The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Well, there you have it,” said I. “My little act was its own reward.”

  He shook his head. “Intangibles! Is there anything tangible I can give you? Within reason?”

  My glance fell on his walking stick—this walking stick. It had first taken my eye the moment I beheld it leaning up at his hospital bedside; nor had I since been able to find, even when in fantasy mode, any stick of its kind in our own shops. For all I knew, it might be far more valuable and less replaceable than his harp in his own world.

  As I hesitated, his gaze followed mine.

  “My stick?” he said, and I thought a pained expression crossed his face.

  “No, no!” I cried hastily. “Pray consider it unasked.”

  He, however, was not to be outdone in generosity. “It does hold some sentimental value for me,” said he, “but nothing lasts forever. Here!” He tossed it to me before I had any chance for further protest—I could only let my hand go up reflexively to catch it. “Take it in good health,” he went on. “But mind you, when you have grown tired of having it, I may return for it.”

  “Oh, please do!” said Angela, who had come up in time to hear his last words. “Just be sure to watch the time and come back before we get too old. Remember, you live so much longer than us!”

  “True,” said he. “I shall not forget.”

  Not to drag out our good-byes, after a few more exchanges he stepped into the lee of the outcropping. At that moment, and not until then, the portal appeared, a rectangular glow on the rocky face. Standing within it, the sorcerer swirled his robes and was gone, the radiant portal vanishing with him.

  The day itself remaining radiant, Angela and I went back down the hillside to finish packing up the remains of our picnic luncheon.

  * * * *

  So here it is, with its slight but wondrous gnarls flowing around the eyelets which mark the spots where once thorns sprang out…the naturally patterned grain of what he said is called “blackthorn” in his own magical land. A little too long for me, perhaps, but I should not need it to assist my stride for several decades yet.

  No, we have no idea when he will return for it. We can only hope he remembers to watch his calendars. To him, several decades must seem the merest twinkling of an eye.

  * * * *

  As the Computer Wizard, Corwin also encounters Zim in the sorcerer’s native Oz; but without reference to the meeting recounted above.

  Melody has my standing permission to use any of my characters as freely as she uses her own.

  THE DREAMSTONE

  All my life, I have been keenly interested in dreams. As a reader, I am doubly interested in fictional dreams—my favorites are Gilbert’s “Nightmare Song” in Iolanthe, which rings so true that I can’t help theorizing it was an actual dream of Gilbert’s own, which he set down in verse; the early dream chapter in Wuthering Heights; and, of course, Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, which, apart from being much longer and more sustained than the dream sequences of an average night, are in fact surprisingly dreamlike.

  Is it any wonder that I keep trying to do dreams in my own fiction?

  These next three stories are related to my unfinished novel The Purgatory Club, included in the aftermath of the present collection. I had originally planned to describe the work of the eponymous talisman among the institution’s entire population of permanent inmates, but never got beyond the first three stories. Anyone who has been reading the Fanciers and Realizers collection straight through may recognize a few characters from earlier stories.

  THE DREAMSTONE I: SOULS FOR TRADE

  There might be some truth to the claim that every suitcase was delivered intact to the owner’s rooms. The Dreamstone was badly wrapped, but safe. Talasia had mischievously half-hoped that it might prove too much temptation for some sticky-fingered official.

  Leaving everything else for the maid to unpack, Talasia carried it to the window and held it to the light. As a gemstone, it would have fetched almost nothing in any merely material market. A smooth flat oval of polished mountain agate, with dark shapes like storm clouds above bright spots like distant stars going nova as seen by day—interesting, but hardly expensive. In terms of tridollars, its housing would cost five hundred times more: a locket with the clearest crystal lens over a backing of twenty-two carat gold, scrolled up around the edges into an elegantly simple frame, and suspended from a twenty-four inch chain whose every handcrafted quarter-centimeter link was an individual work of art. On the back of the locket, in letters just large enough to read with the naked eye, was engraved the name of the great jewelry artist Eva Vara.

  Talasia decided to wear it to dinner on this, her first night here. It went well on the tunic she believed to be moire’ silk in shades of old ivory…although her perception was less reality-oriented in the matter of color than in that of jewelry.

  She had no fear of the Dreamstone as long as she remained awake. And she felt that the chances were extremely slight of her dozing off the first evening in this company.

  * * * *

  After dinner and the hour or so spent conversing in groups of three or four at the small dining-room tables, they gathered en masse on the veranda—all the guests except three: the Amerind had gone off alone to commune with nature somewhere there were no electronic screens to keep the bugs away from him, and Delila Bluehair had gone off in company with one of the gentlemen.

  Talasia had not yet perfectly matched all of their names and faces in her immediate recognition log. Not that it mattered very greatly. She would very probably be with these people for the rest of her life and theirs. That should be time enough to get to know them all.

  She stood a few moments at the inner rail, sipping her cordial and watching the fireflies rise over the lawn, wondering if they really were fireflies. Then she turned toward the nearest sofa, artfully aiming her chest in hopes that her necklace would catch the gleam of the blue oil lamp. When it still failed to attract comment, she picked it up by the chain and began toying with it, as if idly.

  At last Lady Larghetta said in her slow, aristocratic voice, “What a charming pendant, my dear.”

  “Thank your ladyship. Would you like a closer look?” Flipping open the crystal cover, Talasia shook out the Dreamstone and tossed it.

  It landed neatly in the lady’s satin-skirted lap. Her ladyship looked down at it in a leisurely manner, looked up again, and said with infinite gentility, “Thank you ever so much, M. Magadance, but it was more the locket, as now I perceive it to be, that had caught my eye.”

  “What, this old thing?” Talasia slipped it off over her head and twirled it several times by the exquisitely expensive chain before dropping it onto the older woman’s outstretched palm. “Yes, the casing has a certain charm. But since the stone is the truly remarkable item, I naturally thought ...” With a tiny shrug, she refilled her glass from the liqueur decanter and returned to the rail.

  Elsin Klipspringer, who sat beside Larghetta on the couch, leaned over and frowned in concentration at the stone until her ladyship plucked it up and handed it to her.

  Dear, timid little Elsin! She was the one new companion whom Talasia had known by more than reputation or fleeting glance in the old life, and she was perhaps the main reason Talasia had chosen this particular enclosure out of all the available listings. Another person would have said some such thing as, “Its presumption is amusing enough, but why on earth do you call it more remarkable than a setting by Vara?” Elsin Klipspringer studied it for a moment and said, “To me, it looks like a highwayman with three capes to his long black cloak, flying from the redcoats’ fire.”

  “What?” Carefully laying down the locket and chain, Lady Larghetta bent over Elsin’s shoulder for another look at the stone. “Why, yes. I should have said storm clouds rising over sea waves dancing in the moonlight, but we see the same markings, do we not? My storm clouds will be your highwayman’s cl
oak, the bright crests of my waves will be the flashes of your redcoats’ muskets.”

  Talasia smiled. “You begin to see why it’s remarkable. Everyone sees the same markings. In that much, it makes reality perceivers of us all. If each of us were to do a scientific painting of the Dreamstone, our paintings would be as nearly alike as our varying talents could make them.”

  Old Dr. Macumber chuckled. “Like a Rorschach ink blot, hey? Well, I guess I’d be the best judge of that, wouldn’t I? Toss it here.”

  Instead of tossing it, Elsin rose, crossed to “the mad doctor,” and put it into his palm.

  “‘The Dreamstone,’ I think you called it?” inquired the tall, dark man who called himself John Stock.

  “And for a reason,” Talasia explained. “It brings dreams. Or enhances them, or makes them coherent, or gives them staying power in the memory… Whatever dream theory you prefer, the Dreamstone can give you a remarkable experience.”

  “I,” said the almost pureblood Chocolate man, “do not subscribe to any other dream theory than this: dreams are illusions, usually tools of the Devil, and always filled with dangers, pitfalls, and occasions of sin to the unwary.”

  “One mind’s sin,” M. Stock commented, “is another mind’s entertainment.” Lighting a mock cigarette, he went on to the newcomer, “Don’t take M. Of The Light any more seriously than you have to, M. Magadance. I, for one, would like to know more about this Dreamstone of yours.”

  “You simpy sleep with it somewhere near your head—under your pillows, inside a pillowcase, tucked between sheets and mattress… Some users have even worn it to bed around their necks. The first time a person uses it, it almost always brings a wonderfully pleasant dream experience, or at least an entertaining one.”

  “‘Almost’ always?” queried Lady Larghetta.

  “A very few individuals seem to have minds so vile that even the first experience is a nightmare in every sense, a dream that the dreamer hates both to have and to remember. I’m sure,” Talasia added daringly, with a glance at the half dozen faces around her, “that none of us here present are so very evil as that! Although I suppose that one or two of us might conceivably have the sort of dream adventure that is bone-chilling when it happens but warmly satisfying to look back on. I have met people who claim to enjoy nightmares.”

  “Count me among them,” said John Stock. “But when you say, ‘the first time,’ you seem to imply that subsequent uses can have less desirable results.”

  “It varies with the user. An especially pure-hearted person—a Saint Francis or Mother Theresa—can get another pleasant dream from it the second time.”

  “Such a person,” said M. Of The Light, “would be too wise to use such an item even once.”

  “A Gautama or a Jesus,” Talasia went on, “might even get a pleasant dream the third time. For most of us ordinary mortals, however, the nightmares begin with the second time and get worse with every subsequent use, until the dreamer either passes the stone on or ...”

  “Or?” said John Stock.

  “Dies.”

  Dr. Macumber cackled. “Well, well, well! New evidence that nightmares can kill, eh?”

  Elsin asked timidly, “Does that ever happen the…the first time?”

  “The man who gave it to me said yes, but only once or twice so far in its known history, in cases of truly remarkable psychomystical corruption. Surely none of us would have anything to fear…the first time.”

  The poor old sot at the far end of the group, who had said nothing since they gathered, made a snuffling noise, but Talasia had no idea whether it was a contribution to the general discussion or merely a stray fume from his own private alcoholic stupor.

  “Nothing to fear, possibly,” said M. Of The Light, “except for this same corruption of the soul, which is the one and only thing in this vale of earthly sins and sorrows that any right-thinking mortal ought to fear.”

  “Who gave it you?” Lady Larghetta asked, her voice sounding ever so slightly hollow.

  Leaning back on the rail, Talasia regarded them all in the half light and took another sip of bitter liqueur before replying. “A stranger on a riverboat down the Nile. A swarthy little man with a white suit, a thick accent, and a haggard face. One evening he came up to me, staggering a little, as I sat on deck watching the pyramids in the sunset. He pressed the necklace into my hand and whispered—I can’t reproduce his accent very well—’Take eet, kind lady. Take eet and zave my life.’ Naturally, I asked the why and how of it, especially when I noticed the quality of the chain and locket. In his broken English, he told me everything I’ve just told you, and added that he had slept with it three times, knowing the results; that he feared the fourth time would kill him for sure; but that it had on him the effect of a very powerful addictive. That was only about a year ago,” she ended wistfully.

  Lady Larghetta had let the locket and chain drop into her lap. “A nice trinket for you to bring into such an establishment as this!”

  “Ah, but you see, it doesn’t have an addictive effect on everyone. On only about one in ten, the little man said. I haven’t been able to check that on any sound statistical basis, but surely at least one among us could hold it in perfect safety forever. I myself have resisted it very nicely for seven months since my second dream. There are a few individuals for whom it never works at all, who remain permanently immune to all its possible effects.”

  “Ah, hah!” the doctor chortled. “The out! That essential little failsafe to explain why it doesn’t happen to work for Dan, Nan, or Kelly! Well,” he went on, sitting back in his rattan armchair and crossing his insect-thin legs in their creased white trousers, “things have changed a lot out there since I came in. Back in my day, you’d find a yarn like that in the backpage ads of a tabloid print-newspaper. But I’ll bet you’ve got a dream or two to tell us to go along with it. Don’t you, M. Tally?”

  “Of course.” She smiled. “For me, the Dreamstone works very well.”

  * * * *

  In my dream, I had to do something terrible. Necessary, and somehow wonderful, but so terrible that my soul revolted.

  My soul was a sort of other person, inside my body with me, but also, at the same time, outside, arguing with me face to face. He seemed to be a young man. Androgynous, I suppose, but shading more to the masculine than the feminine, so I’ll say “he.” He was absolutely appalled at what I had to do, and flatly refused.

  “It isn’t a whim,” said I. “It has to be done, and I’m the only creature fit to do it, as in the story of Titus Andronicus.”

  “Well,” said he, “you’ll have to do it by yourself, because I won’t have any part of it. You can call me a coward soul if you like.” And he folded his arms and went off into a corner to cower.

  So I set off to do it by myself. Only I soon found that, without my soul, I couldn’t move. That is, I couldn’t lift anything. I could lower my arm, but not raise it; put my foot down, but not pick it up again. As for wielding any kind of tool or weapon, that was simply out of the question, unless I could get any effective good out of swinging a hatchet back and forth a few inches at the level of my upper leg.

  I saw that the only thing for it was a deal with the Devil, so I called him up. The dream didn’t show exactly how. Even with the Dreamstone, there are occasional skips and fuzzinesses. But all at once there he was, in all his satanic majesty, got up like a formal diplomat of the last century, in a black-tailed coat, with a gold and diamond badge of royalty pinned to a broad red satin cordon across his chest. He had a top hat, a monocle, a smoking cigarette in an ivory holder several inches long, and I was sure he used lemon polish on his horns.

  “Your Majesty,” said I. I didn’t bow, because I remembered that I wouldn’t have been able to get back up. “I have a worthless, coward soul over there that I want to sell you.”

  He went over and strolled all around my soul, inspec
ting him closely, smoking his cigarette, and paying no attention to the corner walls on two sides of the soul. Eventually he came back to me, put a new cigarette in his holder, and said, “Actually, it’s rather a fine specimen. But my usual practice is to pay clients whatever they like in return for an option, which I always exercise, on their souls at the expiration date of the contract. People need their souls in the meantime, you perceive, if they want to enjoy their lives or even function in the world. If you’ve been led to imagine otherwise, you’ve been misled.”

  “That may be,” I said, “but if you can make him do what I have to do now, you can take him afterwards and welcome.”

  “Alas!” said the Devil. “I can do things to souls, but I can’t make them do anything. I’m even more powerless than the Inquisition that way. It’s the reason I’m always willing to wait and get them when there’s no longer any need to try to make them do anything.

  “Now usually,” he went on, “the soul is as ready as its occupant to make the deal. In fact, as often as not, the soul is the prime mover. But in such a case as yours, what I’d suggest is a trade-in.”

  “A trade-in?” said I.

  “A trade-in,” said he.

  “A trade-in?” said my soul, and we went round three or four turns like this, until finally I asked,

  “But what profit does your Satanic Majesty get out of a trade-in?”

  “More than you might expect,” said he. “One: I get your old soul at once. Its very uselessness for your present purpose shows that I probably wouldn’t have gotten it at all in the normal flow of events.”

  My soul began such a wailing and gnashing of teeth that the Devil had to raise his voice to continue.

  “Two: I get the chance to finalize my claim on your new, trade-in soul. You see,” he explained, “there’s a sort of limbo, or No Angel’s Land, between my own realm and Purgatory. ‘Provisional Hell,’ we like to call it. On the other side, they call it ‘Provisional Purgatory.’ It houses souls who lived well by their own standards—unfortunately, their standards weren’t quite in accord with you-know-Whose; souls who weren’t quite decided when their occupants disintegrated; souls whose occupants kept them from slipping quite far enough in one direction or the other…souls who, for any reason at all, were found not quite definite enough for either salvation or perdition. I’m sure we can find one among them who will satisfy you perfectly. They’re all eager to get out for a second chance, and considering your present purpose, I’m fairly confident I can predict which way the chance will go.”