Dream thief

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  But was he all right? Why did she question it? The thought nagged at her the rest of the day, whereupon she decided that since she had no reason to doubt the sincerity of the young man or his message she should forget it. …

  SPENCE VIEWED HIS SURROUNDINGS with a kind of groggy half-awareness, as if he had been drugged and then beaten senseless and left in a congealing heap. What or who had done the beating he did not recall. Assuredly it had been something large and mechanical; perhaps he had mixed it up with a shuttle scrubber.

  Oddly, he felt no pain; in fact, he felt nothing at all. It seemed as if he had been disconnected from his body and hovered somewhere very close to it, but far enough away not to have to share its misery. A thin, gauzy veil separated him from his senses, as if he were visiting a sick friend for whom he had only slightly more than the usual amount of empathy. The sensations he felt seemed more properly to belong to someone else. He was more than happy to let them go; they had not held particularly pleasant associations.

  A sound like a crystal chime reached his ears and he felt himself enveloped in a snowy white cloud which shut out all sight, all sound, all thought. He knew himself to be conscious, but beyond that he had no thought at all-a state like sleep, only brilliantly light rather than dark.

  He floated in this feathery state of unknowing for an eternity.

  Then, tinning in the distance far away he heard the chime again, and the blazing white cloud which had held him for so long began to dissipate. He was back in the strange room again, covered with the filmy energy tent. Spence glanced down at his side and saw that the needles were gone and all that remained of his vaguely remembered injury was a rosy pink scar along his ribs.

  He looked around the oval-shaped room for his surface suit, but could not see it anywhere. Only then did the full impact of what had happened break in on him. He had been carried to this place, ministered over, and nursed back to health. The dreams of his delirium had not been dreams at all. The creature from the growing-machine had cared for him.

  He lifted the clinging web and was about to stir from the nest where he lay when he glanced up and saw a humanoid well over two meters tall watching him from a doorway. The thing gazed at him steadily with keen interest, its long, triple-jointed arms crossed over its narrow chest.

  Spence recognized the golden, finely pebble-grained skin, the huge yellow eyes, and the elongated body as the being from his dreams. He felt no fear of the creature, only amazement that this meeting should actually be taking place.

  The creature, clothed in a loose-fitting garment of a sandy color that glinted in the light, came to him in graceful strides. It stood towering over him, its eyes burning as if it would devour him with its hungry look. Spence realized he was looking into the face of a Martian.

  Feeling a little like a character out of a corny old science-fiction movie, he raised his hand in greeting.

  The Martian opened his wide, thin-lipped mouth and a sound like a sustained and fluid chirp issued forth. Ringing, reverberating, the liquid tones reminded him of a treeful of nightingales breaking into song at once.

  The Martian stared at him, expecting some kind of response. But before he could think of a suitable reply the Martian, still staring intensely, made some physical adjustment in its speech organs and then said, in a voice that trilled like bubbling water, "Who are you? Why have you come?"

  Spence passed a hand before his eyes in disbelief. When he looked again the being still loomed over him, its spare features almost sparkling with fierce intensity. He decided that the harsh, reptilian quality of the Martian's aspect was due to the fact that it had no hair, that the face, with its thin, almost nonexistent nose, was dominated by the huge brilliant eyes. Also, he saw a narrow double row of gill slits along either side of the Martian's exposed chest.

  They stared at one another for several minutes before Spence, realizing he had not answered, managed to croak out, "I am Spencer Reston. I am from Earth." He had almost forgotten how to speak.

  The Martian then turned with a dry rustle of his clothing and scooped something off a nearby pedestal table. He turned back and held out the flat, ovoid object. Spence took it and looked at it and saw that it was a three-dimensional photograph of astonishing depth and clarity. It showed a grouping of stars as viewed from ground level; low brown hills showed on the horizon. It could have been any grouping of stars in the galaxy, but Spence guessed it was a constellation viewed from Mars. Still, it meant nothing to him. He shrugged and handed the object back.

  The alien did not take it but pushed it at him once more and when Spence looked the picture had changed to another scene; this one he recognized easily. In remarkably vivid holographics – so lifelike it was as if he held a window which opened onto the universe-he saw the Sol system.

  He nodded enthusiastically and pointed to the third planet from the sun. "Earth," he explained as he might to a dull-witted child. Immediately the scene shifted once more and he was peering at Earth's great blue globe with its swirls of frilly white cloud encircling it.

  The alien loosed a low whistling word which rose at the end; then with but a moment's pause said, "Earth."

  Spence realized he had just received his first lesson in Martian. He was mystified.

  "Who are you? How do you know my language?" he asked slowly.

  "I am Kyr. I have… assimilated," the word rolled out oddly, -your language skills while you were healing. I hope this causes you no anxiety. It is easier."

  The creature, as alien as anything Spence could have imagined-not so much in appearance as in character and bearing – stood conversing with him like a native. It passed all comprehension.

  "You saved me. Why?"

  "Life is precious and must be conserved. You had nearly ceased to be."

  "Thank you. I am grateful." He hoped the alien understood him well enough, for he meant it sincerely. "Are there more like you?"

  The Martian reflected for a moment and something like a smile flitted across the thin lips. "Yes. Many seedings by now."

  The creature-for some reason Spence considered it a male creature-allowed that this was not what Spence wanted to know. "But that is not what you asked. You wished to know if there are more of my kind here now. No, not for many Earth years. I am the only one. I am the last."

  "Why? Where are they? Where did they go?" There were so many questions he wanted to ask, they gushed like a fountain into his mind; he could not ask them all at once.

  The alien handed him the picture generator and Spence saw a bright array of stars slanting across the center of the field. It could have been the further rim of the spiraling Milky Way galaxy.

  "To other stars?"

  "Yes." The Martian nodded.

  "Why?"

  "Ovs could no longer support her people. Our atmosphere shrank, the waters dried up. To survive we built the underground cities and then, when we became skilled enough to venture to nearby stars, we left in search of other worlds."

  "Migrated to the stars… but why? What caused your atmosphere to change?"

  Kyr indicated the picture device and Spence saw once more the solar system he had seen before, but on a closer inspection he saw that it contained ten planets orbiting the sun in orderly fashion, rather than the nine he knew.

  "Our neighbor, Res, was struck by a large mass that passed close by Earth and Ovs, causing disturbances in the atmosphere and rotation of the planets. Debris rained down, and clouds of dust from the explosion covered both planets for many Earth years. Ovs suffered more serious damage."

  "Where was this Res?"

  "Here." A long multijointed finger pointed to the fifth planet from the sun.

  "The asteroid belt!" said Spence with some excitement. "We've long theorized a planet there."

  "We were struck by many of the pieces; so was Earth. Your planet has been struck many times in the past, but luckily was not much populated during these events. Each time it has been recreated.

  "Here it was…"-no human word seemed a
dequate -"catastrophe. Very much life was destroyed-plants, animals. Whole cities died. Ovs could not recover."

  Spence's mind reeled. This little bit of information could answer so many questions about the great upheavals and cataclysms in Earth's past. He wondered what else the Martian could tell him. And what of Martian life-philosophy, art, and literature? Did they have these things? Did they know of their origin? What kind of spaceships did they travel in? What secrets had they possessed while men still roamed the Earth in nomadic tribes?

  There was so much to learn Spence fell silent, speechless. The possibilities were awesome, and he was hopelessly inadequate to the task.

  "You must sleep now," Kyr said. "We will talk again. I would hear how you came here and how you knew to rebirth me."

  Without protest, though his brain was reeling with excitement, Spence lay back in the oval nest and the alien lowered the energy net over him once more. He slept at once, blissfully and soundly.

  9

  … WHAT PLACE Is THIS? " Spence stood on a sort of sky way overlooking a spreading underground metropolis undulating in graceful asymmetry-hives, hollows, arches, pinnacles, and spikes-stretching out as far as the eye could see under a great glimmering golden dome.

  "Tso. It is the largest of the underground cities built in the Third Epoch. On Ovs there have been four epochs: Vjarta, Kryn, Ovsen, and Soa. In your words the Water Epoch, Dust Epoch, Stone Epoch, and Star Epoch."

  The underground city held an eerie beauty for Spence, though seeing it now reminded him of nothing so much as bones, as if he were gazing into the fabled Elephant Graveyard.

  In the last few days-Spence called them days – Kyr had guided him through the ancient city and had instructed him in the culture of the vanished race. Each new bit of information struck him with the force of a mind explosion. Each new fact was a revelation. Spence had learned a great deal; enough to know that to learn the rest would take a lifetime-ah, but what a lifetime!

  He turned to his tall friend. That had been one of the first things he had learned; the docile, peace-loving, kindly beings were friends, not enemies of man. Brothers under the sun.

  He gazed at the form of the being beside him and felt a sadness for him. "Why did you stay behind? Why didn't you go with your people?"

  Kyr fixed him with an indecipherable look. "I am a Guardian. it is my life to preserve the memory of our kind in the solar system, so that any who come-as you have come-will know and remember.

  "I was chosen among others to guard the secrets of our past, lest anyone come after us and use our discoveries unwisely. You see, there was much we could not take with us and to destroy it would have been unthinkable. The Guardians were chosen to keep watch over all that was. Now I only am left." Sadness accompanied this last admission; Spence felt it and turned the conversation.

  "When did your people leave? How long ago?"

  Kyr pondered this for a moment. "Several lifetimes," he replied at last. "Three or four thousand of your years, maybe more. I cannot be sure until I have visited the-" He paused and chirped a word that sounded to Spence like krassil and then continued. "That I must do soon. I must make certain no one has entered there."

  "Then let's go. I'd like to see it." Spence, feeling remarkably fit thanks to Kyr's healing care, was eager to see all he could of Martian wonders.

  The krassil turned out to be part museum and part time capsule. It was a huge, cone-shaped hive in the center of a cluster of smaller hives, and it had been sealed long ages past against this very day.

  Kyr walked several times around the enormous structure while Spence sat on one of the mushroom-shaped objects which abounded throughout Tso. After his tour Kyr stepped aside and tilted back his head, loosing a long, whining note that split the air like a knife.

  Spence clamped his hands over his ears and watched.

  Kyr waited for a few moments and then repeated the procedure, this time in a slightly lower register.

  The vibration of the Martian's voice shook the very ground beneath their feet. Spence realized then how powerful the beings were. He watched as a sizable crack opened in the smooth, shelllike surface of the hive. Kyr went to the crack and began pulling away chunks of material which concealed a door.

  He stood before the door and in his whistling tongue chirped a few words to it. The door magically slid aside.

  A voice-imprinted lock, thought Spence. Such things were in experimental use on Gotham now. The Martians then were not as far advanced technologically as he had first thought.

  Spence entertained this notion for a few seconds before remembering that he was seeing the state of their science four thousand years ago. Technology on Mars had frozen the day they left.

  He chided himself for the vanity that lay behind his mistaken observation and for presuming to compare two such different civilizations. Then Kyr reemerged from the krassil, and beckoned to him to follow.

  Spence entered through the oblong doorway and stepped into the interior of the krassil, crammed to the ceiling with singular objects, all looking as if they had been placed there only moments before and their owners would return to take them up again at any time.

  There were things impossible to describe-many of them looked like they had been grown according to some freakish horticultural method rather than manufactured. Most of the Martian artifacts he saw possessed this natural, rather organic quality.

  This had caused Spence to do some wild theorizing on the origins of the Martian civilization. Man had belonged to the mammalian order on Earth, but it did not necessarily follow that that should be the regular course of things at all. The Martians might very well be part of the botanical branch of the Martian life tree, or the reptilian-he was not sure which they resembled the more. Maybe they came from some otherworldly synthesis of both.

  While Kyr busied himself with what appeared to be an inventory of sorts, Spence wandered among the strange assemblage of objects-objects at once bizarre and eerily fascinating, whose uses could only be supposed by the most astounding leaps of imaginative fancy. His curious eyes devoured all he looked upon greedily, like a man whose sight has just been restored after a long period of blindness.

  He came after some time to a further part of the krassil where an arched opening led into a small alcove. Inside, set on a rough base of stone, stood a large graceful object which immediately captured his attention. It looked like delicate, interwoven, semitransparent wings. He stepped into the alcove and the sculpture-if that is what it was-instantly lit with a rosy light and began to slowly move.

  Spence watched as other colors gradually came into play along the sculpture's transparent surface: yellow, blue, and green. These tones began to melt into each other in complex patterns as they swirled over the sculpture's elegant form until the form itself and the color became one. The hues mingled and blended, forming more subtle shades, now flashing boldly, now subdued.

  He was riveted to his place, drinking in the astonishing beauty of the art piece. He could not take his eyes from it. The thing held him with a hypnotic power as it spun and resolved itself into endlessly intricate patterns of light and color, each more graceful and lovely than the last. He felt a welling up inside him of emotion, a yearning so strong that it resembled a hungering Pain-a pain that bordered on bliss.

  It was a feeling he recognized as belonging to the apprehension of beauty, but one he had rarely, if ever, felt. Presumably others were so moved when they looked upon a classic work of art or listened to a beloved symphony. He had seldom had such experiences; the feeling was foreign to him and perhaps therefore more powerful and bewildering.

  He could not look away. The light sculpture reached out to him, binding him fast with threads of wonder. He felt nearly faint with rapture.

  This, thought Spence, was what the poets felt, the love that burns its victims in flames of ecstasy. Oh, to be so consumed-it was past enduring, yet he longed to endure still more.

  That he could be so affected by the sight of any created objec
t he would have denied. But that obstinacy melted away in the certainty that he was experiencing a work of consummate beauty.

  Tears formed in his eyes and his heart swelled nearly to bursting as the dry rivers of his soul began to flow with streams of joy. The passions he felt unlocked within him could not be contained. He wanted to leap, to dance, to weep and shout and exhaust himself in singing. Shudders of pleasure coursed through him; he heard a strange music ringing in his ears and realized that it was his own voice giving free vent to his pleasure in spontaneous song.

  The sculpture, as if sensing his joyous outpouring, moved more swiftly in response. The brilliant shades spun and changed, weaving themselves together and parting in intricacies beyond reckoning.

  It seemed to live, growing larger and more luminous, throwing off flashes of light and filling his tear-filled eyes with shapes too wonderful to behold.

  At last he could take no more. He closed his eyes, but still felt the shifting colors of light playing over him. A voice nearby said, "This is Soa Lokiri. "

  Spence turned to see Kyr standing beside him. He had not been aware of the Martian's presence.

  "It is beautiful." He returned his gaze to the shimmering display. At length he said, "What is Soa Lokiri?"

  "It means Starmaker. It is an artwork in homage to Dal Elna, made by the hand of one of our most revered artists, Bharat."

  "Starmaker." Spence repeated the name, nodding to himself. "It is aptly titled. But who is Dal Elna?"

  Kyr tilted his head sideways, looking at Spence closely. "Dal Elna, the All-Being."

  "All-Being? You mean God?"

  Kyr's head began weaving from side to side. "That word does not communicate to me."

  A pang of guilt squirmed inside Spence. Possibly the word held no meaning for Kyr because it held no particular meaning for him. Whatever means Kyr had used to, as he said, assimilate Spence's language, he had only received Spence's vocabulary and only the meanings Spence himself attached to the various words at his command. God, for Spence, was an empty word. It did not communicate.