“It didn’t work!” Tasmae paced the small cave, her fists clenched. She rounded on Joshua. “Why didn’t it work?”
“I don’t know!” He’d been singing almost nonstop for the past half hour. His fingers were sore from the activity after so many days without practice, and he could feel the tightness in his throat. He took a deep breath, forced himself to relax. “Maybe it can’t be that easy.”
“Does Deryl know we’re here?”
“I tried to get him that message. Making up stuff on the fly isn’t as easy as it sounds.”
She stalked to where the weapons cabinet had once stood, turned and stalked back. He wished she would stop. He felt like he was watching a panther, with no glass wall to protect him if she decided to pounce. His neck reminded him of her strength.
“Does Alugiac know we’re here?” She demanded.
“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes trying to banish the fear that thought brought. “We need allies.”
“How? So far, you have called up imaginary creatures and disembodied voices.”
“And Lattie.”
“Who tried to distract us from saving Deryl!”
“Okay!” He jumped up to snap in her face. She froze in surprise, and despite her weapons and her status, she suddenly seemed very young and vulnerable.
He backed away from her and brought the keytar in front of him. “Okay. I don’t think we can come at Deryl directly—maybe that’s good if that will put us in Alugiac’s sights. And I can call people—I just have to be more careful.”
“You should have a weapon,” She said. Her voice trembled just a bit.
He held up the keytar. “I have a weapon. I just need to use it better. This helps because there’s a lot of music on Earth that doesn’t have words, but has very specific associations—like the Twilight Zone theme. Certain sounds, too; things I can’t recreate with my voice but can with the keytar. It also helps me when I’m changing words. Staying with the melody and rhythm adds to the power of the song, but I can play the melody first while I check the scanning without influencing anything—I think.”
“You think?”
He nodded, his fingers playing scales, making adjustments. Just feeling the plastic of the keys reassured him. “I think I know what to do. We need an ally, and it has to be someone Deryl can trust, too. If he’s really trapped in illusions made from his memories, like we think the riddle said, there’s only one person I know who can help us.” He closed his eyes, pictured his fiancée clearly in his mind, and played the chorus of the song he’d written to propose to her not a week ago:
I trust your heart
I believe your words
I really need your help now girl
We need to save Deryl, please do your part
So I can believe your words
And trust your heart.
“Joshua?” Came a voice from the narrow entrance of the cave.
“In here!” He called, warning himself to stay cool. She’s no more real than Lattie was, he told himself firmly.
Still, when he saw her at the entrance, his heart leapt. “Hey, beautiful!”
But instead of smiling in return, her eyes narrowed. “Joshua, is that you?”
His smile faded into confusion. “What’s wrong, ‘Ko, baby?”
“Where are your bandages?” She asked as walked straight to him, running her hands searchingly over his throat. He could feel the tension in her fingers and in her shoulders as he set his hands over them. It still felt so good to touch her.
“What’re you talking about, ‘Ko?”
“Where are your bandages? Where are your scars? He slit your throat, Joshua; I saw him do it. I thought you were going to die, and the doctors said you’d never sing—” She stopped, suddenly noticing the cave room with its pillows and abundance of plants. “Oh, buh! This is a dream!” She relaxed, though her smile was sad. “Will you sing for me again?”
“He what? No, babe, he…” A horrible idea occurred to Joshua. He’d somehow summoned the Sachiko from Deryl’s illusions. He placed his hands over his fiancée’s and drew them from his neck, fighting back the feeling of loss. He guided her to sit next to him. “It’s not a dream, babe. What I’m going to tell you is pretty unbelievable, but I swear to you, it’s true, and it’s real. And if we’re going to help Deryl, I need you to believe me.”
He explained everything, starting with Tasmae and ending with Sachiko’s arrival in the cave. Her lips curled into a half-smile. “So this is the Twilight Zone? Funny. It’s more colorful than I’d expected.”
Joshua chuckled with relief. Illusion or not, this Sachiko had a lot in common with the real one, including her quirky humor and ability to stay calm and focused no matter what the situation. He knew he’d made the right choice summoning her. They could trust her.
That same calm, however, made Tasmae suspicious. “You’re taking this very well, considering that means you are also an illusion.”
She shrugged. “It explains a lot. I can only remember very specific—and none too fun, mind you—snatches of time, all at SK-Mental and all involving Deryl. All pretty horrific. I’m actually glad to know the real me’s alive and fine in another dimension. Besides, if I’m an illusion, then that means my Joshua is, too.” She reached out to touch his face. She ran her hands over the smoothness of his neck again. “I’d rather you were the real one,” She whispered, then her voice strengthened. “But if the real Deryl’s caught in that illusion, then he’s in big trouble. He’s in the maximum intensity ward, he alternates between rocking and chanting that nothing is real, sobbing over what he’s done to you, and raving at someone named Alugiac—and they’ve brought in some doctor—Alouicious Acker—who wants to lobotomize him.”
Tasmae’s eyes rolled into the back of her head and she swooned.
The two eased her onto the cushions. Almost immediately, she struggled to sit up.
“Just relax a minute,” Joshua urged. “You can make plans lying down just as easily as sitting up, you know.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shock you,” Sachiko said.
“It wasn’t that,” Tasmae said. “Deryl. Something’s happened.” Suddenly, tears flooded her eyes. “Alugiac’s winning. Deryl’s starting to believe whatever illusion Alugiac has set up for him. I’m losing Deryl, I can feel it!”
*
“Deryl, look! How sad.” Clarissa stopped and pointed at a father trying to console a little girl of about six.
Joshua and Sachiko were in town for their visit, and they’d decided to go to the street carnival. They were passing by the arcade area when they saw the father trying unsuccessfully to comfort the sobbing child. Clarissa, already feeling the mothering instinct, ran up to them to ask what was wrong. It turned out the father had been trying to win one of the large animals at the ball toss, and had finally had to call it quits.
“The game’s gotta be rigged,” he said to Deryl and Joshua as the ladies tried to comfort the girl. “I know it was probably the wrong thing to do, but her mom and I split up and I don’t get to see her much now, and she loves white Bengal tigers, and I just—you know, wanted to be a big shot for her. I played varsity, you know? Now we have to go home early.”
“No you don’t,” Joshua said as he quietly pressed a some twenties into the man’s hand. “Go ride the rides. Eat too much cotton candy. Have fun.”
Deryl, meanwhile, was looking at the stand the father had pointed to, and his eyes narrowed as he watched the bored yet smug look on the carnie’s face as he counted out his earnings. “First, you’re going to win your daughter a tiger.”
“I told you, it’s gotta be rigged.”
Deryl crouched down in front of the sniffling girl. “Know what I think?” He told her softly. “I think your Daddy just needs one more shot—and maybe a kiss for luck. What do you think?”
“We don’t have any more money,” She sniffed.
“Sure you do.” He reached up behind her ear and pretended to pull a five dollar bill from it. “I’ll bet it’s lucky.”
The father clearly thought it was a bad idea, but his daughter looked at him with such hopeful eyes that he took the money and went back to the stand. Deryl and the others followed. The man behind it smiled and his eyes shone greedily.
“Back again! This is your lucky day, I can feel it! Your daddy loves you very much, little girl!” He almost shouted the words with plastic enthusiasm.
Deryl looked at the five baskets sitting at angles. “Which one should he aim for?” He asked the little girl.
“That one, Daddy!” She pointed. “It’s lucky, I know it!”
“Sweetie, there’re no guarantees,” the man warned.
“You’ll do it!” She said, and kissed his cheek for luck.
He sighed, took the ball and aimed at the basket. They all watched intently.
He threw.
Deryl concentrated.
The ball sailed in, landed and stayed.
“A winner!” the carnie said disbelievingly, then spoke with more enthusiasm as he heard the girl’s screams of joy and the cheers of the others. “That’s right, ladies and gentlemen! A winner, right here! Congratulations, little lady,” he said with a false smile as he passed the tiger to her. He puzzled over the baskets while the father and child gave the couples enthusiastic hugs and heartfelt thanks and went on their way.
“Isn’t that bear cute?” Clarissa asked, and Deryl laughed.
“Still a ball left,” he said and threw it into a basket without bothering to aim…physically, anyway.
“And we have another winner!” the man at the carnival stand shouted enthusiastically, though his eyes couldn’t hide his surprise.
Clarissa squealed and clapped as he passed over a squishy four-foot velour bear.
“Where are we going to put that?” Deryl teased.
“We’ll find a place,” clarissa replied smoothly as she hugged the bear. Then she bumped her shoulder against him. “Besides, if you didn’t want it in our apartment, why’d you win it for me?”
“I figured it was another one of those craving-things.” Clarissa jabbed her elbow into him. She still wasn’t showing and hadn’t had much morning sickness or cravings, but that didn’t stop him from making jokes. “Seriously, I just wanted to wipe that smug smile off that guy’s face.”
“Hey, let’s go ride some rides,” Sachiko said.
They got to the Round Up first, and the person running the ride wouldn’t let them take the bear on, so Deryl volunteered to stay with it. Joshua elected to wait with him, and the girls gave the man their tickets and got on. Soon the ride was whirling in a circle and tilting and they could hear their wives’ laughter among the shouts and screams of the other riders. Deryl set the bear in front of him and leaned his elbows on the temporary fence. Joshua mimicked his posture.
“So how long have you been able to do that again?” He asked casually.
“Do what?” Deryl bluffed.
“You’re not fooling me, buddy. There are going to be quite a few more winners at that game now, aren’t there?”
Joshua looked at him directly, but Deryl couldn’t meet his eyes. He stared at the whirling bodies in the spinning circular cage. “I just evened the odds,” he murmured.
“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it. Clarissa calls ‘Ko a lot. She’s worried about you. You are taking your medication?”
“Ask her. She counts my pills every night.” He meant to say it lightly, but it sounded bitter even to him.
“I’m asking you.”
“Fine.” Deryl turned to confront his friend. “Tell me straight up: Are you real?”
Now it was Joshua’s turn to drop his eyes. He swore softly. “Deryl, what do you think?”
“I’m asking you.”
“How am I supposed to prove to you this is real?”
“Because…” Deryl started then stopped. How could he explain? Sometimes, he heard snatches of Joshua’s songs—on the radio, in the elevator—and the world around him would seem so fake, so wrong. “Because I trust you. Just be straight with me.”
Joshua sighed. “Seriously, I don’t know how to prove it. The philosophers have been trying to do that for thousands of years. It’s the whole ‘brain in a vat’ conundrum.”
Or psyche in the Netherworld, Deryl’s mind whispered. He tried to hide his disappointment and his frustration. It had been over two months, and he still continued to experience blackouts and holes in his memory. Still, he had encounters with Tasmae, where he’d meet her, love her, lose her, often by her being killed in some kind of battle that he’d refused to take part in. Still, he felt the Master’s whisperings, trying to lure him back to his training. Now, he was having odd visions of two planets crashing, of the inhabitants falling into a trance, of power surging through him as he reached out, becoming large as a solar system. Through it all, that voice in his head, usually accompanied by pain, insisted none of this was real.
Yet somehow, he managed to get everything done he needed to, whether he remembered doing it or not, and no one had noticed anything unusual in his behavior. Except, it seemed, Clarissa. He’d hoped his friend, who had guided him through so much in the past, would be able to advise him now.
“You know, you were more help at SK-Mental,” he groused.
Joshua snorted. “Dr. Acker helped you. You wouldn’t be here, alive, sane, married, and about to be a father, if it weren’t for him. All I did was give you a Band-Aid until he came along. Dr. Malachai was right about that much. Why do you think I chose music?”
“You were a terrific psychologist,” he told him earnestly. “You still could be.”
But Joshua shook his head. “I’m a musician. Want me to sing you sane?”
He felt a sudden urge to tell him yes. He rubbed at the base of his skull. “That’s not funny. You left because of me.”
Joshua snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself, dude. Psychology was always my backup plan. But if you need a second opinion, I can ask my dad.”
Deryl turned back to the ride. It had started to slow down. “No, I’m handling it. I am taking my medication. It just doesn’t work as well as we’d hoped. But I’m not ready to have someone cut out half my brain.”
“It’s not half; it’s just a small area that’s causing you problems. And you were fine for the first three years after it was essentially disconnected. It’s natural to be afraid—I’d be—but you’ve got to think about the consequences. Do you love Clarissa?”
Deryl closed his eyes and nodded. The only time he felt whole was with her. Reality didn’t matter. She did.
“Then think about what’s best for her—and the baby, capice? Say, did you take care of that phone caller?”
About a month ago, someone had started calling their house. When Clarissa answered, he made obscene suggestions, and she’d hung up furious and upset.
Then one evening Deryl answered, and the caller warned that he’d better protect her because he was coming. He’d felt cold terror wash over him because the voice sounded like the Master’s.
He’d mentioned the call to Joshua, but not the voice, even though he craved reassurance. If it really was the Master’s voice, then this wasn’t real, was it? Or was his twisted mind making an already sinister call even more insidious?
The ride had ended and everyone was exiting. He didn’t have time to get into this now.
“They couldn’t trace the call, so there wasn’t much the police could do. We changed the number, and I walk her to and from the gym. Don’t tell Clarissa he called me—she’s worried enough as it is, and I don’t want her risking the baby.”
“Clarissa isn’t like your aunt, Deryl. She’s strong and healthy. She’ll be all right.”
“I’m not taking any chances.” In fact, he hadn’t wanted to come to the carnival at all, and Clarissa had finally called her doctor to have her reassure him that it was all right for her to ride some rides. Now, as she and Sachiko hurried over to them, he couldn’t help but give her an anxious smile. “Have fun?” He asked, though he really wanted to ask if she was okay.
She knew him too well. “Yes, and I’m fine! You’re such a big worrywart. Besides, I had an OB right next to me the whole time, right Dr. Sach?”
“Absolutely!” Sachiko laughed. “Let’s find something we can do together.”
“Like the carousel—that’s more Deryl’s speed!”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Deryl told his wife as he slipped an arm around her waist. “Let’s go do the Tunnel of Love.”