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

Somewhere, ahead, the time setting would take effect. He did not know where. He did not know how long it would be.

Four midnights passed. Bard and Sharan waited three hours each time. The appointment was not kept. No thrusting fingers of thought entered their minds, singing gladly of reunion. For the first three midnights, Bard and Sharan were gay with each other, laughing too easily.

After the three tense hours of waiting had passed on the fourth night, Bard looked across the room at Sharan.

“He told me that their attitude was heresy in his world, Sharan.”

“Why haven’t they come? Why?”

“Logically we can make either of two assumptions. One, that they have been punished, perhaps put to death by their own people. Two, that they have started the voyage.”

There were lines of strain around her mouth. “And the third possibility?”

“That it was a game they got tired of? That they have no ability to follow through on a course of action? Do you believe that, actually?”

Her smile was weak. “I guess not. Isn’t it odd to feel that you know them so well, never seeing them?”

“Not so odd. Not with shared thoughts. Not with two... souls, if I can use that word, sharing the same brain tissue. Sharan, we owe them something. We owe them the assumption that they were forced, somehow, to start the trip. I don’t know how long it will take. A month, possibly. Now just imagine what would happen if a ship of that description started to land here, or in Pan-Asia. Interceptor rockets would scream up. Shoot first and ask questions later. Our friends would be, within seconds, a large blue-white flash and a rain of radioactive particles. Have you thought of that?”

She put her hand slowly to her throat. “No! They wouldn’t!”

“Look, Sharan. According to Raul and Leesa, the rest of the Watchers believe, even when they can visit three other planets through the dream machines, that they are alone in the universe. What is the primary egoism of man? That his planet is the only inhabited planet, his race the life-apex of the universe. Thus any unknown ship can only be the ship of an enemy nation on this same planet.”

“Then they have no chance!”

“We are their chance, Sharan. We’ve got to let Earth know, somehow, that they are coming. They’ll laugh at us. But even so, if Raul and Leesa are in transit, it might mean that at the crucial moment, someone may decide not to push the button. I wish they had come to us once more. I intended to warn them, tell them how to go into orbit outside the reach of the rockets and make identification. The way it stands they’ll come directly in.”

“If they never come, Bard?”

“We’ll be the prize laughingstock of the century. Do you care?”

“Not really.”

“We must start by giving the true story of the end of Project Tempo. We’ll have to tell Bill Kornal first. Dr. Lurdorff will help us convince Bill. We’ve got to plant the story where it will get the maximum play from the press, radio, video, and everything else. That means that the four of us will have to put our cards, face up, in front of someone who not only can swing some weight around, but who has the sort of mind which might be receptive to this sort of thing. And Mr. X will have to have something to gain by carrying the ball. Any ideas?”

“It sounds like it ought to be somebody in government.”

“Or how about a columnist with a big following. Let me see. Pelton won’t do. I don’t think we could sell it to Trimball.”

“Say! How about Walter Howard Path? He has his column and the newscast on video. And he’s the one that revived that ancient flying saucer business several years ago and claimed that the Air Force had never released the true data. He interviewed me, you know, after I walked out of that conference. He seemed nice, and the interview he published was at least a little bit friendly.”

“I think he sounds like our boy, Sharan. There’s the phone.”

“So... so quickly?”

“How much time have we got to waste? Do you know?”

Sharan placed the call. It was almost four in the morning. Ten minutes later Walter Howard Path was on the line, speaking from his office-apartment in New York.

“Dr. Inly? Oh, yes. I remember you very well, Doctor.”

“Mr. Path, would you care to have the exclusive story of what happened to Project Tempo?”

There was a long silence. “Dr. Inly, I wouldn’t be terribly interested in it if it turns out to be some fairly tawdry little intrigue. The story wouldn’t be good enough, and Tempo has been dead too long.”

“Suppose I can show proof that Tempo was sabotaged by entities from another planet, Mr. Path?”

“Oh, come now, Dr. Inly!”

“Please hold the line. There is someone else here who wishes to speak to you.”

Bard took the phone quickly. “Mr. Path, this is Bard Lane speaking. If you want to gamble on this story, I suggest you fly out here. We haven’t too much time to waste. I know that superlatives are sometimes distasteful. But this, Mr. Path, is the biggest story of this or any other century.”

“What is your address there?”

Walter Howard Path was a lean, enormously tall man with stooped shoulders, seamed cheeks and restless eyes. With his hands jammed in his hip pockets, he slouched over to the windows of the suite and looked down into the street. The four of them watched his motionless back. The conference lasted for five hours. Walter Howard Path had been angry at what he suspected was a ruse for one hour, incredulous for two more hours, grudgingly intrigued for the fourth hour, and obscurely frightened from then on.

Without turning he said, “It’s a hell of a gamble, folks. Even when the fit is so good. Even when it answers so many questions about this crazy, violent planet of ours. Dammit, people won’t want to believe a thing like that. And the ones who will jump into line will be the faddists, the cultists, the chronic end-of-the-world kids.”

The tape recorder had been switched off. Walter Howard Path ambled back to the small table, fiddled with the tape reel.

He gave them all a weary smile. “So I guess I’ve got to hold my nose and go off the high board. Today is Wednesday. I’ll blow it in the Sunday column and on the Sunday night program. We better dig us a hole and crawl in and hold our ears.”

“This is Melvin C. Lynn, reporting the news for Wilkins’ Mead and the Wilkins Laboratories, where the secret of your happiness was developed.

“Tonight, listeners, I am going to give you a different sort of news program. Today a colleague, Walter Howard Path, broke a rather astonishing story. It is considered ethical in this newscasting field never to run down a competitor directly. However, your Wilkins’ Mead reporter feels that it is high time somebody took a lusty kick at Mr. Path’s little red wagon.

“I have attempted to report the news to you honestly and sincerely. Sometimes I have fallen for a hoax. All of us have. But I have never been guilty of perpetrating one. Mr. Path has an enormous audience, far larger than mine. His responsibility to that audience is equally enormous. However, straight news reporting does not seem to satisfy our Mr. Path. You will remember his disinterment of the flying saucer hoax a few years ago. Possibly that sensationalism added a few more readers, a few more listeners.

“This time, however, Walter Howard Path has overreached himself. You all remember the scandal of Project Tempo. A Dr. Bard Lane, physicist, was dismissed for incompetence. He had shielded a technician, a William Kornal, who had committed sabotage on the project. There was a rumored intrigue between Dr. Lane and Dr. Sharan Inly, a sexy young psychiatrist on the project. In the finale debacle, twenty-eight persons died in the premature takeoff of the project ship. For honest reporters, there was no more news to be reported.