“You must understand it is heresy to ever consider the creatures of the dreams as reality. The machines for dreaming have a simple principle, I believe. You are familiar with the vague, cluttered dreams of childhood. The machines merely clarify and make logical these dreams through some application of power. They are limited in that there are only three areas, or worlds, in which we can dream. In time you will become familiar with each world. But never, never delude yourself by believing that these worlds exist. The only possible world is here, on these levels. It is the only conceivable sort of surroundings which will permit life to exist. We become wiser men through dreaming.”
Raul hesitated. “How long has this world of ours existed?”
“Since the beginning of time.”
“Who … who made it? Who built these walls and the dream machines?”
“Again, my son, you come close to heresy in your questions. All this has always existed. And man has always existed here. There is no beginning and no end.”
“Has anyone ever thought that a larger world might exist outside the levels?”
“I must ask you to stop this questioning. This life is good and it is right for all of the nine hundreds of mankind. Nothing exists beyond the walls.”
“May I ask just one more question?”
“Of course. Provided it has more sense than your previous questions.”
“I have seen that this world is large, as though many more men once lived in it than do now. Are our numbers smaller than in times past?”
Orlan abruptly turned his back. His voice came softly to Raul’s ears. “That question has bothered me. I have not thought of it for a long time. When I was very small there were over a thousand of us. I have wondered about this thing. Each year there are one or two togas or robes for which no children are born.” His voice strengthened. “But it will be of no importance in our lifetime. And I cannot believe that man will dwindle and die out of the world. I cannot believe that this world will one day be empty when the last person lies dead with no one to assist him into the tube.”
Orlan took Raul’s hand. “Come and I will take you to the case assigned to you for all of your life.”
Orlan did not speak until they stood, on the twentieth level, before the empty case. Orlan said, “At your head, as you lie therein, you will touch that small knurled knob. It has three stations for the three dream worlds. The first station is marked by a line which is straight. That is the most beautiful world of all. The second station is marked by a curved line which stands on a base. You will find that world frightening at first. It is noisy. The third station, marked with a line with a double curve, is to direct the machine to create the third world, the one we find of least interest. You will be free to dream at any time you desire. You will shut yourself inside, set the knob for whichever world you desire, then disrobe and take the metal plate between your teeth and bite down on it firmly. The dream will come quickly. In your dream you will have a new body and new, odd, pointless skills. I cannot instruct you how to acquire change and mobility in the worlds of dreams. That is something you must learn by doing. Everyone learns quickly, but the actual procedure does not lend itself to words. You will dream for ten hours at a time and at the end of that time the machine will awaken you. Then it is best to wait for a new day before dreaming again.”
Raul could not resist the chance to say, “When the lights are bright in the walls and floors, we call it day, and when they are dim, we call it night. Is there any particular reason for that?”
Jord Orlan’s hand slid quickly down from Raul’s naked shoulder. “You talk insanely. Why do we have heads? Why are we called men? Day is day and night is night.”
“I had a childhood dream where we lived on the outside of a great globe and there was nothing over us but space. The other globe, which we called the sun, circled us, giving light and heat. Day was when it was overhead. Night was when it was on the opposite side of the globe.”
Orlan gave him a queer look. “Indeed?” he said politely. “And men lived on all sides of this globe?” Raul nodded. Orlan said triumphantly, “The absurdity is apparent! Those on the underside would fall off!” His voice became husky. “I wish to warn you, my son. If you persist in absurdities and in heresies, you will be taken to a secret place that only I know of. It has been used in times past. There is a door and beyond it is an empty coldness. You will be thrust out of the world. Is that quite clear?”
Sobered, Raul nodded.
“And now you must dream of each world in turn. And at the end of three dreams you will return to me and you will be told the Law.”
Jord Orlan walked away. Raul stood by the case, trembling. He lifted the glass door, slid quickly in and lay on his back on the softness.
He unwound the band of fabric and thrust it from him. The soft throb of power surrounded him, tingling against his naked limbs. He set the knob at figure 1, which Orlan had not known as a figure, as a mathematical symbol.
The metal plate was cool to his touch. He stretched his lips and put it between his teeth. Putting his head back he shut his teeth firmly against the metal … and fell down into the dream as though he fell from the great red sun to the brown dusty plains near the ragged mountains.
He fell remote and detached in the blackness, limbless, faceless.…
All motion stopped. This then, was the precious dream? Absolute nothingness, absolute blankness, with only the sense of existence. He waited and slowly there came to him an awareness of dimension and direction. He hung motionless, and then detected, at what felt like a great distance, another entity. He felt it was a sense that was not sight or touch or hearing. He could only think of it as an awareness. And with the power of his mind he thrust out toward it. The awareness heightened. He thrust again and again and it was a sudden merging. The thing he merged with fought him. He could feel it twist and try to turn away. He held it without hands, pulled it toward him without arms. He pulled it in and merged it with himself and pushed it back and down and away from him so that it was shrunken into a far small corner.
And Raul Kinson found himself walking on a dusty road. His arm hurt. He looked down at it and he was shocked to see the stringy leanness of the arm, the harsh metal enclosing the withered wrist, the dried blood where the metal had cut him. He was dressed in soft rags and he smelled the stink of his body. He limped on a bruised foot. The metal band on his wrist was in turn connected to a chain affixed to a long heavy pole. He was one of many men fastened to one side of the pole, with an equal number attached to the other side. Ahead of him, bare strong shoulders, oddly dark, were crisscrossed with wounds, some fresh, some very old.
The thing he held pressed down, writhed, and he released the pressure, a pure mental pressure he could not understand. It seemed to flow up into his mind, bringing with it strong fear and hate and the strange words of a strange tongue which, oddly, had meaning to him. These others were his comrades. Yes, they had fought together against the soldiers of Arrud the Elder, seven days’ march away. Death was better than captivity. Now there was nothing to look forward to but an empty belly, a life of slavery and savage punishment, a ceaseless, hopeless desire to escape and return to the far green fields of Raeme, to the cottage where the woman would wait for a time, where the children played by the mud sill of the door.
Vision and other senses began to fade. Raul found that he had released the mind of this man too far, that he had given the man the power to thrust him back into the nothingness. So once again he exerted control. In a short time he found the necessary delicate balance—with the captured mind thrust down, but not so far that language and circumstances became meaningless, yet with a sufficient control so that his own will would not be thrust out. With the maintenance of a proper balance, it was as though he existed on two levels. Through the mind of this man, this person who called himself Laron, he felt the hate and the hopeless anger, and also, through the alien invasion of his mind, a secondary fear of madness.
He trudged along in t
he dust. The soldiers guarding them carried long pikes with metal tips and walked lightly, joking among themselves, calling the prisoners foul names.
Raul gasped with pain as the pike point stabbed his upper arm. “Scrawny old one,” the soldier said. “You’ll be lion meat tomorrow, if you live that long.”
Ahead the dusty road wound back and forth up the flank of a hill. Beyond the hill he could see the white towers of the city where Arrud the Elder ruled his kingdom with traditional ferocity. It appeared to be a march of many hours. What had Jord Orlan said about change and mobility? A knack to be acquired. This helplessness and the pain of walking did not seem to promise much.
He let the captive mind flow back up through secret channels, once again taking over will and volition. Senses faded, and as the nothingness once again enfolded him, he tried to thrust out toward the side, toward the soldiers. Again the feeling of grappling with a strange thing that resisted. The moment of control, of pushing the other entity down into a corner of his mind passed and vision returned.
He lay on his belly in a patch of brush, staring down at a distant dusty road far below, at a clot of figures walking slowly along the road. He let the captive mind expand until he could feel its thoughts and emotions. Once again—hate and fear. This one had escaped from the city. He was huge and strong. He carried a stout club and he had killed three men in making his escape. Contempt and pity for the captives. Hate for their captors. Fear of discovery. This was a simpler, more brutal mind than the first one. Easier to control. He watched for a time, then slid out of the mind and thrust his way toward the remembered direction of the road.
The new entity was more elusive and control more difficult. He found that he had taken over the body of a young soldier. He walked apart from the others. The captives were at his right, laboring under the weight of the poles that kept them joined, like one large many-legged insect. Raul fingered the spirit of this young soldier and found there revulsion for the task, contempt for the calloused sensibilities of his comrades in arms, pity for the dirty prisoners. He regretted the choice of occupation he had made and wished with all his heart that this duty was over. It would be better in the city at dusk when he could wander among the bazaars, a soldier returned from the wars, stopping at the booths to buy the spiced foods he loved.
Raul forced a turn of the head and looked back at the line. After several moments he found the thin man with the pike wound in his upper arm. He had been in that man’s mind. Inside his own mind he felt the flutter of panic of the young soldier who had made a motion without apparent purpose. “Why do I turn and stare at the thin old one? Why is he of more importance than the others? Is the sun too hot on this helmet?”
Raul turned and looked up into the hills, trying to locate the brush where the fugitive hid. This seemed to alarm the captive mind even more.
“Why am I acting so strangely?”
The haft of the pike was comforting in Raul’s hand. He lifted it a trifle, realizing that the habit action patterns of the young soldier would serve him well should he wish to use the pike. For a time he contented himself with looking about at the landscape, picking out of the soldier’s mind the names of the objects he saw. A bird, a quick blue flash against the sky. An ox cart loaded with husks of corn. They passed stone ruins of an unguessed antiquity.
He turned when he heard a harsh scream. The thin one, whose mind he had inhabited, had fallen. A heavyset soldier, his face angry and shiny with sweat, jabbed again and again with the pike, making the red blood flow.
Raul thrust with the ease of long practice, the tip of his pike tearing through the profiled throat of the heavyset soldier, who turned, eyes bulging. He clawed at his throat with both hands, dropped to his knees, then toppled face down into the yellow dust of the road.
In his mind he felt the panicky thoughts of the young soldier. “I killed him! I must be mad! Now I’ll be killed!”
The soldier in charge swaggered over, scowling. He took in the situation at a glance and drew the short broadsword that only he wore. The others, grinning in anticipation, kept the young soldier from fleeing by making a half-circle of leveled pikes.
Raul, infected by the panic in his mind, thrust again with the pike. The broadsword flickered and lopped off a two-foot section of the end of the pike, stinging his hands. He looked down and saw the thrust as the broadsword went deep into his belly. The leader twisted the blade and withdrew it. The spasm and cramp dropped Raul to his hands and knees. He gagged as his arms weakened and his face sank slowly toward the dust. From the corner of his eye he saw the broadsword flash up again. The bright pain across the back of his neck drove him out into the nothingness where there was neither sight, nor sound, nor sense of touch.
At dusk he was in the city, with life and motion brawling and clashing around him. He lead a heavily laden burro and at intervals he cried out that he had water, cool water for dry throats. In the mind of the water vendor he found the location of the palace itself. More and more he was gaining control of the directional thrusts, gaining confidence in gauging the distance from mind to mind. He was a guard at the castle gates, then a man who carried a heavy load up endless stone steps.
At last he became Arrud the Elder, the man of power. To his astonishment, as he gained control of the king’s mind, he found it as simple and brutal as the mind of the fugitive. He found hate and fear there. Hate of the distant kings who drained his manpower and wealth in unending wars. Fear of treachery within the palace walls. Fear of assassination.
Raul relaxed to Arrud’s action patterns. Arrud buckled the heavy belt around his thick waist. It was of soft leather, studded with bits of precious metal. He flung the cape over his wide shoulders, tucked his thumbs under the belt and swaggered down the stone hallway, thrusting open the door at the end of the corridor. The woman had long hair, the color of flame. She lay back on the divan and looked at Raul-Arrud coldly. She had a harsh, cruel mouth.
“I await your pleasure,” she said bitterly.
“Tonight we look at the prisoners. The first ones have arrived.”
“This time, Arrud, pick some strong ones for the beasts, strong ones who will fight and make the game last.”
“We need the strong ones for work on the walls,” he said sulkily.
Her tone grew wheedling. “Please. For me, Arrud. For Nara.”
Raul relinquished his hold and faded into grayness. Only the gentlest of motions was necessary. He seeped slowly and relentlessly into the mind of the woman and found that there was an elusive subtlety about it that defied his initial attempts at control. At last he had her mind trapped. Her thoughts were hard to filter through his own mind. They were fragmentary, full of flashes of brilliance and color. Only her contempt and hate for Arrud was constant, unvarying. He found that maintaining a delicate balance of control was far more difficult when handling the woman-mind. He would possess her mind so utterly that he would lose her language, her female identity, to become, foolishly, Raul in a woman-body. Then she would surge back until he clung to the last edge of control.
In a short time he knew her. Knew Nara, daughter of a foot soldier, dancer, mistress of a captain, and then a general, and at last mistress of Arrud. He knew her contemptuous acknowledgment of the power of hair like flame, body that was cat-sleek, vibrant, clever.
Arrud came near the divan. He pressed his knuckles to his forehead, said slowly, “For a time I felt odd, in my mind. As though a stranger were in my mind, calling me from a great distance.”
“You have not given me your promise about the strong slaves, Arrud.”
He looked down at her. He reached with a hard hand, fondled her breast, hurting her with his clumsiness. She pushed his hand away and his lips went tight. He reached again, tore the sheer fabric of her garment from throat to thigh.
Raul fingered through her thoughts and memories, found the knowledge of the ivory-hilted dagger wedged between the cushions of the divan. He forced the woman’s mind back, quelling her anger, supplanting it w
ith fear. She willed herself to speak and he would not permit her to speak. Arrud slid with bulky clumsiness onto the couch, seeking the woman’s throat with his lips. Raul forced the woman’s hand to grasp the dagger. She was rigid with fear and he sensed in her mind the frantic thought that this was not the way to kill Arrud. This way she would be discovered. The dagger tip touched Arrud’s back. The needle blade slid into the thick muscles as though sliding through water as it reached for the heart. His heavy body pinned her to the couch as he died. As Raul slid away, sickened and weary, he heard her first maddened scream.
Raul awakened in the glass case of dreams. He lay still for a time, and there was a deep, slow, aimless lethargy within him, an exhaustion more of the spirit than of the mind or body. The ten-hour dream had ended as he left the body of the woman. It seemed as though he had been in the odd, alien world for months. He took the metal plate from his mouth. His jaw muscles were cramped and sore. He turned slowly and pushed the side panel up, turned and rested bare feet on the warm floor of the level of dreams.
A woman stood there, smiling at him. The habits of childhood were difficult to overcome. It shocked him that he should be noticed by one of the adult women. She was not an old one.
“You have dreamed,” she said.
“A long dream and it tired me.”
“The dreams are like that in the beginning. I shall never forget my first dream. You are Raul. Do you know my name?”
“I remember you from the games of the children. A long time ago you became a dreamer. Fedra, is it not?”
She smiled at him. “I am glad you remembered.” It was flattering to be treated with such friendliness by an adult. Childhood was a lonely time. Fedra was different, in the same way that he and Leesa were different, but not as much. She merely had not quite the frailness of the others, and there was some lustre to her brown hair.
He reached for his garment in the case, but she said, “Have you forgotten?”
He looked at her. She held the toga of a man in one hand, the thongs in the other. His heart gave a leap. To think of all the times he had yearned for a man’s toga. And now it was here. His. He reached for it. She pulled it back.
Wine of the Dreamers: A Novel Page 5
