The Dream Catcher

Ruth is a misfit, fated to disrupt the Web, the perfect pattern formed by the psychic joining of the minds of everyone in Ark Three. What will happen to her on New Year's Day when every other fifteen-year-old is given a position in the community according to their vocation? Ruth, it seems, has no talent.

But surprises are in store both for the com- munity inside the protective Dome of Ark Three, and no less for Ruth herself For evidence of other Arks in the world outside leads Ruth and a small band of Ark Three adventurers into an exciting and hazardous journey, and involvement in a dangerous political rescue operation at Ark One, where a giant computer has gained control of the people's minds.

A complete novel in itself, The Dream Catcher also continues the story of Lord Tomi and Rowan of Devil on my Back and is as dramatic and compelling as its predecessor.

'

BOOKS BY MONICA HUGHES

Crisis on Conshelf Ten

Beyond the Dark River

Hunter in the Dark

The Keeper of the Isis Light

The Guardian of Isis

The Isis Pedlar

Devil on my Back

The Dream Catcher

The Dream Catcher

MONICA HUGHES

The Dream Catcher

New York ATHENEUM 1987

An Argo Book

Copyright © 1986 by Monica Hughes

No pan of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing

from the publisher.

Atheneum

Macmillan Publishing Company

866 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022

Composition by Computape (Pickering) Ltd., Great Britain

Printed and bound by Fairfield Graphics, Fairfield, Pennsylvania

First American Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Hughes, Monica. The dream catcher.

SUMMARY: In a future world whose people are clustered

in domed cities, fifteen -year -old Ruth, who possesses

great extrasensory powers and who has received troubling

messages in her dreams from another center of civilization,

accompanies a group to search for the source of the messages.

[ 1. Fantasy] I. Title.

PZ7.H87364Dr 1987 [Fic] 86- 20584

ISBN 0-689-31331-4

The Tyranny of the Web

THREE FLOORS below ground, at eleven-thirty on a fine August morning, school was in session. It was Web Practice time, and in each classroom the students sat silently concentrating, eyes closed, minds reaching out to connect. Each person connecting to the next, each classroom with the other, until every neophyte and adult in Ark Three was linked. The energy level rose. The City hummed with a silent psychic hum. Beyond the dome that enclosed the City a light breeze tossed a meadowful of flowers. A skylark sang in the intensely blue sky. A bumblebee clambered clumsily into the throat of a columbine, searching for nectar. It backed up, dusty with pollen, and flew on a zigzag course to another flower.

Buzz! Buzz! Right in her ear. Ruth squeaked and her eyes flew open. For a moment it seemed to her that she had been Outside. Then she saw the rows of girls, each with folded hands and obediently closed eyes. Bother! I've done it again! She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to empty her mind of everything except her connection with the minds of the girls on either side of her.

“All right, students. Eyes open. Stretch ... and now relax. Let's see how we did.” Teacher Jonson bent over the inked record that spilled out of the potentiometer on her desk. She tore the paper free and held it up for them to see.

A smoothly pulsating line - with a sudden jagged break in it like a spike on a fever chart.

“Ruth gain, wouldn't you know?” Angela muttered.

Charity groaned and rolled her eyes up.

“Quiet, please. Ruth, was it you?”

Ruth's cheeks grew hot. She stared at the plastic top of her desk until it went out of focus and shimmered. “I'm sorry,” she muttered.

Teacher Jonson sighed. “All right. What was it this time?”

“I'm not sure. But it was beautiful. Green and moving colours and a golden light. Sunshine, I think. Then something buzzed in my ear and I jumped. But it was so real ...” She looked at Angela, sitting in the desk next to her.

“Well, it certainly wasn't me,” said Angela virtuously. “I was paying attention to Web Practice.”

“That's enough. Class dismissed. No, Ruth, not you.”

Ruth sank back into her desk and clenched her hands in her lap. Not another row! There had been so many in the last year that she had almost forgotten what it was to be ordinary and unnoticed. But it wasn't my fault, she thought. I do try. I really do. Oh, I wish I were like Patience. She can link her mind to anyone in the Ark, just like that. She'll become a Communicator on New Year's Day, that's certain. Or Faith. Her touch makes you feel better right away. She's sure to be a Healer. Oh, they are lucky to know who they are.

She spread her own hands in front of her, clumsy square- tipped hands, the nails bitten, the cuticles ragged at the edges. Even her hands were awful. What could be worse than being the dumbest kid ever to be born in Ark Three?

“Ruth, do pay attention!”

She jumped and hid her hands in her lap. “Sorry, Teacher Jonson. ''

“My dear, don't look so miserably guilty. I know you don't wander on purpose. I just wish we could get to the bottom of why. It's not easy to form a perfect Web. We've all had to learn, even the Protector. Many times there have been messages so powerful that they broke through an individual's concentration. But there has always been a good reason: the call for a Healer, for instance. Your distractions seen so ...well, so trivial. Colours and sunshine and something buzzing! Do you remember what it was last time?”

“Oh, yes. I was lying on my back somewhere Outside, watching cloud patterns. Then a bird flew by and its shadow made me jump.”

“And the time before?”

“I was among trees, big dark ones, not like the trees we can see from the Dome. It was horribly spooky.”

“And in the last two years there has been no hint of your future strength? Do you see yourself as becoming a Healer? A Communicator? A Teacher?” Ruth shook her head dumbly. “Dear me, it is difficult, isn't it? I don't remember when we've had a student quite like you. When is your fifteenth birthday?”

“September the twenty-third, Teacher Jonson.”

“And less than five months to the New Year. Well, we'll have to try a little harder, won't we? Fight these distractions. Tell yourself that they are only your imagination, that they have nothing whatever to do with the Ark.”

“Yes, Teacher Jonson,” Ruth answered meekly, though she wanted to shout that they were real, that her daydreams were far more important to her than anything that happened in Ark Three.

“Off you go to lunch. Try not to worry. It'll come out right in the end. You'll probably grow out of it.”

But I don't really want to, thought Ruth. If only it didn't interfere with the Web. Oh, why docs life have to be so com- plica ted? She disentangled her long thin legs from her desk, tripped over her feet in the aisle and scurried out of the room. She was going to be late for lunch, but if she skipped washing and hair-tidying she might catch up. She pushed past a bunch of Grade Fivers in the main corridor and caught up with Grade Eight C at the door of the big dining room. How tidy they all were. She smoothed down her hair with her hands and noticed an ink mark on her finger. As she sucked at it guiltily she heard Angela's clear voice from the line ahead. “Our average is lower than any Grade Eight's since the beginning of the Ark, I bet. And it's all her fault. I wish she was in another class.”

“Have you thought about New Year's Day?” She heard Faith answer. “We won't be neophytes any more. We’ll be out of the dormitory and into our own rooms.”

“So.?”

“Three of us are going to have to room with her.”

“Well, it's certainly not going to be me!”

“Nor me! Why can't she behave normally, like the rest of us.?”

Ruth stopped and let the crowd push past her. Then she turned and ran back to central elevators. One stood open and empty. She jumped in and pushed the 'Close' button quickly and kept her finger on it while she made up her mind where to go. There weren't many places where a person could be alone. Being together in a group was what Ark Three was all about, what the Web was about. And she had to be alone. That was one of the things that made her so different.

She could leave the elevator and go to the dormitory, but someone was sure to find her there. The library was a possibility, but there might be boys working in the library and she would die if a boy were to see her with her face like this. She made up her mind and pressed the 'G' button. The elevator rose to ground level and the doors opened to disclose the dome garden.

This was the nicest place in Ark Three, the circular garden, a kilometre in diameter, protected by a plastic dome, which supplied the fruit and vegetables for the whole underground community. The misters were working and the place smelled fresh and green and wet. Nobody was in sight. Probably the gardeners had gone for lunch while the garden received its daily allotment of water.

She ran along the gravel path that led from the central elevators to the perimeter. By the time she had reached her favourite place, with its view of the eastern mountains, her pale green pant suit was soaked and water was clinging to her curly hair. She shook her head. The wetness didn’t matter. The temperature of the garden was kept at twenty-seven degrees Celsius during the day. Her pant suit would soon dry. The transparent roof joined a waist-high wall around the perimeter, wide enough to sit on. This was Ruth's favourite place, and she scrambled up and sat cross-legged on the top of the wall, leaning against the curved dome.

It's all her fault.

When we're assigned rooms three of us will have to room with her. It's certainly not going to be me!

Nor me! Nor me! Nor me!

The hateful words echoed round and round in her ears. I'm not going to cry again, she told herself angrily. Crying is babyish and a waste of time.

But what can I do? Life is so completely and absolutely hopeless.

She stared blankly at the distant hills and listed all the things that conspired to make life unbearable.

First of all, she was ugly. She was thin and tall, with bony knees and elbows that stuck out and knocked cups off tables and things like that, no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on accidents not happening. Her eyes were slanty and a mixed speckly brown and green, definitely weird. As for her hair, it was a blight. No matter how she tried to be as neat as the rest, her hair would bounce into a wiry tangle.

But it wasn't only looking weird. After all Faith wasn’t much to look at, and Purity had a definite squint. It didn't matter because they meshed. They were a secure part of the Web, of the whole psychic society that was the community of Ark Three.

And she wasn’t. She was not a part of it, not in the least way. Had it always been this bad? She thought back and remembered once earning a gold star in Esper games. That was in Grade One. It was in Grade Six that things had begun to go really wrong.

In Grade Six most people began to show their special Esper skill. It was a difficult time for them all, as they were pulled in two directions, by their newly discovered personal skills and by their communal need to mesh with the whole and be a part of the Web. But she hadn't shown a single useful skill. She couldn't heal; her hands were so clumsy that sick people would probably beg her to go away. She couldn't communicate telepathically with anyone in the City; she couldn't even form the tiny part of the Web that was expected of her without spoiling it. And she most certainly couldn't be a teacher, since she hadn't the least speck of any other skill. All she had were day dreams. Stupid, useless, day dreams.

“What am I to do with my life?” she said out loud. “In four months school will be over and I'll be grown-up. I'm sup- posed to work for the City, but what can I do? I'll have a room with only three other girls instead of twenty, but no one will share with me. Maybe I'll never have a room. Maybe I'll have to stay in school and dormitory and be a neophyte for ever and ever!”

I think I'd sooner die!

The thought sent a shiver down her spine, because she really couldn't think of an alternative.

As she stared blankly through the transparent plastic of the protecting dome at the wilderness that lay beyond Ark Three, a crazy thought jumped into her mind. Why don't I leave?

It was a terrifying idea. Nobody had ever left the Ark, not since it had been built at the beginning of the Age of Confusion that followed the last of the oil, a hundred and forty years before. That was the purpose of the Ark, to protect the people and their knowledge from the madness that lay outside.

But the madness must be over by now, and nothing seemed to lie outside but meadows and forested foothills and, in the distance, the dark mountains. As Ruth watched, two hawks circled lazily in a thermal, round and round. One of them suddenly plunged to the ground, rising a moment later with a small limp bundle in its talons. There was life outside - animal life anyway- though no signs of human beings. If humans had survived the end of civilization outside the Ark, they were somewhere else.

Ruth concentrated on her terrifying thought. If she were to leave the Ark, then the Web would complete itself, golden and shining with psychic energy. She was a flaw in the design. They'd be better off without her. As for the girls in Grade Eight C, they wouldn't have to dread the New Year wondering if she would disgrace them all.

“All right,” she said out loud, to make sure she herself believed in her wild plan. “I'll go.”

THERE was nothing to stop a person leaving the Ark, any more than there is anything to stop a person jumping off a ship into a raging sea. It was understood: no one in her right mind would leave the warm togetherness of the Web for the cold empty loneliness of Outside.

The way out was through a door in the western perimeter of Ark Three facing what had been, in the old days, a huge lake, before the dam that had held back the waters had broken. It was on Floor One, where all the foods not grown in the Dome garden, such as yeast cultures and hydroponics, were developed.

The door would be bolted on the inside, of course, since the original purpose of the Ark was to stop the crazies from coming in, not prevent the people of the Ark from leaving. But opening it should be no problem. The problem lay in explaining her presence on Floor One at all. Yeast culture, in particular, was a touchy business and only the scientists actually working were permitted there. In her pale green neophyte's uniforms he would stand out, peculiar as usual.

It's hopeless. Completely hopeless. And now I've missed lunch and I'll have to rush back to class or I'll be in trouble again. What were they supposed to be doing this particular afternoon?

Then she remembered and sat up so suddenly that she hit her head against the hard curve of the Dome. She rubbed it absentmindedly, while she busily worked out a plan. That afternoon Eight C was on laundry duty. Everyone from neophyte to Warden took their turn at the jobs necessary to keep the Ark running, from working in the kitchen to shovelling recycled waste for the garden.

If she were to volunteer to sort the laundry it should be easy to borrow a food scientist's white coverall, cap and face mask. As soon as no one was watching she would slip into a washroom, put on the whites and, completely disguised, walk past the yeast vats to the Door.

“I'll do it!” Almost happy again at the thought of action, she ran along the path to the elevators and went downstairs to join her class.

Two hours later she was walking, with as much authority as she could muster, past the yeast culture tanks and vats, towards the western wall. Getting the clothes had been easy. No one ever wanted the job of sorting the smelly overalls used on Floor One. When the sorting was finished, she had carried the bundles to the washing machines and then quietly left.

She looked around her quickly. She mustn't seem unsure of what she was doing, or some officious person would be bound to come up and ask if they could help. Close up her disguise would be useless.

There were half a dozen doors in the western wall, all apparently the doors to storerooms. There seemed to be no Door with a capital D. Well, she would just have to explore and hope she found the right one before someone noticed her.

The first door led to a room lined with shelves filled with dormant cultures. Door number two led to a store of miscellaneous equipment, spare glass vats and tubing. She opened door number three. Her heart was thudding noisily and she could feel the sweat running down her flee behind her mask. Surely someone was going to notice her peculiar behaviour.

The room was cluttered with cleaning supplies. Propped against the back wall was a step ladder. She was just about to close the door when she noticed, through the rungs, the outline of another door. A door with great bolts top and bottom!

Ruth slipped into the room and closed the door behind her. Her hands were shaking as she moved the ladder out of the way. If she could open the Door it would be a sign that she was doing the right thing, she told herself, that she was supposed to leave the Ark. She grasped the bottom bolt with both hands. It was stiff with age and wouldn't budge. She wiggled it up and down and pulled again. At last it relented and shot back with a loud thunk.

Had anyone heard? She wiped the sweat off her face with rust-stained hands and rubbed her hands down the sides of her pant suit. Then she reached for the top bolt. No good. She had to haul back the ladder and climb up before she could reach it. Had anyone touched the bolts since they were pushed across in the Beginning? She could feel herself trembling, her excitement tearing through the psychic fabric of the Web like shears through synthetic. If she wasn't careful someone would realise what she was doing and catch her before she could get away. She took a deep breath and tried to quieten her unruly mind.

The second bolt slid across. She heaved the ladder out of the way so hastily that it began to topple and she only just grabbed it in the nick of time. Again she stopped and listened, her heart thumping. No one seemed to have heard.

All right, Ruth. Here goes. She turned the door knob and pulled. The hinges creaked and the Door swung open reluctantly. Beyond it, stretching into darkness, was a bare concrete passage.

Not in the dark, she thought. I can't. Her hand fumbled against the inner frame and found a switch. As if by magic the passage sprang into whiteness. She could see straight ahead for about two hundred metres before the line of lights curved out of sight to the left, beckoning her forward to see what lay around the corner.

She shut the Door carefully behind her and took a deep breath. The smell of damp and dust surrounded her. She walked forward, her footsteps echoing loudly. She found herself tiptoeing. What was around the corner?

Another hundred metres or so of whitewashed passage ended in a blank wall. Was it all a joke? Was there no way out of the Ark? But that was crazy. No one would build an underground passage going nowhere. Her ancestors had to have come through this passage, once the Dome had been sealed over the City. And if the passage led nowhere she would have to go back. To face Patience and Angela and the others ...

She ran along the last fifty metres, her footsteps echoing loudly. But it was all right. Once she reached the end she could see the ladder set into the left hand wall. It led up through a round tunnel into darkness above.

She began to climb. Paint flaked off against her hands and rust stained her palms red. How far was it? Not far, she told herself. The Door was only one floor underground. It couldn't be more than three or four metres, could it?

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