Dream thief

11

… WHAT ARE YOU DOING here?" Ari had become aware of unseen eyes on her; she whirled around and met Hocking gazing at her with an unhealthy leer on his bony face. She had not heard him enter. Her father was asleep on one of the couches across the room and she thought of waking him, but decided not to.

"I have only come to see how my charges are getting along," Hocking said with oily civility. "Have you everything you need?"

"Let us go. You can't hope to gain anything by keeping us."

"Letting you go would be somewhat awkward at this point, I'm afraid. We've gone to an enormous amount of trouble to get you here. But maybe we can strike a bargain."

There was a slight whirring noise and the pneumochair slid closer. Hocking dropped his voice and his obsequious manner. "I want to talk to you. If you cooperate I might be able to help you. I have a plan."

"A plan for what?"

"For resolving this messy affair once and for all," whispered Hocking slyly. He glanced around as if to make certain no one overheard him.

"How do I know you'll live up to your part of the bargain?"

"You don't. But you'd be foolish to pass up any chance you might have to secure your freedom. I'll tell you something, Miss Zanderson. There are forces at work here that stagger the imagination-far beyond your comprehension. You are but an infinitesimal part of a design greater than men dare dream. That I am offering you a chance to save yourself should be enough for you."

As much as she distrusted the loathsome being before her, she wanted to believe there might be a way to influence him to release them.

"I don't know if I should."

"Listen, you little fool! Ortu wants you dead. You're a nuisance to him. But if you help me, I'll get you out of here safely. You have no choice… I won't ask again." Hocking glared at her fiercely. "Well?"

"All right. What do you want me to do?"

"Come with me. Now. And be quiet. Ortu has eyes all over the place."

Ari slipped after the floating chair as it flew along darkened corridors and down spiraling stone steps, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the palace. It was all she could do to keep pace with the egg gliding before her.

Finally they reached a large wooden door at the bottom of a flight of steps. Hocking paused before the door and it swung magically open before them, closing on them again once they had entered.

The room was large and dark, rank with the musty smell of age and silent as a tomb. There was a soft hum and a click, and instantly the room was washed in white light. Ari blinked and threw a hand to shield her eyes.

In a moment she lowered her arm and saw that they were in a room with stone walls at the very roots of the palace. The light came from two huge lamps set in the ceiling, but otherwise the room had no distinguishing features-save one: the enormous apparatus glinting coldly before them.

What it looked like, she could not describe. It seemed insect -like to her-as if it were a construction of nature rather than human engineering-but it had a strong, metallic appearance. The gleaming black thing stood on tall legs over a small platform with a sling chair on it. The chair she recognized as being a more or less common variety, but it was strangely out of place among the protruding knobs and convolutions of the sleek machine. Altogether, the thing had a vague, spidery appearance.

"What is it?" she asked. Her voice quavered, giving away her anxiety.

"This is merely a simple communication device-a sort of radio, you might say. It amplifies and projects brain waves. It won't bite you, my dear. I've used it myself many times. It's quite harmless, I assure you."

Ari was not assured. She liked her collaboration with the enemy less and less with every passing second.

"You're going to put me in that, aren't you?" she stated.

"I'm going to ask you to assist me, yes. That is, after all, why you came. Shall we begin?"

Hocking indicated that she was to take her place in the chair. Ari mounted the platform uncertainly and settled herself in the chair, perching on the edge of the fabric seat.

"You may as well make yourself comfortable," said Hocking as he went about readying the machine. "This will take some time." "What are you going to do?"

Hocking could not resist a smirk at her weakness. Humans, he thought, were all alike: scared children in the presence of things too vast for their puny intellectual powers. "You will not feel a thing. There will be no sensation whatever. See? We are already beginning."

Hocking lied. There was an immediate sensation, and an unpleasant one.

Ari suddenly felt dizzy, as if the room had shifted, and the feeling in her fingers-which she held clasped together in her lap-faded away. For a long moment she could not focus her eyes.

But the feeling diminished and she felt, rather than heard, a deep vibrant thrum moving up through the platform, through the chair, and into her very bones. She clamped her teeth shut to keep them from vibrating.

Two long pincerlike claws came down over her head; Ari closed her eyes so she would not have to look. When she opened them again she was bathed in a shimmering blue aura. It covered her like a gossamer gown.

The light in the room had dimmed and Hocking was nowhere to be seen. She sat motionless and gazed into the flowing light. It seemed a part of her, and she thought she had never seen anything so beautiful. It sparkled with unearthly radiance, flecked through with silver beams which burst like tiny comets as they played over her form.

She relaxed and centered her mind on the dancing light. As she did a numbness overtook her, starting at the base of her neck and working upward over her scalp. The feeling was unusual, but not unpleasant. She let it creep over her until it seemed that her head had become isolated from her body-there was no longer any connection between the two that she could feel. But at the same time this did not alarm her. She accepted it calmly and noted it somewhere in the back of her mind.

Ari's breathing slowed and she felt herself drifting. It reminded her of those last waking moments just before sleep overtook her-that delicious nether region between wakefulness and sleep when the body relaxed and the waking mind gave itself over to the subconscious.

In a moment, with eyes wide open, as if stargazing on a starfilled night, Ari began to dream.

She heard a voice nearby. It was the voice of her father and she was a little girl playing with her doll on the porch of an old house. The voice said, "Ari, where are you?"

"I'm here, Daddy," she replied. She looked around but her father was not there. She continued playing with the doll's frilly pink dress and heard again her father's call.

This time she rose from her play and looked out across a green lawn. The lawn was newly mown and smelled of cut grass. A light summer breeze blew clippings across the walk. Her father stood out on the grass and she saw him and waved to him.

"Come along, Ari. Follow me," he said. But he did not look at her. He seemed instead to look beyond her. This frightened Ari. She could not think why her father would not look at her.

"I'm coming, Daddy," she called as her short little legs scrambled down the porch steps.

Her father turned away and was walking quickly across the lawn in long strides toward a dark wood which grew near the house.

"Daddy!" the young girl cried. "Wait for me!"

The figure of her father reached the wood and stopped. He looked back and motioned her onward and then stepped in among the trees. Ari reached the place a moment later and stood outside, hesitant and frightened.

"Daddy, come out! I can't see you!" she shouted. Her tiny voice fell away among the trees.

No answer came from the dark wood. The afternoon sun stretched the shadow of the old house across the lawn and Ari drew away from it. She stepped lightly into the forest and was immediately immersed in deep blue shade and black shadow.

"This way, Ari," she heard her father say. The voice came from just ahead of her.

She ran forward, stumbled, picked herself up and ran on. She caught a fleeting glimpse of her father's back as he moved through the tangle of branches. "Wait!" she called. "I can't keep up!"

But the figure of her father moved on, never looking back.

Little Ari began to cry. The tears streamed down her face and she sat down on the ground and wailed.

"Why are you crying, Ari?" The voice was warm and gentle. The little frightened girl sensed in it a friendliness and understanding.

She turned and saw a tall man standing in the light of the fading afternoon sun, golden and serene. He was unlike any man she had ever seen; he seemed to exude peace and kindness. -lie large yellow eyes looked down on her with benevolence.

"My daddy left me," she sniffed, her fear dissolving. Here was someone who would help her. "I tried to follow him, but I got lost. I'm scared."

"Don't be afraid. I will help you. I am your friend." The figure reached out a hand and Ari took it, noticing with a child's curiosity that the hand had but three exceptionally long fingers, "Come with me."

Ari and the tall being turned and walked out of the wood and back onto the lawn toward the house. But as they neared the old structure it began to change. The walls melted and rearranged themselves, the roof slid away, the porch became a great courtyard-the house transformed itself into a palace of shimmering gold.

"Is this your house?" asked Ari. Her eyes sparkled at the scene.

"Yes," answered the being. "But now it is your house as well. You will live with me forever."

They drew nearer and entered the palace through a magnificent gate of scrolled silver. A group of people were waiting for them, and when these people saw Ari they all cheered and made sounds of welcome.

They moved across the courtyard; Ari heard beautiful music playing inside. She saw a wide gallery, lit from within by glittering lights, and heard laughter echoing through the palace. A wide bank of stairs led to the gallery and she ran to the foot of the stairs.

"Ari!" someone called. She looked up and saw her father surrounded by many others, standing on the stairs waiting for her.

"Daddy! You came back! Never leave me-promise?"

"Look who's here!" said her father. He raised his arm and stepped aside. At the same moment the people gathered around him parted and a beautiful woman dressed in white stepped forward.

The woman came down the steps holding out her arms for Ari. The little girl looked and at first did not know who the woman was. She looked again and saw that it was her mother.

"Mama!" Ari squealed.

Instantly she was swept up in her mother's arms and cradled to her breast. "Ari, my beautiful, beautiful child," murmured the woman. "I've missed you so much. I'll never leave you again."

Ari, overcome with happiness, pressed her head against her mother's neck and wept for joy. She heard the voice of the golden being saying, "Today your dreams have become real. You don't need them anymore. Give them to me and you can live here forever." …

WHEN ARI AWOKE SHE was back in the closed room with her father.

"Ari, I've been terribly worried about you. Where have you been? You were unconscious when they brought you in. Are you all right?"

She sat up and grabbed her throbbing head. "I'm okay-I think. Oww… my head hurts. I've been asleep."

"For nearly two hours. Where did they take you?"

Ari looked at her father. His words puzzled her. "Take me?" She dimly remembered Hocking coming for her and going somewhere dark and unpleasant, but nothing more. "I don't think they took me anywhere."

"Yes, they did. You were gone when I woke up. You should have told me where you were going. I was worried-you were gone so long."

"Was I?" She rubbed her head and closed her eyes. It made no sense. Nothing did, really. She had a vague picture of talking to someone and a warm, pleasant feeling associated with the picture. But who she had talked to, what they had said, anything at all about the meeting, she could not remember.

It was as if a piece of her mind, her memory, had been taken from her, wiped clean. She could not remember.

But the warm, pleasant feeling lingered and she smiled as it flowed over her like a gentle breath of air. "Wherever I was, it was the best place I have ever been," she said. "I feel like I was in paradise."