A vast, scaled body hissed close by him, more a damp sensation against his neck than a sound. A vague shape, shining dark enameled red, rolled past him, as grainy and dimly lit as the inside of his own eyelids. Its coils rose and slid back into oily blackness without revealing its full shape. His dreaming brain knew it was seeking prey.
The vision became a long, flat plain. In the distance, a tall cloaked figure in black was striding away from him. Under the unruly mop of black hair, Spike's face was grey and lifeless, his blank eyes staring straight ahead, giving no sign of recognition.
"Spike!" Jet opened his mouth, but the only sound he could muster was a hollow wheeze. Under Spike's feet, the ground wavered, and with each step, his legs sank a little deeper into a growing sea. He did not seem to notice, even to the point when his chin parted the water as he moved.
"Spike!" Jet's tried to yell a warning, but all that came out was the same impotent silence.
He was in a wooden boat, in the midst of a rolling storm. He could not feel the rain; it only blinded him. A single oar was in his hand. He thrust it into the water, striking helplessly against the whitecaps and silently mouthing Spike's name. Music. There was music coming from the storm. A song from his childhood, achingly distant. Sadness washed through him. His arms grew heavy, and the oar was a dead weight against the tide.
There was a shape ahead of him. A head, floating in the waves. It was Spike, his hair dry and waving as if in a mild breeze, though all around him was turbid with rain and wind.
Jet opened his mouth, sent another soundless yell, and struggled against his own leaden arms to reach his friend as the oar bent uselessly against the weight of the water. Though he was far behind Spike now, somehow the side of his face was still clear. The eyes, distant and cold, were trained straight ahead at something beckoning him from the storm's still, purple eye. The music was coming from there. A woman's voice was singing. And as Jet scanned slowly forward to follow the train of Spike's gaze, a form took shape in the darkness of the cyclone. It was a woman, her long, pale hair rising, spiraling in the wind. Lit from within, her face was raised to the low sky, her mouth open. It was her sweet voice that swirled through the storm.
The wind sucked the air from Jet's lungs. The woman's long, slender neck and shoulders sloped down to a dark form melding with the sea. Lightning, pale blue and distant, lit the shape. A seal. The body of a seal. Another flash, and it was not a seal. A woman's body, tall and slender, emerged from the rumpled folds of a seal's shed skin. She looked impassively past Jet, trained her dark eyes on Spike's floating head, and reached out to him.
Spike was rising from the water, reaching for her, drawn in by the song. His eyes were suddenly luminous and peaceful. And as Jet watched, the woman's arms lengthened and darkened, sprouted reddish, shining scales. Spike lifted his arms, enveloped her in them, closed his eyes. He did not see the smooth, pale shape of the woman become the coils of a giant serpent closing around him. Jet's voice was shredded and thrown back at him by the storm. He watched, helpless, as the muscular coils wrapped around the oblivious Spike.
It's a dream. Jet heard his own brain coaching him. He flung the oar aside, tensed his thighs against the flooded bow of the dinghy and leaped--but was yanked up short by the arms and legs. He swiveled his torso from side to side and glimpsed thick copper wire completely looped around his limbs, twisting them into ungainly positions. It was the wire he used to train young bonsai trees, bending them away from the form nature had chosen and shaping them to his will. He strained against the wires, but could not move. His arms and legs had gone dead in the coils. A woman's hand, as large as his own body, reached from out of the darkness. Its fingers balanced a brush like the one he used to create bonsai, to bleach the inner wood he had carved out, to change the plant's color and form to what he had chosen for it.
The dripping brush loomed over his leg, then smeared its wetness over the copper bindings. Between the wires, his flesh sizzled, then melted away to reveal white bone, pocked with oval holes. He strained upwards, struggling alone, and saw Spike from the corner of his eye. The loops of the red serpent had almost completely engulfed him, though his face was as peaceful as if sleeping.
In a blink, the storm was gone. Jet stood at the base of a silent, red rock canyon. He knew it was Laughing Bull's home, though the sky was blacker, the stars even more numerous than in the old shaman's real asteroid sanctuary.
Jet could not walk or move. His limbs were numb, still strapped tight in the copper wire. Laughing Bull was nowhere to be seen, but his voice was suddenly close in Jet's ear.
"Running Rock."
Jet cast his eyes around until they found the old man perched high above him on the edge of a cliff.
"Running Rock," the medicine man spoke the name he had given Jet as a child. "Every rock some day comes to its rest."
"Spike's in danger," Jet found he could speak.
"The Swimming Bird controls his own fate. You are more tightly ensnared than the Swimming Bird."
Jet twisted helplessly against the coils. "Please. You have to help me."
"The coils are there by your own hand. Only you have the power to remove them."
Jet struggled against the paralysis, breathed in shallow, starving gasps and gave a garbled roar of frustration. "No more riddles! I can't get loose!"
"Find the White Deer," said Laughing Bull.
There was a noise in the distance. A sharp, electronic sound, repetitive and insistent. He searched the sky, looking for its source.
"Swimming Bird calls to you from the Dragon's coils. You know the danger. You must choose to meet it or not."
As the sound grew louder, the sky and red rock faded to the bleak, patterned umber of closed eyelids. The noise blared and cut off sharply as Jet heard the automatic pick-up answer the call with a terse message in his own voice, "You know how to leave a message." and then a drawn out beep.
He opened his eyes, which felt as if someone had been sandpapering them while he slept. He sucked in a long breath. His arms and legs were numb. Their circulation had been cut off by a wild tangle of twisted sheet tourniquets that held him in the same awkward pose he had dreamed. He must have been thrashing like a noosed ferret to get himself in such a state. Slowly he untangled himself, and grimaced at the tingle of blood coming back into his limbs. A disembodied voice in the main room was leaving a message.
"Jet. Are you there?" It was Bob. "Jet, pick up now! I have something for you. About your partner. Jet…pick up!"
Jet nearly fell out of the bunk with the effort of throwing himself towards the door and hallway, but his limbs, still buzzing with just-returned sensation, would not quickly obey. Groggy and winded, he dragged himself around the corner on all fours just in time to see Bob casting a furtive glance over his shoulder before turning back to the screen to mutter. "Sorry, Black Dog. Can't stay on this line." And the screen went blank.
This time Jet had no trouble finding his voice for a stream of curses. He reached the com and stabbed at the keyboard, desperately trying to activate the I.D. retrieval system, to no avail. Bob must have called through a stream of anonymous IP's that would take Ed's expertise to unravel. He took a deep breath through his nose, swallowed back the rising bile, and cursed the ephemeral salve of the whisky bottle. The deep throb in his wounded leg punctuated every heartbeat. He crawled up to sit on the couch and clutched his foggy head in his hands. No more for me, thanks. I'm driving.
The dream came back to him in slow waves. Man, what the sleeping brain could do on a rip-roaring hangover and some stale saltines. He'd always been predisposed to wild dreams, but this one was ridiculous. "You could be a bit more subtle with the metaphors," he chided himself.
What else was there? It was fading quickly. Laughing Bull. The old man had been there. You know the danger. You must choose to meet it or not.
Jet rubbed his scalp, slowly shook his head, and laughed out loud, the pressure of it making his swollen eyes ache. To think he'd accused Faye of being irrational with grief for Spike. At least she probably was practical enough to just accept his death, not make up pathetic, wish-fulfilling dreams. He almost felt embarrassed.
Why had Bob called? What had he said? About your partner.
Adrenaline sent a chill from behind his ears all the way down his sides and curling into his empty belly. "No." he said flatly. "Don’t be stupid. You saw it. Spike is…"
He could not bring himself to say it aloud. And somewhere, deep inside himself, he felt something spark to life. Dreams could be powerful messengers. He always had believed it, though he never really admitted it to anyone except jokingly.
No. Spike was dead.
But Jet was alive. And as long as he was laid up with a bum leg, he had little to do. It might be interesting to visit the scene of the crime and try to find out a little more. No harm in getting some closure to all this. And the least he could do would be to pay Spike a graveside visit, to say a final goodbye. He undoubtedly had family on Mars, and they would have been notified by now. The burial would be in a day or two. That would leave plenty of time to poke around for information.
He stretched his legs, finally awake, stood up and limped back to the observation deck. The Bebop hovered over the dark side of Mars. It would be an hour before she'd be close enough for an easy Hammerhead drop to Tharsis. In an hour he would be ready.

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