by John Gordon
something beneficial in this world. "Capturing me was no great feat. I was a dunce. But doing anything more... what would you do?"
"We must go, Aldor. We must go now." The woman was worried and she tugged at his arm.
"Ed. You should have cooperated. We will meet you again soon, in our world. There you will see what we can do. I'm almost sorry for you." He smiled the broad toothy smile and they left me. They walked out of the circle of light. I could hear them go across the empty floor and out a door. The single light went out and I was left in darkness. The terminal's electro-luminescent glow was a feeble moon near my side.
I struggled with the straps until they gave a little bit. How long would I have to lay here? I shouted and my voice sounded hollow and tiny in the warehouse. It must be the old athletic building, slated for demolition in the fall; nobody would ever come in here.
After a bout of yelling and struggling my left hand came free and I worked frantically trying to loosen something else. Finally I stopped. I was just too tired. The drug they used left me weak and images of lightning slashed across my inner vision as I closed my eyes.
On The Run
I was not alone in the hammock. My left arm was under her body; her lips caressed my neck. I turned my head and her cheek pressed against mine. Elise. I stroked her strong hips and ran my fingers down her firm thighs, her skin hot to my touch.
"Elise, I love you." Was I saying this? Were these my words, coming from my lips?
She pulled back to look at me. The hammock swayed. "Ed, you remember Earth and your life there. Do you have a clear memory of it?"
"A little." I nuzzled her lips with my own.
"Do you remember on Earth what happens to you here?"
"No. There I am totally against this, against the reality of it." I kissed her at the side of the neck.
"This is a more fluid place Ed and emotion is very powerful here. We're getting lost in it. Even your body is changing to a more powerful, slim shape. It's this world's effect on you, and on me."
I bit her gently and brought my head against hers. "Is the intention to live with and love you part of my emotional consciousness?"
Elise shook her head. "It shouldn't be. We have work to do. It's very important work."
"I have very important work... with you. We may never see Earth again. We are alive now and I love you now." I silenced her response with a long kiss.
We stood in the warm morning sun watching Dan and Mela bring down the heat detector. Nothing had disturbed them during the night.
The day was dry and hot but by evening the tank was out of the desolate clay and moving through tall thin trees, and it was cool. We were three days from the meeting point, travelling faster than Resnik's estimate.
Another night with Elise and I felt that if there was a heaven, it would fall short of love making with her. She fit me perfectly. Laying beside her, I marveled at my body. I was strong, and my paunch was gone. Without any flab around my waist I was hard, powerful, and a sense of being a capable fighter sat easy on me. Lazy and confident, I drifted to sleep.
We Are In Their World
I tried to turn over, to stroke Elise's soft flesh with my hand. Instead something gripped my arm and legs. I tore my right arm from the strap with one fluid motion and pulled my right leg up, ready to kick out. The straps snapping with the harmony of my body.
I groaned. I felt as if I had broken my arm and leg. I had acted from a different impulse than I was used to on Earth. But my body was not the physical machine I was experiencing on Landine.
"What is my screwball thinking? What am I thinking of? There is no Landine. It's only a dream." I yelled the words out loud, and they echoed around the hollow hall. Then I unbuckled the straps and slid my stiff and aching frame to the ground.
A madman kidnapped me, trying to force me to delete some information from a database. Then I dreamt of being a fighter in a tank with three others, one of them a beautiful woman I made love to, a woman that strongly resembled the programmer in my University team. I took my head in my hands and tried to rub some sense into it.
As soon as I pulled into my garage and dragged myself in the house I called Martin.
"Ed, you're all right."
"Barely, no thanks to your formula. What's going on Martin? Some nut tried to get me to erase the formula from the database, kidnapped me and strapped me to a table in the old gymnasium. I need some explanations."
"They're getting desperate. I didn't think they'd actually do anything. They can't have much of a base here. It takes them too long to reach Earth and their people have to assume identities. But you're all right, that's what counts. We need to talk."
We sat over steaming coffee in the kitchen. Martin moved his arms and used his hands when he talked. His students often referred to him as the windmill.
"It's bigger than you can imagine, Ed." His arms spread wide, further apart than my side of the table. "There are whole universes that we can experience. And we can do it while we sleep, while our bodies are resting here. Think what this means."
"Martin. These dreams are coincidences. We just happen to have similar tastes, or something. And Elise; for God's sake she is a beautiful woman, of course men would have her in their dreams. It's just unusual for me to remember them so clearly."
"She's not in my dreams right now. Because she's traveling with you."
"Proves nothing. Proves nothing and it's not even real. I'm more concerned about the man that kidnapped me. He rushed off suddenly. I'd like to know why. It might be a clue to tracking him down. I called the campus police, told them I'd be in tomorrow to make out a report."
"It's Albert Tinberry. He's the lab assistant that was at the castle when you first came in. He was at the models emulator. He destroyed our plane."
"I don't know about the dreams Martin, but he's some kind of nut case."
"He's not a nut case. He's a Brack, and if Resnik is right.."
Ed interrupted him. "Who is Resnik?"
"Dream jumping is real, my friend. Human beings are good at it, some better than others. Usually it is done with help from teachers who live in the other worlds. Resnik is something of a beginning teacher. He travels the dream lanes and when he finds promising students who wish to study with him, well...he teaches."
"For some reason, you didn't require a teacher. You took to it like a duck in a pond. Some are like that. Resnik says it has to do with past lives and a kind of vibration that you attune quickly to. Some people just aren't able to do it at all."
I smiled. My friend was actually able to believe that he was really existing in another world, even to accepting reincarnation; it was more than I could swallow.
Martin continued and I masked my skepticism. "In my universe he has work and loves just as you and I; only he is able to dream travel while wide awake as well as when he is asleep."
"What is this formula to us Martin? I don't know anything about any Bracks and I certainly don't want to live in their world."
"The formula can make dream jumping easier. But even with the formula there are difficulties. It's not magic. It induces a release of tension that permits total relaxation, like a contented baby, all the way down to the roots of man's nervous system. But without discipline and training it is useless for dream travel. For healing, because of the stress free factors, it may be a miracle to many people, if we can develop it. I'm not sure what the anti-gravity effect can do. Perhaps that is how the Brack's fly, like when they attacked our tower. Their military and their leaders take it in the form of pills."
"So, you have the formula. The Bracks have failed. They may as well leave us alone."
Martin shook his head. "No, Ed. You have the formula. I've forgotten parts of it completely. The last of it was developed the time you joined us to go across country by land. I gave it to you on a piece of paper. My lab was broken into and
my papers destroyed. On Landine I have it, yes. But it's not so easy to bring a long molecular formula across the dream barriers that our race has constructed over centuries."
I shrugged and refilled our cups. "It's still in the University computer."
"No, it's not. The last two weeks of computer tapes were destroyed today, this afternoon. And the computer strangely crashed. There are many unhappy people at the old U."
"That's too much. The computer crashes and the tapes destroyed. What about my own computer?" I rushed from the room to my lower office, Martin close on my heels.
The machine sat on my desk like a dignified butler, undisturbed except for the placement of a small disk to one side. It had not been there when I quit working last night. I turned it on. When the system didn't boot from the hard drive I was sure someone had tampered with it. All my work, not just the formula, was gone.
"This is serious. Damn, my backup program is toast, that disc is it and I didn’t leave it there. I was experimenting with some programs. Damn, Damn." I hit the table top in frustration.
"We have to plan, Ed. We have to plan what we're doing on Landine." Martin went back toward the kitchen. I still stood, staring at my computer.
"Ed, come. Let's talk."
Drinking fresh coffee we sat across from each other again. Martin drew a map on a sheet from my notebook. "This is our goal and this is where we are. I would guess that you are somewhere here." He made an x. "That's
