Silent minds outside of it. When we enter the Dream, remember, we build our world from the real-world minds closest to us before we can move on to other minds. We don’t know what would happen if Silent tried to reach the Dream using minds from within the disturbance. Better first to learn what happened to the Silent already there.”
A tickle at the base of Ara’s skull warned her that her drugs were beginning to wear off and she would have to leave soon. As before, it seemed as if the Empress could read Ara’s mind.
“Your time must be running short,” she said. “You have your instructions. I will expect to hear from you soon regarding these matters. Grandfather. Mother.”
“Imperial Majesty,” they replied together. Then Ara let go of her body.
A dark room, the same one she always encountered before possessing an Imperial Silent, popped into existence around her. The two bits of light that represented the Silent slaves they had possessed floated in front of her, and Grandfather Melthine, no longer young and muscular, stood to one side. The furry, rotund Seneschal, Imperial silver chain hanging around its neck, ushered them out and courteously bade them good-bye. Behind them, the Dream foyer slipped into nothingness and disappeared entirely, leaving them on the familiar empty plain. In the distance, ever-present and almost taken for granted now, was the red and black chaos.
Ara had said space meant nothing in the Dream, and this was normally true. Where she was depended on where she wanted to be. If Ara thought she and her garden were worlds away from, say, Gretchen’s ship, so it was. If Ara thought the ship was so close that the mast was visible over the garden wall, so it would be. If two Silent had contradictory ideas of what reality looked like, for example if Gretchen felt Ara was far away and Ara was sure Gretchen was near by, the strongest will won out.
All this meant nothing when it came to the distant darkness. No matter how hard Ara concentrated, it stubbornly loomed on the horizon, perhaps two kilometers away. She could get closer if she wanted, but not farther.
“Ara!” Melthine grabbed her arm and pointed. “Look!”
The dark chaos, pulsing with its scarlet anger, was growing. It moved like a thundercloud, engulfing the plain of the Dream. The whispers around Ara went silent for a moment, then leaped into hysterical babble.
“We should leave the Dream,” Ara urged. “Before-”
The ground rumbled beneath them. Lightning arced from the spreading darkness, stabbing the ground ahead of it like the antennae of a hungry insect. The darkness swirled like a red-cracked thundercloud. Melthine stared at it.
“Go!” Ara said, giving him a small push.
A scarlet lightning bolt smashed into Melthine’s chest. Thunder blasted Ara off her feet and knocked her several meters away. She landed hard and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Her ears rang and her nose was bleeding. The ground shook again. Stunned, Ara stared stupidly upward, unable to move or think. Then she remembered Melthine. Panic jigged in her mind like a frightened frog. Ara forced herself to roll over. Melthine lay in a boneless heap perhaps ten meters away. She got up and ran toward him, ignoring the pain in her ears and her head. This was the Dream. There would be no pain.
The pain remained with her as she knelt beside Melthine. His eyes were closed and his skin was clammy. He was still breathing, though the breaths came fast and shallow. A black hole had been burnt in his chest. Horrified, Ara felt for his pulse. But even as she did so, the breath hissed heavily from his lungs. He went still and vanished beneath Ara’s fingertips.
“No!” she cried. “Melthine!”
But the plain was empty.
Another bolt of lightning struck the ground and thunder crashed close enough to make Ara’s ears ring anew. The darkness was still expanding, rolling toward Ara like a juggernaut. Swiftly Ara quashed her grief and gathered together her concentration. At the last moment, the words of the Empress echoed in her mind.
You and I are much alike, Mother Araceil Rymar. People of our kind see what must be done, and we do it.
Ara opened her eyes. The familiar ceiling of her own house was above her. Quickly she sat up.
“Bruna,” she said frantically, “call emergency services.”
Wordlessly the house computer made the connection. In hurried tones, Ara started to tell the operator what had happened, but the woman interrupted.
“Emergency services are with him now, Mother Adept,” the operator’s disembodied voice said through the computer speakers. “Grandfather Melthine wears a wristband monitor when he enters the Dream and we were alerted. He will be transported to the medical center.”
Ara disconnected and called the medical center. Melthine hadn’t arrived yet, of course, so she made herself to wait an agonizing half hour. There was no point in going down there-they wouldn’t let a non-relative see him in the emergency room.
Ara called the medical center again. Melthine was alive but comatose. Only close family members would be allowed to visit. Ara disconnected and passed a hand over her eyes, not sure whether she should be relieved that Melthine was still alive or upset over what had happened.
The house around her was quiet, and now it felt eerie, as if something were waiting to jump out of the Dream straight at her. There was plenty of empty space. In addition to several guest rooms, a dining room, living room, and computer playroom, the house contained Ara’s office and her Dream Temple. The latter was merely Ara’s fanciful term for the comfortably-furnished room she liked to use when she entered the Dream.
The house was, like most Bellerophon houses, done in glass and brown wood, and it was located only a short walk from the monastery. A wraparound balcony looked out over the misty leaves and branches, and flower boxes full of colorful blooms brightened the balcony rail. A walkway connected her the balcony to the main thoroughfares, and neighbors had similar houses above and below her in the talltree. Ara shamelessly enjoyed the place. After everything she went through-was still going through-as a Mother Adept, she deserved every penny of the generous stipend that had allowed her to buy the house ten-odd years ago.
“Attention! Attention!” Bruna said. “Emergency-level newscasts located.”
Ara stiffened. Most house computers constantly scanned the news services for stories that might be of interest to their owners. Bruna was no exception. An emergency-level cast coming right now could only be related to the Dream incident that had nearly killed Melthine.
“Bruna, put recent newscasts on screen,” she ordered. “Text and video. No holograms.”
One wall flashed with videos and words. Ara watched and read. So far over two hundred Silent had been on the receiving end of some sort of Dream onslaught, and the numbers were still coming in. They had been swallowed by pits, struck by lightning, ripped apart by tornados. Some had been attacked by their own Dream furnishings. Half of the two hundred were dead. The disturbance had expanded to engulf another nine planets-twenty-eight now in all. The Silent on those worlds were unreachable through the Dream.
Ara’s blood chilled. These were just reports from the Independence Confederation and the worlds friendly to it. How many Silent had been attacked on worlds that didn’t report such things? What was going on?
A link to a related story caught Ara’s eye, and she followed it, partly to get the frightening words and pictures off her wall. She could have disconnected, but the house was empty and Ara didn’t want silent rooms right now.
After a moment’s reading the new story, Ara’s forehead crinkled. A new study showed rates of depression on three separate worlds had risen sharply in the last six months, as were incidents of domestic violence, violent crime, and suicide. Each of the three worlds was unrelated, except for the fact that a pair of them were two of the nineteen worlds originally swallowed by the black chaos. The third world was close by. The report had been released just before the engulfment, but with the recent attacks on Silent, someone had dug it up and re-released it.
An increase in domestic violence, violent crime, and suicide. Related? The Dream was, according to some theorists, made of all sentient minds in the universe. Would a world-wide increase in depression have an impact on the Dream?
Or would it be the other way around?
Ara got up to pace the hardwood floors of her bedroom. There had to be a relationship. The chaos. Depression rates. Sejal. It was frustrating. A piece of this was missing, and Ara was sure if she had it, she would know what was going on. And the longer it remained a mystery, the more difficult everything would become. The
