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  Tanis motioned to Palus with his hand.

  “What?” Palus asked.

  “Show him. Run and jump into my arm. You’re Rachelle, remember? I won’t drop you.”

  “Jump? How?”

  “I don’t know, just run and jump. Make it look real, as a woman might jump. Perhaps feetfirst.”

  “I don’t think Rachelle would run and jump. She’s quite a confident woman, you know. What do you think of sweeping me off my feet instead?” Palus asked. “You could strike a few of the bats that are diving in to eat me, then pluck me to safety while whispering wondrous words into my ear, then battle the beasts with your free arm.”

  Tanis arched an eyebrow. “Very clever. How many beasts would you say I should fell before I sweep you off your feet?”

  “If you were to send a hundred back to hell, she would be very impressed.”

  “A hundred? Before I jump to her rescue? It seems over the top.”

  “Then fifty. Fifty is plenty.”

  Tanis seemed totally taken with the notion. “And what if we were to say that the big one, Teeleh himself, were leading the attack from two sides, leaving me no way for escape? I dispatch fifty easily enough, but then they are too many and all hope seems lost. At the last moment, Rachelle could direct my attack, and with a brilliant reversal I send the big one screeching for his life. The rest flee in disarray. Perfect!”

  “Do you actually want to do it?” Palus asked.

  In answer Tanis suddenly spun uphill. “Don’t worry, my love! I will rescue you!” he thundered, looking at Palus.

  He took three steps and then leaped into the air, executed a spectacular roundhouse, landed on his hands, rolled forward, and came up with two stunning kicks Tom wouldn’t have thought possible in succession.

  Tanis ended his first attack in a back handspring that placed him at Palus’s side. He swept the man from his feet and struck out with another kick.

  The momentum carried both off balance. They tumbled to the ground, rolled once, and came up laughing.

  “Well, I suppose that one needs a bit of practice,” Tanis said. “But you do get the idea. I wouldn’t suggest anything so extravagant with Rachelle the first time you see her. But she will want to be surprised by your inventiveness. To what lengths would you go to choose her, to save her, to love her?”

  Tom couldn’t remotely imagine doing anything bold. Whispering lavish words of woo could prove challenging enough. Had he ever done anything like this before his amnesia? Evidently not, or he would bear the mark of union on his forehead.

  “How did you do that kick?” Tom asked.

  Tanis bounded to his feet. “Which one?”

  Palus held up his hand. “Forgive me, but I must take my leave. Karyl waits.” They bid him well and he headed for the village. The children were playing with several Roush on the other side of the valley, taking turns riding on a pair of the white creatures’backs as they locked wings and swooped down the hill.

  “Which kick?” Tanis asked again.

  “The first one. The one-two-back?”

  “Show me what you mean,” Tanis said.

  “Me? I can’t kick like that.”

  “Then I’ll teach you. A woman loves a strong man. It was once the way men fought, you know. In the histories, I mean. I have created a whole system of hand-to-hand combat. Try the kick. Show me.”

  “Now?”

  “Of course.” Tanis clapped twice. “Show me.”

  “Well, it was something like . . .” Tom stepped forward and executed a roundhouse with a second kick, somewhat similar to the one he’d seen Tanis do. Surprisingly the roundhouse felt . . . simple. He could execute it with far more ease here than in his dreams of the histories. The atmosphere?

  Unfortunately the second kick came up short. He landed on his side and grunted.

  “Excellent! We’ll make a warrior of you yet. I think Rachelle will be very impressed. Would you like to be my apprentice?”

  “At fighting?”

  “Yes, of course! I could teach what very few have learned, even here. We could talk of the histories and discuss ways to deliver a crushing blow to the putrid bats of the black forest.”

  “Well, I would like to learn from you—”

  “Perfect! Come, let me show you the second kick.”

  Tanis was gifted and spared no passion in explaining precisely how to move so as to maximize the number of moves in the air. When he took off, he used his arms as a counterbalance, allowing for surprising maneuvers. Within an hour, Tom was able to execute some of the moves without landing on his head. Short of the movies, no living person could move like this in the histories, surely. There had to be a difference in the atmospheres. Or was it the water?

  The hour wore Tom weak.

  “Enough! Now we talk,” Tanis finally announced, seeing Tom struggle for breath. “We will learn more fighting tomorrow. But now I want to know more about the histories. I would like to know, for example, what kind of weapons they had. I know some, devices that made large sounds and delivered terrible blows to hundreds at once. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

  “A gun?” Alarm rose through Tom’s chest. Tanis really was seriously considering this expedition of his into the black forest. But he couldn’t !It was far too dangerous.

  “What is a gun?” Tanis asked. “I am considering an expedition, Thomas. Such weapons could be a great help. A very great help, indeed. You could go with me, since You’ve been there!”

  He spoke with such enthusiasm and innocence.

  “You don’t know the black forest, Tanis. Entering would be the death of anyone who tried.”

  “But you! You’re alive!”

  “I was lucky. And trust me, no swift kicks would have helped me any. There’s way too many of them. Millions!”

  “Exactly. Which is why they must be defeated!”

  “You have agreed with the others not to cross the river.”

  “A precaution. There are times to leave caution in the valley and strike out for the mountain.”

  “I don’t think this is that time,” Tom said. It occurred to him that he needed some water. He was desperately thirsty. Faint, in fact. They were walking up the hill, and he stopped to catch his breath. “Are you driven by anger against them, or curiosity?”

  Tanis looked at the forest in thought. “Anger, I think. Perhaps it’s not the right time. At the least, I could write a wonderful story about such a thing.” He faced Tom. “Tell me what else you know.”

  This wasn’t going as Michal intended.

  Dizziness suddenly swamped him. He shook his head. “Please, Tanis, you don’t understand.”

  “But I want to!”

  Tom’s world tipped and suddenly began to fade. He dropped to one knee. Felt himself falling. Reached out his hand.

  Black.

  15

  Excuse me, sir?” A hand touched Tom’s shoulder.

  He sat up, half awake. A stewardess leaned over him. “Please bring your seat up.” Kara’s seat was empty. Bathroom.

  Tom tried to clear his mind. “We’re landing?”

  “We’ve begun our descent into Bangkok.” She moved on.

  They were in the cattle class of a Singapore Airlines 747. The yellow-and-blue upholstery that covered the seat directly in front of him was beginning to tear. On the seat-back monitor, a red line showed the flight’s progress over the Pacific. This was the dream.

  The plane smelled like home. Southeast Asia home. Soy soup, peanut sauces, noodles, herbal teas. His mind flashed back over the last eight hours. The flight to Singapore had been a long, sleepless affair during which Kara and Tom had flipped through channels on the small embedded screens and reminisced about their years in Southeast Asia. Years of learning how to be a chameleon, switching skins between cultures.

  Like switching mind-sets between his dreams now. He’d been bred for this.

  “Scoot over, will you?” Kara bumped his knee, and he slid over to the center seat so she woul
dn’t have to climb over him.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living.” She fastened her seat belt. “Talk to me.”

  “About what?”

  “About why ants build nests in the desert. What do you mean, about what?” she whispered. “What did you find out?”

  He stared at her, struck by how much he loved his one and only sister. She came off tough, but her walls were paper thin.

  “Tom?”

  “Nothing.”

  Her left brow arched. “Excuse me? You just slept for five hours. We’re flying across the ocean to Bangkok because of your dreams. Don’t tell me they stopped working.”

  “I didn’t say that. In fact, I think I am learning something. I think I may know why this is happening.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “I think maybe these dreams of what happened in the histories are arming me with information that could stop something terrible in the future. I think maybe Elyon is allowing me to have these dreams. Maybe to stop Tanis from his expedition.”

  She just stared at him.

  “Okay, so maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe I’m supposed to stop something from happening here.”

  “I have $345,000 in my bank account that says it’s the latter. Which is why you were going to find out what in the world we’re supposed to do in Bangkok, remember? And you come back with nothing?”

  “It’s not like that. Believe me, when I’m there, I’m not exactly concerned about my dreams of this place. Trust me. I have bigger problems. Like who I am. Like how this Great Romance thing works.”

  “Great romance? Please don’t tell me you’re actually falling for this girl who healed you.” He’d filled Kara in on the details of his dream before falling asleep.

  The last meeting with Rachelle flooded Tom’s mind. The way she had looked at him, smiled at him, walked by him without a word. His face must have shown something because Kara turned away.

  Kara rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. You can’t be serious.”

  “Actually, she’s very interesting.”

  “Uh-huh. Of course she is. And built like a goddess, no doubt. Did she find you irresistible and smother you with kisses?”

  “No. She walked away. But Tanis, the leader of the tribe, and Palus, her father, are showing me how to win the beauty.”

  “Okay, Tom. Win the beauty. Everyone is entitled to a fantasy now and then. In the meantime, we have a problem here.”

  The plane entered a turn and Kara looked across Tom at Bangkok’s metropolitan skyline, not so different from New York’s .The fairly modern and very exotic city packed nearly eight million people like sardines. Midday. To the east, Cambodia. To the south lay the Gulf of Thailand, and several hundred miles across it, Malaysia.

  “I’m not pretending to know how this works, but You’ve got me scared, Thomas,” she said quietly.

  He nodded. “Me too.”

  She faced him. “No, I mean really. I mean, this isn’t a dream here. For all I know, the other isn’t a dream either, but I can’t have you treating this reality like some dream. You hear me? You know things you shouldn’t know—terrifying things. For all I know, you may be the only one alive to stop it.”

  She had a point. Not that he was treating this 747 like a dream no matter how much it felt like a dream. On the contrary, he was the one who’d convinced her they had to come in the first place. Would he have done that if it were only a dream? No.

  “And no offense,” Kara said, “but you’re starting to look pretty haggard. You have bags under your eyes, and your face is drooping.”

  “Drooping?”

  “Tired. You haven’t had a decent sleep since this whole thing started.”

  True enough. He felt like he hadn’t slept at all. “Okay,” he said. “I hear you. Any ideas?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. I think I can help you. I can keep you focused.”

  “I am focused. We wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t insisted.”

  “No, I mean really focused. As long as you keep tripping between these dreams and realities, you’re bound to keep second-guessing yourself, right?”

  “A little. Maybe.”

  “Trust me, a lot. Right now you probably still think you’re in the colored forest, sleeping somewhere, and that Bangkok is some dream based on the histories of Earth. Well, you’re both right and wrong, and I’m going to make sure you realize that.”

  “You lost me.”

  “I’m going to assume that both realities are real. After all, it is a possibility, isn’t it? Alternate universes, divergent realities, time distortions, whatever. The point is, from here on we assume that both realities are absolutely real. The colored forest really does exist, and there really is a woman there named . . . what’s her name?”

  “Rachelle.”

  “Rachelle. There really is a beautiful babe over there named Rachelle who has the hots for you.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  She held up her hand. “Whatever. You get the idea. It’s all real. You have to do whatever you’re meant to do there, even if it’s nothing more than falling madly in love. I’ll help you with that. Give you ideas, advice. Maybe I can help you land this hot chick.”

  “Assuming I’m interested in landing the first hot chick who winks at me. What do you take me for?”

  “Okay, I won’t call her a hot chick. Does that help? You’re missing the point. It’s real. That’s the point. The colored forest really exists. Everything that happens there is as real as real can be. And I won’t let you forget that. Not one word about it being a dream anymore. We pretend it’s another country or something. The furry bats are real.”

  This last sentence she said a bit loud, and a tall, dark-haired European with a gray mustache looked their way. Kara returned his stare.

  “Can I help you?”

  The man looked away without responding.

  “You see, that’s what we’re going to get. That’s why we have to stick together on this, because you know it, Thomas, this world is real too.”

  The huge plane bounced on the runway, and the overhead bins creaked with the strain of the landing.

  “We really have landed in Bangkok and the Raison Vaccine really is going to be announced tomorrow and you really do know something about that.”

  “So we go a hundred percent in both realities,” Tom said.

  “Not me. You. I just help you do that.”

  It was the most sensible thing he’d heard in forty-eight hours. He wanted to hug her right there. “Agreed.”

  “Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Now that we’re in Bangkok, what do we do?”

  “We find out everything we possibly can about Raison Pharmaceutical.”

  “Okay.” Kara nodded. “How?”

  “We go to their complex outside the city,” Tom said.

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “Then we stop them from shipping any samples or product. Better yet, we stop them from making this announcement tomorrow.”

  “This is where the plan loses focus for me,” Kara said. “I’m not exactly a stockbroker, but I’ve seen my share of new drugs released into the market, and I’ll guarantee you, calling off an announcement would send their stock into a dive. It’s up 100 percent in anticipation of this announcement already.”

  Tom nodded. “And we have to convince them to destroy any existing samples of the vaccine. And the means to make it.”

  “This whole thing is definitely out of focus. Who says we even get past the main gate? This is a high-security facility, right?”

  “I guess we’re going to find out.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “The next time you go back to the other place, you need more information. Period. In the meantime, is there anything you need here that will help you there?”

  She looked at him, dead serious.

  “I told you, Thomas, we treat both . . . what should we call them? Worlds? We treat both worlds, or whatever they are, as if they are real. An
d as a matter of fact, they have to be. So if we need information here, maybe you need information there too.”

  He shook his head. “No, not really. There’s nothing happening there. I mean, I’m lost and I can’t remember anything, but I don’t see how anything here can help that.”

  “I wouldn’t assume there’s nothing happening there. How about this winning the beauty thing? Need some advice on how to land the chick?”

  “Please—”

  “Fine. On how to find true love then?”

  “No.”

  “Just don’t pass gas around her.”

  “You’re not taking this seriously.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing. You have enough idealism to fill a hundred novels. What you need is practical advice. Brush your teeth, wear deodorant, and change your underwear.”

  “Thanks, sis. Priceless advice.” He twisted his mouth in a half-grin. “I think she’s pretty religious.”

  “Then go to church with her. Just make sure it’s not some cult. Stay away from the Kool-Aid.”

  “Actually, we’re all quite religious. I’m pretty sure this Elyon is God.”

  She raised her eyebrow. “You don’t believe in God, remember? Dad believed in God, and it about killed us all. God is where I’d draw the line with this chick. Girl. Keep religion and politics out of it. Better yet, find a different woman.”

  It took them an hour to make their way through Bangkok International Airport and negotiate the rental of a small green Toyota Tercel from the Avis desk. Tom still had his international driver’s permit from the Philippines, and he welcomed the thought of weaving his way through Third World traffic again. Kara spread the map on the dash and took the role of navigator, maybe the more difficult task of the two.

  She traced a line on the map. “Okay, Raison Pharmaceutical is out by the Rama Royal Park, east of town. We go south on the Vibhavadi Rangsit to the Inthara cutoff, east to the Inthara Expressway, and then south all the way to the Phra Khanong district.” She looked up as he pulled into traffic. “Just don’t get us killed. This isn’t Denver.”

  “Have faith.”

  A horn blared and he swerved.