The Night Mayor by Kim Newman

lost.
    Trefusis wouldn’t like it, but if Susan refused to go indream, she was sure Juliet would support her. The marshal’s favoured plan – Susan gathered – was that she should go into Daine’s Dream, as herself but with a few improvements, and then rip the sub-universe apart until she found the fugitive and could tase him awake. Susan knew that wouldn’t work, but also that she would never be able to explain to Juliet why an amateur enforcer would have a better chance indream than a skilled public servant.
    Everybody thought they knew what it was like to be a Dreamer, but everybody too readily confused passive dreaming with creative Dreaming. This went beyond a legal technicality, Susan realised. Really, there were only three people in it: Daine, Tunney and herself. They were all Dreamers, and if Daine wasn’t brought back to Princetown, things would go badly for all Dreamers everywhere. She didn’t have to like it, any more than she had to like being Vanessa Vail, but there was no way she could evade the responsibility without racking up a seed of guilt that would sprout and eat at her Dreams. If she didn’t remainder the dragon, she could forget her chance of freeing herself of the D-9000.
    ‘Susan, we can stop all this here,’ said Juliet, leaning forward. The Yggdrasil andrew’s eyes slowly opened. ‘You can say no.’
    ‘Fantasies can be dangerous. I’m used to that. I can’t explain yet, but I have to dream Daine’s Dream. It’s… a professional point.’
    Juliet understood that. Of course, Susan thought, the marshal had probably been inspired to get into Enforcement by dreaming
Vanessa Vail
– by
being
Vanessa Vail – at an impressionable age. Dreamers were for ever the vanguard, or maybe for ever the forlorn hope.
    ‘Okay, let’s do it. It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.’
    ‘Discussion over?’ asked Trefusis. ‘Good. We’ve a tank prepared.’
    Dr Groome wiped the view and started projecting mental images into it. ‘You’ll need some externals to tap you properly into the Dream. A clothe, a hairstyle, some props.’
    Dr Groome projected a mannequin and roughed out a tailored suit. The psych was surprisingly inventive. Susan particularly liked the hat, which was perhaps a touch mannish for her chosen persona but passed thanks to its raffish qualities.
    The psych smiled. ‘I don’t know much about flatties, but historical fashions are
my
pash. I’ve a collection of antique accessories. Yggdrasil can encode them into your indream simulacrum. The least we can do is dress you for effect. Tunney went in looking like a Redevelopment reject.’
    ‘And I’ve been thinking about guns,’ said Juliet. ‘You’ll need to think up something.’
    The mannequin faded, and the snips came back. In the view, more actors died.

11
    ‘ A ll that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream…’
    Who said that? Edgar Allan Poe? Or Vincent Price?
    In the dark, I dreamed the unpopulated dreams of the amnesiac. I dreamed I was on a case. I was looking for a man named Tom Tunney, a washed-out writer and a deep-dyed drunk. Lissa, his ex-wife, wanted him found and substantial alimony coughed up. She also wanted to know if he was dead or alive, just out of general interest. Nice lady. Body by Bacall, hair like Hedy’s, face from Frances Farmer and penny-bright eyes like a week-old corpse. I had traced Tunney out of the City to a big house with high broken-glass-topped walls where the rich and inebriated pay to have their vices purged. He had been there and gone. The doctors told me he was unimproved by his stay with them. I could believe it. When the informants ran out, I kept on the man’s trail by following the empties. I always keep a bottle in my desk drawer, but this character was putting it away on an industrial scale. With Lissa’s money I picked up his tabs. Bartenders, hoteliers and B-girls kept asking me if I was Tunney’s brother. The resemblance, they said, was amazing. Lissa