Dream thief

4

… SPENCE STUMBLED BRUISED AND bleeding across a rocky, alien landscape. Over his shoulder Earth, a beautiful, serene blue globe, rose full in the black, formless sky. He winced with pain as needlelike shards of tiny cinders sliced the soles of his bare feet and scraped the flesh away from his knees and the palms of his hands when he fell. He felt a cool wetness on his cheek and lifted a hand to his face.

Tears. He was crying.

Then he was standing on the top of a low mountain overlooking a lush green valley. Around him a gentle breeze played among tiny yellow flowers, shifting their sunny heads playfully with each gust. The air bore a sweetly pungent scent and seemed to vibrate with a faintly audible tinkling sound which reminded him of bells.

In the valley below, small white houses, each surrounded by its own neat acreage, dotted the slopes in an orderly fashion. He could see the minute figures of people going about their daily chores, moving in and out of the little houses. An atmosphere of unfathomable peace and wholeness enfolded the valley like a golden mist and Spence was crying-heartbroken because he did not belong in that valley, among those people who lived in such simple splendor.

The air grew cold around him. The fragile yellow flowers shriveled at his feet. The tears froze on his face. He heard the empty howl of frigid winds roaring down as if from incredible heights. He looked down in despair and watched the verdant valley wither and turn brown. The whitened wisps of dried grass and leaves flurried about him in the savagely gusting wind.

He shivered and wrapped his arms tightly across his chest to keep warm. He glanced down at his feet and saw that he stood upon hard, bare earth. He saw something sparkle and beheld a small pile of diamonds glittering in the icy glare of a harsh, violent moon. They were his tears-frozen where they had fallen. The earth would not receive them. …

SPENCE WAS AWAKE LONG before he opened his eyes. He simply lay and allowed the waves of feeling to wash over him, filling the cavernous emptiness inside his chest with fiercely contending emotions. He felt like a leaf tossed in a tempest, a rag blown before the glowering storm. He lay with his eyes clamped shut and tried to make sense of it all.

At last the storm subsided and he wearily opened his eyes and got up, placing the scanner cap on its hook. He sat for a moment on the edge of the couch experiencing a mild light-headedness which he had not noticed before. The moment passed and he stood up slowly, and in doing so his hand brushed his headrest. He stared at it as if he had never seen it before. The light sky blue of the pillow's case bore two darker stains side by side. He touched them lightly, knowing what they were. The pillow was damp with his tears. …

"… AND I CAN'T HELP feeling that it was a mistake to use myself as a subject in the research, that's all." Spence was speaking quietly, but with some conviction to Dr. Lloyd, head of the BioPsych department of Gotham. He had sought out Dr. Lloyd as a sympathetic ear.

"But I disagree, Dr. Reston. I was on the academic board that evaluated your grant proposal. I voted for it; I think it is quite sound, and if I may say so, quite insightful. How else can a scientist fully evaluate subjective data without himself experiencing the phenomena which produce the data? Your work with tyrosine hydroxylase interaction with catecholamines is little short of revolutionary. I think you have touched upon a very viable research model, and one which, if successful, could pioneer the way for some very prime developments in sleep science. Your research is key to the LTST project as a whole. Speaking as a colleague, I'd like to see you continue. I think that is imperative."

Spence was not hearing what he had hoped to hear. Dr. Lloyd, with great enthusiasm, was defending Spence's own pro posal against him.

"Perhaps there would be a way to restructure the project, maybe-"

Dr. Lloyd smiled benignly and shook his head from side to side slowly. "You haven't given it a proper chance. Why not see where it will take you?"

"I could interpose another subject into the same design-I wouldn't have to…"

"No, no. I can understand your anxiety. But you have already done so much. How do you know that you are not even now evincing some of the signs of LTST yourself? Eh? Have you thought of that?"

"But-"

"Dr. Reston, believe me, I admire your work. I would hate to see anything augur ill for the progress you've already made. Your career is in its ascendancy. You will go far. But as a friend I must warn you. Don't tinker with your design now. It would not look good to the Board. You would not wish to appear, shall we say, undecided? Wishy-washy?

"I am afraid the Board would take a dim view of any changes at this late date. And, as a member of the Board, I would have to agree."

"I suppose you're right, Dr. Lloyd. Thank you for your time." Spence rose reluctantly to his feet and his colleague led him to the door with his hand on Spence's shoulder.

"Any time, Dr. Reston. Please feel free to stop by any time. That's what I'm here for." Lloyd chuckled, delighted that he could be of help to the legendary young Dr. Reston. "Go back to your work. I should tell you we're all watching your progress with the greatest interest."

"Thank you. Good-bye, sir."

"Don't mention it. Good-bye. Come by any time."

Spence had met with a brick wall of his own making. He had not considered it before, but it made sense that GM would want him as much as he had first wanted them. His presence would lend to the overall prestige of the Center, and now that they had him they were not going to let anything happen to him that would lessen his value as a contributor. They were not about to let anything stand in the way of Dr. Reston's glorious success, not even Dr. Reston himself.

He walked gloomily back to the lab, feeling trapped. What was happening to him? Was he losing his sanity? Was this how it started?

The dreams were back, end they were beginning to exert more and more control over his sleep state. He awoke in the morning drained and unrested, his emotions on the ragged edge. The dreams themselves he could not remember. They were shadowy forms which moved barely beyond the edges of consciousness.

Was Lloyd right? Was he undergoing the strain associated with long-term space travel? If so, how was that possible? He had not been on GM long enough. Was there some mechanism which acted to somehow speed up his own experience-the encephamine injections, perhaps? Or was there some other explanation?

Only one thing was certain: the dreams had returned to haunt him.

Perhaps he should do as Dr. Lloyd suggested, simply follow where his mind would take him. Spence shrank from the thought. There was something in him that rebelled at that suggestion. Irrationally rebelled, it seemed, because it was solidly logical advice. Yet something within Spence-his spirit, his conscience, that tiny inner voice-screamed a warning at the thought of abandoning his reason to the design of the project. Even if it was his own project.

Spence sought to quell this inner mutiny as he walked back to the lab. There was no reason not to continue as planned-no scientifically objective reason.

He entered the lab with the faint whisper of the sliding partition. The lights were off and Tickler was gone. The lab was quiet. He stepped in and the door slid closed behind him, leaving him in complete darkness and silence.

He turned to fumble in the blackness for the access plate in order to switch on a lighting panel overhead. As he wheeled around, the faintest trace of a glimmer caught his eye. He stopped and turned back slowly.

In the darkness of the empty lab he perceived a strange luminescence, a sort of halo, barely visible, hanging in the air in the center of the lab. He closed his eyes and opened them again and the slight, greenish glow remained. As Spence watched, the radiant spot seemed to coalesce, to focus and grow brighter by degrees, and he moved toward the glow as if drawn by a heavy magnetic force.

The halo was quite visible now; it even threw off a gentle reflection all around. Spence walked slowly around it, his muscles tensed like a cat ready to spring. It was like nothing he had ever seen. Whichever way he moved, the shimmering halo showed always the same face to him: a luminescent wreath of pale green light shining with a gleaming radiance which shifted and danced under his gaze. The center of the halo remained unaffected by the light. Through it he could see the dim outlines of objects on the other side of the room.

Spence edged cautiously closer, sideways like a crab. He attempted to look away, but his curiosity, or some greater force, held his attention firmly. He could not resist.

Now he was standing very close to the glowing presence in the center of the lab. So close that he could feel a tingling sensation on his hands and face, a tiny prickling of the flesh as if with extreme cold. He raised one hand toward the aura and saw it surrounded by the greenish cast.

Gradually he noticed a movement within the halo-a very transparent shimmer of deepest blue, almost beyond human vision. The radiance intensified and cast out beams which glittered gold and silver as they fluoresced within the green aura of the halo.

Although he stood rooted firmly in his place, he experienced the unnerving sensation of traveling very rapidly into the halo, as if he were being sucked into a swirling vortex of cold blue fire. With this sensation came a quickening of his physical senses. His heart began beating rapidly, his breathing labored, sweat beaded up on his forehead and neck. He was feeling very weak and dizzy, teetering on the brink of consciousness, when he felt a unique sensation: the flesh at the base of his neck began creeping upward in tiny pinpricks over his scalp. For one brief instant he wondered what that could mean. What could it be? The answer hit him like a shock: every hair on his head was standing on end.

Spence opened his mouth to cry out, but no sound came. He was held in the steely grip of a terror he could not name, a fear which came swimming at him from the darkened corners of the room-of his mind. He could not move or scream or look away. Only endure.

Some small part of his mind withdrew from the horror which now twisted his features. It watched with dread fascination as the green aura flared brilliantly and the whirling blue lightning slowed and began to take shape. To his rational inner eye it appeared that a scene was taking place behind a filmy curtain of light, but the movements were too indistinct and too remote to be understood.

Gradually he became aware of a sound which perhaps had been there all along, but had gone unnoticed. It was the thin, needle-like tinkling of tiny bells. This he heard not with his ears, but inside his head and on the surface of his skin. And hearing it now, in this way, turned his blood to ice water in his veins. For up to this moment it was a sound heard only in his dreams.

With an effort he raised his hands and clamped them over his ears and screamed with every fiber of will left in him. Then he toppled insensible to the floor.