Wine of the Dreamers

One

The soft purr of the turbine was almost lost in the roar of wind as the gray sedan traveled south through the New Mexico night. The night air, as always, was cool. Night in this land, he thought, is different. The land seems to rest from the heavy fist of the sun.

Step out of the cool shadows of early morning and the sun is a vast white blow between the eyes. The sun sucks greedily at all liquids. A man lost for a full day in the wastes of rock and sand will be found in the blue dusk, curled in fetal position, lips black, body withered and mummified like the long-dead.

Parched, wind-driven air dries the membranes of mouth and nose. The sun gaunts the men, pinches wrinkles into the flesh around the eyes. It fades colors and drabs the women.

At night, in the blue desert dusk the jukes sing out the plaintive old ballads, and the young girls dance with a determined abandon. For the young girls know that the sun makes short work of youth, and juices are soon gone. Flat bronzed Indian faces look in at the dancers, and their eyes are polished obsidian. They know that they alone are bred for this land, and when the pallid laughing ones are gone, they will remain.

There are racial memories, more of a faint pulse of blood and ache of bone than a true memory. The sun is a god. The god is angered because the tall pyramids are no longer used. The sun has long since baked away the faint stains on the pyramid crests, on the stone bowls, the time-worn channels. At dawn the sun hears no chant, sees no black upraised glint of stone knife, sees no blinded virgin awaiting the clever twisting thrust that rips the pulsing heart from its hot membranous nest.

Maybe, he thought, big hands resting easily on the wheel as he drove, they are closer to truth than we are. We and our learned talk of hydrogen-helium reaction.

Speed at night was a hypnotic. The speedometer needle held steady at ninety-five. Faint vibration from the road surface. White onrushing flick of an insect caught in the hard bright headlight beams. And weariness. Bard Lane knew that his weariness was of a very special type. An all-inclusive type, compounded of physical, intellectual and emotional strain, each carried to the threshold of tolerance. For a moment the car seemed to be standing still while the road ahead leaped toward him and was snatched under the wheels. He bunched his shoulders, shook his head violently to thrust back the impulse toward sleep that for a moment had brushed his eyelids. He adjusted the side vent a bit to throw a stronger current of the cool air against his face.

Far ahead the Christmas tree of a truck appeared, heading in the same direction. He came up on it slowly, made a pass signal with his lights and swept by, noting that it was a truck train, with heavy quad trailers. Once by the truck he sat a bit higher in the seat so that he could use the rearview mirror and the diminishing glow of the truck lights to check on the prisoner who slept curled on the back seat.

Far ahead he saw the lights of a lonesome town. He diminished speed gradually, saw the single traffic light ahead turn from green to red. In the glow of the lights along the deserted sidewalks, he glanced at the girl who slept beside him. She had slumped over toward the door so that her head appeared to be uncomfortably braced in the angle between door and seat back. Long legs were stretched out under the dash, and both hands, palms up, fingers curled, rested in her lap. She looked remarkably young and quite helpless. Bard Lane knew that there was nothing at all helpless about Sharan Inly. At the southern outskirts of the town he picked up speed again, and felt the heaviness of eyelids begin anew.

He shook his head again, reached out and punched one of the radio buttons, turning the volume down so as not to disturb the girl.

“... and remember, when you’re bored, drink Wilkins’ Mead, spelled em ee aye dee. Wilkins’ Mead is non-alcoholic, non-habitforming. Four out of five doctors know that Wilkins’ Mead cures boredom through a simple process of intensifying your reception to all stimuli. Three years ago, in May of 1972, Wilkins’ Mead was placed on the market. Since that time, one hundred and sixty million Americans have learned that you have never really seen a sunset, enjoyed a kiss, tasted a steak until you have first had your handy lip-sized bottle of Wilkins’ Mead. And now for your Wilkins’ Mead reporter, the man the Senate couldn’t silence, Melvin C. Lynn, with his nightly Wilkins’ Mead summary of news of the world...”

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

“This has been a quiet day on the international front. The Paris Conference continues and an informed source stated late this afternoon that the delegates have not yet lost hope of reaching an agreement on the basic problems confronting them. The Pan-Asia delegate has flown back to Moscow for further instructions on the Siberian agreement not to launch snooper satellites until new orbits have been assigned to each major power. The South American Coalition has refused to back down on their claim to five thousand miles of their moon base, even though they admit that it is almost a month since the last weak signals were received, and all expedition personnel must be assumed dead. Tomorrow, and throughout the world, as well as at the conference, there will be the customary sixty seconds of silence to commemorate the anniversary of the loss of the first manned rocket to Mars...

“And now for the national news front. Bliss Bailey, the Staten Island ferry boat captain who barricaded the ferry-boat bridge and chugged off toward Bermuda, was brought back under guard today. The commuters who took the inadvertent cruise with Captain Bailey have reported that once it was discovered that the ferryboat was heading east across a calm sea and nothing could be done, most of them turned it into a holiday. The identity of the nude blonde who jumped overboard the first night out has not yet been discovered. Bailey is quoted as saying, ‘It just seemed like a good idea at the time.’ Witnesses say Bailey appeared slightly dazed. His employers have not yet made public their decision regarding Captain Bailey. His cruise passengers are circulating a petition for his reemployment.

“Well, tomorrow morning the new slot-machine divorce law goes into effect in Nevada. Thirty machines have been installed to handle the expected rush of business. Applicants will slide a fifty-dollar bill into the waiting slot, then give their name, address and reason for requesting a divorce in a clear, low voice into the mike, then press their right thumb firmly against the exposed sensitive plate. Six weeks later they will return to the same machine and duplicate the procedure and the decree will fall into the hopper.

“Speaker of the House, Wally Blime, was severely reprimanded today in the public press and over the airwaves. This reporter feels, as others do after yesterday’s childish display, that bubble gum and a pea shooter are rather poor substitutes for the dignity expected of a public figure in high office. Blime’s only defense is that ‘Something told me to do it.’ And this, my friends, is from the same man who, two years ago, broke fourteen windows on New York’s Madison Avenue before he was restrained by the police. His defense, at that time, was the same. Wally, this is a word from a friend. This reporter feels that it is high time you returned to private life.

“Larry Roy, national TV favorite, today jumped or fell from the forty-first story of a New York City hotel. Melly Muro, Larry Roy’s seventh wife, told police that she could think of no reason for suicide, unless it could be a breakdown due to overwork. Melly, you will remember, is the redheaded woman who figured so largely in the divorce of Franz Steeval, composer and conductor, three months ago. Larry Roy was her sixth husband.

“Martha Needis, the Jersey City landlady who, last Tuesday, murdered her six roomers in their beds with a steak tenderizer, is still at large.

“In Memphis, debutante Gayla Dennison was today acquitted of murdering her guardian. She wept tears of joy.

“At Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, government psychiatrists today disagreed on their diagnoses in the case of Corporal Brandt Reilly, the enlisted man who, ten days ago, turned an aircraft cannon on a company formation, killing sixteen and wounding twenty-one.

“And here is a light note in the news. Today, Pierre Brevet, French artist, is in serious danger of being lynched by irate American womanhood. He has been in this country for three days. He told reporters that he heartily approves, for French women, the new beachwear consisting of halters only, but after a visit to Jones Beach yesterday, he feels that this is one daring style this country could do without. He stated that his objections are deep-seated. Could that be a pun, Pierre?”

“You have just heard Melvin C. Lynn with the Wilkins’ Mead news. And now do you hear that? Know what it is? You — pouring your first full golden glass of Wilkins’ Mead from its handy lip-sized bottle. And tonight you have that date you’ve been waiting for. The big important date with the ‘one and only.’ Take her a bottle of Wilkins’ Mead too. And then you can be sure that the two of you will enjoy one of the most—”

Bard Lane grunted and punched at the radio button. The airdale voice was mercifully silenced. Sharan Inly said wryly, “No mead for me. But a beer would go good, if the man can arrange it.”

“Did I wake you up with that racket? Sorry.”

“You didn’t wake me up. That creamy little voice of Melvin C.’s is insidious. It crept into my dreams, licking its chops at sudden death, Bard. I listen to him and feel that we’re in an age of decay, and he is its prophet. Wonder what compulsion makes him go all oily over a nice juicy hammer murder?”

“You work all the time, don’t you, Sharan? Always the psychiatrist.”

He could feel her eyes on him. “You always shy away from psychiatry. There’s always a little bitterness in your voice when you bring it up. Why?”

“If I start telling you my attitude, it will turn into an argument. Looks like a beer spot ahead. How’s our boy?”

She knelt on the front seat and reached into the back as he began to slow for the neon flicker far ahead. She turned and plumped down into the seat with a sigh. “He’ll keep for another three hours without a booster shot. Better park where it isn’t too light, so nobody will get nosey.”

There were a few shining new cars in the large parking lot, a larger number of dusty heaps, some pickup trucks and a few huge trans-state trucks. Bard parked near a weary-looking clump of live oaks, and carefully locked the car. He straightened up and stretched stiffness out of his joints. Sharan, standing nearby, made the time-honored and infinitely feminine gesture of looking back down over each shoulder to see how badly her skirt was wrinkled. The night breeze molded the thin skirt against the long clean thigh-lines, the trim hips. He felt the stir of pleasure in looking at her, along with the knowledge of the trap. Biological trap. Nature takes clear fresh skin, and youth and a slim body, and the child-bearing ability, holds it up and says, “This is what you want.” And the pulse responds.

The acid twang of a jukebox cowhand quavered on the night air. “...She never reely tole me that she loved meeeee...”

There were metal tables on the patio, on the stones that were still warm underfoot from the sun-heat of the long day. He held a chair for Sharan, then went inside, walking the cramped tiredness out of his legs, muffling a yawn with the back of his hand.

Inside there were booths and dancers and girl-laughter and soft drinks held under the table edge for the quick jolt from the package store bottle. He stood at the beer bar and waited patiently, a tall tanned man with blunt bones in his face, with widow’s peak slanting sharply back into the crisp brown hair, gray-touched, with an odd look that combined both mildness and authority. He wore a rumpled khaki hunting jacket over a faded blue work shirt, open at the throat.

He carried the two frosted bottles and one glass out to the table. Sharan was making up her lips, turned in the chair so the light from the doorway struck her mirror at the right angle. She smiled up at him, capped the lipstick and dropped it back into her white purse.

“How are we running on time, Bard?”

“We can kill a half hour and still get there a good hour before the conference.”

“Want me to drive for a while?”

“No thanks. It’s better to be doing something.”

His big brown fist rested on the table top. She patted it with a quick, affectionate gesture. “Don’t let it get you down. Screening wasn’t your responsibility.”

“My responsibility is to get the job done. I couldn’t pass the buck if I wanted to.”

The light behind her haloed her cropped curls. She was indeed pleasant to look at. A face that was almost, but not quite, thin — with eagerness, mobility, sensitivity. She held her glass in both hands, like a child. Thrown together on the job, they had kept their relationship on the plane of friendship, mutual respect. There had been isolated moments — bending together over a desk, a quick glance across a crowded office, an inadvertent touch — when he had become conscious of his own awareness, and hers. But by unspoken agreement between them they always forced a return to an unemotional status. Maybe one day there would be time. Maybe one day the pressure of responsibility would be taken away, and there would be time for play.

He had wondered about her in the beginning. This new crop of young professional women no longer had any consciousness of fighting for equality. It existed. In the beginning he had accepted the idea that her amorality would be no less casual than that of the other women her age on the project. For a time he had skirted the idea of asking her to add the self-evident closer aspect to their association. But, at the time, he had decided that his duty was to maintain all his energies at the highest possible peak.

Now he was glad he had made that decision, for as he had come to know her better he realized that a casual amorality would not integrate with the rest of her character. In fact, she would probably be decidedly old-fashioned in that regard. And, had he asked her bluntly, he suspected that something in their relationship would have ceased to exist in the moment she denied him.

Women who played for keeps were becoming so rare as to be refreshing.

Until the all-pervading, all-important, capital J Job was done, Sharan Inly would remain Dr. Inly, Project Assistant in Charge of Psycho-Adjustment.

“The General,” she said dolefully, “is going to be muy irritado.”

“That is an understatement. Fat blue sparks are going to crackle off his fingertips.”

She finished her glass, refilled it from the bottle. “How about that argument we’re going to have? Want to start now?”

“You want to hear someone attack your profession, Dr. Inly?”

“Sure. I’m a missionary. I’ll bring enlightenment to your poor layman mind.”

“Here goes. Ever since Freud and Jung, you people have been honing certain basic weapons. I am a layman in psychiatry. However, I am a scientist. As a scientist, I am disturbed by your acceptance of the truth of your basic assumptions. Take the case of the critter we’ve got out in the car. I’ll use a little of your gobbledegook language. He’s been screened two ways. Loyalty and, in your province, stability. You hunted for all the garden-variety neuroses and couldn’t find any of any importance. Ergo, we’ve got a stable guy. No delusions of persecution, no manic-depressive tendencies, no control so excessive it smells of dementia praecox. Doesn’t miss his mother, save lady’s shoes or draw pornographic pictures. Your ink-blot tests, properly fitted into statistical distribution charts, show that Mr. X is a nice clean-living ambiverent, ideal technician material.”

She frowned. “You quarrel with that?”

“Not at all. But the neat little tests assume that this stability is a permanent state.”

“They do not! The tests and the whole theory admit that in the face of unexpected strain, even the most stable, the most adjusted, can become psychoneurotic in one way or another. My goodness, that’s why I’m employed out there. It’s my job to detect the presence of any change in the face of strain and...”

“Now you’re stating my point. I say that one of your basic assumptions is that there has to be an environmental change to create the strain which results in an alteration of this basic quotient of stability. I say that the assumption is too hasty. I say that there is something further to study. I think the shift from stability to instability can come in the twinkling of an eye and come without reference to any outside stimuli. Forget hereditary weaknesses. Forget the old business about escaping from a life that is unbearable. I say that you can take a perfectly adjusted guy, put him in a situation where his life is satisfying — and boom, he can go off like that. You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. Why? Why does it happen? It happened to Bill Kornal. One minute he was okay. The next minute it was as though something... quite alien took over his mind. So now we’ve got him out in the car and there’s four month’s work lost.”

“Are we going to go back, Bard, to the old idea of being possessed by devils?”

“Maybe we should. How about the news we listened to? What keeps perpetually messing up mankind? Jokers who go off their rocker when they’ve got every reason not to. No, you people are doing a good, but a limited job. Floating around somewhere is an X factor that you haven’t found yet. Until you do I’m looking at psychology and psychiatry with a limited and dubious acceptance, Sharan.”

There was a whisper of sound. He searched the night sky until he saw, against the stars, the running lights of a jet transport, losing altitude for the Albuquerque landing, the six flame-tongues merged, by the altitude, into a thin orange line.

The breeze stirred her hair. She said slowly, “I should rise up in mighty wrath and smite you hip and thigh, boss. But a still small voice within me says there might be something in what you say. However, if I admit you might be right, I’m also admitting the impossibility of ever isolating this X factor. How can you find something that hits without warning and disappears the same way?”

“Possession by devils,” he said, grinning.

She stood up, slim against the light, more provocative to him in her complete, thoughtful, forgetfulness of self than if she had posed carefully.

“Then,” she said, “the devils are more active lately. Oh, I know that every generation that reaches middle age believes firmly that the world is going to hell. But this time, Bard, even at my tender years, I think they may have something. Our culture seems like a big machine that’s vibrating itself to bits. Parts keep flying off. Parts that are important. Decency, dignity, morality. We’ve all gone impulsive. Anything you want to do is all right, provided your urge is strong enough. It’s a... a...”

“Sociological anarchy?”

“Yes. And there, Mr. Lane, you have my motivation. Now you know why I’m so desperately anxious for you to succeed. I keep feeling that if mankind can find some new horizons, there’ll be a return to a decent world. Quaint, aren’t I?”

They walked across the lot toward the car. He looked at the night sky, at the stars which seemed closer, more attainable here.

“Elusive devils, aren’t they?”

She caught his wrist as they walked, her nails biting into the flesh with quick strength. “They won’t stay elusive, Bard. They won’t.”

“Four years now, that I’ve had my little obsession, Sharan, and they seem as far away as ever.”

“You’ll never give up, Bard.”

“I wonder.”

They had reached the car. Through the rear window, open an inch, came the soft sound of Bill Kornal’s snores.

“It makes me feel ill to have you talk of giving up,” she said in a half-whisper.

He leaned over to put the key in the lock. His shoulder brushed hers.

Without quite knowing how it had happened, he found her in his arms. She stood tightly against him with upturned lips, and with a small, plaintive sound in her throat. He knew that he was bruising her mouth, and could not stop. He knew it was a forgetfulness, a little time stolen from the project, from the endless drain of effort and responsibility. He had expected to find in her all the warmth and passion of any healthy young adult. He was pleased that her intensity matched his own.

“This is no good,” she said.

She stood a little aside, her head bent. He knelt and swept his hand back and forth across the gravel until he found the keys. He straightened up.

“Sorry,” he said.

“We’re both tired, Bard. We’re both scared to death of what General Sachson might do. We were clinging to each other for... comfort. Let’s forget it.”

“Let’s not exactly forget it, Sharan. Let’s shelve it for future action.”

“Please,” she said sharply.

“All right, so I shouldn’t have said that.” He knew that his tone was a shade indignant.

He unlocked the door. She slid under the wheel and across to her side. He chunked the door shut and drove out in a long curve onto the highway, accelerated viciously up to cruising speed. He gave her a quick glance. She was staring straight ahead, her face expressionless in the reflected dash lights. A big jack bounded from the shoulder into the road, startling him. He felt the tiny thud in his wrists as the wheel hit it, heard her sharp intake of breath.

“Just say I was possessed by one of those devils,” he said.

“Probably we both were,” she said. He glanced again and saw her smile. She moved a bit closer to him. “Besides, Bard, I’m a prim kid, I guess.”

“Didn’t taste very prim.”

“That’s what I mean,” she said, enigmatically. “Now be good.”

The gray sedan droned through the night.