Dream Hunter (Bailey Spade 2)

I guess those four months without sleep are still weighing on me.

Yawning, I check to see if Valerian has replied.

He hasn’t.

I guess I might as well use the wait time to chip away at my sleep debt.

I program my comms to ring loudly if I get a message, and I set an alarm so I don’t miss my appointment with Dr. Cipactli. I doubt I’ll need the latter—it would mean I’d slept over twenty hours. Still, better safe than sorry.

Picking up a hygieia wand, I properly disinfect myself and plop onto the bed. Immediately, my tense muscles relax. Earth’s best memory foam mattresses are a joke compared to smart beds on Gomorrah. I feel like I’ve been enveloped in a cloud, with the floating sensation completing that illusion.

Not surprisingly, I go under faster than if I’d inhaled sleeping gas.

I wake to the blaring of an alarm.

Puck. I slept all the way into the next day, and now I need to rush to see Dr. Cipactli.

I gleefully use my highly sanitary, eco-friendly bathroom. My least favorite part of Earth is all that filthy water wasted as part of the plumbing. The only water we have on Gomorrah is the drinking kind coming out of the faucets, and I imbibe it with gusto. Next, I hygieia my body and teeth, put on a nondescript black shirt and dark cargo pants—one of my many outfits calibrated to fit both Earth and Gomorrah fashions—and rush out of the building. Once on the street, I get some manna and jump into a self-driving car.

Munching on the yumminess, I realize I didn’t have a single dream in over twenty hours of sleep. In general, I feel great. Way better than before I slept—which tells me I needed the whole twenty hours, if not more.

The car stops, and I go up to Dr. Cipactli’s office.

“I have an appointment,” I tell the elf secretary.

With a polite smile, she presses some button only she can see in her VR. “One moment.”

A few seconds later, the tallest gnome I’ve ever seen steps out of the nearby office. Gnomes grow tall in adolescence and then shrink as they grow older, so this specimen must be young—which can still mean up to a thousand years old given the typical gnome lifespan.

Like most other gnomes, this one needs to wear a special mask due to the respiratory problems they develop on worlds with air that’s about twenty percent oxygen—like Earth and Gomorrah. According to Itzel, these breathing issues are what initially drove gnomes to explore technology.

Dr. Cipactli’s mask is unusual in that you can’t really see much of his face under its shiny black surface. If Felix were here, I bet he’d say this mask makes Dr. Cipactli look like Darth Vader.

“Bailey,” he says in a deep voice distorted by the mask—strengthening the Vader comparison. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He extends his hand in an Earth-like greeting.

Ignoring the proffered appendage, I curtsy—which usually lets me avoid skin-to-skin contact.

It works. Dr. Cipactli inclines his head and says, “Step into my office.”

I follow him in and do a double take.

His wall screens slideshow horror-movie-worthy images that remind me of the creatures I’ve met in subdreams.

“I study nightmares,” he explains, noticing my shock. “Which is why I got excited when Dr. Xipil told me about your case.”

I take a seat in a hovering chair and cross my legs. “Oh?”

He examines me as if I were a celebrity—or an exotic bug. “I’ve never met a dreamwalker before.”

I smile uncomfortably. “We are pretty rare.”

“Exceedingly.” He sits behind his desk. “Which is why, in lieu of payment, I hope you’ll demonstrate your powers.”

Payment, right. This isn’t a free hospital, either. I uncross my legs. “I’d be happy to. The only issue is that you’re a gnome. You’re not the first one to ask this of me, and I’ll tell you the same thing I told them: It may or may not work.”

Gnomes are renowned for being immune to many Cognizant powers. Vampire glamour doesn’t work on them, tricksters can’t influence their fate directly, illusionists fail to make them see their illusions, seers can’t see them in their visions of the future—the list goes on and on.

Dr. Cipactli nods eagerly. “Gnome resistance to dreamwalking is why I want to try this. My grandmother told me it would work if a gnome gave consent—but didn’t explain further. Once I grew up, I realized what she said doesn’t make sense. If I’m sleeping—and therefore unconscious—how can I give my consent?”

Hmm. Interesting. “Maybe you agree I dreamwalk in you while you’re awake?”

“Maybe.” He rubs the chin part of his mask. “But wouldn’t that give you unlimited dream access forever and ever? Or can I revoke my consent after I wake up? Or maybe even during the dreamwalking session itself?”

I smile. “Now I’m actually curious to do this.”