Wine of the Dreamers (13 page)

As she went to the doorway she remembered what Raul had told her the day before she was first permitted to dream. “If a small living creature is put in a white box before its eyes are open, if it lives out its life in that box, if food and warmth are provided, and if it dies in that box—then, in the moment of death, the little creature can stare at the walls of the box and say ‘This is the world.’ ”

His words had come back to her an uncomfortable number of times.

She found Raul on one of the highest levels. The micro-book page at which he stared was incomprehensible to her. He heard the soft sound of her bare feet against the floor and turned, startled.

He smiled. “A long time since you’ve come up here, Leesa. I haven’t seen you since you interrupted our talk.”

He clicked off the projector. “What were you looking at?” she asked.

He stood up and stretched. His expression was sour. “At something I’ll never understand, I’m afraid. This box contains all of the texts used by the technicians who piloted the Migration ships. I only found them by accident. I could look for the rest of my life and not find the intermediary texts. The science is beyond me. In the old days it was beyond any individual man too. They were organized into work teams and research teams. Each man handled
one part of a particular problem and all of the work was coordinated through the use of integral calculators. But maybe I can—–” He stopped suddenly.

She sat in one of the other chairs. “Can what?”

“Maybe I can find out enough so that I can handle one of the patrol ships. I know the interior details of the ships now.”

“What good would that be?”

“I could go to one of the three worlds. I could take some of them onto the ship and bring them back here and bring them into this tower and show them to Orlan and the others. Then they’d stop this childish babbling about the Law, and about this being the only true reality. There are men on Earth who could look at a patrol ship, one man in particular who could learn much from one, so that even if I were unable to return, he would be able to … I talk too much.”

“Maybe I find it interesting.”

“You didn’t a short time ago.”

“Couldn’t I have thought it over?” she said, pouting.

There was excitement in his tone. “Leesa! Are you beginning to see what I’ve seen for so long?”

“Why not? Maybe I could … help you.”

He frowned. “You might, at that. I’d about given up hope of ever … Never mind. I guess I should trust you.” He looked directly into her eyes. “Do you understand now that you’ve spent six years smashing the lives of people who actually exist, who exist and go about their affairs while we’re talking here? Do you believe that?”

She held the chair arms tightly. “Yes,” she said, as calmly as she could.

“I told you that we’ve outlived our purpose. If nothing were done we’d eventually disappear, but we’d go on and on, striking like random lightning into the lives of men until the very end, making public figures do dangerous and incomprehensible things, making obscure little men and women commit acts that baffle their courts, confound their friends and ruin their lives. I am going to put an end to it.”

“How, Raul?”

“Marith is too primitive for space travel—Ormazd too concerned with the human mind to be mechanistic. Earth is my hope. There is a man there who is in charge of a project to build a space ship which is quite like those I showed you from the window. Since so many odd accidents—which we can explain and they can’t—have happened to all previous attempts, this one is being handled with the greatest secrecy. With eleven billion host-minds to choose from, roughly, the less than eight hundred Watchers are unlikely to find this project, even though it is in an area where we have ruined previous projects. I am trying to protect that project and I am trying to get into more direct contact with a man named Bard Lane who is in charge. I want to explain what has happened to previous projects and assure him of my desire to help, and warn him against what one of us might do while dreaming. Not long ago someone stumbled across the project, possessed one of the technicians and spoiled months of work. I haven’t been able to find out who it was. They haven’t been back, but they may come back. I can’t go and talk to the others. It would arouse suspicion, because it would be something I haven’t done in years. But you might be able to find out, Leesa.”

“And if I should find out?”

“Tell the person who possessed the technician that you stumbled on the same project and destroyed it utterly. In order to do that convincingly, you should …”

“Why do you pause?”

“Can I trust you? Somehow, you do not seem sufficiently … shattered by the realization that in the dream worlds we are dealing with reality. The day when I was at last convinced, I thought for a time that I might go mad. I wanted to go up to the corridor of dreams and rip all the cables free, smash all the dials.”

“You can trust me,” she said evenly.

“Then, in order to convince the person who did the damage, you should take a look at the project. It is called Project Tempo. I will explain to you exactly how to find it. It is quite difficult because of the lack of contacts in the
surrounding countryside. I have been most successful through using the drivers of vehicles, and it is a matter of luck to emerge near a road. The last time it took me so long that I had but a little more than an hour to … do what I planned.”

“What are you doing when you go there?”

“Explaining to Bard Lane just what we are.”

“How do you find it?”

“Before I tell you, I must have your solemn promise that you will do no damage to the project. Do you promise?”

“I will do no damage,” she said, and in her thoughts she added, on the first visit, at least.

He opened a case on the floor. “Here,” he said, “is a map I made here after committing it to memory on Earth.”

She knelt beside him. She watched his finger trace the possible routes of entry to the project area.

NINE

Dr. Sharan Inly sat at her desk, her hands pressed against her eyes, her fingernails digging into her forehead just below the hair line. She wished with all her heart that she had become a stenographer, or a housewife, or a welder.

You could deal with humans, and be interested in them as humans even when they were cases duplicating those in the texts. Yet, as you treated them, you kept a tiny bit of yourself in reserve. It was self-protection. And then you would run into a case that would break your heart, because somehow you had gotten too involved with the individual as a person, not as a case.

“I hope you’ve got an explanation,” Bard Lane said coldly as he slammed into her office.

“Shut the door and sit down, Dr. Lane,” she said with a tired smile.

He sat down. His face had a drawn look. “Dammit, Sharan, my desk is piled high. Adamson needs help. The fool committee that wants to administer the death kiss to this whole project is waiting. I know you can bring anyone here at any time, but I think you might have checked first. Just a little consideration for the amount of work I—–”

“How did you sleep last night?”

He stared at her, stood up with determination. “Fine, and I eat well, too. I even take walks. Want me to make a muscle for you?”

“Sit down, Dr. Lane!” she said crisply. “I’m doing my job. Please cooperate.”

He sat down slowly, a look of fear in his eyes, growing fear. “What is this, Sharan? I guess I slept well enough. I felt tired this morning, though.”

“What time did you get to bed?”

“A little before midnight. I was up at seven.”

“Thomas Bellinger, on the routine guard report, noted that you went into your office at ten minutes after two this morning.”

Bard gasped. “The man’s mad! No! Wait a minute. If somebody could plant a man who looks like me … Have you alerted all guards?”

She slowly shook her head. Her eyes were sad. “No, Bard. That won’t work. You passed the full test series with flying colors just this week, but it still won’t work. You noticed that Bess Reilly wasn’t in your office this morning?”

He frowned. “She’s sick today. She phoned from her quarters.”

“She phoned from here, Bard. I asked her to. Bess was a little behind in her work. She went in early this morning. She went into your office and took yesterday’s tape off the dictation machine and took it out to her desk to transcribe it. When she started to listen to it, she thought you were playing some sort of joke. She listened some more and it frightened her. She very properly brought it directly to me. I’ve been over it twice. Would you care to hear it?”

He said softly, “Dictation … a funny nightmare is coming back to me, Sharan. Silly thing, like most of them are. It seems I had something that I had to get down before it went out of my mind. And I dreamed I …”

“Then you walked in your sleep, Bard. Listen to what you said.”

She moved the small speaker closer to his chair, depressed the switch on the playback machine.

It was unmistakably Bard Lane’s voice. “Dr. Lane, I am taking this method of communicating with you. Do not be alarmed and do not doubt me. I am physically nearly four and a half light-years from you at this moment. But I have projected my thoughts into your mind and I have taken over your body to serve the purposes of the moment. My name is Raul Kinson and I have been watching your project for some time. I am anxious for it to succeed, as it is your world’s only chance to free itself from those of us whose visitations are unprincipled, who only want to destroy. I do not want to destroy. I want to help you create. But there are dangers that I can warn you about, dangers which you do not, as yet, understand. Take warning from what happened when your technician, Kornal, was seized by one of us. We are the survivors on your parent planet. I do not wish to tell you too much at this moment. Be assured that my intentions are friendly. Do not be alarmed. Do not fall into the logical error of assuming that this is an indication of mental unbalance. I will attempt to communicate with you in a more direct manner a bit later. Hear me out when I do.”

Sharan clicked the switch to the off position. “You see?” she said softly. “The same delusion as before. This is just a further refinement of it. I’m both glad and sorry that Miss Reilly brought it to me. But here it is, Bard. Now do you think I should have sent for you?”

“Of course,” he whispered. “Of course.”

“What am I to do?” Sharan asked.

“Do your job,” he said. His mouth was a hard, bloodless line.

Her voice was dispassionate, but her hand trembled as
she handed him the note previously prepared. “This will admit you for observation. I see no need to assign an orderly to you while you pack what you’ll need. I’ll advise Adamson that he’s acting chief until you’re replaced.”

He took the note and left her office without a word. After he closed the door softly behind him, she buried her face in the crook of her arm, her shoulders hunched over the desk. She pounded gently on the desk top with her clenched left fist.

Bard Lane walked from the hospital lounge into his room at the end of the corridor. He wore the beltless bathrobe they had issued to him, the soft plastic slippers. He lay on the bed and tried to read the magazine he had carried in from the lounge. It was a news digest, and seemed to contain nothing except hollow-sounding absurdities.

New Navy sub successfully withstands the pressure at the deepest point of the Pacific. Mello Noonan, creamy-tressed star of video, lands her heli-cycle on the observation deck of the new Stanson Building, smilingly pays the forty-dollar fine. Russians, through careful research, prove that man first walked erect at a spot fourteen miles east of present-day Stalingrad. Teen-age girls in Houston set new fad by shaving their heads and painting them green. When they meet on the street, they doff shoes and ‘shake hands’ with their feet. Memphis musician brains girlfriend with tuba. Widow in Victoria, Texas, claims to be receiving spirit messages from long-dead Valentino. Georgia ax killer claims, at trial, that he was ‘possessed’—accusing mother-in-law of putting the evil eye on him. Injunctions issued against further use of new Reno slot machines which provide divorce papers for a fifty-dollar fee. Doctors unable to bring nine-year-old twins in Daytona out of trance caused by forty-one hours spent in front of their home video screen. Vote fraud in North Dakota … dope ring indicted … gambling ship sunk … bride leaves third grade … multiple murder … drives car into shoppers … jumped from eighty-third floor … minister fires church … dresses four inches shorter next year 
… curb service vice … hate … fear … anger … envy … lust …

He lay back on the bed. The magazine slipped to the floor, landing with the dry sound of a dead winged thing. Madness in the world. Madness tolling in his mind like a huge cracked bell in a forgotten tower, a bell swayed by the unknown winds. He shut his hands hard, squeezed his eyes shut and felt his soul as a fading focal point of certainty in this alien body, in this body of webbed nerves and muscle fiber and convoluted brain. He knew that any idea of plan or order in this mad world was pure delusion, that man was a tiny creature, knotted with the most deadly instincts, that he could look at the stars, but never attain them. In the back of his mind he stood at the edge of a distorted cliff, and he leaned toward the darkness. So easy to fall, to drop downward with a scream so vast and so solid that it would be as a smooth silver column inserted slickly in his throat. He would fall with his head tilted back, his lips drawn wide, with white-rimmed iris, with long tortured spasm that …

The bed moved. He opened his eyes. The little blond nurse from the lounge sat on the end of his bed. The stiff starched uniform had a bold life of its own, as though, inside it, her tender body recoiled from any touch against its harshness. The temple veins were violet tracery against the luminescent skin. Her large eyes were blue-purple glass beads from a costume jewelry counter.

“As bad as that, Bard Lane?” she said.

He frowned. Nurses were not supposed to sit on patients’ beds. Nurses did not speak with such casual informality. Possibly in the psych ward the nurses had special leniency from the rigid rules applying to those who nursed more obvious wounds.