Джон Макдональд - Wine of the Dreamers [= Planet of the Dreamers]

“Why will they end?”

“I asked that. He said that it is the Law. He said that a long time ago the first world came dangerously close to building such machines, but the Watchers obeyed the Law and caused the people of the first world to destroy their own machines time and time again until there were great explosions and now the world is a long way from building such machines. The third world has no interest in building such machines. The danger is on the second world. He said that he is afraid that too many of us have forgotten the Law. In his lifetime he has destroyed, he said, three great ships on the second world. He said we should all be dreaming in the second world, but many will dream of nothing but the first world. Jord Orlan roams the second world in every dream, looking for the great machines that will end the dreaming.”

“If it is the Law,” Leesa said, “then it must be done.”

“Why? You and I have learned to read and to write. Only you and I can read the old records, fit the old spools to the viewing machines. Jord Orlan is firm and kind, but he no longer questions anything. He did when he was young. Now he accepts. He does not ask for reasons. That is blindness. I will know why , and if the reason is good, I will obey. What is the meaning of my life? Why am I here?”

“To dream?”

He could never forget the first three dreams, not even after eight years of dreams had been superimposed on those first ones.

While others dreamed their idle amusements and mischiefs and sensations, Raul had made the dreams and the waking times all a part of the same search. On the silent upper levels he spent eight years going through forgotten spools and records of all the eternity of the Watchers.

And for eight years he spent every dream in the second world, and the early dreams were always wasted when they began in some primitive place of jungle or desert, because usually then the dream would end before he could move from mind to mind a sufficient distance to reach some city where there would be libraries and laboratories. Many of the dreams were wasted in small villages until he learned the knack of thrusting upward as strongly as he could, floating in blackness, then thrusting downward and reaching out for the sense of other presences. Then as he learned the geography of the second world, he learned how to identify the area where the dream first took him, and thrust in a chosen direction for an estimated distance. Then only the first hour of ten might be wasted, but for the remainder he would be reading, through skilled and professional minds, the texts and papers on astronomy, physics, mathematics, electronics, history...

At last the answer came to him, shockingly, abruptly. He realized he had known it for some time but had not been able to accept it because it required such a total inversion, a turning inside out and outside in of all previous beliefs.

The answer was as blinding as a flash of intense light.

It was as unanswerable, as unarguable, as death itself.

Raul Kinson knew that he had to share his new knowledge with Leesa. They had grown apart since she had been permitted to dream.

He found her with a group of the younger adults. He watched her from the doorway. She had achieved the popularity, the leadership, that had been denied him. Though all thought her ugly, she was a source of constant pleasure and amusement to them.

No one could match the diabolical cleverness and inventiveness of her mind once she had taken over the hapless body of some poor citizen of world one or two. And no one could tell the dream exploits more entertainingly.

Discontent, he knew, had driven her down the more obscure pathways of the dreams, had made her vie with the others in the excesses of the dreams. She had gathered around her a group that attempted to outdo her, and always failed.

Raul listened, feeling sick at heart. In their game, each member of the group gave a short summary of their latest dream. If the group shouted approval, they would tell it in detail.

A woman said, “On the second world I found a host body on a boat. A great brute of a man. It was a small boat. I threw everyone overboard and then jumped myself. The food was left on the table. The other dream creatures will be sadly confused.”

The woman pouted as no one showed disapproval. A man said, “I became the one who guides one of the big machines which go through the air. I left the controls and locked the door and stood with my back against it and watched the faces of the passengers as the machine fell strongly to the ground.”

They looked at Leesa for approval. Her smile was bitter and her laugh lifted harshly over the laughter of the others. She said, “Because in the last dream I caused a great accident, you all must try to do the same thing. This last dream of mine was a small thing, but it amused me greatly.”

“Tell us, Leesa. Tell us!”

“I slipped very gently into the mind of a great man of world two. A very powerful man, full of years and dignity. Over the entire ten hours of my dream, I made him count all objects aloud. The vehicles on the street, the cracks in the sidewalk, the windows in buildings. I made him count aloud and did not permit him to do anything except count aloud. His friends, his family, his co-workers, they were all horrified. The man of dignity counted until his voice was a hoarse whisper. He crawled around on his ancient knees and counted the tiles in the floor. Doctors drugged him and I kept control of the old man’s mind and kept him counting aloud. It was most amusing.”

They screamed with laughter. During the next dream period Raul knew that all of them would seek variations of Leesa’s latest game, but by the time they gathered to recount their dreams, Leesa would have gone on to something else.

Raul thought of the myriad lives she had broken in her attempts to prove to herself that the dreams were in no way real, but the twist of her mouth betrayed her. He knew that she still suspected that the dreams might be real, and each additional torment she inflicted on the dream creatures made more heavy the load of conscience.

In the life she led apart from the dreams and the telling of the dreams, she had nothing to do with the other adults. She was aided in this by her appearance which, though it matched standards of beauty in worlds one and two, appealed in the world of the Watchers only to those who thought to stimulate jaded tastes with the unusual.

She looked across the heads of the others and met his glance boldly. He beckoned to her and she walked slowly toward him. He went out into the corridor and she followed him. “I wish to talk to you, Leesa. It is something important.”

“The dreams are important.”

“We will go up to one of the rooms of learning.”

She stared at him coldly. “I have not been up there in over two years. I do not intend to go up there now. If you wish to talk to me, you can meet me on the second world. We talked there once before.”

He agreed reluctantly. He had a sour memory of the last time they had talked on the second world. He arranged the place and the time with her, and the recognition signal. They ate together and went up to the corridor of dreams, entered their respective cases.

He had grown almost accustomed to the clamor of the traffic, the pushing, hurrying throngs on the streets of this, the greatest city of the second world. He was late, he knew. This time it had taken almost an hour to cover half a continent. Possibly Leesa had wearied of waiting for him. She had little patience these days.

Once near the hotel he selected a lean young male body, took over the mind with a casual brusqueness that bordered on the careless. He marched the captive body into the hotel. He had thrust the host-mind far back into a corner of the captive brain. Even in panic, the struggles were weak and far away, a faint fluttering that did not interest him. There were several young women in the lobby, obviously waiting. Near the clock he took a handful of objects from the pocket of the captive body, dropped them clumsily on the floor. He bent and gathered them up — knife, change, lighter.