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

“Rotten, Sharan.”

“There’s some coffee beside you. Better have some.” Even with the container held in both hands, some of the hot coffee spilled out onto the back of his hand.

“You didn’t find a very good answer, did you?” she said.

“Is any answer a good one?”

“Giving up isn’t a good answer.”

“Please. Spare me the violin music. I was discarded. It seemed necessary to act the part.”

“Everybody has a streak of martyr, Bard.”

He stared at her. His eyes were hollow, lifeless. “They fixed me good. They tied the can to me, baby. No lab in the country would touch me. You know that. I had some money saved. I was going to show everybody. I interviewed some accident victims — the ones where I suspected Raul and his gang had a part in it. I took a tape recorder. Know the most common expression? ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ they said. I tried to get a newspaper interested. They talked very pleasantly while they sent for the little men with the nets.”

“I read about it, Bard,” she said softly.

“Good article, wasn’t it? Funny as hell.”

“You haven’t been in the news for a month. The public has a short memory. They’ve forgotten you.”

“That’s a comfort.”

“Feel better now?”

He stared at her. “Dr. Inly, the patient refuses treatment. Why don’t you go exercise a few prefrontal lobes or something?”

She smiled at him. “Don’t be childish. Finish the coffee. We’re going to get you a haircut and a steak — in that order.”

His smile was mild acid. “And why do I merit all this attention?”

“Because you are needed. Don’t be defensive, Bard. Just do as I say. I’ll explain later.”

Dusk was over the city and they were in an oak booth at the back of a quiet restaurant. His eyes were brighter and some of the shakiness had gone out of his hands. He pushed his coffee cup aside, lit her cigarette and his own. “Now it’s time to talk, Sharan.”

“We’ll talk about a mistaken premise, Bard. We assumed that a hypnotic device operated from the other side of this world destroyed the Beatty One. After they delicately told me that I was all through and that I’d be called if there was a vacancy for anyone with my rating, I was... contacted again. With the Beatty One gone, there didn’t seem to be much point in it. I jeered at their fantasy of an alien world. I jeered at our friend, Raul, and at his sister. It took them a long time. I brought Lurdorff in on it. He’s too egocentric to ever doubt his own sanity. And now he believes, too. They’re what they say they are.”

He stared at her without expression. “Go on.”

“Everything he told us appeared to be true. It was the girl who destroyed the ship. She took over the A-six technician named Machielson. She had him overpower the guard. The rest of it went just the way you guessed. Bard, do you remember the time I told you that I wished I could fall in love with you?”

“I remember.”

“Someone else did. The sister. She found out too late. She thought we were figments of her dreams. Now she, like Raul, is convinced that we are reality. The logical processes of most women are rather odd. She and her brother have been helping me look for you. I explained about investigation agencies and how expensive they were. The next day a man stopped me in the street and gave me all of the money out of his wallet and walked on. A second and a third man did the same. That’s the way Raul fixed the money angle. And now we’ve found you.”

Bard stubbed out his cigarette. He laughed softly. “Sort of a long range affair, isn’t it? Raul identified their planet as being near Alpha Centauri. If he gave me a picture of what is actually their world, my lady love has a bald and gleaming skull, the body of a twelve year old child. I can hardly wait.”

“Don’t make a joke out of it, Bard!” she said with some heat. “We need you. If we’re ever going to live up to the promise that we had in the Beatty One, you have to help us.”

“I see. Raul gets one billion people to each hand us a dollar and then we start from scratch.”

She stood up quickly and stubbed out her cigarette. “All right, Bard. I thought you might want to help. I’m sorry. I was wrong. It was good to see you again. Good luck.” She turned away.

“Come back and sit down, Sharan. I’m sorry.”

She hesitated, came back. “Then listen. Of all men on this planet, you have the best overall grasp of the problems involved in the actual utilization of Beatty’s formulas. Some forgotten man on Raul’s planet perfected those formulas roughly thirteen thousand years before Beatty did. Raul has gotten to the ships he told you about. He nearly died in the attempt. When he was gone too long the first time, Leesa went out after him and managed to get him back before he froze to death. He has been in one of the ships a dozen times. He thinks that it is still in working condition. He has activated certain parts of it — the air supply, internal heating. But as far as the controls are concerned, you are the only one who can help. He is baffled.”

“How can I help?”

“We discussed that. He can use your hand to draw, from memory, the exact position of every knob and switch, along with a translation of the symbols that appear on them. If the principle is the same, which he is almost certain that it is, then you should be able to figure out the most logical purpose of each control.”

“But... look, Sharan, the odds against my being right. They’re tremendous. And the smallest mistake will leave him lost in space, or aflame on the takeoff. Or suppose he does find us. Suppose he barrels into our atmosphere at ten thousand miles per second and makes his landing in Central Park or the Chicago Loop district?”

“He’s willing to take the chance.”

She let him think without interruption. He drew aimless lines on the tablecloth with his thumbnail. “What would be gained?”

“What would the Beatty One have gained? And you do read the papers, don’t you? Mysterious crash of stratoliner. Father slays family of six. Bank embezzler throws two millions into Lake Erie. Novelist’s girlfriend buried alive. Auto charges noon crowds on busy street corner. We’ve always considered that sort of thing inexplicable, Bard. We’ve made big talk about irrational spells, about temporary insanity, about the way the human mind is prone to go off balance without warning. Isn’t that sort of thing worth stopping, even at a billion to one chance? Religions have been born out of the fantasies the Watchers have planted in the minds of men. Wars have been started for the sake of amusing those who have considered us to be merely images given the appearance of reality by a strange machine.”

Again the silence. He smiled. “How do we start?”

“We’ve worked out a coordinated time system. Their ‘days’ are longer than ours. We’ll have to go to my place. They expect me to bring you there so that contact can be made. It is quicker than searching each time. We have an hour before we have to get there.”

She had a hotel suite. Bedroom and sitting room. Physically there were two people in the room. Mentally there were four. Bard sat in a deep chair, the floor lamp shining down on the pad he held against his knee. Sharan stood by the window.

Through Bard’s lips, Raul said, “We’ll have to make this a four-way discussion, and so all thoughts will have to be vocalized. How will we make identification?”

Sharan said, “This is Leesa speaking. Raul, when you or I speak, we’ll hold up the right hand. That should serve.”

It was agreed. Bard felt the uncanny lifting of his right hand without his own conscious volition. “In Dr. Lane’s mind, Sharan and Leesa, I still find considerable doubt. He seems willing to go along with us, but he is still skeptical.” The hand dropped.