“Cassandra! Cassandra!” he bellowed, rushing up the steps, his chubby frame jiggling.

  She flew into his arms and hugged him sobbing. “You saw them! You know they’re real!”

  “Shuusssh, shuusssh,” he said rubbing her back, gun in hand. “It’s all right, baby. They won’t be messing with you now. I got a lot of them before I woke up. You need to go see Doc.”

  She sat in the Columbia University Center for Sleep Disturbances with her coat on hiding her purse, hands trembling, eyes bloodshot, and clutching the card that Saddiq had given her. When the nurse ushered her back to Dr. Rehnquist’s office, she froze. He stood up from behind his desk, his calm brown eyes and brunette hair and every feature of his face a dead ringer for the bartender in the dreamscape. She began slowly backing away.

  “Cassandra Hubbard, at least please sit down and learn about this amazing gift.”

  She stood by the door.

  “Some of us are stronger than the others.”

  “I don’t wanna die,” she whispered.

  “You don’t have to … only those who can’t go back and forth, and they choose that outcome, not me or anyone else. Some need the fix, like a drug. Their self-esteem requires it, and they can’t ever be sure they’ll have the dream. So,” he said with a philosophical sigh, “some opt for a permanent solution while in their sleep. It’s tragic. But you’re so much stronger than that. You, like me, can traverse the dreamscape at will. How did you get my card?”

  “Saddiq.” She hugged herself, feeling slightly faint. “He pressed it in my hand at the bar.”

  The doctor rounded the desk slowly, his expression holding repressed excitement. “What bar?” he whispered.

  “The one you bartend.”

  For a moment he just looked at her. “While you were asleep?” He swallowed hard, his eyes briefly filling with tears that burned away. “You brought it through the dreamscape?”

  “I lost my sweater over there,” she said in a thick murmur, her voice quavering. She began rocking as she spoke. “And he gave me this—I have to understand what’s going on … what’s been chasing me all my life. How come all these people around me know about this other dimension—even Fred?” Growing frantic, she searched the doctor’s face for answers. “Why me, what do they want? Why Saddiq? What the hell is this shit!” she said, finally losing it and shouting.

  “Close the door,” the doctor said, his gaze locked with hers. “Saddiq lost his only brother—Hassan was thrown over the train tracks seconds before a subway train pulled into the station … just like you lost your parents, and Fred lost his sister. Everyone we’ve found who can phase in and out of the dreamscape, at will, has this connection. Loss and death. But we’ve never seen you—and those like you—actually bring tangible items back from the dreamscape. We also learned, quite by accident, that there’s a viral, energy element on that side of consciousness that needs policing.”

  “The Watchers.” Cassandra’s eyes widened as her voice dipped low in horror.

  “Yes. We need people like you and Saddiq to keep those nasty little creatures that come out of nightmares at bay. As you noticed from the demise of your own parents, those insidious elementals can cause great harm. Only dream knights, as I like to call them, can exterminate them in both the waking and sleeping states of consciousness. That’s what we need you—”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  Growing paranoid, she folded the card away into her pocket.

  “Researchers,” the doctor said calmly.

  “I don’t know much, but sounds like something the government would like to get their hands on … people’s heads. Suck out their dreams. Make ’em kill at will without a trace. Wouldn’t be to save little kids, or to prevent major catastrophes, would it?”

  “While I’ll honestly tell you that this does have definite military application, this is way too important as far as technological breakthroughs to—”

  From nowhere she drew a huge, silver automatic. “I’m out,” she said quietly, glimpsing the shadows beginning to crawl from beneath his desk.

  She opened the door, reaching for it blindly and slipped out, then turned and ran. Halfway down the hallway, barrel-chested orderlies brandishing Uzis blocked her escape. She backed into a room, shot out the window, and jumped, her coat billowing out behind her the five stories to the ground. She silently landed on one foot and one knee, then got up and ran … .

  “Miss Hubbard, Miss Hubbard,” a soothing female voice said. “The doctor can see you now.”

  Cassandra’s eyes snapped open. No gun-toting orderlies, no Watchers. Perspiration soaked her. “I … I have to go to the ladies’ room. Okay?”

  The nurse gave her a questioning look, and Cassandra stared deeply into her eyes. Then it hit her like a ton of bricks, the recognition clear—the nurse was one of the blondes sitting with the truckdriver, plying him with meds masquerading as drinks. The doctor, playing bartender psychologist, was the one that was probably working for the military and testing different outcomes. She had to get out of there, had to find Saddiq.

  “I really have to go,” Cassandra said more calmly, playing along.

  “It’s right down the hall,” the nurse said, her tone skeptical. “And, why don’t you let me hang up your coat?”

  “No, that’s okay—it’s cold in here,” Cassandra said. Then she spun. “Oh, damn! I gotta feed the meter, too. Be right back.”

  She ran like someone was chasing her, down the hall, down the steps, out into the ancient ivy-walled campus, then jumped in front of the first cab she saw to stop it.

  “You crazy?” the cabbie shouted.

  “Yeah, my sister’s having a baby—gimme a break and take me to her job.” She flashed a wad of cash, and the cabbie begrudgingly accepted her as a fare.

  Cassandra’s leg wouldn’t stop bouncing the whole ride back across midtown to the Chinese food place where she knew Saddiq worked. She paid her fare, jumped out and ran inside to the takeout counter, shoving herself to the front of the line.

  “I’m not ordering, just looking for someone,” she told disgruntled customers. “Yo, is Saddiq here?” she yelled, trying to get someone’s attention in the back.

  “On a delivery, lady,” a fry chef hollered.

  “Where? I need to find him now.”

  “You wait till he come back; we don’t get into no personal shit up in here!”

  A busboy passed her with a load of garbage-strewn dishes in his tub. “Yo, sis, be cool up on the man’s gig, feel me? Damn.”

  Cassandra followed the busboy. “Tell me where he went?” She grabbed his arm, not caring that he was twice her size and had a keloided bicep tattoo that looked like it was etched in prison. “It’s a matter of life or death. Hit him on his two-way. I don’t care. Just tell him Cassandra from the box company has an urgent message for him.”

  The busboy looked both ways, and kept clearing tables so his bosses didn’t take notice. He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I ain’t know it was all like dat—who’s trying to do a drive-by on my boy?”

  Her mind scavenged whatever she could, looking both ways like a thief to camouflage not having a legit answer. “Po-Po,” she finally said, knowing that would be enough to get her to Saddiq.

  The busboy nodded. “You go wait over by the chairs like you’re ordering. I’ll hit my boy on the chirp and let him know. Good looking out, sis.”

  She nodded, too rattled to do more and found a menu, not reading it but watching. Soon the busboy came back to her and handed her a slip of paper listing an address.

  “He said he’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  The pair exchanged a nod and she was gone.

  Cassandra hurried the six blocks to the building, arriving nearly out of breath. Saddiq was waiting for her in the lobby, pacing.

  “You came up on my job, sis? It better be real important, yo. I’m serious. I don’t even know you like that.”

  She dug in her coat pocket and showed him the card. Her voice was low and lethal, her eyes hard. “Black Dragon—what the fuck you mean you don’t know me like that?”

  He looked at her, and then looked at the card, all the hardened street scowl slowly melting away. “You work for Dr. Rehnquist?”

  “No,” she said between her teeth, shoving the card back into her pocket. “You don’t remember?” She walked closer to him. “Take me to a hotel room. Now.”

  He looked at her with a sheepish grin then ran his tongue over his bottom lip as he slid his palm across his jaw, considering. It was the first time outside the dream that she’d seen his perfect, white teeth.

  “Damn, I mean, all this time I been delivering grub up to the box company … I ain’t know it was like that, fine as you are, but, uh, I’m down. Gonna have to tell the job—”

  “Listen,” she hissed in a fierce whisper. “I want you to get in the bed with me and go to sleep.”

  “Say what? You trippin’, shorty …’cause if I—”

  “At lunchtime, you went to sleep in between runs while waiting on them to pack orders, dozed in the chair, right? You saved a cargo of young children … I mean the Black Dragon did. I was there, shooting my ass off, and you dropped down off a building, and …”

  She watched him walk away and then come back to her, his expression stricken.

  “Rehnquist send you here to fuck with my head? Huh?” Saddiq leaned down into her face. “I didn’t push my brother off that damned platform, and I already did my bid. I’m out, I’m clean—”

  “I know,” she said quietly, touching the center of his chest through his coat. “I know. So does Rehnquist. But he gives you meds, right … so you don’t remember.”

  Saddiq looked away.

  “Don’t take the meds this afternoon. Come to a hotel with me and fall asleep. You can’t go back to your apartment and I can’t go back to mine. They’re after us. We can do something that only a few people can do—I know it. Something isn’t right with the doctor. I went there today and fell asleep in the waiting room and the Watchers … they came out of nowhere in his office, all around him.”

  “You can see ’em, too?” Saddiq whispered, raking his fingers across his hoodie so hard that it peeled back showing the immaculate, zigzag cornrow pattern of his hair.

  “Yes,” Cassandra said. “Over on the other side you told me to get educated. On this side, I’m gonna tell you to do the same.”

  Saddiq nodded. “Sho’ you right.”

  “Tell me about Fred … the security guard in our building.” She looked up at Saddiq.

  “Don’t know him, really. Brother seems cool. He’s in the program. Had a loss, like everybody does who’s in it. Used to be a CO up at Riker’s, but had to come out from the stress. He was the only one, other than you, who saw ’em.”

  “He was up there with you at Riker’s?” She shook her head. “Sent you to Rehnquist, right?”

  “Yeah,” Saddiq said slowly.

  “Just like he was the only one who heard me screaming in the fire escape when the Watchers came right after I woke up.” She folded her arms over her chest. “I smell a setup. Scared us right toward Rehnquist.”

  “For what, though? Who wants to live like a got-damned freak? I hate this shit—I want somebody to cure it!” Saddiq’s voice was low and intense, and his eyes had a desperate quality to them as they searched her face. “That’s why I was going to Doc. He’s the only one who believed what I saw, the only one who … I want it to stop.”

  “I do, too, but there’s a reason beyond just being bleeding heart helpful that he’s doing these studies.” She held Saddiq’s arms, her voice frantic as she tried to get him to understand. “Think about it, man. Think. Rehnquist has been dipping into people’s heads, and in dreams you can be whatever you want … you don’t have to be fat, bald, old, slow—whatever. You can fly, do any amazing shit you want. Your imagination is the limit. But none of his other experiments have been able to do what you and I did.”

  Hope wafted through her as Saddiq’s expression became less defensive.

  “Rehnquist must be looking for more people who can see them. These ‘researchers’ are surely manipulating the energy of nightmares. Just like they do with the fantasies that make us superheroes on the other side. But listen, Saddiq, what if they can’t control the nightmares as carefully as they can normal fantasies? And maybe that’s what we’re for, you feel me? I’m serious … maybe we’re the cleaners, the safety valve, when nightmares get out of hand and all that negative energy breeds more Watchers.” Cassandra produced the business card for Saddiq again. “Remember this? I left my sweater on the other side; you gave me a business card to the doctor’s office, which I brought through to the real world side. See? We have the power to bring things back and forth from the dreamscape to reality and vice-versa! Others don’t have that power. It was all over the doctor’s face and he as much as said so during my chair nap.”

  “Aw’ight, so what? How you get paid from that shit, sis? Why would a big money cat worry about dreams and psycho shit? What’s in it for him?”

  Cassandra wiped her palms down her face. “Imagine the possibilities if they controlled someone with our powers on the other side. A super-assassin or commando, who could kill anyone, do whatever madness they wanted—in dreamtime. Then that assassin wakes, and is untraceable, untrackable.” She pressed the card into his palm to make him feel it and to drive home her point. “This could have been a piece of C-4 left at an embassy, a courthouse, the home of a foreign head of state … by the Black Dragon.”

  “Oh … shit …”

  She nodded. “We have got to get out of here, find a place to sleep, and—”

  “Hit the fucking bar.”

  No, she didn’t know this man from a can of paint, but didn’t have to. As far as she was concerned, they were partners for life on the run. He had no family and she sure didn’t. If they could bring things through the dreamscape, that meant they could imagine cash, phony IDs, and whatever else was necessary to live on the edge, to live anonymously, and to live well doing so.

  Soon they might learn how to just wake up in the right place and at the right time, always in a new country before being discovered. As long as they were around each other, the Watchers backed off. But they could still feel them—lurking, measuring their chance to strike. Then it would be time to drift off and snuff some really bad shit.

  Cassandra had long gotten over her squeamishness about dropping a worthless piece of shit or twisted, murdering bitch on the other side. It had never bothered Saddiq at all. Her old boss Stan the child molester was one of the first to die.

  Saddiq looked at his platinum Rolex, turned off the alarm, and stared out the window of the Ritz Carlton, London. “Baby,” he said, stroking her back, allowing his fingers to play against her damp skin. “I think we need to get out of here. We’ve been asleep for almost ten hours. Got a bad vibe.”

  She nodded and kissed his chest, dozing, a black dragon tattoo now gracing her knuckles and twinning up her wrist. “Let’s go somewhere warm this time, though.”

  Didn’t matter. They could go anywhere they dreamed. A lonely, pristine beach in Thailand, Trinidad at Carnival. Those monsters, the Watchers, died by the thousands on the other side, and the evil scum who spawned and fed them would never wake up, safe and snug in their beds … .

  TRICKSTER

  by STEVEN BARNES and TANANARIVE DUE

  The American came during the time when the rains shunned us; when the grass withered, the drinking pools grew shallow and the Earth revealed its age.

  He came in one of the fleet, five-footed Spiders that gleam in the sun. I have painted the day of his arrival on the wall of our sacred cave, where we return once a year to sing new songs to our ancestors. Like my father and his father, I visit Shadow Cave. There, beneath its vast ceiling and beneath the eyes of my dead fathers, I paint the cave walls with pigments of ground clay with eland fat.

  My name is Qutb, which means “protects the people.” I am an old man now. My head holds my people’s story, which I paint on the cave walls. I draw natural things: animals hunted, raindrops fallen upon my face, the eternal walking circle of giraffe and antelope and lion north through what the white men call the Great Rift Valley since before their Great War, and we of the People call home.

  It is difficult to draw the Spiders, because these are not of nature: rounded backs like silver tortoises, yet as big as a hut where even six people could sleep without touching. Five legs racing across the plain faster than a cheetah. White men use Spiders in place of their legs, or the boxes with wheels men rode when I was a boy. It is rare to see a white man walking.

  But this stranger was not a white man. His face was shaped somewhat like mine, but he had orange-red dusk fire hidden underneath the night in his skin. He stood a full head taller than me, with a runner’s body, although our children could outrun him. He wore pieces of glass held by wire over his eyes, and a white shirt beneath a sand-colored coat.

  He said his name was Cagen. It sounds like Kaggen. This is the Trickster. The Mantis of our stories, he who loves eland well. It is in Kaggen’s honor that I use the fat of his best beloved in Shadow Cave.

  He did not speak the People’s tongue, a proper language. But he did speak the Swahili, the tongue of those who lived far to the east. I speak that and the tongue of the Kikuyu, who dwell in the great villages and valleys much closer to where People roam, so we were able to understand each other. Cagen’s head was filled with the place called America, and he called us his “brothers” because of the night in his skin, but to us he was just another white man. Our children laughed at him and with him.

  He offered our children trinkets and sweets, the men tobacco and knife metal, gave my second wife Jappa cloth for a dress. He asked me if I had sons and I said that once I had, but they had gone to the great villages, and I had never seen them again. He said he wanted to learn our stories and knowledge of the plant people. He said his head was empty and he wished knowledge. Empty head! Our children called him Empty Head.