There were explanations for everything. All he had to do was to accept them. Or if necessary, invent them. The real world felt like a tide, pressuring him to accept what everyone else in the world believed to be true. Except weirdos like Stimmitz and Helga, he thought.
“Hey,” he said, turning in his chair to see the others. They had all come to Goodell’s apartment because the Rec hall was getting its monthly floor-polishing by an outside squad of janitors. “Anybody seen Helga recently?” For some reason he felt like trying to talk to her again.
“Didn’t you hear?” Kathy yawned and scratched. “She got canned.”
Ralph lowered the beer can from his lips and looked at her. “What for?” he said finally.
Goodell looked disgusted. “Same thing that idiot Stimmitz got it for,” he said. “They found out that she had sneaked into Thronsen with him.” A couple of the other watchers nodded, a silent chorus.
“Did anybody . . . see her go?” Ralph squeezed the cold cylinder in his hands.
“Naw,” said Goodell. “She took off without saying anything to anybody. Wouldn’t you if you got caught doing something that stupid?”
“She must’ve really been in a hurry to get packed and out of here,” said Kathy, and giggled. “I peeked in her apartment before Blenek came and locked it up, and it was all torn-up looking.”
“Like somebody had been fighting there?” asked Ralph dully.
“Yeah, like that.” She giggled again.
Ralph stared at her while he sipped the flat remnants left in the can.
Maybe Helga was in a hurry, he thought. It’s more likely than all that other stuff. He noticed that the top button of Kathy’s Opwatch blouse was missing, revealing a small triangle of skin below her throat. It was pale white, like the rest of her slender body. The skin of the girl with the camera had been golden. But if that wasn’t in another universe, it was far enough away in this one to be not worth thinking about.
He turned and looked past the television and out the window. The sunset was melting the desert. Maybe, he thought, she was some kind of nature buff, taking pictures of the spot where some desert animal killed and ate another one. Maybe that’s the explanation. He drained the can, stood up, and went past the others into the apartment’s kitchen.
There was a small mountain of empty cans on one of the counters—he added his own to it. Sometimes, he thought, it drops inside you without even making a splash. He opened the refrigerator for another.
Inside were four sixpacks of two different brands; one whole shelf was stacked with them. It looked like every other refrigerator he had ever seen on the base, including his own. He pulled one can apart from the rest and closed the door.
As he opened the can, it suddenly struck him as funny that, considering how lazy all the watchers were, they had spent so much energy carrying all that beer all the way from the little store in Norden where they bought their groceries. A question of values, he decided. He brought the can to his lips, then took it away, and stared at it.
He had never seen any of them bring any beer back from the town. The realization hit him like a wave. Right now, there were sixpacks of beer in the refrigerator of his own apartment that he hadn’t put there. There were always fresh sixpacks, yet he never bought any. And neither, as far as he knew, did any of the others.
Damn, thought Ralph. He opened Goodell’s refrigerator, looked inside, closed it again. The beer was still there, mute and solid, covered with moisture not much colder than that now springing out on Ralph’s skin.
This has been going on all the time, he thought, and nobody’s ever noticed. None so blind, right? As those who will not see— until it tears out their throats. He felt ill—his universe was crumbling for good, dissolving at last to reveal the one, the true one, underneath.
That bloodstain, he thought. There’s no animal in this part of the desert big enough to have made that. And the base commander’s explanation of what happened with Stimmitz and the slithergadee—that’s crap, too. If the kids are all unconscious, how could they see Stimmitz and incorporate him into their dreams! It was clear to him that Stimmitz had been right all along and had died because of it. There was something wrong about Operation Dreamwatch—something that killed to hide itself.
And the beer. His hand trembled as he looked at the can he held. Who knows what they put in it. Or what it’s doing to us. He stepped to the sink and started to pour it out.
“Hey,” said Goodell from the doorway. “What’re you doing?” He looked from the last golden drops falling into the sink to Ralph’s face. “Are you feeling okay? You look terrible.”
Ralph set the can down on the counter. “I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”
“You’d better go back to your place and lie down.” Goodell put his hand on Ralph’s shoulder. “So you’ll be ready to go out on the field tonight.”
“The field?” echoed Ralph. He stared at Goodell. Some part inside himself clenched with the realization of what might be waiting for him there.
Commander Stiles was just leaving his office when Ralph caught him.
“Hello,” said the older man as he locked the door with his key. “What’s the hurry?”
Ralph gasped, trying to catch his breath. He had run all the way from Goodell’s apartment. “I just wanted to see,” he managed to speak, “if I could go ahead and take that week off.”
“Sure,” said Stiles. “I don’t see why not. Be good for you. I’ll have the forms ready tomorrow so you can take off right after your shift if you want.”
“Uhh . . . would there be any way I could leave tonight?”
The base commander frowned, his leathery skin bunching around his lower lip. “No, I don’t think so. Not according to the Opwatch manual, you know.” His eyes sharpened on Ralph. “Was there some particular reason you wanted to leave so soon?”
Careful, Ralph told himself. Don’t let him suspect what you know.
“No,” he shrugged. “Just a spur of the moment decision, that’s all.”
“Come by in the morning, then.” Stiles pocketed his key and started down the hallway. “No need to be impatient.”
Ralph watched the broad uniformed back receding from him, then slowly followed after it toward the exit.
Nothing happened on the dreamfield that night, except for the usual sequences to be observed. As the line came snaking down out of the field’s blue sky, Ralph’s observation partner remarked on how nervous he had seemed all through the shift. Ralph only nodded, watching the descending line. It looked wonderful, a linear angel.
By nine a.m., he was standing on the one small section of sidewalk in Norden with a single canvas bag in his hand, even though he knew the Greyhound to L.A. didn’t come through until eleven-thirty.
PART TWO
L.A.
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.