Roger Zelazny - The Dream Master

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

"I know. Here comes the meal we just had."

"Ugh! It looks dreadful! Did we eat all that stuff?"

"Yes." He chuckled. "That's a knife, that's a fork, that's a spoon. That's roast beef, and those are mashed potatoes, those are peas, that's butter . .." "Goodness! I don't feel so well."

"... And those are the salads, and those are the salad dressings. This is a brook trout—mm! These are French fried potatoes. This is a bottle of wine. Hmm—let's see— Romanee-Conti, since I'm not paying for it—and a bottle of Yquem for the trou—Hey!" The room was wavering.

He bared the table, he banished the restaurant. They were back in the glade. Through the transparent fabric of the world he watched a hand moving along a panel. Buttons were being pushed. The world grew substantial again. Their emptied table was set beside the lake now, and it was still nighttime and summer, and the tablecloth was very white under the glow of the giant moon that hung overhead.

"That was stupid of me," he said. "Awfully stupid. I should have introduced them one at a time. The actual sight of basic, oral stimuli can be very distressing to a person seeing them for the first time. I got so wrapped up in the Shaping that I forgot the patient, which is just dandy! I apologize." I'm okay now. Really I am." He summoned a cool breeze from the lake. "... And that is the moon," he added lamely. She nodded, and she was wearing a tiny moon in the center of her forehead; it glowed like the one above them, and her hair and dress were all of silver.

The bottle of Romanee-Conti stood on the table, and two glasses.

"Where did that come from?" She shrugged. He poured out a glassful. "It may taste kind of flat," he said. "It doesn't. Here—" She passed it to him. As he sipped it he realized it had a taste—a frutte such as might be quashed from the grapes grown in the Isles of the Blest, a smooth, muscular charnu, and a capiteux centri-fuged from the fumes of a field of burning poppies. With a

start, he knew that his hand must be traversing the route of the perceptions, symphonizing the sensual cues of a trans­ference and a counter-transference which had come upon him all unawares, there beside the lake.

"So it does," he noted, "and now it is time we returned." "So soon? I haven't seen the cathedral yet..." "So soon."

He willed the world to end and it did.

"It is cold out there," she said as she dressed, "and dark." "I know. I'll mix us something to drink while I clear the unit."

"Fine."

He glanced at the tapes and shook his head. He crossed to his bar cabinet.

"It's not exactly Romanee-Conti," he observed, reaching for a bottle.

"So what? I don't mind."

Neither did he, at that moment. So he cleared the unit, they drank their drinks, and he helped her into her coat and they left.

As they rode the lift down to the sub-sub he willed the world to end again, but it didn't.

"There are approximately 1 billion 80 million people in the country at this time, and 560 million private automobiles. If a man occupies two square feet of land and a vehicle ap­proximately 120, then it becomes apparent that while peo­ple take up 2 billion 160 million square feet of our country, vehicles occupy 67.2 billion square feet, or approximately 31 times the space of mankind. If, at this moment, half of these vehicles are in operation and containing an average of two passengers, then the ratio is better than 47 to 1 in favor of the cars.

"As soon as the country is made into a single paved plain, and the people either return to the seas from which they came, remove themselves to dwellings beneath the surface of the earth, or emigrate to other planets, then perhaps tech-

nological evolution will be permitted to continue along the lines which statistics have laid down for its guidance."

Sybil K. Delphi, Professor Emeritus,

Commencement Address

Broken Rock State Teachers' College.

Shotover, Utah

Dad,

I hobbled from school to taxi and taxi to spaceport, for the local Air Force Exhibit—Outward, it was called. (Okay, I exaggerated the hobble. It got me extra attention though.) The whole bit was aimed at seducing young manhood into a five-year hitch, as I saw it. But it worked. I wanna join up. I wanna go Out there. Think they'll take me when I'm old enuff? I mean take me Out—not some crummy desk job. Think so?

I do.

There was this dam lite colonel ('scuse the French ) who saw this kid lurching around and pressing his nose 'gainst the big windowpanes, and he decided to give him the sub­liminal sell. Great! He pushed me through the gallery and showed me all the pitchers of AF triumphs, from Moonbase to Marsport. He lectured me on the Great Traditions of the Service, and marched me into a flic room where the Corps had good clean fun on tape, wrestling one another in nul-G "where it's all skill and no brawn," and making tinted water sculpture-work in the middle of the air and doing dismounted drill on the skin of a cruiser. Oh joy!

Seriously though, I'd like to be there when they hit the Outer Five—and On Out. Not because of the bogus ba-lonus in the throwaways, and suchlike crud, but because I think someone of sensibility should be along to chronicle the thing in the proper way. You know, raw frontier observer. Francis Parkman. Mary Austin, like that. So I decided I'm going.

The AF boy with the chicken stuff on his shoulders wasn't in the least way patronizing, gods be praised. We stood on the balcony and watched ships lift off and he told me to

go forth and study real hard and I might be riding them some day. I did not bother to tell him that I'm hardly intellectually deficient and that I'll have my B.A. before I'm old enough to do anything with it, even join his Corps. I just watched the ship lift of and said, "Ten years from now I'll be looking down, not up." Then he told me how hard his own training had been, so I did not ask howcum he got stuck with a lousy dirtside assignment like this one. Glad I didn't, now I think on it. He looked more like one of their ads than one of their real people. Hope I never look like an ad.

Thank you for the monies and the warm sox and Mo­zart's String quintets, which I'm hearing right now. I wanna put in my bid for Luna instead of Europe next summer. Maybe... ? Possibly... ? Contingently... ? Huh- If I can smash that new test you're designing for me... ? Anyhow, please think about it.

Your son,

Pete

"Hello. State Psychiatric Institute."

"I'd like to make an appointment for an examination."

"Just a moment. I'll connect you with the Appointment Desk."

"Hello. Appointment Desk."

"I'd like to make an appointment for an examination."

"Just a moment... What sort of examination."

"I want to see Dr. Shallot, Eileen Shallot. As soon as possible."

"Just a moment. I'll have to check her schedule... . Could you make it at two o'clock next Tuesday?"

"That would be just fine."

"What is the name, please?"

"DeVille. Jill DeVille."

"All right, Miss DeVille. That's two o'clock, Tuesday."

"Thank you."

The man walked beside the highway. Cars passed along

the highway. The cars in the high-acceleration lane blurred by.

Traffic was light.

It was 10:30 in the morning, and cold.

The man's fur-lined collar was turned up, his hands were in his pockets, and he leaned into the wind. Beyond the fence, the road was clean and dry.

The morning sun was buried in clouds. In the dirty light, the man could see the tree a quarter mile ahead.

His pace did not change. His eyes did not leave the tree. The small stones clicked and crunched beneath his shoes.