program has finished printing out.”

Ralph found the knobs described and turned them against the slight resistance of the springs. He looked up and saw that a tiny red light at the top of the panel had blinked on.

“That’s it. Perfect.” Behind Spencer’s voice could be heard a mechanical chattering, like a rapid typewriter. “The printout’s started. This is going to take a little while so just relax and keep those knobs in that position.” The voice clicked off, leaving Ralph in silence.

After a few seconds, the bridge of his nose started to itch but he ignored it. I wonder if Senator Muehlenfeldt ever comes here. An image came into his mind of the old man—on television and in the newspapers the tangled eyebrows were like snow on a weathered cliff-face—bent over the control panel as though it were some kind of altar. Maybe, thought Ralph. Who knows what somebody with all that money does? Spencer might even be right about him. Who could know?

The red light continued to glow as more time passed. His arms began to ache from being held in one position for so long. In the van—hidden in a dark corner of a parking lot in the real world—the members of the Alpha Fraction were right now huddled around some piece of equipment, reading the printout as it extruded and coiled on the floor. A secret history was passing through him, as unreadable as his heartbeat. First thing, he thought, when I get out of here, is to get my hands on that printout.

The light went out, its red facets dying into black. Ralph held the knobs in position, waiting for Spencer’s voice. The device resting in his lap remained silent. He glanced down at it, feeling a slow crawl of seconds across his back. A suspicion of something having gone wrong coiled around him and tightened.

He jerked his hands from the knobs on the panel and pressed the switch on the device’s bottom. “Spencer?” The box was still silent when he released the switch. “Are you there?” he called, pressing it again.

There was no answer. The chair fell over as he pushed away from the panel and stood up. He grasped the device’s two wire loops and twisted the dial. A metal bucket slammed into a row of mops in the darkness, knocking one over and striking Ralph on the shoulder.

Carrying the device in one hand, he closed the broom closet door behind him and ran down the corridor to the service elevator. The unmarked doors flicked past the periphery of his sight. Panting, he pressed the button and heard the faint whine of the pulleys bringing the elevator to him.

The doors finally drew open, revealing one of the squadron of real janitors, resting his weight on the chrome handles of a floor-buffer. The man glanced at Ralph as he scrambled on, then yawned and looked away.

At the ground floor, Ralph squeezed through the elevator doors as soon as they were partially open, and ran across the building’s loading dock towards the rear exit. “Hey!” Alarmed, the janitor with the buffer called after him. “What’s going on?”

Under the harsh blue lights the lot stretched forever. He finally sighted the van’s shape, hidden in the lot’s unlit corner, and ran toward it.

Gasping for breath, he pulled open the door on the driver’s side. A wave of relief coursed over him. “What the—” he said, almost laughing. Mendel was stretched out on the seat, asleep. “You’re sure taking this easy.” He reached down and shook the short man’s shoulder. The body rolled over and fell to the van’s floor, the head lolling against the accelerator and brake pedals. The seat was shiny with blood.

Ralph backed away, clutching the device in his sweating hands. He forced himself to walk to the rear of the van and to pull the doors open.

Spencer’s body couldn’t be seen. A wadded mound of paper was smoldering into ashes between the banks of electronics. The interior was filled with smoke.

Gunther, he thought dully. Sarah was right about him. He found out somehow, or something else happened to make him snap. And now they’re all dead. Spencer and Mendel and Sarah—

Something moved inside the van. He peered into the smoke and saw a man’s vague outline. Was he holding something out to him? Suddenly, Ralph fell back as a flash of light appeared in the obscured hand, followed by a muffled pop. The window in one of the doors shattered around a bullet hole.

Raising himself from the asphalt, he looked up and recognized the figure standing above him. Gunther.

The hand with the gun pointed down at him. His heart stopped for a moment, then he reached up, grasped the van’s door and swung it towards Gunther. The edge of it caught the gun and sent it clattering into the darkness beyond the van.

He was running across the lot before his mind was functioning again.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Gunther’s silhouette separate from the outline of the van and start after him. He realized he still had the device gripped in one hand. The image filled his mind of a place where he’d be safe. For a moment, at least.

The service elevator was still open on the ground floor. As he punched the button inside and the doors slid shut, he saw Gunther run onto the loading dock. Then the elevator jerked upwards.

Ralph leaned against the side of the elevator. His lungs burned with each breath. He considered trying to elude Gunther in the building, then making it out into the street. No, he decided, If I can get into the broom closet and into the field I can wait until morning. Chances will be better when the building’s full of people. The elevator rattled upwards in its shaft, each floor falling slowly past.

Finally the doors pulled open and he stepped out into the corridor. A sound froze him. Somewhere on the floor, one of the passenger elevators was closing. He ran, turned the corner, and saw Gunther hurtling toward him from the other end of the corridor. The broom closet was between them. Cradling the device to his chest, Ralph ran for the door.

He made it into the dark space but before he could close the door, Gunther had pulled it away from him. The man’s weight toppled him backwards against the mops. As the enormous hands circled his throat, he grasped the device’s wire loops and twisted the knob.

Breath came again, along with the cool fluorescent light. His ears were filled with a wailing, siren-like noise. He stood up but the noise didn’t end. The alarm’s been tripped, he realized. They’ll find me if I stay here.

Something hard seemed to grow inside him, swelling in his chest. He stepped backward against the wall of the small room, tightened his grip on the device’s wire loops and turned the dial.

Gunther was still in the broom closet, waiting, his hands spread and tensed. He started to turn as he felt Ralph’s presence behind him, but then staggered as the flat metal box struck the side of his head. Ralph swung the device again and Gunther fell heavily to the floor of the closet. The device dropped to the concrete as Ralph’s hands started to tremble. He forced a breath and ran out to the corridor and toward the elevator.

Several blocks away from the Muehlenfeldt Center, he found a phone booth and called a taxi. As he stripped off the janitor coveralls he saw that the front of them was stained with blood. That’s from the van, he thought vaguely—his emotions were burnt out from exhaustion. He left the coveralls in a trash can outside the booth.

“You look like you’ve really been through it,” said the taxi driver as Ralph climbed into the back seat.

“Yeah.” He reached up and kneaded the side of his face.

“Must’ve been some party. Hey, let me know if you’re going to be sick and I’ll pull over to the curb, okay?”

At the downtown bus terminal, he got out and paid the driver. A few of the people inside the brightly lit building glanced at him as they stood or sat beside their luggage. The automatic doors swung open as he approached them and he hurried toward the ticket counter.

A few moments later, he sat in the building’s lobby, waiting. He leaned forward and studied the ticket, though he had already memorized everything on it. Norden, he thought, and then back to the base. Maybe that’ll be the last place they’ll look for me. Maybe there’ll be enough time to figure out what to do. But L.A.’s not safe any longer. He leaned back against the bench, a hollow feeling growing inside him. No place would be safe again.