by Tanith Lee
All the Older People nodded approvingly at me. I was just what a young person should be, tinkling, almost nude, my one-color eyes still dark from ecstasy, and my Jang vocabulary working like a catalyst in everything I said.
I sidled up to a large revolving tray of scent bomb earrings, smoking fragrance, light winking and glittering on their tortured shapes. I stretched out my hand. A floating mirror swam down to me and showed me my new face. I selected a pair of solid-phosphorous things, magnetized them to my ears, and watched them uncoil and wend lovingly down my neck, over my shoulders, and sigh to rest on my abdomen.
“Madam looks charming!” sang angelic voices in the domed, see-through roof.
I knew I’d come at the wrong time. Jang girls usually trail in in the mornings when the whole place throbs to Jang upper-ear music, which you can’t actually hear consciously but which sends you into euphoria in seconds. Then they can sell you practically anything, with machines screaming: “Simply groshing!” and “Ooma, how derisann!” all around you.
Then, all at once, I felt light-headed, happy, and abandoned. The older ladies looked bewildered and clapped in their portable audio-plugs. Upper-Ear had been turned on full blast. Zaradann with joy, I cursed Jade Tower’s observation robots. I removed my spoils, put my hand down among a pile of junk, and let them go. I brushed back my hair and magnetized about six pairs of coiled, random earrings which I had just picked up, and which were probably all odd, in the tangle at the back of my neck. But it was a reflex. I was too ecstatic to get any sort of satisfaction out of it, really.
I went past this woman on the way out. She was busy paying, working up into a real frenzy, and I noticed she’d left her audio-plugs out, so the Upper-Ear could help her along. Honestly, she must only just have migrated from the Jang herself.
“It’s so groshing!” she was crying while the machine, only going on her clothing and hair, was saying:
“Absolutely charming, madam,” and all the time the vis-take was feeding her enthusiasm into electrodes which changed emotion into power, and pushed it into Four BEE’s main power station banks.
It was rather sad, somehow. I never pay for anything if I can help it. I just enthuse ever so unexcitedly, and drive all the robot assistants zaradann.
3
Outside Jade Tower Thinta was waiting for me, looking as impatient as Thinta can look; more patient than ever, in fact.
I took out my earrings and found one pair, four odd. Thinta ignored me. I threw them down the Jade Tower terrace and watched electricity wave-nets catch them at various junctures. My mind bounced between my demagnetized ears, from the retreating aural joy and delight that had ruined my stealing enterprise.
“Attlevey, Thinta,” I remembered to say. I suddenly realized I’d rather be solo, but here was Thinta and we were going to a Dream Room.
No, really, I liked the Dream Rooms. I’d never let on what dreams I programmed for myself, though Hergal always dreams of flying. I thought Hatta probably dreamed of being some sort of three-headed monster.
“What’s that?” Thinta asked, gazing up at my white, stolen pet, kicking and hooting in the clutches of my bee. Thinta’s bee moved in to help. Thinta’s bee always moves in to help. It gets you down. Thinta tried to stroke my pet, and my pet tried to bite Thinta.
“Stop it!” I shouted at all of them. I felt pretty tosky, actually.
We got to Four BEE’s Third Sector Dream Rooms more or less all right. Thinta flew safely, and I realized how much I preferred being with Hergal and feeling the blood drain out of my head with fright. Actually when I’m with Hergal I always realize how I prefer being with Thinta and not feeling the blood drain out of my head with fright.
“Here we are!” Thinta cried, and proudly guided us down to a superb landing in one of the nets. I mean, you don’t have to guide anything into a net. They’re there to catch you. Oh well.
We got out and on to a movi-rail. There were lots of people buzzing up and down, and crowds of Jang for once. The ones coming out were discussing what they had been dreaming—all symbols and astral projection and so on. I felt a bit small. I usually did. Honestly, I just couldn’t feel at home in that place if someone didn’t make me feel inferior about what I chose to dream. The average Jang dream ecstasy is to be a mote of pulsing light, sucked to and fro between fiery suns, novas and palely smoking moons, a kind of cosmic, all-over comprehension of having love. No, really, I read it on a flash. Anyhow, Hergal dreamed of flying. Good old Hergal.
The bottom of the shaft is lovely, masses of smoldering pink cloud architecture with rays of gold passing in between, and the whole thing shifting ever so gently. Cloudy robots guided us to little transparent cubicles and helped us drop clothing and anchor ourselves on comfortable air cushions that give you a stimulating tonic massage as you dream.
I waved to Thinta as the walls, ceilings and floor began to smoke up and turn opaque, then settled back and dictated my dream to my robot. The idea is just to give them the skeleton of what you want; they think up the relevant sets, costumes, special effects, and also lots of little twists and surprises to delight you. But I was a bit of a pest. I always have too much imagination to fit inside my head. I’ve been told, though of course I don’t remember consciously, that, during my twentieth of a rorl at hypno-school, that was the worst problem my tutors had with me. I could turn a seven-dimensional geometric exercise into an epic adventure, where all the planes and double planes were really the inhabitants of a besieged citadel, fighting off hordes of triple bisectors with paralyzer-beams.
The robot struggled valiantly with my detailed color descriptions, my quick but elaborate costume sketches on the thought-receptive wall-panel, my demands for background music, and the sweeping grandeur of ruined palaces I kept stressing whenever new thought flagged. I think Thinta had been long gone by the time the robot staggered out.
I lay back, closed my eyes, and waited. Suddenly you feel this stroking sensation all over, and then you’re there….
Oh, well done!
A sweeping grandeur of ruined palaces, fallen marble blocks and pillars towering upward without roofs, crumbling stairways, and great window spaces through which burning arrows of light streamed and bubbled. Overhead an enormous planet hung low, like a pitted emerald in the pale green sky. Arid desert, faintly glittering, stretched away and away.
I’d just come in sight of this place, after traveling for units without sustenance across the Blazing Waste. It was twilight. The huge creamy-tawny beast I rode stood stock still, its pads planted in the sands, its shaggy-maned head lifted to stare at that baleful planet overhead. I dismounted and climbed one of the crumbling stairways. I was all gold: gold hair, gold skin and eyes, gold tunic and groin-high boots, ancient double-bladed dagger with a gold-plated hilt. I saw my reflection in cracked glass floors and shreds of mirror.
Darkness gathered. Things twittered high in the ruinous roof.
Two red candles up ahead. No, not candles. Eyes, watching me. I could sense, I could tell, there was something in this place that would hurt me if I wasn’t careful. Obviously, I was fairly weak from my ordeal in the Crystal Deserts, but mine was an old and noble line, forged like good steel (of course). I felt no fear (what’s that?) but drew my gold-hilt dagger and went forward through the dense viridian dusk.
The eyes went out.
There ahead was a terrible monster, breathing a poisonous fire that almost scorched me. I uttered ancient mystic words to protect myself from the flames, and closed with it. The fighting was long and awful. (Naturally.) But grace was in my every movement, my blade was swift and certain. (What else?) Eventually the thing collapsed and blew away like the desert dust, leaving only a bleached skeleton at my booted feet. I went on. Nets of bronze dropped down. Too proud to struggle, I was borne upward through the tall ranks of pillarheads, to a vast hollow rampart. I found a table of glass laid out with a feast of exotic foods and spa
rkling wines.
“Eat,” boomed a voice out of nothing and nowhere. “Drink. You are weary.”
I stepped up to the table and, mistrusting the food despite my hunger, spoke first a magic charm. At once the whole thing went up in purple fires (surprise! surprise!) and a clap of thunder howled around the rampart. Huge winged horrors flapped down on me. I beat at them until my strength was almost exhausted, and then, using ancient incantations, managed to drive them into the fire on the table, where they were consumed. Many more demons attacked me during the long and terrible night. Blazing meteors screamed from the sky and exploded far out in the desert wastes, as I slew pythons of flame and dragons of brass. Temptations were offered me and countless mirages, all of which I resisted and all of which proved to be false. At last, toward dawn, when I knew I was almost too weary to save myself any longer, even though my beauty and my luster were still undimmed (sort of pale gold with romantic shadows under my eyes, all swooning and gorgeous) a tall figure appeared at the end of the rampart.
A male. A mythical figure and handsome beyond belief, dark-eyed and pale-haired, but with evil stamped all over his marvelous face. He drew a long and phosphorescent sword, and we were at it again. Where my extra reserves of strength arrived from was quite beyond dream-me (though real-me knew all right) but, by my insumatt skill, I at last had the being at the point of annihilation under my long dagger. But I paused. Something stopped me. His beauty clouded my reason and I could not strike. Ashamed, I flung down my blade, and cried:
“Kill me. I am unworthy to be your opponent.” And the great sword lifted and then was gone.
I looked up astonished. My enemy was my enemy no longer. Three times more marvelous, he embraced me, and told me of the ancient and terrible curse that had lain upon this place and upon him. I, by my bravery and beauty, had saved both him and his land. (Splendid!)
He led me down the steps into a wonderful hall of gold and fire, and I saw that the palace was a ruin no longer. There was the glitter, past long windows, of the unlocked rain, and all around the desert was blossoming.
To the tremulous tinkle of fountains bursting from rock, I woke up.
“Who am I?” I often thought that after a dream. “Where am I?”
It doesn’t take long to recollect, however. I felt disappointed. Life had been just beginning for me, for us. We had been going to feast and have love, and now I would never know what it was like to—Of course, I could have had that added on to the dream if I’d asked. Only I never do. I know of people who go to a Dream Room just to dream about having love, but what’s the point? I mean, you can have love any time you want, really, any way you want, and there are millions of pills and stuff to guarantee results. So why go off and dream about it too?
“You’ve been ages,” said Thinta.
It’s not the dream that takes the time—they stretch your time sense or something, and every dream lasts a regulation ten splits—it was all my pre-dream direction that hung everyone up.
Thinta was drinking silver-water cordial, but I wanted to go away alone and think about my lover, and the dragons I had fought.
“I have to dash, Thinta ooma,” I said. “I have to go back to Limbo for the first unit checkup on my new body.”
It’s true. They like to check you if you don’t stay in for a unit or so. Hergal always stays in.
“Of course, ooma,” Thinta smiled drowsily. Perhaps she wanted aloneness too. But no. “I’ll come too. We have to pay yet.”
Oh farathoom! Thinta’s such a bore about paying for things.
We trailed along to our pay booths and she was off.
“Thank you, thank you. It was absolutely groshing, groshing! Oh thank you, I’m so happy. It was so derisann! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
Oh shut up.
“Thank you,” I droned urbanely.
Machines registered protests, started to encourage me. The booths were full of people yelling their guts out with praise and joy. All right, I thought, I’ll show you.
I raised my voice.
“Oh thank you,” I screamed. I took an ecstasy pill and soared and soared. I ranted. I screeched until my throat gave out. I hugged the machinery with unbridled passion, and tears of love ran down my face.
Thinta helped me outside. She looked approving.
“You’ve been a very good girl,” she congratulated me.
Perfect sunlight hit me in the face and threw the husks of my vision at my feet. Dragons eddied on the gentle breeze. My lover faded and was gone.
4
I left Thinta and went to Limbo by Body Displacer. They’re efficient, but they tend to make you puke. No one uses them now except Older People, who think they have to be in a hurry about things and have cast platinum stomachs. I got in and threw switches and wished I hadn’t. It’s quick of course, but really I think you lose so much time being sick at the other end when you get there that you might just as well hop on a float-bridge. Anyhow, I arrived, and I did feel pretty weird, actually, as if I’d left something behind. My head or something.
Robots glared at me. They disapproved. Body Displacers are non-Jang, and non-Jang youth is obnoxious, unreasonable, tosky, zaradann.
They gave me my check. I’d lost a small, artistically placed mole in transit, and they grumbled. Otherwise my body was fine. Except I was tired of it.
“I’d like to apply for a new body,” I said.
Shocked silence.
“How long does it take?”
“Your request has been registered,” the quasi-robot told me. “Normally you would have to wait for thirty units. It has been marked on your records, however, that you have gone through fourteen bodies in the past vrek. You will therefore have to wait for sixty units.”
“Can I appeal?”
“Oh yes.”
“Will it do any good?”
“None whatsoever.”
I went out.
The afternoon was getting more tiresomely lovely with every second.
5
I went down to Peridot Waterway and signaled for my bubble. The water ran past going steeply uphill, a smooth pearly green. Buildings towered up all around me. My bee fell on my head but I was too depressed to swear at it. That white, stolen pet landed in my arms and took a good-sized slice out of me. We slapped each other, and it jumped down to the floating road where a magnetizer caught it and slammed it up against somebody’s artistic, eighth-dimensional statue.
The bubble came along and I got in. I dragged the pet in with me, I’m not sure why, I suppose because I had stolen it. I always attach importance to the things I steal, except where my pleasure in getting them is ruined, e.g., Jade Tower. It sat and sneered at me, slitting its big eyes. I rubbed stuff on my hand and the tear healed up. The pet looked disappointed. I set the bubble for home, but I didn’t really want to go there. I’ll drown again, I thought, and farathoom to their sixty units.
I reached for the controls, but before I did anything I thought of the pet. It would probably go zaradann with panic; it just wouldn’t understand, when the water filled the oxygen locks. It wouldn’t like the asthmatic drowsiness of dying, and I couldn’t explain.
Oh well, I could always drown tomorrow.
* * *
—
Home. Home is where you tie your bubble, as they say. It was where I tied mine. We went up the moving ramp, me, my bee, and the pet, and under the big gold ornamental lamp in the porch that opens and shuts like one of those ancient flowers. Home. It’s all glass, delicately misted up at strategic points and shot through with rainbows. It booms to the echo of tireless mechanical voices, begging to know what they can bring us to eat or drink, or do to make us laugh. Music you could hear (but is it music?) raged around the glass halls, all clicks and tattoos and crashes and chimes. I signaled my makers and took the flying floor to where they were. Older People hardly ever change their bodies, and
my makers were the same as they had been for vreks and vreks. They were both male; they had been male predominantly now for ages, very soolka in their dark beards and tasseled sandals, having a simply groshing, non-Jang orgy, with lots of older women in terribly sexual, opaque dresses.
“Who are you?” they inquired mildly.
I told them.
“Oh,” they turned a few memorizer mirrors on me so they could try to store my image somewhere in the place for future reference.
“Don’t bother,” I told them, “I’m changing again in sixty units or so.”
The flying floor wafted me away from them, and they returned to their antics without a backward glance, even at my hair. I remembered one of them, the one who had been my female maker all those vreks and units ago, hated scarlet. Oh well, perhaps she was more tolerant now that she was a male most of the time. I couldn’t recall when she’d last been female. Probably not since my post hypno-school period, when the two of them decided to set up home and include me. Usually people don’t bother about staying together, but my makers had always been pretty kinky.
Up among the slowly revolving glass turrets, I had to turn on the vacuum drift and be sick. I’d sort of been waiting for it ever since the Body Displacer affair. Then I immediately felt hungry. I’d missed about ten mealtimes, what with one thing and another.
Artistically shaped fruit, toasted snow-whirls and drinks with silver ice in them came whizzing to my aid, even before I’d opened my mouth. My makers had been adding telepathy units while I was out; I’d have to be careful. I wandered into the fur room, my feast following me on dainty crystal trays and singing atrocious little songs about how tasty it was, in case I forgot the filthy stuff was there. I settled in warm, smoky-gold drifts, absentmindedly eating it all up.
