Storm Dreams (The Cycle of Somnium Book 1) (17 page)

Brewster stood and pulled Cassidy from the bed. “That’s got you worried again, eh. Philosophy’s no good. Trust me. Sometimes just existing brings its own meaning.”

“How can you be sure you exist?”

Brewster sighed. He blew more smoke, looking thoughtful as if he might draw some meaning from the pipe itself. He slapped Cassidy on the back and opened the door. “I know I exist because I’m the one about to have a drink.”

Cassidy slept little as the next few weeks became an uncalculated game of cat and mouse. The Armada dogged them. Bounty ships followed just out of gun range. The
Nubigena
ran through boxes of ammunition, mostly spilled from the Maxims and Lewis guns. They ran low on food as well, and even Karl complained of all the boiled cabbage they endured because he’d insisted on bringing so much aboard on their last
real
world visit. None of them required food to remain living, but not eating took its toll on their minds. Minds which couldn’t forget needing it.

At the beginning of the third week, Banner stirred for the first time since Gunyin. Cassidy reached his room along with Brewster. Jayce, Karl and Franz were already there. They exchanged glances as the captain blinked his eyes open. “How long?” he asked.

“Weeks,” Cassidy said. “Perhaps a month.”

“Damn,” Banner said, trying to sit up. “How’s our supplies? What’s our status with the Armada?”

They gave him their best guess.

“We’ve got to gate,” he said, forcing himself to a seated position and then to his feet with the aid of the end table. They tried to help, but Banner brushed them away. He staggered in place, eyes wandering and unfocused.

Franz handed him a cane. Banner glared at the young German, but snatched it anyway and hobbled into the main corridor. “I’m hungry,” he said heading for the bridge. “I need a drink.” He took a bowl of cabbage soup and a neat glass of scotch at the helm. He stood at the bow window and rested his hand against the aluminium mullion between the panes of glass. “You’ve done well, boys,” he said, eyes fixed on the drifting clouds and the nothingness between them. “It’s time for a holiday. What do you say?” he said, turning his head, but his body remained rigid and braced against the steel. “Paris? Budapest? London?”

Cassidy spoke for the rest of the crew. “Anywhere with food and no Armada.”

Banner motioned Cassidy over. The others retreated to the back of the control room. He put one hand on Cassidy’s shoulder and locked him with a stern gaze. “You broke us out,” he said, his voice low, but firm. “Whether you stay with us, or go your own way, I’m not forgetting that.” He released Cassidy’s shoulder and turned back to the helm. “Get back over here,” he yelled at the rest of the crew.

Cassidy took up position leaning against his favoured support girder as Franz, Brewster, Jayce and Karl took their old positions. Stay or go? It was hard to imagine going now. Even if death meant oblivion, the Everdream was the enemy in every way now. Besides, he had come to hate it. The whole damned hive-mind made him sick.

Banner smiled his Banner smile, pushing his thin moustache into a straight line. “Berlin,” he said. “I haven’t seen Berlin since the war started.”

Franz and Karl perked up. Cassidy and Brewster exchanged anxious glances. “Where’s your Fokker?” Banner asked Cassidy.

“Gone,” Cassidy said.

Banner nodded. “We better get a new plane. Berlin’s a perfect place.”

***

Cassidy had already forgotten how good it felt to gate into the
real
world, but as the lightning crackled around the ship and the smell of ozone hit him, so did the fresh air. He could smell everything in it. A thousand different odours that ranged from flowers to the exhaust fumes of the engines. The more time he spent in the Twilight, the more he forgot about smells. About bold colours.
Real
tastes.

He had little time to smell the roses, however, as Banner brought them within range of a raging storm. The grey Zeppelin turned into it and Cassidy watched Banner’s visage strengthen as lightning spread across the clouds and the
Nubigena
slipped in like prodigal child returning home. Colour returned to the captain’s cheeks. His eyes lit up with the electric cloud veins, his grey irises almost blue, looking wild and restless. Banner stood straighter. Spun the wheel in sharp, clipped movements, his feet playing at the pedals like those of a grand piano, quickening and sustaining the notes of a Beethoven concerto.

Any other ship would have been torn to pieces by the torrent of wind and beating rain, but Banner
sailed
the storm like riding a tsunami. This was his place of power, and, in it, he was a god. No less a true deity than Karl’s Woden or Poseidon in a raging sea, or Hel in the darkness of the black Underworld.
It’s my storm
, Banner seemed to say with the branching lightning,
and the Nubigena is my lover
.

“God, Cassidy, can you feel it?” Banner said, glancing over.

Cassidy pushed himself away from the girder and stood near him. “I do,” Cassidy said, and almost laughed, because he
could
feel it. It was rocking a lump into his throat that made him want to laugh and cry at the same time. The storm showered him with feral energies that bounced through his body and set his mind aflame. “I feel alive,” Cassidy said, just loud enough for Banner to hear and the captain nodded.

“Damn right, you’re alive. Wait ‘til you smell the food in Berlin. And the smell German girls get when they sweat between their breasts. Milk maids. They have the smoothest skin.”

Cassidy laughed. He’d begun to suspect his dreamer had left love out of the blueprint altogether, but at that moment Cassidy felt something stir. Hope? Or was he just aroused by the thought of meeting
real
women again?

The
Nubigena
broke through the clouds and a rain-soaked Berlin came into view. Franz rose up from his console and peered down at the landscape.

“Franz,” Cassidy said, looking over his shoulder. “Can you really remember Berlin?”

“No,” said Franz, though his smile hadn’t gone away, “but it’s
like
I remember it. It still feels like home.” He turned to Cassidy. “I guess because I want it to be.”

The closer they got, the more it didn’t feel like home to Cassidy, though something about the landscape tugged at his chest. Something so familiar, but foreign, it irritated him just to look at the skyline. “Won’t they notice us?” Cassidy asked.

Banner shrugged. “Yes and no. Even though the ship is
real
, they’ll just register it as something that belongs. They just won’t know why, or who we are. That’s the advantage of
real
objects that spend too much time in the Twilight.”

They landed, mooring themselves with an anchor this time and tied off to stakes they hammered into the hard ground. “Brewster,” Banner said, “stay with the ship. I want Franz and Karl to see Berlin.”

Brewster answered with a salute and got back on board. He hadn’t seemed keen on exploring the streets of the German capitol anyway.

“Cassidy,” Banner yelled over the roar of the rain. “There’s an airbase about half a mile east. Grab whatever looks best to you and fly it out without them seeing you. You can do that with a machine the same way you make yourself unseen.” He tossed Cassidy a roll of marks. “Leave this in someone’s office who looks important enough to take it.”

Cassidy nodded, stuffed the money in his jacket and started walking. He hadn’t noticed it before, but the rain didn’t soak him as it did the few people he passed, huddled in oversized coats and hoods. The water ran down his uniform, but didn’t penetrate, or didn’t care to penetrate, as if it were headed for the ground and felt no need to bother with him. So even to the weather he was a shadow, Cassidy grimaced.

He trotted across wet grass. At least the storm energies still flowed through him. Even with all the apprehension built up from walking in
enemy
territory, his spirits remained high. He was looking for a new fighter. Banner hadn’t cared to ask what had happened and, God willing, he never would.

The airfield proved to be a large one. Probably the main testing ground for new aerocraft. Cassidy strode past the guards and through the checkpoint without even an eyebrow raised. He concentrated on not being seen. Remain intangible. I’m a ghost, he thought and couldn’t help the panic the thought brought with it. His heart quickened. He knew he wasn’t really a Yank anyway. These Germans weren’t really his enemies, and for all that mattered, he’d never been in a single battle of The Great War. Still, it lay in shattered pieces throughout his consciousness, the memory of the carnage, the fires, the sky full of blasting fighters. He couldn’t help the dark sense that he was creeping into the demon’s mouth, and while making it through the entrance meant he had passed the teeth, it might close at any moment.

The grounds crawled with airmen, though most non-pilot officers seemed to prefer the inner warmth of their offices over cold Berlin rain.

A group clustered around someone a hundred yards off. Cassidy approached and noticed a single pilot in their midst. He seemed to be trying to wave them off as they pushed pieces of paper in his face. Papers that wilted as the rain soaked through, all but disintegrating in their hands.

The airman shouted at them. His German sounded savage, but pained and Cassidy understood every word. It disturbed him every time he heard German spoken. He must have been the dream of a spy. Perhaps his dreamer had walked this very airfield, stealing information on aerocraft and the highly prized secrets of German technology. Field agent? Pilot? French dreamer? British? American would be nice, though he knew they’d only recently entered the war.

The group dissipated with a final shout from the airman, though they continued to yell praises of adoration, even as the group bled away into the rain and mud.

As they cleared, Cassidy saw the tired, strained look of the man’s features, though they were all but eclipsed in shadow. His face was drawn. His arms hung limp. Shoulders drooped. A scarlet stain showed through the white bandage around his head.

“You,” Richthofen said, as Cassidy approached. No one had regarded Cassidy as anything more than a strange breeze. Why could the Baron see him no matter how invisible Cassidy made himself? “Am I dreaming, or what in God’s name are you doing in my sweet Berlin?”

Cassidy dug his hands into his pockets. He shrugged over as if huddling from the cold, although he didn’t actually feel it much. “You look tired.”

Richthofen turned and trudged down the airfield. Pilots and ground crew moved away as he scowled ahead. “They think I’m a damned god,” he spat. “They think I can…” He sighed. “I’m only here now in Berlin, instead of where I’m supposed to be, because they want to pin another ridiculous medal on my chest. I used to have a silver cup made for each pilot I downed. How mad is that?” He stopped and crushed a spent cartridge into the damp ground with his heel. “I’m broken, Cassidy. My mind,” he said, pointing to his skull. “It doesn’t work right anymore. They think I can fight for weeks without sleep and shoot without bullets and fly without fuel. They’re insane, and I’m spent.”

He stopped and took heavy breaths as if he were going to cry, or scream, or shoot people. Instead, Richthofen turned down to a dark section between two buildings where the overhanging roof cut off some of the rain. He leaned against the wall and slammed a fist into the grey brick. “I’m not their knight anymore. I’m a pawn and I want to stop.”

“You saved our asses,” Cassidy said, not knowing what else to say at the moment. “Banner’s fine. He’s weak, but he’s flying again.”

Richthofen gave a slow nod. “Ya. I meant to ask. That’s good.” He raised his head and a slight smile peeked through his hard features. “That was a good fight, no? I enjoyed it.”

“How do you do spend so much time away?” Cassidy asked. “I know they miss you?”

Richthofen broke out a cigarette. He offered Cassidy one, and they both lit up. “Time is different. I spend days drinking in the Twilight. I return, and a few hours have gone by. Banner says it’s because of the particular fixed gate I come through. Others don’t work that way. Arcadia is my only peace now.” He took a long drag and blew out smoke. “They are writing a book about me. They say I wrote it, but I don’t write. I don’t have time.” He glared at Cassidy as if he were the German government. “It’s complete scheisse. I’m not that man. No one is that man. He is a myth. An arrogant, egotistical myth.”

Cassidy leaned against the building opposite Richthofen, so that only a few feet separated them. He drew in on his cigarette and breathed out a cloud through his nose. “I’m a half-drawn picture,” he said, half to himself, half to The Red Baron. “I keep waiting for someone to come and tell me something. To look at me and say,
this is who you are. You’re so and so. You live here or there and this has all just been a bad
—” He covered a tremble of his lips with another a drag from the cigarette.

“What are you here for?” Richthofen asked.

“I’m trying to find a new plane.”

Richthofen nodded as if he understood. Not why Cassidy didn’t have a plane, but why he couldn’t go back for the old Fokker. Knew he didn’t want to face Ned and that woman again. “Did he send you with money?”

Cassidy tossed Richthofen the roll of marks.

“Take one,” Richthofen said. “One of the new Fokkers. They’re fast. They turn well. Good guns. I helped design them.”

Cassidy nodded. He turned to go.

“John Cassidy,” Richthofen said.