The 8th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ™: Milton Lesser

by Milton Lesser

  "—be strictly a neophyte in dream empathy," Geria was saying. "But not me. I've had my share of it on Bortinot, and they'll be pairing us off, experienced and novice. I'll take you as a partner if you'd like, Smith."

  "You bet I'd like it!" He felt genuinely cheerful again, quite suddenly. Geria was the one bright spot at the school, and at least he had that. And yet there was something he could not remember, something pushing against the fringes of consciousness, and it concerned Geria. What actually had happened yesterday on the crags? He could remember, remember—but he couldn't at all, not really, and somehow he knew that the most important item of all remained tantalizingly close, yet just beyond his immediate reach.

  He said, "Just what is this dream empathy?"

  "Now you are joking."

  "No. I don't know a thing about it."

  "What do you people of Earth do for entertainment?"

  "Well, we talk, or we dance, or we play games, ride horses, take walks in the country, see a show—anything anyone else does, I guess."

  "No one else does any of that, because d.e.'s a lot better. You know anything about dreams, Smith?"

  "A little. Very little. They've always been something of a mystery on Earth."

  "Well, do you read or watch the telios on Earth?"

  "Of course. But it's strictly local stuff on Earth. That's why I'm here."

  "Well, if it's fiction, why do you read?"

  "Excitement I guess. Interest, suspense. I watch the hero, I struggle with him, succeed when he does if the book's a good one—"

  "Exactly. You go into empathy with him. Smith—how would you like to do that—with me?"

  "Hunh?"

  "Take a dream. I dream it, not you. It's a good one, under control. A vivid dream, more real than life itself in a lot of ways, emotions highlighted, maintained, increased—and exactly what I want to dream because I know we'll both like it.

  "I dream it, not you. But you feel it with me. You grow tired of your own thoughts, so you switch in on someone else's. Control there. Gorgeous dreams, fantastic dreams, even horrible ones, if both would like it. Complete empathy—in a dream world.

  "Then later, when you're experienced, you dream and I emp. How does it sound, Smith?"

  He smiled. "Not much privacy. But I'd be a liar if I said I wouldn't want to take a peek at your dreams, Geria. It sounds fine."

  Geria laughed softly, a lilting feminine sound. "It's a little more private than that, provided I know what I'm doing. There's a control. I can dream what I want, and can restrict it. You'll see."

  Smith very much wanted to see. Almost, he forgot about Jorak and the psi-power. But briefly in his mind he saw the black uniformed giant from Wortan, felt again the flailing Kard raised high overhead, saw accusation in the woman of Nugat's eyes....

  * * * *

  They lay on two adjacent couches, Smith and the woman of Bortinot. A bare cubicle of a room with just the two couches in it. A door, now closed, led into a room in which they had received their instructions. But Smith hardly had listened. Geria knew the game well enough, and he'd let it go at that. The rasping voice of the female instructor had annoyed him, anyway, but he noticed that she was a woman of Bortinot, not beautiful like Geria, but of her planet nonetheless.

  "Psi-powers again," Geria told him. "Hypnotism and telepathy mostly. You'll see...."

  Something which looked like a candle-flame seen through a long dark tube flickered from the ceiling. It came closer, steadied, flickered no more. Smith couldn't draw his eyes away from it.

  "You're asleep," Geria told him, matter-of-factly.

  He was. Not really, because in sleep there was a lack of awareness. But he could not move and everything was dark and he could only think.

  He felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. A mind without a body, in complete darkness. The tingle of awareness which you hardly regard as such because it always is with you was gone. Nothing.

  And then it returned. He felt his heart beating again. His ear itched and he scratched it. He shifted his left arm which had fallen asleep.

  Oddly, the ceiling light had moved. It had been just to the right of center—now it was just to the left, flickering again, retreating. It was gone.

  He turned over on his left side, sleepily, contentedly—on the brink of real sleep. Geria knew what she was doing. He'd rest. He looked—at his own sleeping figure!

  Madness toyed with the edges of his mind, gained inroads, made him look again. The silent figure to his left—himself. He raised his hands, felt the hair, long, flowing, billowing about his head—looked down, could see the gentle rounded rise of breast.

  A voice nibbled at consciousness, repeated itself, became clearer, laughing: "We will go to sleep now, Smith. How does it feel to be here with me? Let's dream. Dream—"

  The voice reassured, and Smith-Geria relaxed, slept.

  * * * *

  He, Geria of Bortinot—really she, then—stood on a hill. A weathered hill and aged, on a frigid world where winds of winter raged and howled and battered mountains into submissive mounds. Fearful place, grim and almost dead it was—and yet he liked it. Smiling, he stood atop the hill and bade the tempest strike. The winds hurled him headlong and he stumbled, but he felt elated, wild and free, part of the elements that did battle there in that country of the weathered hills. And there were others and they were men. They came up the hill and they tried to take him in their arms, strong men and fair, but he ran laughing with the wind. His identity faded in that wind, was torn to tatters by it—left only was Geria of Bortinot, her feelings, her thoughts, but his awareness.

  She stumbled, fell, turned over and over, much too slowly. Winds still howled, but above her here at hill's bottom. Wraiths of fog swirled in eddying gusts, came closer and faded, appeared again and swept away.

  She cried a name because the fog brought her an image and the name and the image were one. "Smith of Earth, of Earth, of Earth...." And he came to her, this image, on a charger, an animal much too thick through the shoulders to be a horse, with three pairs of legs. Low out of saddle he leaned, graceful, handsome bald head pink with excitement. He clutched at her, lifted her through the mists, above them. The six-legged horse soared high, above the hills, above the winds, carried her higher and higher. Smith stroked her yellow hair, kissed her. She tingled....

  "Wake up Smith! Up, come on now, the class is over for today."

  He stirred. The dream—Gods of Earth, what a dream!

  "Well, how'd you like it? See what I mean about dream empathy, Smith? Beats everything, doesn't it?"

  Smith hardly heard her. They say dreams fulfill wishes, they say—and what was it Geria had dreamed? Suddenly, it was very important to Smith, terribly important, more important than anything, because he remembered, without knowing how or why, what had happened yesterday on the crags.

  "Geria," he said. He tried to make his voice soft, but it boomed loudly, almost startled her.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing. Why nothing is the matter. You remember yesterday on the crag, Geria?"

  She nodded.

  "And your dream—Geria?"

  Again, the casual nod.

  "Geria, I—I love you. I think I want to marry you. I think—"

  He stopped. She looked at him for what seemed a long time but really was only a few seconds, and then she grinned. There was nothing malicious about it, Smith knew, just a grin. It spread, and the woman of Bortinot began to laugh. Softly at first, but soon she was laughing very hard and Smith felt foolish. He wanted very much to be out of there, any place but in that room, but he did not know for sure that he knew how to operate the door.

  "Oh, Smith, Smith," she said, "if you could see yourself now. But I suppose I deserve it. I planted the suggestion, you fought it, now you're pretending. All right, I admit defeat. But stop now; you should see your face."

  Serious. She was serious. She thought he was joking. Post-suggestively you tried to get someone to do something—anything, and it
was very very funny if they did. Funnier yet if they didn't, because then they beat you at your own game, made fun of you, laughed at you, but eventually with you. Of course it was like that, let her think it was like that.

  He smiled. "All right, I'll—stop."

  And together, laughing, they walked out of the room. Smith was surprised to find he had no trouble at all with the door.

  * * * *

  Jorak had a friendly smile for Smith when he entered their room. "There's a card for you in the box, Smith. Read it." Jorak, it seemed, had stopped playing with his name.

  Smith took the card, read it. "Smith of Earth, report to Registrar at once."

  "You know why, don't you?" Jorak asked him. But the smile was no longer friendly.

  "How should I know?"

  "Trouble, that's what. But you asked for it. Psi and Wortan don't mix, barbarian."

  Smith was glad when he hardly felt any impulse to strike the purple man. But he said, mocking Jorak's own tones, "Don't provoke me," and Jorak cowered in a corner.

  * * * *

  Smith looked into the banks of the Registrar's lights, spoke into the speaker. "Smith of Earth," he said. This time his voice didn't boom with loudness. And it didn't seem to matter much anymore.

  And this time, the Registrar's voice wasn't so femininely petulant. It sounded masculine, authoritative.

  "Smith of Earth. Item. Garnot of Jlob feels you are an inferior history student, recommends withdrawal from the school.

  "Item: Sog-chafka of Wortan announces your wanton use of psi-powers in Wortan fighting, recommends clemency because you are a barbarian.

  "Item: Kard of Shilon wants to meet you in Wortan again. Promises to kill you.

  "Item: both Jorak of Gyra and Geria of Bortinot have questioned your mentality, want you tested."

  Vaguely Smith listened. He felt removed, resigned. But then certain words struck hard....

  " ... Geria of Bortinot questions your mentality....

  "Smith of Earth. Are you listening?"

  "I'm listening," Smith said.

  "I feel you have two choices," the Registrar said. "We can request your withdrawal from the school, or we can keep you here under observation and give you an exhaustive battery of tests. The decision is in your hands."

  " ... Geria of Bortinot questions your mentality...."

  " ... the decision is in your hands."

  Jorak moved, slipped along the wall. His face was sneering and fearful too. The purple mask of his face seemed to swim before Smith's eyes like something seen through watered glass. Smith was pacing. He felt the emotions beginning to work yeastily and he longed to take that face and twist it off its snaky neck.

  "You had better go back to Earth, Smith," Jorak said. "Wherever it is."

  Abruptly, Smith felt the tendons writhing between his hands. He lifted. He held the squirming figure off the floor, held it there and looked into it curiously.

  "You'd better use some of your psi-power, my little green friend," Smith said, "While you can."

  The green face was turning purple. Words choked off somewhere down in the tubular length of the neck. Smith could feel it now! He could feel it! And he knew. The desperate tendrils of psi-power flailing out. And Smith began to smile.

  "I could tell you some things, Jorak. You have some psi-power, but that and anything else you've got, including some very bad features, you got them all from Earth. You got the germs for it all a long time back. And what you have left is just something that's a kind of left-over after a few thousand years. The Earth has forgotten more psi-power, friend, than you'll ever have."

  Jorak's eyes popped. Veins were coloring thickly through them.

  "You're here to learn something, Jorak. Listen. We developed psi-power on Earth so long ago we don't bother remembering when it was."

  Smith felt the power all right. Latent psi-power, dormant and unused and unneeded and uninteresting for aeons.

  He threw Jorak into the corner. Jorak curled up there, sucking in air and rubbing his bruised neck.

  "We had it. We threw it away," Smith said. "We had a defense against it too. But we don't use psi, or the defense anymore. We outgrew it. It had its day and then we forgot about it, Jorak. Why? We lost interest. Individual sanctity was better. Privacy of the human mind was something a lot more to be desired than being able to pry into someone else's brain, or vice versa. But you take a lot of pride, Jorak, in having a little residue floating around."

  Smith grinned more widely. It was funny in a way, and sad too. And he didn't particularly care about pushing it any further.

  " ... the decision is in your hands."

  * * * *

  He wished his thoughts would organize, fuse somehow with the stirring, rebelling emotions. Integration right now was vital. You lose, or you're not equal to something. And a really top-notch defense-mechanism will turn the whole thing around and say IT is not equal to YOU. That's a danger. And of that he was afraid.

  Could he, should he, pass judgment? On a culture that had left Earth wallowing in the cosmic back-waters? Twice, thrice, he had tried to pass that judgment, but he could not. He should be judged, theoretically, not the school.

  So what if their concept of history was primitive, basking in its own importance, ignoring the philosophical precepts upon which the social sciences are based? Surely they had reason, and he shouldn't question....

  And if they valued Wortan fighting above all else ... if it made their women look like eager animals waiting to see the blood spill ... how could he question? Why should he dare assume that the whole culture was depraved, simply because he regarded it that way by Earth standards?

  And their dream empathy was enjoyable, he had to admit that—but it was too enjoyable. No wonder Earth had dropped that sort of thing long ago. It was a good gimmick to divert attention from important things. It was also regressive, a kind of sick introversion. It was decadence, an invasion of privacy, an offense against the dignity of human privacy of the mind—the individual's last precarious citadel.

  He jumped a little when the Registrar barked: "Your decision, Smith of Earth."

  He smiled at the bank of lights. He had broad duties. He had a duty to Earth. And an indirect duty to the Galaxy. He should report all this. And Earth should try to do something to bring many worlds out of sloth, decadence, regression and inverted self-importance.

  But first of all, a man had a duty to himself, his own psychic health. Maybe the two weren't inseparable either. Maybe Earth would share the humiliation if he, Smith, suffered its scars to remain on him.

  He wanted to consider himself as more than a mere projection of Earth, more than a mere symbol. He was of Earth, sure. But first of all he was Smith. Just plain Smith. A guy with a human spirit, with dignity that could be affronted and had been here.

  He thought of Geria, of what that dream empathy had suggested. He felt her lips again, the softly curving line of her hips under the silver tunic to her knees, the yellow hair falling free to shoulders....

  "Your decision, Smith of Earth," the Registrar's voice was louder.

  "I'm not going back to Earth," said Smith softly. "Yet."

  He watched Jorak slipping up the side of the wall, then rushing out the exit.

  Smith went to the exit too, then into the hall. He started walking down it, and the smile clung to his lips like an old memory.

  * * * *

  From the monochromatic light harmonies playing softly from the walls, from the abstract gentleness of music that never stopped filtering through the gardens and over the mists of fountains, from the ever-coruscating and subdued twilight that surrounded the school—from these things, Smith extracted the tone of decadence, the static, hidebound turning of a wheel upon itself.

  The women from Bortinot stared oddly at him as his bulk, high and broad passed near. He heard their whispers ... "barbarian ... savage...."

  His smile broadened. The cycle closed. Strange, how the old became decadent, and the young revolted and
itself became sophisticated and sick, and the old became young again and the old values turned fresh and clear like a tree blooming out of winter's snow.

  The sounds of voices died abruptly as Smith went in. Faces turned ... Brandog of Hulpin with the albino skin like alabaster; Luog the young, green-skinned Pandenian ... varieties of form and color ... the white, pink, orange and green brows. But there was the sameness of inversion and static culture.

  Mouths gaped as Smith strode up to the front of the class room in transtellar history and looked curiously at the little man with the round gold face and green eyes that still blinked too much, and who, even now, smiled too much, too vacantly, as if he had been practicing a long time and had forgotten what it meant.

  But Garnot of Jlob's smile was slightly strained now and his face had a pale look, under its sheath of gold.

  "What a boorish intrusion," the instructor said. His voice got higher. "The entire school knows of course, Earth of Smith...."

  "Smith of Earth," Smith said softly.

  "Whatever it is, the entire school knows that already you have disgraced yourself and your planet—which was to be expected. And that I have recommended your withdrawal from the school as an inferior student."

  "And so," Smith said.

  "Therefore, it should be obvious that you are not particularly welcome as a member of this class. Surely you have not chosen to remain, and even if you have, it should be obvious that you will not be part of any class of mine until you have successfully passed certain tests, and have been kept under observation. Need I add that after you have taken these tests, we will not be expecting you to remain...."

  Several students tittered.

  "I'm going to talk now, Garnot of Jlob," Smith said. "You asked me questions earlier. Now I'm going to answer them."

  "But I did not...."

  "They're questions that should be answered, even though I'm not at all sure that there's enough free-thought here to grasp the real meaning of what I'm going to say."

  "I did not tell you to talk."

  "I'm Smith of Earth, and this is supposedly a free institution. On Earth I wasn't accustomed to being told when I could talk, when I could listen, when I could think. You asked me once where Earth is. I'll tell you."