Wine of the Dreamers

Three

Raul Kinson’s world had walls. It was a world of rooms, of ramps, of corridors.

There was nothing else. Thought could not reach beyond the walls, beyond the furthest rooms. He had tried to thrust his thoughts through the walls, but thoughts cannot encompass the idea of nothingness, and so his thoughts curled back, repelled by a concept beyond the authority of the mind.

When he was ten years old he had found the opening in the wall. It was an opening you could not crawl through, because it was covered with something you could look through as you look through water. Yet the substance was hard to the touch.

He was not yet old enough then to be permitted to dream.

Dreaming was for the older ones, the ones who had grown big enough to join the mating games.

In the ancient micro-books he had found the word for that hole in the wall. Window. He said it over and over. No one else read the micro-books. No one else knew the word. It was a secret that was precious, because it was not a made-up secret. It existed. Later, of course, he found that in the dreams there are many windows. They could be touched, opened, looked through. But not with one’s own hands. That was the difference. In the dreams you had to use other hands, other bodies.

He would not forget the day he had found the window. The other children angered him. He had never liked the games they played. They laughed at him because he was not frail, as they were. His games, the muscle-stretching games, hurt them and made them cry out. On this day they had permitted him to play one of their games. The old game of statue dance, in one of the biggest rooms on the lowest level. One spindly girl held the two white blocks and as they danced the girl would unexpectedly clap the blocks together. At that signal everyone stopped as though turned to stone. But Raul had been off balance and when he tried to stop he crashed awkwardly into two of the frail boys, knocking them to the floor with shrill yelps of pain and pettish anger. They were angered but his anger surpassed theirs. The translucent floor glowed softly amber.

“You cannot play, Raul Kinson. You are rough. Go away, Raul. We won’t let you play.”

“I didn’t want to play anyway. This game is silly.”

He had left them and gone down the long hall that led through the maze of the power rooms where the air itself seemed to vibrate. He liked walking there as it gave him a strange but agreeable sensation in the pit of his stomach. Now, of course, he knew what the power rooms contained, and knew the name of the soft gray metal of the corridor walls in the power area. “Lead” it was called. Yet knowing what was in the power rooms had never decreased the pleasure he felt walking through the humming air, through a vibration below the range of audibility.

The day he walked away from their games he had wandered aimlessly. Memory was clear, though it had been fourteen years ago. He had been bored. The rooms where music played endlessly, had been playing since the beginning of time, and would play on forever, no longer pleased him. The grownups he saw ignored him, as was the custom.

Seeking some kind of excitement, he had stepped onto the moving track which carried him up through twenty levels to the place of the dreamers, where all children were forbidden to go. He had tiptoed down an empty silent corridor until he came to where the dreamers were, each in a thick glass case set into the wall.

He looked in at a woman. She lay on softness, curled, cat-slack, one hand under her cheek, the other touching her breast. Her mouth was distorted by the fitted metal plate between her teeth. Shining cables coiled up from the exposed edge of the plate and disappeared into the wall behind her shoulder. Standing close, he could feel a tiny throbbing, very much like that near the power rooms, but weaker.

As he watched her she suddenly stirred, and his sudden fright held him transfixed there as she took the plate from between her teeth, laid it aside, and reached down for her loose-woven robe of soft dull metal wadded near her feet, her movements slow and fumbling. As she began to yawn and to reach to push open the door of the glass case, she saw him and her slack sleepy face tightened at once in anger. He fled, knowing what the punishment would be, hoping that in the dimness she had not recognized him. He heard her call, sharp-voiced, “Boy! Stop!”

He ran as fast as he could, aware that if he took the track that moved slowly downward, her shouts might alarm someone on a lower level who could intercept him.

And so he dodged and ran up the stationary track that led to the twenty-first level. Once before he had explored up there. The silence of the rooms had awed him, had frightened him so that he had hurried back down, but on this day the silent rooms were refuge.

Higher and higher. The twenty-first level did not seem safe enough. He continued on up to the next level above that and collapsed, his mouth dry, a great pain in his side, his heart thudding. He listened above the sound of his heart and the stillness settled around him.

It was then he had noticed, close to his left hand, the edge of the great wheel that moved the track. It was like the wheels at the lower levels, with the one astounding difference — it was stilled.

Raul touched it gently. An odd new thought began to form itself in his mind. This might be a thing that was... broken. That had ceased to run. The thought dizzied him because it was outside his experience. All things ran — that is, all things designed to run did so, quietly, perfectly and forever. He had known of the tracks that were still above the twentieth level, and had thought that it was meant that they should be that way. And now he was confounded by this new concept of “brokenness.” One of the women had broken an arm. She was shunned because it was now a crooked misshapen thing. He knew that he dared not talk of this new concept as it applied to the tracks above the twentieth level. Such a thought if expressed would be heresy, pure and simple.

It was hard to think in such a fashion. It made an ache deep in his head. If this track had ceased, for some reason, to run — then it followed that these upper levels were to be used by all the Watchers — and were shunned now merely because of the physical difficulty of walking up the steep slopes. He knew of no one, adult or child, who had gone higher than the twentieth level. There was no need for it. On the lower levels were the warm perfumed baths, the places of wine and of sleep and of the taste of honey. On the lower levels were the food rooms and the rooms that healed pain.

He suddenly wondered how high the levels stretched above him. Would it be possible to go to the top? But was there a top? Was there an end to it? Or did the levels go on and on, higher and higher, without ever an end to them. The strength of his desire for an answer to this question shocked him. He could taste the shrillness of fear in his throat, but at the same time excitement fluttered inside him with soft frantic wings.

He was dressed, as were all the children, in the single long strip of soft metal fabric. It was wound around the waist, with the trailing end brought up between the legs and tucked firmly inside the waistband. When one was old enough to be permitted to dream, one was given either the toga and thongs of a man, or the robe of a woman. When death came, when the dead one was slipped, naked, into the mouth of the oval tube to speed down into unknown blackness, the clothing was saved. He had seen the room where it was stored in shining piles that reached to the highest point a man could touch.

He stood up, took a deep breath, tightened the hand at his waist and walked solemnly up the next motionless track. And the next, and the next. He tired of the steep climb and rested, realizing that he had lost count. The corridors down which he glanced had a sameness about them, and a silence.

At last he came to a track which moved upwards, its neighboring track moving downward, silently and perfectly. He stepped onto the track which carried him up, wondering how long it had been since other bare feet had stopped there.

Up and up and up. The familiar things were a frightening distance below him. But fears were lulled by the familiar silent motion of the track, which created a wind to touch his face.

With the sudden shock of a blow, he saw that at last there was no track to carry him higher, and thus no level above the one he had reached. The corridor was smaller than the others. He fought against a fear that commanded him to turn quickly and descend. The silence was the worst. No pad of feet against the body-warm floors. No distant voices. No sound of children. Just silence and the glow of the walls.

This, then, was the top of the world, the top of eternity, the summit of all. Fear faded into exaltation and he felt larger than life itself. He, Raul Kinson, had gone, alone, to the top of the world. The sneer at the others formed in his mind. He stuck his chest out and carried his chin high. The old ones said there was no limit to the world — that the silent levels went upward into infinity, that those who slid down the tube of death fell forever, turning slowly through the blackness, until the end of time.

He walked down the corridor. It curved slightly. He stopped. There was a picture, a large picture, at the end of the corridor. He knew of pictures. There were thousands of them on the eighteenth level and no one really understood them.

He walked to the picture with the contempt of familiarity. He walked close to its oddly shining surface. A low sound bubbled in his throat, the darkness rushed over him and he had no feeling of impact as he fell.

He struggled back to consciousness and knelt and looked at the picture again. He knew that it was no picture. It was a revelation. It was a truth so fantastic that he heard, on his lips, the meaningless sounds that infants make. He knew that from this day forward, he would be apart from all the others who had not seen this, who did not share his concept.

Outside of the levels, beyond the walls that glowed, everyone was taught that there was nothingness. Often he had gone to sleep trying to visualize “nothingness.” It was all a lie.

All of the levels were located in an enormous, frightening room. The ceiling, impossibly high, was a deep purple color, with hard shining dots of light in it, and one enormous round deep-red light that hurt his eyes when he looked directly at it. The floor of the room was tan and brown and gray. The most horrible aspect of the enormous room was his inability to see the walls. They were beyond vision, in itself a new concept. It dizzied him to stare down at the remote floor. Far off, to the right, the floor was humped up into a jagged series of mounds much higher than the level of his eye. And, in the foreground, six objects towered, standing neatly in a row. The glow of the round red light made them look silvery. The longer he stared, the more accustomed he became to perspective and the more accurately he could assess the height of those six cylindrical featureless objects with the blunt snouts and the flared portion that rested against the tan of the floor. As he watched he saw movement. A bit of the floor came alive, lifted up into a tall whirling column. He could not understand why it did this thing. He watched it move, still whirling, toward the high rough mounds. Soon he could see it no more. He touched his mouth to the hard surface of the transparent substance and drew back with startled speed. In a world where everything was warmed, the surface had a strange chill.

The gnawing of hunger at last took him away from the picture which he later found was called a “window.” He went all the way back down to the deep familiar levels. He spoke to no one of what he had seen. He walked in a daze, feeling shrunken and small against the enormities of what lay outside the known world. He ate and slept and bathed and walked alone, seeking always the chance to slip away, to return to his window that looked out on another world which dwarfed his own.

Once, full of the importance of new knowledge, he had tried to tell one of the old ones about what he had seen. Wrath exploded and Raul Kinson picked himself up off the floor, with bleeding mouth, determined to speak no more.

With Leesa, of course, it was a different thing. As his sister, she shared, to some extent, that wry biological joke which had given him a deep chest, broad shoulders, strong column of neck, muscle-bulge of thigh and calf in a world where physical strength was useless.

He remembered that he had been twelve and she was ten when he took her up to the window. At ten she was taller and stronger than the other girl children of the same age. Like Raul, her hair was blue-black and abundant. It set them apart in a world where hair was thin, dry and brown, lasting usually until the age of twenty, seldom beyond.

They had talked, and he knew that Leesa shared his vague feeling of disquiet, his aimless discontent — but her releases took a different form. Whereas he strove constantly to learn more, to understand more, she made a fetish of wildness and childish abandon.

He was proud of the way she refused to show her fear. They stood at the window. He said, proud of his new words, “That is ‘outside.’ All of our world and all the levels are inside of what is called a ‘building.’ It is cold out there. That red round light is a sun. It moves across the ceiling, but never goes completely out of sight. I have watched it. It travels in a circle.”

Leesa looked at it calmly enough. “It is better inside.”

“Of course. But it is a good thing to know — that there is an outside.”

“Is it? Why is it good just to know things? I would say it is good to dance and sing and be warm — to take the long baths and find the foods that taste best.”

“You won’t tell anyone about this?”

“And be punished? I am not that stupid, Raul.”

“Come, then. And I will show you other things.”

He took her down several levels to a series of small rooms. He took her to one room where ten chairs faced the end of the room. He made her sit in one while he went to the machine which had taken him so many months to understand. He had broken four of them before he at last found the purpose.

Leesa gasped as the light dimmed and the pictures appeared, by magic, on the wall at the end of the room, the end that they faced.

Raul said quietly, “I believe it was intended that all children should be brought to these rooms to watch the images. But somehow, a long time ago, it was given up. Those marks under each picture mean nothing to you, Leesa. But I have learned that they are writing. Each thing has a word, as you know. But those marks can mean the word. With those marks, if you could read, I could tell you something without talking.”

“Why would you want to do that?” Her tone was full of wonder.

“I could leave a message for you. I can read the writing under the pictures. There is an uncountable number of these spools to put in the machines. Each room holds ones more complicated than in the previous room. I think that this room was for the very small children, because the words are simple.”

“You are clever, Raul, to understand those marks. But it seems like a hard thing to do. And I don’t know why you do it.”

Her wonder had changed to boredom. He frowned. He wanted someone to share this new world with him.

He remembered a place that would interest her. He took her down several levels to a much larger room. This time the pictures moved and they seemed to have real dimensions and the persons, oddly dressed, talked, using strange words scattered among those more familiar.

Raul said, “That is a story. I can understand it because I have learned the strange words — at least some of them.” In the dim light he saw her leaning forward, lips parted. The people in peculiar dress moved in strange rooms.

He turned it off. “Raul! It’s... beautiful. Make it appear again.”

“No. You don’t understand it.”

“It is like what I imagine the dreams must be, like they will be when we’re old enough to be allowed to dream. And I thought I could never wait. Please, Raul. Show me how to make it happen again.”

“No. You have no interest in these things. In women that wear strange colors and men that fight. Go on back down to your games, Leesa.”

She tried to strike him and then she wept. Finally he pretended to relent. “All right, Leesa. But you must start like I did. With the simple pictures. With the simple writing. And when you learn, then you can see all this again and you’ll understand it.”

“I’ll learn today!”

“In a hundred days. If you are quick and if you spend many hours here.”

He took her back to the first room and tried to help her. She wept again with frustration. At last the corridors dimmed and they knew that the time of sleep had come. Time had gone too quickly. They hurried back down to the others, hiding until the way was clear, then strolling in with exaggerated calm.

At sixteen Raul Kinson towered above every man in the world. He knew that it was time, and that the day was coming. He knew it from the way the women looked at him, from a new light in their eyes, a light that troubled him. They could not speak to him because until he was empowered to dream, he was still a child.

There were those who had certain duties. And, in each case, they instructed a young one of their choice in these duties in preparation for the time of death. There was a woman in charge of the rooms of childbirth, and another who cared for the young children. A man, fatter than others, organized the games of the adults. But of all those with special duties, Jord Orlan was the most powerful. He was aloof and quiet. He was in charge of dreams and the dreamers. He had wise, kind eyes and a face with a sadness of power in it.

Jord Orlan touched Raul Kinson lightly on the shoulder and led him to the far end of the tenth level, to the chambers where Jord Orlan lived alone, apart from the community life.

Raul felt a trembling excitement within him. He sat where Jord Orlan directed him to sit. He waited.

“After today, my son, you cease to be a child. All who are no longer children must dream. It is the privilege of being an adult. Those of you who come to me come with many wrong ideas of the dreams. That is because it is forbidden to discuss the dreams with children. Many of our people take the dreams too lightly. That is regrettable. They feel that the dreams are pure and undiluted pleasure, and they forget the primary responsibility of all those who dream. I do not wish you, my son, to ever forget that primary responsibility. In good time I shall explain it to you. In our dreams we are all-powerful. I shall take you to the glass case of dreams which shall be yours until the time of death. And I will show you how to operate the mechanism which controls the dreams. But first we shall talk of other matters. You have remained apart from the other children. Why?”

“I am different.”

“In body, yes.”

“And in mind. Their pleasures have never interested me.”

Orlan looked beyond him. “When I was small, I was the same.”

“May I ask questions? This is the first time I have been permitted to talk to an adult in this way.”

“Of course, my son.”

“Why are we called the Watchers?”

“I have been puzzled about that. I believe that it is because of the dreams. The source of the word is lost in antiquity. Possibly it is because of the fantastic creatures that we watch in our dreams.”

“You say that those creatures are fantastic. They are men?”

“Of course.”

“Which, then, is the reality? This constricted place or the open worlds of the dreams?” In his intense interest Raul had forgotten to use only the familiar words.

Jord Orlan looked at him sharply. “You have strange language, my son. Where did you obtain it? And who told you of the ‘open worlds’?”

Raul stammered, “I... I made up the words. I guessed about open worlds.”

“You must understand it is heresy to ever consider the creatures of the dreams as reality. The machines for dreaming have a simple principle, I believe. You are familiar with the vague, cluttered dreams of childhood. The machines merely clarify and make logical these dreams through some application of power. They are limited in that there are only three areas, or worlds, in which we can dream. In time you will become familiar with each world. But never, never delude yourself by believing that these worlds exist. The only possible world is here, on these levels. It is the only conceivable sort of surroundings which will permit life to exist. We become wiser men through dreaming.”

Raul hesitated. “How long has this world of ours existed?”

“Since the beginning of time.”

“Who... who made it? Who built these walls and the dream machines?”

“Again, my son, you come close to heresy in your questions. All this has always existed. And man has always existed here. There is no beginning and no end.”

“Has anyone ever thought that a larger world might exist outside the levels?”

“I must ask you to stop this questioning. This life is good and it is right for all of the nine hundreds of mankind. Nothing exists beyond the walls.”

“May I ask just one more question?”

“Of course. Provided it has more sense than your previous questions.”

“I have seen that this world is large, as though many more men once lived in it than do now. Are our numbers smaller than in times past?”

Orlan abruptly turned his back. His voice came softly to Raul’s ears. “That question has bothered me. I have not thought of it for a long time. When I was very small there were over a thousand of us. I have wondered about this thing. Each year there are one or two togas or robes for which no children are born.” His voice strengthened. “But it will be of no importance in our lifetime. And I cannot believe that man will dwindle and die out of the world. I cannot believe that this world will one day be empty when the last person lies dead with no one to assist him into the tube.”

Orlan took Raul’s hand. “Come and I will take you to the case assigned to you for all of your life.”

Orlan did not speak until they stood, on the twentieth level, before the empty case. Orlan said, “At your head, as you lie therein, you will touch that small knurled knob. It has three stations for the three dream worlds. The first station is marked by a line which is straight. That is the most beautiful world of all. The second station is marked by a curved line which stands on a base. You will find that world frightening at first. It is noisy. The third station, marked with a line with a double curve, is to direct the machine to create the third world, the one we find of least interest. You will be free to dream at any time you desire. You will shut yourself inside, set the knob for whichever world you desire, then disrobe and take the metal plate between your teeth and bite down on it firmly. The dream will come quickly. In your dream you will have a new body and new, odd, pointless skills. I cannot instruct you how to acquire change and mobility in the worlds of dreams. That is something you must learn by doing. Everyone learns quickly, but the actual procedure does not lend itself to words. You will dream for ten hours at a time and at the end of that time the machine will awaken you. Then it is best to wait for a new day before dreaming again.”

Raul could not resist the chance to say, “When the lights are bright in the walls and floors, we call it day, and when they are dim, we call it night. Is there any particular reason for that?”

Jord Orlan’s hand slid quickly down from Raul’s naked shoulder. “You talk insanely. Why do we have heads? Why are we called men? Day is day and night is night.”

“I had a childhood dream where we lived on the outside of a great globe and there was nothing over us but space. The other globe, which we called the sun, circled us, giving light and heat. Day was when it was overhead. Night was when it was on the opposite side of the globe.”

Orlan gave him a queer look. “Indeed?” he said politely. “And men lived on all sides of this globe?” Raul nodded. Orlan said triumphantly, “The absurdity is apparent! Those on the underside would fall off!” His voice became husky. “I wish to warn you, my son. If you persist in absurdities and in heresies, you will be taken to a secret place that only I know of. It has been used in times past. There is a door and beyond it is an empty coldness. You will be thrust out of the world. Is that quite clear?”

Sobered, Raul nodded.

“And now you must dream of each world in turn. And at the end of three dreams you will return to me and you will be told the Law.”

Jord Orlan walked away. Raul stood by the case, trembling. He lifted the glass door, slid quickly in and lay on his back on the softness.

He unwound the band of fabric and thrust it from him. The soft throb of power surrounded him, tingling against his naked limbs. He set the knob at figure 1, which Orlan had not known as a figure, as a mathematical symbol.

The metal plate was cool to his touch. He stretched his lips and put it between his teeth. Putting his head back he shut his teeth firmly against the metal... and fell down into the dream as though he fell from the great red sun to the brown dusty plains near the ragged mountains.

He fell remote and detached in the blackness, limbless, faceless...

All motion stopped. This then, was the precious dream? Absolute nothingness, absolute blankness, with only the sense of existence. He waited and slowly there came to him an awareness of dimension and direction. He hung motionless, and then detected, at what felt like a great distance, another entity. He felt it was a sense that was not sight or touch or hearing. He could only think of it as an awareness. And with the power of his mind he thrust out toward it. The awareness heightened. He thrust again and again and it was a sudden merging. The thing he merged with fought him. He could feel it twist and try to turn away. He held it without hands, pulled it toward him without arms. He pulled it in and merged it with himself and pushed it back and down and away from him so that it was shrunken into a far small corner.

And Raul Kinson found himself walking on a dusty road. His arm hurt. He looked down at it and he was shocked to see the stringy leanness of the arm, the harsh metal enclosing the withered wrist, the dried blood where the metal had cut him. He was dressed in soft rags and he smelled the stink of his body. He limped on a bruised foot. The metal band on his wrist was in turn connected to a chain affixed to a long heavy pole. He was one of many men fastened to one side of the pole, with an equal number attached to the other side. Ahead of him, bare strong shoulders, oddly dark, were crisscrossed with wounds, some fresh, some very old.

The thing he held pressed down, writhed, and he released the pressure, a pure mental pressure he could not understand. It seemed to flow up into his mind, bringing with it strong fear and hate and the strange words of a strange tongue which, oddly, had meaning to him. These others were his comrades. Yes, they had fought together against the soldiers of Arrud the Elder, seven days’ march away. Death was better than captivity. Now there was nothing to look forward to but an empty belly, a life of slavery and savage punishment, a ceaseless, hopeless desire to escape and return to the far green fields of Raeme, to the cottage where the woman would wait for a time, where the children played by the mud sill of the door.

Vision and other senses began to fade. Raul found that he had released the mind of this man too far, that he had given the man the power to thrust him back into the nothingness. So once again he exerted control. In a short time he found the necessary delicate balance — with the captured mind thrust down, but not so far that language and circumstances became meaningless, yet with a sufficient control so that his own will would not be thrust out. With the maintenance of a proper balance, it was as though he existed on two levels. Through the mind of this man, this person who called himself Laron, he felt the hate and the hopeless anger, and also, through the alien invasion of his mind, a secondary fear of madness.

He trudged along in the dust. The soldiers guarding them carried long pikes with metal tips and walked lightly, joking among themselves, calling the prisoners foul names.

Raul gasped with pain as the pike point stabbed his upper arm. “Scrawny old one,” the soldier said. “You’ll be lion meat tomorrow, if you live that long.”

Ahead the dusty road wound back and forth up the flank of a hill. Beyond the hill he could see the white towers of the city where Arrud the Elder ruled his kingdom with traditional ferocity. It appeared to be a march of many hours. What had Jord Orlan said about change and mobility? A knack to be acquired. This helplessness and the pain of walking did not seem to promise much.

He let the captive mind flow back up through secret channels, once again taking over will and volition. Senses faded, and as the nothingness once again enfolded him, he tried to thrust out toward the side, toward the soldiers. Again the feeling of grappling with a strange thing that resisted. The moment of control, of pushing the other entity down into a corner of his mind passed and vision returned.

He lay on his belly in a patch of brush, staring down at a distant dusty road far below, at a clot of figures walking slowly along the road. He let the captive mind expand until he could feel its thoughts and emotions. Once again — hate and fear. This one had escaped from the city. He was huge and strong. He carried a stout club and he had killed three men in making his escape. Contempt and pity for the captives. Hate for their captors. Fear of discovery. This was a simpler, more brutal mind than the first one. Easier to control. He watched for a time, then slid out of the mind and thrust his way toward the remembered direction of the road.

The new entity was more elusive and control more difficult. He found that he had taken over the body of a young soldier. He walked apart from the others. The captives were at his right, laboring under the weight of the poles that kept them joined, like one large many-legged insect. Raul fingered the spirit of this young soldier and found there revulsion for the task, contempt for the calloused sensibilities of his comrades in arms, pity for the dirty prisoners. He regretted the choice of occupation he had made and wished with all his heart that this duty was over. It would be better in the city at dusk when he could wander among the bazaars, a soldier returned from the wars, stopping at the booths to buy the spiced foods he loved.

Raul forced a turn of the head and looked back at the line. After several moments he found the thin man with the pike wound in his upper arm. He had been in that man’s mind. Inside his own mind he felt the flutter of panic of the young soldier who had made a motion without apparent purpose. “Why do I turn and stare at the thin old one? Why is he of more importance than the others? Is the sun too hot on this helmet?”

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.