Wine of the Dreamers (7 page)

Raul turned and looked up into the hills, trying to locate the brush where the fugitive hid. This seemed to alarm the captive mind even more.

“Why am I acting so strangely?”

The haft of the pike was comforting in Raul’s hand. He lifted it a trifle, realizing that the habit action patterns of the young soldier would serve him well should he wish to use the pike. For a time he contented himself with looking about at the landscape, picking out of the soldier’s mind the names of the objects he saw. A bird, a quick blue flash against the sky. An ox cart loaded with husks of corn. They passed stone ruins of an unguessed antiquity.

He turned when he heard a harsh scream. The thin one, whose mind he had inhabited, had fallen. A heavyset soldier, his face angry and shiny with sweat, jabbed again and again with the pike, making the red blood flow.

Raul thrust with the ease of long practice, the tip of his pike tearing through the profiled throat of the heavyset soldier, who turned, eyes bulging. He clawed at his throat with both hands, dropped to his knees, then toppled face down into the yellow dust of the road.

In his mind he felt the panicky thoughts of the young soldier. “I killed him! I must be mad! Now I’ll be killed!”

The soldier in charge swaggered over, scowling. He took in the situation at a glance and drew the short broadsword that only he wore. The others, grinning in anticipation, kept the young soldier from fleeing by making a half-circle of leveled pikes.

Raul, infected by the panic in his mind, thrust again with the pike. The broadsword flickered and lopped off a two-foot section of the end of the pike, stinging his hands. He looked down and saw the thrust as the broadsword went deep into his belly. The leader twisted the blade and withdrew it. The spasm and cramp dropped Raul to his hands and knees. He gagged as his arms weakened and his face sank slowly toward the dust. From the corner of his eye he saw the broadsword flash up again. The bright pain across the back of his neck drove him out into the nothingness where there was neither sight, nor sound, nor sense of touch.

At dusk he was in the city, with life and motion brawling and clashing around him. He lead a heavily laden burro and at intervals he cried out that he had water, cool water for dry throats. In the mind of the water vendor he found the location of the palace itself. More and more he was gaining control of the directional thrusts, gaining confidence in gauging the distance from mind to mind. He was a guard at the castle gates, then a man who carried a heavy load up endless stone steps.

At last he became Arrud the Elder, the man of power. To his astonishment, as he gained control of the king’s mind, he found it as simple and brutal as the mind of the fugitive. He found hate and fear there. Hate of the distant kings who drained his manpower and wealth in unending
wars. Fear of treachery within the palace walls. Fear of assassination.

Raul relaxed to Arrud’s action patterns. Arrud buckled the heavy belt around his thick waist. It was of soft leather, studded with bits of precious metal. He flung the cape over his wide shoulders, tucked his thumbs under the belt and swaggered down the stone hallway, thrusting open the door at the end of the corridor. The woman had long hair, the color of flame. She lay back on the divan and looked at Raul-Arrud coldly. She had a harsh, cruel mouth.

“I await your pleasure,” she said bitterly.

“Tonight we look at the prisoners. The first ones have arrived.”

“This time, Arrud, pick some strong ones for the beasts, strong ones who will fight and make the game last.”

“We need the strong ones for work on the walls,” he said sulkily.

Her tone grew wheedling. “Please. For me, Arrud. For Nara.”

Raul relinquished his hold and faded into grayness. Only the gentlest of motions was necessary. He seeped slowly and relentlessly into the mind of the woman and found that there was an elusive subtlety about it that defied his initial attempts at control. At last he had her mind trapped. Her thoughts were hard to filter through his own mind. They were fragmentary, full of flashes of brilliance and color. Only her contempt and hate for Arrud was constant, unvarying. He found that maintaining a delicate balance of control was far more difficult when handling the woman-mind. He would possess her mind so utterly that he would lose her language, her female identity, to become, foolishly, Raul in a woman-body. Then she would surge back until he clung to the last edge of control.

In a short time he knew her. Knew Nara, daughter of a foot soldier, dancer, mistress of a captain, and then a general, and at last mistress of Arrud. He knew her contemptuous
acknowledgment of the power of hair like flame, body that was cat-sleek, vibrant, clever.

Arrud came near the divan. He pressed his knuckles to his forehead, said slowly, “For a time I felt odd, in my mind. As though a stranger were in my mind, calling me from a great distance.”

“You have not given me your promise about the strong slaves, Arrud.”

He looked down at her. He reached with a hard hand, fondled her breast, hurting her with his clumsiness. She pushed his hand away and his lips went tight. He reached again, tore the sheer fabric of her garment from throat to thigh.

Raul fingered through her thoughts and memories, found the knowledge of the ivory-hilted dagger wedged between the cushions of the divan. He forced the woman’s mind back, quelling her anger, supplanting it with fear. She willed herself to speak and he would not permit her to speak. Arrud slid with bulky clumsiness onto the couch, seeking the woman’s throat with his lips. Raul forced the woman’s hand to grasp the dagger. She was rigid with fear and he sensed in her mind the frantic thought that this was not the way to kill Arrud. This way she would be discovered. The dagger tip touched Arrud’s back. The needle blade slid into the thick muscles as though sliding through water as it reached for the heart. His heavy body pinned her to the couch as he died. As Raul slid away, sickened and weary, he heard her first maddened scream.

Raul awakened in the glass case of dreams. He lay still for a time, and there was a deep, slow, aimless lethargy within him, an exhaustion more of the spirit than of the mind or body. The ten-hour dream had ended as he left the body of the woman. It seemed as though he had been in the odd, alien world for months. He took the metal plate from his mouth. His jaw muscles were cramped and sore. He turned slowly and pushed the side panel up,
turned and rested bare feet on the warm floor of the level of dreams.

A woman stood there, smiling at him. The habits of childhood were difficult to overcome. It shocked him that he should be noticed by one of the adult women. She was not an old one.

“You have dreamed,” she said.

“A long dream and it tired me.”

“The dreams are like that in the beginning. I shall never forget my first dream. You are Raul. Do you know my name?”

“I remember you from the games of the children. A long time ago you became a dreamer. Fedra, is it not?”

She smiled at him. “I am glad you remembered.” It was flattering to be treated with such friendliness by an adult. Childhood was a lonely time. Fedra was different, in the same way that he and Leesa were different, but not as much. She merely had not quite the frailness of the others, and there was some lustre to her brown hair.

He reached for his garment in the case, but she said, “Have you forgotten?”

He looked at her. She held the toga of a man in one hand, the thongs in the other. His heart gave a leap. To think of all the times he had yearned for a man’s toga. And now it was here. His. He reached for it. She pulled it back.

“Do you not know the custom, Raul? Were you not told?”

Her tone was teasing. He remembered then. The man’s toga and thongs must be put on the first time by the woman who will partner the man in the first mating dance he is privileged to attend. He paused in confusion.

She drew back and her mouth became unpleasant. “Maybe you think, Raul Kinson, that you would prefer another. It will not be easy for you. You are not liked. Only two of us asked, and the other changed her mind before the drawing.”

“Give those to me,” he said, his anger matching hers.

She backed away. “It is not permitted. It is the law. If you refuse, you must wear child’s clothing.”

He stared at her and thought of Nara with the hair like flame, the dusky body. Compared to Nara this woman was mealy-white, soft. And he saw the unexpected sheen of tears in her eyes, tears that came from the hurt to her pride.

So he stood and closed the panel on his case of dreams and permitted her to drape the toga on his shoulders, fasten the belt, with the slow stylized motions of the custom. She knelt and wound a silver thong around his right ankle, bringing the two ends of the thong around his leg in opposite directions, each turn higher so that the thong made a diamond pattern. She knotted it firmly with the traditional knot just below his knee. He advanced his left leg and she placed the thong on it. She still knelt, staring up at him. He remembered, reached and took her hands, pulled her to her feet.

Together, with not another word, they rode down from the higher levels to the proper corridor. They went back to the room where the others waited. The fat old one who directed the games of the adults glanced at them with relief. He went to the music panel and touched the soft red disc which started the music. The other couples ceased chattering and lined up. Raul felt like a child who had stolen the toga and thongs of a man. His hands trembled and his knees felt weak as he took his place in line, facing Fedra. He watched the other men from the corner of his eye.

The fat old one played a sustained note on the silver tube he wore around his neck. Naked skulls gleamed in the amber glow of the walls. The cold, formal, intricate dance, substitute for urge and need, began. Raul felt that he moved in a dream. The quick harsh world he had visited seemed more to his taste than this stylized substitution. He sensed the amusement in the others, knew that they saw the awkwardness of his hands and feet, knew that this same awkwardness shamed Fedra. This dance
was required, he knew, because it meant continuance of the world of the Watchers.

As the music slowly increased in tempo, Raul wished that he were hiding on one of the highest levels. He forced himself to smile like the others.

FOUR

Bard Lane stood at the window of his office staring out across the compound toward a new barracks building that was being constructed between two older ones. The wire mesh had been stretched taut and a crew with spray guns were spreading the plastic on the wire with slow practised strokes.

General Sachson had not underestimated the pressure. It was coming from all directions. A Cal Tech group had published an alleged refutation of the Beatty Theories, and the news services had picked it up, simplified it.
Credo
, the new micro-magazine, was screaming about “billions being squandered in some crackpot experimentation in the mountains of northern New Mexico.”

A group of lame-duck congressmen was sublimating political frustration by taking a publicity-conscious hack at the top-heavy appropriations for space conquest. A spokesman for the JCS hinted at a complete reorganization of the top management of military-civilian space flight efforts.

Sensing the possibility of cancellation of Project Tempo, the administrative branches in Washington—finance, personnel, procurement—were pulling the reins tight by compounding the numbers of reports necessary.

Sharan Inly tapped at the door and came into Bard’s office. He turned and gave her a weary smile. She wore
her usual project costume, jeans and a man’s white shirt with the sleeves rolled high, collar open.

She glanced with distaste at the mound of paper on his desk. “Bard, are you a clerk or a scientist?”

“I’m too busy learning to be the first to do anything about the second. I am beginning to learn something about government paper work, though. You know, I used to try to handle every report—at least set up reasonable procedure for it. Then I found out that before I can get a report in, the whole thing is changed around. Know what I do now?”

“Something drastic?”

“I had rubber stamps made. Take a look. See this one?
HOLD FOR ACTION—COORDINATION GROUP
. And this one.
FOR REVIEW AND REPORT—STATISTICAL COMMITTEE
. Here is a pretty one.
SUSPENSE FILER—PROGRAMMING BOARD
.”

“What on earth are they for?”

“Oh, it’s very simple. Now take this report request right here. See, it came in three copies. The Industrial Research Committee of the Planning Board of the Materials Allocation Group of the Defense Control Board wants a report. And I quote. ‘It is requested that on the twelfth and twenty-seventh of each month, beginning with the month following receipt of this directive, that the planned utilization of the appended list of critical metals be reported for three months in the future, each month’s utilization to be expressed as a percentage of total utilization during the six months period immediately preceeding each report.’ And here is their appended list. Seventeen items. Did you see that new girl in my outer office, in the far corner?”

“The little brunette? Yes, I saw her.”

“Well, I route this report to her. She cuts a stencil and mimeographs the directive, runs off a hundred copies. She’s my Coordination Group, my Statistical Committee and my Programming Board. On the twelfth and twenty-seventh of each month she’ll mail in a copy of the directive with one of the rubber stamp marks on it. She’ll send
one to the Defense Control Board and one to the Materials Allocation Group and one to the Planning Board and one to the Industrial Research Committee. I let her use any stamp she happens to feel like using at the moment. It seems to work just as well as making out the report. Probably better. I have her put a mysterious file number on the stencil.”

“Oh, Bard, how terrible that your time has to be taken up with this sort of thing!”