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

The next few rooms were empty. The following room was one with light controls. A mixed group was performing a stylized dance. They had turned the lights to blood red. It was a slow dance, with measured pauses. She thought of joining, but she knew that in some inexplicable way, her entrance would set up a tension that would remove some of their pleasure.

Restlessness was in her like slow spreading rot. On the next level she heard the sound of the small ones crying. She went and looked at them. Always, before, she had found a small pleasure in watching their unformed movements. She looked at them and their faces were like so many identical ciphers — circles of emptiness, signifying nothing.

She rode up to where the tracks no longer moved. She went halfway up to the twenty-first level, then dropped and curled like a child. She covered her face with her hands and wept. She did not know why she was weeping.

Bard Lane heard his name called. He turned to see Major Tommy Leeber striding diagonally across the street from the mess hall to intercept him.

Major Leeber’s smile sat a shade stiffly on his lips and his eyes were narrowed.

“I hope you have a minute, Dr. Lane.”

“Not very much more than that, I’m afraid, Major. What seems to be the trouble?”

“According to the records, Dr. Lane, my loyalty check was tops. And my brain waves passed all Sharan’s witchdoctor techniques. So what’s with these two shadows I’ve picked up?” He jerked his thumb back over his shoulder toward the two guards who stood several paces behind him, obviously uncomfortable.

“Those men are assigned to you in accordance with new operating instructions, Major.”

“If you think you can chase me out of here by making me so uncomfortable that—”

“Major, I don’t care for your tone, and I can’t say much for your powers of observation. Everyone with access to fabrication zones and lab areas is subject to the new orders. You will notice that I have a guard too. We are in a critical phase. If you start acting irrational, you’ll be grabbed and held until you can be examined. Me too. As a matter of fact, you have it a bit easier than I do. Part of my job is to watch the guard while he watches me. We’re using this method as a defense against any... temporary insanity where Dr. Inly did not detect the susceptibility of the employee.”

“Look, how do I get rid of these boys?”

“Leave the project area, Major.”

Leeber knuckled his chin. “Look, Doc. I happen to know that you’re not getting new help in here. So where do the extra guards come from?”

“Other occupational classifications.”

“Which slows down the works plenty, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Already you are in plenty of hot water because of being so far behind schedule, Dr. Lane. Doesn’t delaying it further seem to be a funny thing to do right now?”

For a moment Bard wondered how his knuckles would feel against the dark military moustache, the full lips. It would be a pleasure to see Major Leeber on the seat of his pants in the street.

“You may report this new development to General Sachson, Major. You may tell him that if he cares to, he can reverse this security regulation of mine. But it will be made a matter of record. Then, if someone else should get as destructive as Kornal did, the blame will be in his lap.”

“For my money, Doc, the old man won’t be too upset. He has it figured that inside of sixty days there won’t be anybody here but a survey and salvage outfit, making chalk marks on whatever is worth keeping.”

“I don’t think you should have said that, Major Leeber,” Bard said in a low voice. “I don’t think it was smart.”

He watched Leeber carefully, saw the greased wheels turning over slickly. Leeber grinned in his most charming way. “Hell, Doc. Don’t mind me. I’m being nasty because these two boys tailing me have fouled up an operation that was all briefed out.”

“I don’t expect loyalty from you, Leeber. Just a reasonable cooperation.”

“Then I apologize. I’m all lined up with a little blond cookie who runs a computer in the chem lab. And all I could think of was these two boys looking over my shoulder.”

“Then take her out of the area, Leeber. When you report back in at the gate they’ll make you wait until guards can be assigned.”

Leeber scuffed the dust with the edge of his shoe. “A noble suggestion, Doc. Will you join me for a quick one?”

“I can’t spare the time, thanks.”

“Okay, I guess I don’t want these boys joining in on my date. Guess I better take her out of the area, eh?”

“Either that or there’ll be four of you. Five, when you count the guard assigned to her. A female guard.”

Leeber shrugged, gave a mock salute, and sauntered away.

Bard Lane went into the mess hall. He took one of the small tables against the wall where he could be alone. He was lifting the glass of tomato juice to his lips when he felt the familiar pressure against his mind. He made no attempt to fight it. He held the glass poised in mid-air, then raised it to his lips. The sensation in his mind made him remember the first science courses he had taken in college. A hot afternoon, when he stared into the microscope, delicately adjusting the binocular vision until the tiny creatures in the droplet of swamp water had seemed to leap up at him. There had been one with a fringe of long cilia. It had slowly enfolded a smaller, more globular organism, merging with it, digesting it as he watched. He had long remembered the silent, microscopic ferocity, the instinctive ruthlessness of that struggle.

And now his mind was slowly devoured while he sat calmly drinking the juice. He replaced the glass in the saucer. To the onlooker he was Dr. Bard Lane — the boss — the chief — the “old man.” But he knew that as far as free will was concerned he had ceased to be Bard Lane.

The alien prescience was quickly interlaced through his engram structure, much as a bobbin might shuttle back and forth in a textile machine. He sensed the fingering of his thoughts.

His new familiarity with the reception of the thoughts of the alien made those thoughts as clear as though they had been softly whispered in his ear.

“No, Bard Lane. No. You and Sharan Inly have come to the wrong conclusion. We are not of this planet. This is not a clever device to trick you. We are friendly to your purpose. I am glad to see that you have taken the precautions that were suggested to you. Please make it very clear to all your trusted people that they must move quickly whenever there is the slightest doubt. Any faint peculiarity — any unexpected word or movement — will be the basis on which to move. Delay may be fatal.”

Bard made his thoughts as clear as he could by mentally thinking each word, mentally underlining each syllable. “How do we know you are friendly?”

“You can’t know. There’s no way of proving it to you. All I can say is that our ancestors of twelve thousand years ago are mutual. I told you about the Plan. The Plan is failing because the people in my world have forgotten the original purpose. One world — Marith — lives in barbaric savagery. Another — Ormazd — has found the key to the search for happiness on their planet. We are inbred and decadent. Your project is hope for mankind.”

“What are your motives?”

There was a silence in his mind. “If I am to be honest with you, Bard Lane, I must mention boredom, the desire for change, the wish to do important things. And now there is another reason.”

“What?”

Their sympathetic emotional structure had been so carefully interleafed that Bard Lane was disconcerted to feel the hot blush on his cheeks and neck. “I want to be able to meet Sharan face to face. I want to touch her hand with mine, not with the hand of someone whom I could inhabit.”