Stephen Lawhead: Dream thief

It did not occur to Spence that he had just painted her with exactly the same unflattering strokes he painted nearly every other woman. That, for him, was easier than just admitting that he had no time for women, that romance would interfere with his research and career, that he was afraid of women because he did not trust himself to be faithful to both an intimate relationship with another human being and to his work.

He had a certain right to be afraid; he had seen too many gifted men burdened by cares for a wife and family succumb to second-rate research centers and teaching jobs. The young Dr. Reston intended to fly as high as he could, and no woman was going to hold him down.

The young lady squirmed under his unrelenting gaze. She tilted her head and peered back at him. Their eyes met and Spence looked quickly away. But soon he was staring at her again. She smiled and then laughed as she turned to confront him.

"Is this your way of getting a girl's attention?"

"Excuse me?" He was unprepared.

"Staring. Is there something you want?"

"Was I staring? I'm sorry. I didn't mean… Look, I only want to see the director. When will he be available?"

The girl glanced at her watch and said, "Oh, next week some time. Maybe Thursday."

"What?" Spence leaped from his seat and bounded over to the desk. "I thought you said I could wait!"

"You may wait as long as you like, but he won't be back until next Thursday."

"You said…" Spence sputtered. His hands clenched themselves in angry fists at his side.

"I said it would likely be a rather long wait. You interrupted me before I could finish."

"Is this the way you treat everyone on important business?" She flashed him a defiant smirk. "No, only those who waltz in demanding to see the director without an appointment."

She had him; he was defeated and disgraced. It was true, he had behaved like an idiot. A wave of cool shame instantly quenched the anger just as the flames threatened to touch off his temper.

The young secretary smiled at him again and he did not feel so bad. "So, we're even," she said. "Now, would you like to start again at the beginning?"

Spence only nodded.

"Fine. Is this personal business or official?" "Well, personal."

"See? That wasn't hard. I'll put you down for an appointment Friday morning first thing. His assistant will call you."

"You mean you're not his assistant? I thought-"

"You thought I was, I know. No, I'm only filling in while they are away. Mr. Wermeyer is his assistant."

Now Spence felt doubly the fool. He wished only to be allowed to melt into the carpet and slink away. "Thank you," he muttered and backed away slowly. The partition slid closed, terminating the episode in the director's office. He sighed and made his way back to his quarters more hopelessly tired than ever.

… THE OLD HEAD CAME up slowly. Lizard-like. The large oval yellow eyes gazed outward from under half-closed lids. Yellowed skin, the color and texture of ancient parchment, stretched tautly over a smooth, flat skull and hung in folds around the sagging neck. Not a hair remained in the scalp; not a whisker, not an eyelash.

A thin, slightly rounded band stretched across the smooth brow. This circlet pulsed with a purplish light of its own, throbbing as waves of energy flashed and dimmed.

Hocking could see him as if wreathed in smoke-clearly in the center of his field of vision, but shimmering and indistinct on the periphery. The face regarded him with a steady glare, the expression beyond contempt or malice though traces of both were there, beyond weariness or simple age. Cold. Reptilian. It was an expression utterly alien to any assignable human emotion.

In a lesser being the face and its mysterious scowl would have created at least a sense of dread, if not outright fear, but Hocking was used to it.

"Ortu." He said the name softly, distinctly. "We are ready to proceed with the final experiment. I have found a subject especially receptive to the stimulus." Hocking licked his lips and waited for a reply.

For a moment he doubted whether the image before him had heard, but he knew it had. The reply would come in time.

"Proceed, then, as I have instructed." The words were spoken evenly, but with an unusual coloring-the faintest suggestion of a foreign accent, but indecipherable.

"I thought you would be pleased, Ortu. We can begin at last." Hocking's upper lip twitched enthusiastically. "At long last…"

"Pleased? For what reason should I be pleased? Oh, there are so many." There was no mistaking the venom in the voice. "Pleased that it has taken so long? That even my inexhaustible patience has been tried time and time again to no result? That my plans should rest on the feeble efforts of a creature too stupid to comprehend the smallest fraction of the work?" The circlet on his forehead flashed brightly.

Hocking endured the sarcasm bravely. "I have been particularly careful in my choice of a subject this time. He is a sleep scientist named Reston, and he's quite malleable. We will not be disappointed again, I assure you."

"Very well, begin at once." Ortu closed his eyes and his ancient head sank once more.

"It shall be done." Hocking, too, closed his eyes and when he opened them again the glimmering image had vanished. He sat in his chair in the center of his darkened quarters. The whisper of a smile flitted across his skeletal features. Now, at last, all was ready. The final test could begin. …

SPENCE STEPPED FROM HIS sanibooth actually whistling. He felt better than he had in weeks. Rested, alert, and happy. He had slept the whole night long, the sleep of the dead. And not one dream had intruded upon his slumber-at least not the dreams he had learned to fear of late: those without color, without form, which seemed born of some alien, sterile intelligence, which came into his mind and left him shaking and drained, but without memory.

Whatever had been bothering him was now gone, or so he hoped. Perhaps it had only been the strain of adapting to the confines of the station. GM was the largest of the orbiting advancement centers; it was also the highest. Actually, it was the world's first self-sustaining space colony, maintaining an orbit three hundred and twenty thousand kilometers above the earth around a point astrophysicists called libration five. That distance, or rather the thought of that distance, sometimes had a strange effect on newcomers. Some experienced symptoms of claustrophobia; others became nervous and irritable and had difficulty sleeping, or had bad dreams. Often these problems were not immediately apparent; they developed slowly over the first weeks and months of the rookie jumpyear and had very little in common with the allied problem of space fatigue, which only seasoned veteransthose in their fifth or sixth jumpyear-seemed to contract. That was something else entirely.

So Spence, feeling very pleased with himself that he had weathered the worst and had come through, rubbed his body with a hot, moist towel to remove the fine, blue powder of the personal sanitizer and then tossed the towel into the laundry port. He dressed in a fresh blue and gold jumpsuit and made his way into the lab to reweave the dangling threads of his project.

He slipped into the lab quietly and found Dr. Tickler hunched over a worktable with an array of electronic gear and testing equipment spread out around him.

"Good morning," said Spence amiably. There was no real day or night, but the Gothamites maintained the illusion, and the station flipped slowly over on its axis on a twelve-hour cycle to help in the deception.

"Oh, there you are! Yes, good morning." Tickler bent his head around to observe Spence closely. He wore a magnifying hood which made his eyes bug out absurdly, like two glassy doorknobs splotched with paint.