The Last Dream

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “You knew? Sir—” Jax checked his verbal explosion.“No offense—but what does someone from the Damned World know about self-obligation?”

  “As it happens,” said Doug wryly, “it’s not unknown where I come from.” He smiled to himself. “Actually, it was just Etam’s bad luck that he imported someone with it—a maverick like myself.”

  “Mav-er-kkk…” Jax’s tongue stumbled over the unfamiliar sounds.

  “That’s close enough,” said Doug. “It’s from the Damned World’s language—a word meaning someone without the ownership mark all his herd-followers wear burned into their bodies. Every society has a few mavericks—even yours. You can tell us by our habits, if you know what to look for. For one thing, we refuse to live by the herd rules, so we’re forced to make up our own rules instead.”

  “But we’re talking about self-obligation,” Jax said.

  “That is self-obligation,” Doug replied. He shook his head as the Aerie Master opened his mouth protestingly. “Never mind, I know you can’t see it yet. You’re as blinded by your society as my people are by theirs back on the Damned World. It’s as if my people were all blind in the right eye, and you folks here all blind in the left. They see only the virtues that exist in the social mass. You see only the ones existing in the individual.”

  “Sir,” said the Elector, “without the safeguards to individual freedom embodied in the Brotherhoods and the Magi, all but a handful of men would enslave the rest.”

  “No they wouldn’t,” said Doug. “But you won’t believe that until you see it for yourself. That’s why I’m going to go back and open up communication between my people and yours. They need to see that to make a society work, the individual doesn’t have to be swaddled in protection from birth to the grave.

  “Doug—” the word came from Anvra’s throat like a catching of breath. He turned and smiled at her.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to stay on the Damned World. How can I? I inhabit one of your bodies and my old one is a ruin. But I’ve got a responsibility—”

  “Responsibility to whom? Those wingless, crawling slaves back there?” demanded Jax.

  “To them and you, too,” said Doug. “I’m the only one in both societies with what amounts to full vision. Even physically, two eyes see more than one, you know. They allow binocular vision— depth perception. I can see things you can’t even begin to imagine—like the advantages to both worlds in getting to know each other—”

  “Doug duDamned,” said the Elector, “I’m not sure we could approve this.”

  “Maybe not—but can you stop me?” Doug laughed. “I didn’t set up the rules of this society of yours— you people did. Does anyone in your whole civilization have the right to stop me from doing what I want?”

  “Stop you?” echoed Jax. “We won’t stop you—we just won’t help you. You need a Portal to get back to your own planet. Also a poison and an antidote that works on your present body the way whatever you took on the Damned World worked on your old body.”

  The room shadowed about Doug for a moment. For a moment again, as when Etam-Kathang had been living, Doug seemed to see through the walls around him as if they were made of smoke—out and out until his vision ranged into the whiteness among the planes of eternity.

  “You don’t understand at all, do you?” He focused down to the three of them watching him, and the walls became solid once more. “No, Jax duHorrel,” he said gently. “I don’t need a Portal or any special help—any more. I told you I can see things none of you will be able to see until you acquire this new perception of mine. For example, you asked me how I knew Kathang was in Etam’s body. Well, I saw him there—first as a blur and then, just before the Hearing, as a recognizable double-image. And just as I can see now how to get back to the Damned World—even taking this body along with me—by an effort of mind alone.”

  “You!” Jax choked on the words he had been going to say, took a deep breath and made an effort to lower his voice. “You don’t understand what’s involved in what you’re talking about! Do you think your plane’s just the other side of some magic space, four inches thick within the ring of a Portal? It’s not just inches thick, that Portal. Its other surface is dimensions and qualities away, on the world of its destination—there are elements to the equation that change value second by second.”

  Doug laughed. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Nonsense. Utter nonsense,” snapped Jax.

  “No, not nonsense,” said Doug, sobering. What he had seen during that terrible momentless moment of distanceless passage through the planes of interdimensional space formed again in his mind’s eye. “There’s something else I didn’t tell you. You all assumed Etam brought my body and soul here together. He didn’t. Maybe it was because of the drugs in me, but my identity was left behind. It could have stayed behind and died an easy death. But some instinct in me wouldn’t let it.”

  Jax stared at him.

  “From the moment my identity entered interdimensional space, my new vision began to operate,” said Doug. “What I saw then seemed all blurred and-.out of focus. But I’ve since had time— and maybe help—to strengthen it and bring it into focus. The last confusion ended when I saw Etam Kathang an hour ago. I remember—and I understand now. There are many, many roads between the planes, and all of them are roads I can travel.”

  Jax stared at him, unconvinced. “You’ll still need help.”

  “And maybe I’ll get that, too,” Doug said, smiling at Anvra.

  “Love will not be enough,” muttered Jax.

  But Doug was looking outward, beyond the Magus and the Sorcerer and the Water Witch, beyond the room—and beyond what the others could see. He was staring at a dimensionless brightness through which a dark thing strode. And as he looked, it turned toward him.

  The Walker lifted a lumpish arm. And this time, the hand beckoned.

  The saint who said, “All the way to heaven is heaven,” did not envision the converse being equally true.

  The Last Dream

  He meant it.

  A couple of days back, or perhaps it was a week or so ago—it was too much trouble now to keep track of the calendar—a reporter had got into his hospital room. They had found the man, of course, and hustled him out again; but not before he had had time to ask a few questions. Most of them were the same old questions… what did it feel like to have run through thirty million dollars of inheritance, would he do it all over again, etc. But there was one question that hadn’t been asked before. How did Tommy feel about dying?

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Tommy Harmen had said.

  The reporter had made a note of that answer— with pencil on some thickly typewritten paper, sheaved together. A newsy point? Well, thought Tommy, I meant it. It wasn’t something he had said merely for the shock value. After all, he was ninety-four. At ninety-four, dying wasn’t something you considered academically. It was right there in the room with you, like a piece of furniture. Maybe it wasn’t sprung or padded just to suit you, but it was something to sit on anyway, and you planned on sitting on it. What the hell! Tommy Harmen chuckled at the profanity in his thoughts. Funny. Old people shocked others as children did when they swore. You were supposed to be above such—

  The chuckle, he realized suddenly, had also been in his mind. It was too much effort to chuckle aloud. They had him in an oxygen tent now. It made the room seem wavery and unnatural, seen through the plastic. Which reminded him—he needed that nurse. Damn it, they took better care of the babies in the nursery ward, he’d be bound. With an effort as large as that in hauling back on the rod when there was a big blue on the end of the line, he groped for the button. Where was the damn thing… ? No matter. He gave up. After all, it was the hospital’s good name and odor that was at stake, not his.

  He lay still, exhausted by the effort, lapsing into a light doze. Bet that reporter hadn’t believed him, knowing the things he’d done, the places he’d been, the things he’d… all over the wor
ld, too. There was that little island down in the West Indies… and Antibes… and…

  “How about the jereboam?” asked Winkie.

  “Jereboam, hell,” he said. “Let’s have in the Methuselah.”

  … His vision cleared. He was sitting at a small, round table with a marble top—a real marble top.

  “Didn’t know they made them any more,” he said, testing it with his fingernail.

  “You have to know the dealer,” said Winkie. Tommy looked up. Winkie was tipping back on two legs of the elegant occasional chair, with his collar open. Drunk as usual. No, not drunk. Tight.

  Tight as a lord. Square jaw hanging down, curly hair mussed. Handsome devil, Winkie.

  “You’ve taken off weight,” said Tommy.

  “Polo,” said Winkie. “Makes all the difference.” He winked. “Second story polo.”

  Tommy laughed and finished his glass. It was one of the good ones. Piper Heidsieck? He looked about for the bottle, and then remembered they had just ordered in the new one. He glanced around the room. It was a drawing room, large, with comfortable furniture, but rather too many tables to sit at and a small plush bar over in one corner. He felt a sudden access of delight.

  “Why, it’s a house!” he said. “A real house!”

  “Exclusive,” said Winkie. “Very.”

  He looked back at Winkie.

  “You’re looking damned young,” he said. “Where’ve you been all these years?”

  “Living it up,” said Winkie. “Here comes the champagne.”

  And it was coming. They were wheeling it in on a sort of cart, like he hadn’t seen since—when was it? In the south of France, somewhere. And there was the Methuselah, a great-granddaddy among champagne bottles.

  “Pop it,” said Tommy to the black-tied waiter, who was releasing the wire from the bottle’s cork. “I don’t care what it does to the bouquet. I want to hear it bang.”

  “Yes, Mr. Harmen,” said the waiter, his lean, bony face lit by a happy, conspiratorial smile. Tommy peered suddenly at him.

  “Why, you’re Caesare,” he said. “What’re you doing on this side of the world—after all these years?” Tommy frowned. “Why, that was back in the thirties—no, the twenties—”

  “Twenty-five and twenty-six, Mr. Harmen,” said Caesare. The cork flew suddenly from the bottle and the impelling tips of his thumbs with a sound like a cannon shot. Applause burst out, around the room. Glancing up and about him, Tommy saw the room was now filled to overflowing with good-looking women and men in all sorts of costume, from evening clothes to hunting outfits. The faces of old friends leaped out at him everywhere his eyes fell among the crowd.

  “Winkie!” he said.

  “What, Tomser?” said Winkie, pushing a glass of the champagne from the methuselah into his hand.

  “All the gals,” said Tommy. “All the guys. I know them all. What is this? Some kind of party?”

  “Graduation party,” said Winkie, winking. “Five guesses for who.”

  “Me!” cried Tommy, shot through suddenly with delight. “Damn you, Winkie—oh, damn you!”

  “Think nothing of it,” said Winkie, winking like mad.

  Tommy tossed off his glass of champagne. It went bubbling through all his veins bringing fire to his body in every part of him.

  “Fill her up!” shouted Tommy. “Fill up, Winkie! Fill up, everybody! Let’s kill the old gent. Let’s have a party!”

  Chattering and laughing, the surrounding crowd poured in around their table and the bottle. Champagne danced and sparkled in Tommy’s throat— the best, the best, the very best he’d ever tasted. Good-looking women sat on his lap, leaned over his shoulder, twined their arms around his neck. And he knew them all; and they were beautiful, beautiful—more beautiful than ever. And the canapes were the tastiest, and the waiters the happiest, and the bartenders—there were dozens of them—the jolliest; and the music (it came from somewhere hidden behind the crowd) all the things he liked. And the party went on and on and on; and nobody grew tired at all; but gradually, by some beautiful, natural, group assent, they began to slow down, to quiet down, to a sort of wonderful, companionable silence.

  “Bless you,” said Tommy, looking at them all with a last glass of champagne in his hand, and sniffing in spite of himself, “Bless you all, damn your eyes. I’m going to miss you.”

  “Miss you too, Tomser,” said Winkie. And then, as if Winkie’s words had been a signal, they all got up and began to file by, one by one, and shake his hand before going back to their seats or stations (in the case of the bartenders and waiters), where they lapsed into silence and stillness once again.

  At the last, there was only one man who had not come by; and he was a slim, nondescript looking chap in a business suit and the sort of ordinary face people have trouble remembering.

  “Who’s he, now?” said Tommy to Winkie, peering at this last man, who was sitting at a table by himself, with no drink, but a briefcase laid out on its marble top before him. Winkie did not answer; and, looking over at his old friend and drinking companion, Tommy discovered Winkie had fallen into the same sort of brown study that had claimed all the rest.

  Tommy looked back over at the slim man, and found him standing before his and Winkie’s table.

  “I’ll sit down, if you don’t mind,” said the slim stranger, and pulled out a chair and took it without waiting for an answer. Tommy, seeing this, lifted his champagne glass for a last time to his lips—and found it empty. He put it back on the table; and recognition came belatedly.

  “Oh,” he said, “you’re the reporter guy.”

  “Yes, and no,” said the slim man, in the judicial tone of a good lawyer. “Yes… and no.” Tommy’s eyes slowly widened.

  “Don’t slip and slither around with me,” said Tommy. He sat up suddenly a little straighter in the chair. “I know who you are now; and I settled my problems with you sixty years ago when I got tossed by that rhino—the one in Uganda. I didn’t see my way clear to making any changes then; and I’m not about to go back on that decision now. Never did in my life and I don’t intend to at this late date.”

  “Changes,” said the slim man, and coughed, “are not exactly a topic for discussion at this point.” He had been busy opening his briefcase, and now he withdrew from it a thick sheaf of papers bristling with paperclips, interspersed with smaller slips of colored paper. He laid the sheaf before him.

  “I just want you to know,” said Tommy. “It was my money and my life, and I don’t regret a dollar or a minute of it. Nobody lived it up like I did. It was one long circus and if you people’ve been warming a spit for me all these years, why lead me to it. I don’t say,” said Tommy, touching the empty champagne glass a little sadly, “that I’m exactly looking forward to it. But I always paid my bills; and I bought this and I’ll pay for it.”

  “Yes. Indeed. Well,” said the slim man with another dry cough, tapping the sheaf of paper before him, “I have your complete record here. It establishes beyond doubt that, among the other things, on innumerable occasions you have proven yourself a profligate—”

  “Right,” said Tommy.

  “—a drunkard—”

  “Yes,” said Tommy, glancing with a touch of nostalgia at the now-empty methuselah.

  “—and an engager in illicit relationships with the opposite sex. Nowhere,” said the slim man, “is it recorded that you did as much as one honest day’s work, that you sought to improve the world you lived in, or change your fellow man in any way for the better. An unparalleled, a unique, record, in which all the entries of a lifetime fall on one side of the ledger.” He tapped the sheaf of paper with one dry forefinger and glanced sharply at Tommy. “I hope you realize this makes you a special case.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” growled Tommy, for he was beginning to get tired of all this and the fumes of the champagne were fading from his head.

  “Just this,” said the slim man, and made a sweeping outward gesture. “Here you s
ee gathered—” Tommy looked up and discovered that the room in which he sat had strangely and subtly expanded; it stretched now to fantastic distances, and everywhere that he could see, it was filled, stuffed and jammed with silent people—“All the people, living and dead, whose lives your own life affected. Look at them.”

  Tommy looked again; and it was true. There were armies of waiters and waitresses and bartenders, regiments and companies of men and women he had known, even back to those that had populated the shadowy early beginnings of his childhood. They all looked at him now with silent, waiting gazes.

  “Hey, lads and lasses,” murmurred Tommy, gently. “Good to see you one more time.”

  He had almost whispered the words; but some trick of the now vast room picked them up and amplified them and sent them rolling amongst all the watching multitude. And a wordless, rustling stir answered back from their formless ranks.

  “We can dispose of your case very quickly,” said the slim man, “provided any one of these people will produce an indictment,” he turned his head to the room and raised his voice. “Anyone having just cause to condemn Thomas Nicholas Harmen will now speak up!”

  His words like Tommy’s, boomed out through the watching crowd. But no sound came back… And Tommy, staring in incredulity from face to remembered face, his glance dancing like lightning from remembered features to remembered features, met here a friendly wink, there a grin, and there again a surreptitious thumbs-up gesture, there a tenderly remembering smile, there a beam of gratitude, there again and once more a glow of pure, remembered jollity and happiness.

  “Will no one, no one out of all this man’s life time,” said the thin man, speaking up again, “find some cause for indictment against him?”

  Silence made answer, a happy, stubborn silence.