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

“... an end to the dreams.” The words had a sad sound.

“But they will be stopped. The two of them. The black-haired ones who are strange.”

“They will be stopped.”

“I have tried, my brothers, to show them the errors of their ways. I have tried to lead them into the ways of Truth. But they claim the three worlds are reality.”

“Orlan has tried.”

“I am not a vindictive man. I am a just man. I know the Law and the Truth. They have gone out into the nothingness, out into the emptiness that surrounds us, to look for the worlds of which we dream. Death will be a kindness.”

“A kindness.”

“Seek them out, my brothers. Put them in the tube of death. Let them slide down into the darkness and fall forever through the blackness. I have tried and I have failed. There is nothing else we can do.”

“Nothing else.”

They moved slowly toward the door, then faster. Faster. Jord Orlan stood and heard the pad of their feet against the warm floor, the growling in their throats. And they were gone. He sat down heavily. He was very tired. And he did not know if he had done the right thing. It was too late for doubts. And yet... He frowned. There was a basic flaw in the entire thought process. If outside was a nothingness, how could the two of them go outside and return? To have them do so would indicate that the nothingness was a “somethingness.” And if that were true, then Raul Kinson’s fanatic beliefs had to be given certain credence.

But once Raul Kinson was credited with any correctness, the entire structure of his own beliefs faded and dimmed. Jord Orlan’s head hurt. It was a sad thing to have lived so long in perfect comfort with one’s thoughts and then to have this tiny bitter arrow of doubt festering in his soul. He yearned to pluck it out. Possibly the spy had been mistaken. Possibly they did not go out into the nothingness.

He found himself descending toward the lowest level in great haste. He found the door. It did not take him long to remember the secrets of the twin wheels. He pulled the door open. And this time he dared to keep his eyes open. The wind whipped his cheeks. He squinted into it. The six ships stood tall against the huge red sun. Sand drifted in at his feet. He picked up a handful of it. He closed the door against the wind and leaned his forehead against the metal. He did not move for a long time. He turned and hurried back the way he had come.

Six of them were holding Raul. Raul’s face was twisted with fury and, above the grunting of the captors, Jord Orlan heard the popping and crackling of Raul’s shoulder muscles as he struggled, sometimes lifting his captors off their feet. Four of them were having an equally difficult time with the girl. They held her horizontally, two at her feet and two at her head. Her robe had been flung aside. As Jord Orlan neared them, they rushed with her toward the tube, toward the black oval mouth of it. But she twisted one foot free, planted it against the wall near the mouth of the tube and thrust with all her strength. They staggered and fell with her.

“Stop!” Orlan shouted.

“No!” the captors cried.

“Do you want their death to be easy? The tube is an easy death. Their sin is enormous. They should be thrust out into the emptiness outside to die there.”

He saw doubt on their faces. “I order it!” he said firmly.

And, with Orlan leading, with the two captives no longer struggling, clad once more in robe and toga, the procession left the silent bystanders and went down to the door.

Orlan stopped the captors at the angle in the corridor. “Let them go on to the doorway alone. I shall go with them. If you look on nothingness it will forever blast your eyes and your mind. I will rejoin you when they have left.”

They felt fear and anger, but fear was the stronger. They waited out of sight. Jord Orlan walked with Raul and Leesa.

He said, in a low tone, “I saw the odd garments. You need them to venture outside.”

“What are you trying to tell us?” Raul demanded.

“That... there are things in our world that I do not understand. And before I die, I want to understand... everything. I did not believe the ships were there until I saw them with my own eyes. Now I share your sin. My belief has grown weak. If you could reach another world, then...” He turned away. “Please hurry.”

“Come with us,” Leesa said.

“No. I’m needed here. If your heresies turn out to be true, my people will need someone to explain it to them. My place is here.”

They left and he closed the door, retaining for a moment the image of the two figures leaning against the wind, the six ships in the background. He went back to those who waited and told them very calmly that it was all over.

The light plates set into the control room walls made a soft glow. Air came through the tiny grills in a sound like an endless sigh.

The entire control room was mounted on a shining piston that went straight down through the heart of the ship. The partitioned space along one wall, forty feet by ten, held the row of beds. Beyond the opposite partition were food stores, water tanks, sanitary equipment.

Leesa lay on the bunk and he folded the web straps across her body, drawing them tight. The last strap circled her forehead.

She looked up into his eyes. “Are we really ready?”

“We have to be. And I’ll make a confession. If all this hadn’t happened, I was going to try it alone, without you.”

“Maybe,” she said softly, “this is all just another dream, Raul. A more clever dream. Can you find Earth?”

“I know the number for Earth. I’ll set it the way Bard Lane explained. And then, quite soon, we’ll know.”

“Promise me one thing.”

He looked down at her. “What is it?”

“If we are wrong. If there are no worlds out there. Or if we lose our way, I want to die. Quickly. Promise?”

“I promise.”

He slid the partition shut and went to the control panel. His pilot’s couch was on rails so that, once he was in place, he could slide it forward under the vertical panel and lock himself in place. He strapped his ankles and his waist and pushed himself under to lie looking up at the controls. He activated the three-dimensional screen. There were the six ships, the tall white world, the sandy plain and the hills. He opened the book and took a last look at the reference number for Earth even though it had long since been memorized. He set the ten-digit number, six plus values and four minus ones, on the ten dials, checked it again. The replica ship was in neutral position. Only then did he strap the diaphragms firmly to his throat. He pulled the headband up and tightened it, slid his arms down into the straps.

And softly as he could, he made the vowel sound. The ship shuddered, trembled. On the screen the tiny image moved slowly upward, upward. Now the stern was as high as the bows of the other ships. He strengthened the vowel tone and the replica ship remained in the middle of the screen, the planet moving away below it, the curvature beginning to show, the white tower world dwindling.

He rashly strengthened his tone once more. A vast weight pressed his jaw open, punched down on his belly, blinded him by pressing his eyes back into his head. He heard, from a great distance, Leesa’s scream of pain. He ceased all sound. The pressure slowly left him. He was dizzy with weightlessness. His home planet had shrunk to the size of a fist. It appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the screen and the image of the ship had dwindled until it was a bright mote against the darkening screen.

He took a weightless arm out of the strap, thumbed the knurled knob at the side of the screen. His planet slid off the screen and, by experimentation, he made the ship image grow larger. He moved close to it. The opposite knob seemed to rotate the ship itself end for end, but he realized that it merely shifted the point of vision. He adjusted it until he was looking forward from dead astern of the ship. The vast disc of the sun was straight ahead. He moved his hand to the replica ship and turned it through a ninety-degree arc to the right. As the sun slid off the screen, the replica ship moved slowly back to neutral. The screen showed distant spots of light against the utter blackness. He began to make the vowel sound again, cautiously at first, running it each time up to the limits of endurance, then resting in silence as the ship rushed, without noise, through the void. He understood that each time he made the sound he gave it another increment of speed. At last, no matter how loudly he made the sound, he could feel no answering downward thrust and he knew that the top limit had been reached.