Dreamsongs 2-Book Bundle

by George R. R. Martin

  Bannersson’s eyes blazed, and the lines of his mouth grew hard and angry. “No? Well, that’s too bad. You’d rather talk about Ruotsinsalmi, I suppose. But we won’t. We’re going to talk about Sveaborg, old man, whether you like it or not.”

  Cronstedt shuddered at the violence in his voice. “Alright, Major. I had to surrender. Once surrounded by ice, Sveaborg is very weak. Our fleet was in danger. And our powder was low.”

  The Swedish officer considered him scornfully. “I have documents here,” he said, holding up the envelope, “to show just how wrong you were. Facts, Admiral. Cold historical facts.”

  He ripped the end of the envelope off violently, and tossed the papers inside it onto Cronstedt’s bed. “Twelve years ago you said we were outnumbered,” he began, his voice hard and emotionless as he recited the facts. “We were not. The Russians barely had enough men to take over the fortress after it was surrendered to them. We had 7,386 enlisted men and 208 officers. Many more than the Russians.

  “Twelve years ago you said Sveaborg could not be defended in winter due to the ice. That’s hogwash. I have letters from all the finest military minds of the Swedish, Finnish, and Russian armies testifying to the strength of Sveaborg, summer or winter.

  “Twelve years ago you spoke of the formidable Russian artillery that ringed us. It did not exist. At no time did Suchtelen have more than forty-six pieces of cannon, sixteen of which were mortars. We had ten times that number.

  “Twelve years ago you said our provisions were running low, and our store of powder was dangerously depleted. It was not so. We had 9,535 cannon cartridges, 10,000 cartouches, 2 frigates, and over 130 smaller ships, magnificent naval stores, enough food to last for months, and over 3,000 barrels of powder. We could easily have waited for Swedish relief.”

  The old man shrieked. “Stop it, stop it!” He put his hands to his ears. “I won’t hear any more. Why are you torturing me? Can’t you let an old man rest in peace?”

  Bannersson looked at him contemptuously. “I won’t continue,” he said. “But I’ll leave the papers. You can read it all yourself.”

  Cronstedt was choking and gasping for breath. “It was a chance,” he replied. “It was a chance to save everything for Sweden.”

  Bannersson laughed, a hard, cruel, bitter laugh. “A chance? I was one of your messengers, Admiral; I know what sort of a chance the Russians gave you. They detained us for weeks. You know when I got to Stockholm, Admiral? When I delivered your message?”

  The old man’s head lifted slowly, and his eyes looked into Bannersson’s. His face was pale and sickly, his hands trembling.

  “May 3, 1808,” said Bannersson. And Cronstedt winced as if struck.

  The tall Swedish major turned and walked to the door. There, knob in hand, he turned and looked back.

  “You know,” he said, “history will forget Bengt and what he tried to do, and will remember Colonel Jägerhorn only as one of the first Finnish nationalists. But you I don’t know about. You live in Russian Finland on your thirty pieces of silver, yet Bengt said you were only weak.” He shook his head. “Which is it, Admiral? What will history have to say about you?”

  There was no answer. Count Carl Olof Cronstedt, Vice-Admiral of the Fleet, hero of Ruotsinsalmi, Commandant of Sveaborg, was weeping softly into his pillow.

  And a day later, he was dead.

  Call him the arm we trusted in

  That shrank in time of stress,

  Call him Affliction, Scorn and Sin

  And Death and Bitterness

  But mention not his former name,

  Lest they should blush who bear the same.

  Take all that’s dismal in the tomb,

  Take all in life that’s base,

  To form one name of guilt and gloom

  For that one man’s disgrace,

  Twill rouse less grief in Finland’s men

  Than his at Sveaborg did them.

  —The Tales of Ensign Stål,

  JOHAN LUDVIG RUNEBERG

  AND DEATH HIS LEGACY

  The Prophet came out of the South with a flag in his right hand and an ax handle in his left, to preach the creed of Americanism. He spoke to the poor and the angry, to the confused and to the fearful, and in them he woke a new determination. For his words were like a fire in the land, and wherever he stopped to speak, there the multitudes arose to march behind him.

  His name was Norvel Arlington Beauregard, and he had been a governor before he became a Prophet. He was a big, stocky man, with round black eyes and a square face that flushed blood red when he got excited. His heavy, bushy eyebrows were perpetually crinkled down in suspicion, while his full lips seemed frozen in a sneering half-smile.

  But his disciples did not care what he looked like. For Norvel Arlington Beauregard was a Prophet, and Prophets are not to be questioned. He did no miracles, but still they gathered to him, North and South, poor and affluent, steelworkers and factory owners. And soon their numbers were like unto an army.

  And the army marched to the music of a military band.

  “Maximilian de Laurier is dead,” said Maximilian de Laurier aloud to himself as he sat alone in a darkened, book-lined study.

  He laughed a low, soft laugh. A match flared briefly in the darkness, flickered momentarily as he touched it to his pipe, and winked out. Maxim de Laurier leaned back in the plush leather armchair, and puffed slowly.

  No, he thought. It doesn’t work. The words just don’t sound right. They’ve got a hollow ring to them. I’m Maxim de Laurier, and I’m alive.

  Yes, answered another part of him, but not for long. Quit fooling yourself. They all say the same thing now. Cancer. Terminal. A year at most. Probably not even that long.

  I’m a dead man, then, he told himself. Funny. I don’t feel like a dead man. I can’t imagine being dead. Not me. Not Maxim de Laurier.

  He tried it again. “Maximilian de Laurier is dead,” he said firmly to the silence.

  Then he shook his head. It still doesn’t work, he thought. I’ve got everything to live for. Money. Position. Influence. All that, and more. Everything.

  The answer rang ruthless and cold through his head. It doesn’t matter, it said. Nothing matters anymore, nothing except that cancer. You’re dead. A living dead man.

  In the dark, silent room, his hand trembled suddenly, and the pipe flew from his grasp and spilled ashes on the expensive carpet. His fists clenched, and his knuckles began to whiten.

  Maximilian de Laurier rose slowly from the chair and walked across the room, brushing a light switch as he passed it. He stopped before the full-length mirror on the door, and surveyed the tall, gray-haired reflection that stared back from the glass. There was a curious whiteness about the face, he noted, and the hands were still trembling slightly.

  “And my life?” he said to the reflection. “What have I done with my life? Read a few books. Driven a few sports cars. Made a few fortunes. A blast, one long, wild blast. Playboy of the Western World.”

  He laughed softly, but the reflection still looked grim and shaken. “But what have I accomplished? In a year, will there be anything to show that Maxim de Laurier has lived?”

  He turned from the mirror with a snarl, a bitter, dying man with eyes like the gray ash of a fire that has long since gone out. As he turned, those eyes drank in the gathered remains of a life, sweeping over the rich, heavy furniture, the polished wooden bookcases with their rows of heavy, leather-bound volumes, the cold, sooty fireplace, and the imported hunting rifles mounted in a rack above the mantelpiece.

  Suddenly the fire burned again. With quick strides, de Laurier crossed the room and yanked one of the rifles from its mounting. He stroked the stock softly with a trembling hand, but his voice when he spoke was cold and hard and determined.

  “Damn it,” he said. “I’m not dead yet.”

  He laughed a wild, snarling laugh as he sat down to oil the gun.

  Through the Far West the Prophet stormed, spreading the Word from a priva
te jet. Everywhere the crowds gathered to cheer him, and husky steelworkers lifted up their children on their shoulders so they could hear him speak. The long-haired hecklers who dared to mock his cause were put down, shouted down, and sometimes beaten down.

  “Ah’m for the little man,” he said in San Diego. “Ah’m for the good patriotic Americans who get forgotten today. This is a free country and I don’t mind dissent, but Ah’m not about to let the Commies and the anarchists take over. Let’s let’em know they can’t fly the Communist flag in this country if there are any red-blooded Americans left around. And if we have to bust a few heads to teach ’em, well, that’s okay too.”

  And they flocked to him, the patriots and the superpatriots, the vets and the GIs, the angry and the frightened. They flew their flags by day, and read their bibles by night, and pasted “Beauregard” stickers on the bumpers of their cars.

  “Any man has got a right to dissent,” the Prophet shouted from a platform in Los Angeles, “but when these long-haired anarchists try to impede the progress of the war, why, that’s not dissent, that’s treason.

  “And when these traitors try to block troop trains carrying vital war materials to our boys overseas, Ah say it’s time to give our policemen some good stout clubs, untie their hands, and let ’em spill a little Commie blood. That’ll teach those anarchists to respect the law!”

  And all the people cheered and cheered, and the noise all but drowned out the faint echo of jackboots in the distance.

  Reclining in the deck chair, the tall, gray-haired man glanced at the copy of the New York Times lying across his lap. He was a nondescript sort of fellow, with a worn off-the-rack sports jacket and a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses. Few would notice him in a crowd. Fewer still would look closely enough to recognize the dead man who once had been Maximilian de Laurier.

  A half smile flickered across the dead man’s lips as he read one of the first-page stories. The headline read “De Laurier Fortune Liquidated” in prim gray type. Below, in smaller print, a somber subhead observed that “English Millionaire Vanishes; Friends Believe Money Deposited in Swiss Banks.”

  Yes, he thought. How appropriate. The man vanishes, but the money gets the headlines. I wonder what the papers will say a year from now? Something like “Heirs Await Reading of Will,” perhaps?

  His eyes left the article and wandered upward across the page, coming to rest on the lead story. He stared at the headline in silence, a frown set across his features. Then, slowly and carefully, he read the article.

  When he finished, de Laurier rose from the chair, folded the paper carefully, and dropped it over the rail into the murky green water that churned lustily in the liner’s wake. Then he shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and walked slowly back to his stateroom in the economy section of the ship. Below, the newspaper tumbled over and over in the turbulence caused by the great liner’s passing until it finally became waterlogged and sank. It came to rest at last on the muddy, rock-strewn bottom, where the silence and the darkness were eternal.

  And the crabs scuttled to and fro across the fading front-page photo of a stocky, square-faced man with bushy eyebrows and a crooked sneer.

  The prophet swung East with a vengeance, for here was the homeland of the false seers who had led his people astray, here was the stronghold of those who opposed him. No matter. Here his crowds were even greater, and the sons and the grandsons of the immigrants of the last century were his to a man. So here Norvel Arlington Beauregard chose to attack his enemies in their own lair.

  “Ah’m for the little man,” he said in New York City. “Ah support the right of every American to rent his house or sell his goods to whoever he so chooses, without any interference by briefcase-toting bureaucrats and egghead professors who sit up in their ivory towers and decide how you and me have to live.”

  And the people cheered and cheered, and they waved their flags and said the Pledge of Allegiance, and chanted “Beauregard—Beauregard—Beauregard” over and over again until the arena rocked with the noise. And the Prophet grinned and waved happily, and the Eastern reporters who covered him shook their heads in disbelief and muttered dire things about “charisma” and “irony.”

  “Ah’m for the working man,” the Prophet told a great labor convention in Philadelphia. “And Ah say all these anarchists and demonstrators better damn well quit their yappin’ and go out and get jobs just like everybody else! You and me had to work for what we had, so why should they get pampered by the government? Why should you good folks have to pay taxes to support a bunch of lazy, ignorant bums who don’t want to work anyway?”

  The crowd roared its approval, and the Prophet clenched his fist and shook it above his head in triumph. For the Word had touched the souls of the workers and the laborers, the strainers and the sweaters, the just-haves of a nation. And they were his. They would follow false gods no longer.

  So they all stood up and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” together.

  In New York, Maxim de Laurier caught the first bus from customs to the heart of Manhattan. He carried only one small suitcase packed with clothing, so he did not bother to stop at a hotel. Instead, he went straight towards the financial district, to one of the city’s largest banks.

  “I’d like to cash a check,” he said to a teller. “On my bank in Switzerland.” He scribbled in his checkbook sloppily, ripped the page loose, and shoved it across the counter.

  The teller’s eyebrows shot up slightly as he noticed the figure. “Mmmm,” he said. “I’ll have to check this out, sir. I hope you don’t mind waiting a few moments. You do have identification, of course, Mister—?”

  He glanced at the check again. “Mister Lawrence,” he concluded.

  De Laurier smiled amiably. “Of course,” he said. “I’d hardly try to cash a check of this size without proper identification.”

  Twenty minutes later he left the bank, walking with measured confidence down the avenue. He made several stops that day, before he finally checked into a cheap hotel for the night.

  He bought some clothing, several newspapers, a large number of maps, a battered used car, and a collection of rifles and pistols. He took plenty of ammo, and made sure every rifle had a telescopic sight.

  Maximilian de Laurier stayed up late that night, bent over a cheap card table in his hotel room. First he read the newspapers he had purchased. He read them slowly, and carefully, and over and over again. Several times he got up and placed phone calls to the papers’ information services, and took down careful notes of what they told him.

  And then he spread out his maps, and studied them intently, far into the morning. Selecting those he wanted, he traced a heavy black line across them, constantly referring back to his papers as he worked.

  Finally, near dawn, he picked up a red pencil and circled the name of a medium-sized city in Ohio.

  Afterward, he sat down and oiled his guns.

  The Prophet returned to the Midwest with a fury, for here, more than anywhere except in his homeland, he had found his people. The high priests who had fanned out before him sent back their reports, and they all read the same way. Illinois was going to be good, they said. Indiana was even better. He’d really clean up in Indiana. And Ohio—Ohio was great, Ohio was fantastic.

  And so the Prophet crisscrossed the Midwest, bringing the Word to those who were ripe for it, preaching the creed of Americanism in the heartland of America.

  “Chicago is my kind of town,” he said repeatedly as he stumped through Illinois, “You people know how to handle anarchists and Communists in Chicago. There’s a lot of good, sensible, patriotic folks in Chicago. You’re not about to let those terrorists take over the streets from good, law-abiding citizens in Chicago.”

  And all the people cheered and cheered, and Beauregard led them in a salute to the police of Chicago. One long-haired heckler yelled out “Nazi,” but his lone shout was lost in the roar of the applause. Except, at the back of the hall, two burly security guards noted him, nodded
to each other, and began to move swiftly and silently through the crowd.

  “Ah’m not a racist,” the Prophet said as he crossed the border to speak in northern Indiana. “Ah stand for the rights of all good Americans, regardless of race, creed, or color. However, Ah support your right to sell or rent your property to whoever you choose. And Ah say every person ought to work like you and me, without being allowed to live in dirt and ignorance and immorality on a government handout. And Ah say that looters and anarchists ought to be shot.”

  And all the people cheered and cheered, and then went out to spread the Word to their friends, their relatives, and their neighbors. “I’m no racist and Beauregard’s not one either,” they’d tell each other, “but would you want one to marry your sister?” And the crowds grew larger and larger each week.

  And as the Prophet moved east into Ohio, a dead man drove west to meet him.

  “Is this room satisfactory, Mr. Laurel?” asked the thin, elderly landlady, holding the door open for his inspection.

  Maxim de Laurier brushed past her and deposited his suitcases on the sagging double bed that stood against one wall. He smiled amiably as he surveyed the dingy cold-water flat. Crossing the room, he lifted the shade and glanced out the window.

  “Oh, dear,” said the landlady, fumbling with her keys. “I hope you won’t mind the stadium being located right next door. There’s going to be a game next Saturday, and those boys do make a dreadful lot of noise.” She punctuated her sentence with a sharp stomp as her foot came down to crush a cockroach that had crawled out from under the carpet.

  De Laurier brushed aside her fears with a wave of his hand. “The room will be just fine,” he said, “I rather enjoy football anyway, and from here I’ll have a fine view of the game.”