The Dream Master

by Roger Zelazny

  The Dream Master

  Roger Zelazny

  Roger Zelazny

  The Dream Master

  I

  Lovely as it was, with the blood and all, Ren­der could sense that it was about to end.

  Therefore, each microsecond would be better off as a minute, he decided—and perhaps the temperature should be increased... . Somewhere, just at the periphery of every­thing, the darkness halted its constriction.

  Something, like a crescendo of subliminal thunders, was arrested at one raging note. That note was a distillate of shame and pain, and fear.

  The Forum was stifling.

  Caesar cowered outside the frantic circle. His forearm covered his eyes but it could not stop the seeing, not this time.

  The senators had no faces and their garments were spat­tered with blood. All their voices were like the cries of birds. With an inhuman frenzy they plunged their daggers into the fallen figure.

  All, that is, but Render.

  The pool of blood in which he stood continued to widen. His arm seemed to be rising and falling with a mechanical regularity and his throat might have been shaping bird-cries, but he was simultaneously apart from and part of the scene.

  For he was Render, the Shaper.

  Crouched, anguished and envious, Caesar wailed his pro­tests.

  "You have slain him! You have murdered Marcus Antonius —a blameless, useless fellow!"

  Render turned to him, and the dagger in his hand was quite enormous and quite gory.

  "Aye," said he.

  The blade moved from side to side. Caesar, fascinated by the sharpened steel, swayed to the same rhythm.

  "Why?" he cried. "Why?"

  "Because," answered Render, "he was a far nobler Ro­man than yourself."

  "You lie! It is not so!"

  Render shrugged and returned to the stabbing.

  "It is not true!" screamed Caesar. "Not true!"

  Render turned to him again and waved the dagger. Pup-petlike, Caesar mimicked the pendulum of the blade.

  "Not true?" Render smiled. "And who are you to question an assassination such as this? You are no one! You detract from the dignity of this occasion! Begone!"

  Jerkily, the pink-faced man rose to his feet, his hair half-wispy, half-wetplastered, a disarray of cotton. He turned, moved away; and as he walked, he looked back over his shoulder.

  He had moved far from the circle of assassins, but the scene did not diminish in size. It retained an electric clarity. It made him feel even further removed, ever more alone and apart.

  Render rounded a previously unnoticed corner and stood before him, a blind beggar.

  Caesar grasped the front of his garment.

  "Have you an ill omen for me this day?"

  "Beware!" jeered Render.

  "Yes! Yes!" cried Caesar. " 'Beware!' That is good! Be­ware what?"

  'The ides-"

  "Yes? The ides-?"

  "—of Octember."

  He released the garment.

  "What is that you say? What is Octember?"

  "A month."

  "You lie! There is no month of Octember!"

  "And that is the date noble Caesar need fear—the non­existent time, the never-to-be-calendared occasion."

  Render vanished around another sudden corner.

  "Wait! Come back!"

  Render laughed, and the Forum laughed with him. The bird-cries became a chorus of inhuman jeers.

  "You mock me!" wept Caesar.

  The Forum was an oven, and the perspiration formed like a glassy mask over Caesar's narrow forehead, sharp nose, chin-less jaw.

  "I want to be assassinated too!" he sobbed. "It isn't fair!"

  And Render tore the Forum and the senators and the grinning corpse of Antony to pieces and stuffed them into a black sack—with the unseen movement of a single finger— and last of all went Caesar.

  Charles Render sat before the ninety white buttons and the two red ones, not really looking at any of them. His right arm moved in its soundless sling, across the lap-level surface of the console—pushing some of the buttons, skip­ping over others, moving on, retracing its path to press the next in the order of the Recall Series.

  Sensations throttled, emotions reduced to nothing, Repre­sentative Erikson knew the oblivion of the womb.

  There was a soft click.

  Render's hand had glided to the end of the bottom row

  of buttons. An act of conscious intent—will, if you like— was required to push the red button.

  Render freed his arm and lifted off his crown of Medusa-hair leads and microminiature circuitry. He slid from behind his desk-couch and raised the hood. He walked to the window and transpared it, fingering forth a cigarette.

  One minute in the ro-womb, he decided. No more. This is a crucial one... Hope it doesn't snow till later—these clouds look mean . ..

  It was smooth yellow trellises and high towers, glassy and gray, all smoldering into evening under a shale-colored sky; the city was squared volcanic islands, glowing in the end-of-day light, rumbling deep down under the earth; it was fat, incessant rivers of traffic, rushing.

  Render turned away from the window and approached the great egg that lay beside his desk, smooth and glittering. It threw back a reflection that smashed all aquilinity from his nose, turned his eyes to gray saucers, transformed his hair into a light-streaked skyline; his reddish necktie be­came the wide tongue of a ghoul.

  He smiled, reached across the desk. He pressed the sec­ond red button.

  With a sigh, the egg lost its dazzling opacity and a hori­zontal crack appeared about its middle. Through the now-transparent shell, Render could see Erikson grimacing, squeezing his eyes tight, fighting against a return to con­sciousness and the thing it would contain. The upper half of the egg rose vertical to the base, exposing him knobby and pink on half-shell. When his eyes opened he did not look at Render. He rose to his feet and began dressing. Render used this time to check the ro-womb.

  He leaned back across his desk and pressed the buttons: temperature control, full range, check; exotic sounds—he raised the earphone—check, on bells, on buzzes, on violin notes and whistles, on squeals and moans, on traffic noises and the sound of surf; check, on the feedback circuit—hold­ing the patient's own voice, trapped earlier in analysis; check, on the sound blanket, the moisture spray, the odor banks;

  check, on the couch agitator and the colored lights, the taste stimulants... .

  Render closed the egg and shut off its power. He pushed the unit into the closet, palmed shut the door. The tapes had registered a valid sequence. "Sit down," he directed Erikson. The man did so, fidgeting with his collar. "You have full recall," said Render, "so there is no need for me to summarize what occurred. Nothing can be hidden from me. I was there." Erikson nodded.

  "The significance of the episode should be apparent to you."

  Erikson nodded again, finally finding his voice. "But was it valid?" he asked. "I mean, you constructed the dream and you controlled it, all the way. I didn't really dream it— in the way I would normally dream. Your ability to make things happen stacks the deck for whatever you're going to say—doesn't it?"

  Render shook his head slowly, flicked an ash into the southern hemisphere of his globe-made-ashtray, and met Erikson's eyes.

  "It is true that I supplied the format and modified the forms. You, however, filled them with an emotional signifi­cance, promoted them to the status of symbols correspond­ing to your problem. If the dream was not a valid analogue it would not have provoked the reactions it did. It would have been devoid of the anxiety-patterns which were reg­istered on the tapes.

  "You have been in analysis for many months now," he continued, "and everything I have learned thus f
ar serves to convince me that your fears of assassination are without any basis in fact." Erikson glared.

  "Then why the hell do I have them?"

  "Because," said Render, "you would like very much to be the subject of an assassination."

  Erikson smiled then, bis composure beginning to return.

  "I assure you, doctor, I have never contemplated suicide, nor have I any desire to stop living."

  He produced a cigar and applied a flame to it. His hand shook.

  "When you came to me this summer," said Render, "you stated that you were in fear of an attempt on your life. You were quite vague as to why anyone should want to kill you-"

  "My position! You can't be a Representative as long as I have and make no enemies!"

  "Yet," replied Render, "it appears that you have managed it. When you permitted me to discuss this with your detec­tives I was informed that they could unearth nothing to indicate that your fears might have any real foundation. Nothing."

  "They haven't looked far enough—or in the right places. They'll turn up something."

  "I'm afraid not."

  "Why?"

  "Because, I repeat, your feelings are without any objec­tive basis. Be honest with me. Have you any information whatsoever indicating that someone hates you enough to want to kill you?"

  "I receive many threatening letters..."

  "As do all Representatives—and all of those directed to you during the past year have been investigated and found to be the work of cranks. Can you offer me one piece of evidence to substantiate your claims?"

  Erikson studied the tip of his cigar.

  "I came to you on the advice of a colleague," he said, "came to you to have you poke around inside my mind to find me something of that sort, to give my detectives something to work with. Someone I've injured severely perhaps—or some damaging piece of legislation I've dealt with..."

  "—And I found nothing," said Render, "nothing, that is, but the cause of your discontent. Now, of course, you are afraid to hear it, and you are attempting to divert me from explaining my diagnosis—"

  "I am not!"

  "Then listen. You can comment afterwards if you want, but you've poked and dawdled around here for months, un­willing to accept what I presented to you in a dozen different forms. Now I am going to tell you outright what it is, and you can do what you want about it."

  "Fine,"

  "First," he said, "you would like very much to have an enemy or enemies—"

  "Ridiculous!"

  "—Because it is the only alternative to having friends—"

  "I have lots of friends!"

  "—Because nobody wants to be completely ignored, to be an object for whom no one has really strong feelings. Hatred and love are the ultimate forms of human regard. Lacking one, and unable to achieve it, you sought the other. You wanted it so badly that you succeeded in convincing your­self it existed. But there is always a psychic pricetag on these things. Answering a genuine emotional need with a body of desire-surrogates does not produce real satisfaction, but anxiety, discomfort—because in these matters the psyche should be an open system. You did not seek outside your­self for human regard. You were closed off. You created that which you needed from the stuff of your own being. You are a man very much in need of strong relationships with other people."

  "Manure!"

  "Take it or leave it," said Render. "I suggest you take it."

  "I've been paying you for half a year to help find out who wants to kill me. Now you sit there and tell me I made the whole thing up to satisfy a desire to have someone hate me."

  "Hate you, or love you. That's right."

  "It's absurd! I meet so many people that I carry a pocket recorder and a lapel-camera, just so I can recall them all ..."

  "Meeting quantities of people is hardly what I was speak­ing of. Tell me, did that dream sequence have a strong mean­ing for you?"

  Erikson was silent for several tickings of the huge wall-clock.

  "Yes," he finally conceded, "it did. But your interpretation of the matter is still absurd. Granting though, just for the sake of argument, that what you say is correct—what would I do to get out of this bind?"

  Render leaned back in his chair.

  "Rechannel the energies that went into producing the thing. Meet some people as yourself, Joe Erikson, rather than Representative Erikson. Take up something you can do with other people—something non-political, and perhaps some­what competitive—and make some real friends or enemies, preferably the former. I've encouraged you to do this all along."

  "Then tell me something else."

  "Gladly."

  "Assuming you are right, why is it that I am neither liked nor hated, and never have been? I have a responsible posi­tion in the Legislature. I meet people all the time. Why am I so neutral a—thing?"

  Highly familiar now with Erikson's career, Render had to push aside his true thoughts on the matter, as they were of no operational value. He wanted to cite him Dante's observations concerning the trimmers—those souls who, denied heaven for their lack of virtue, were also denied entrance to hell for a lack of significant vices—in short, the ones who trimmed their sails to move them with every wind of the times, who lacked direction, who were not really concerned toward which ports they were pushed. Such was Erikson's long and colorless career of migrant loyalties, of political re­versals.

  Render said: "More and more people find themselves in such circumstances these days. It is due largely to the in­creasing complexity of society and the depersonalization of the individual into a sociometric unit. Even the act of cathecting toward other persons has grown more forced as a result. There are so many of us these days."

  Erikson nodded, and Render smiled inwardly.

  Sometimes the gruf line, and then the lecture ...

  "I've got the feeling you could be right," said Erikson. "Sometimes I do feel like what you just described—a unit, something depersonalized .. ."

  Render glanced at the clock.

  "What you choose to do about it from here is, of course, your own decision to make. I think you'd be wasting your time to remain in analysis any longer. We are now both aware of the cause of your complaint. I can't take you by the hand and show you how to lead your life. I can indicate, I can com­miserate—but no more deep probing. Make an appointment as soon as you feel a need to discuss your activities and relate them to my diagnosis."

  "I will"—Erikson nodded—"and damn that dream! It got to me. You can make them seem as vivid as waking life —more vivid ... It may be a long while before I can for­get it."

  "I hope so."

  "Okay, doctor." He rose to his feet, extended a hand. "I'll probably be back in a couple weeks. I'll give this socializing a fair try." He grinned at the word he normally frowned upon. "In fact, I'll start now. May I buy you a drink around the corner, downstairs?"

  Render met the moist palm which seemed as weary of the performance as a lead actor in too successful a play. He felt almost sorry as he said, "Thank you, but I have an engagement."

  Render helped him on with his coat then, handed him his hat, saw him to the door.

  "Well, good night."

  "Good night."

  As the door closed soundlessly behind him, Render re-crossed the dark Astrakhan to his mahogany fortress and flipped his cigarette into the southern hemisphere. He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, eyes closed.

  "Of course it was more real than life," he informed no one in particular; "I shaped it."

  Smiling, he reviewed the dream sequence step by step, wishing some of his former instructors could have witnessed It. It had been well-constructed and powerfully executed, as well as being precisely appropriate for the case at hand. But then, he was Render, the Shaper—one of the two hun­dred or so special analysts whose own psychic makeup permitted them to enter into neurotic patterns without car­rying away more than an esthetic gratification from the mi­mesis of aberrance—a Sane Hatter.

  Re
nder stirred his recollections. He had been analyzed himself, analyzed and passed upon as a granite-willed, ultra-stable outsider—tough to weather the basilisk gaze of a fix­ation, walk unscathed amidst the chimarae of perversions, force dark Mother Medusa to close her eyes before the caduceus of his art. His own analysis had not been dif­ficult. Nine years before (it seemed much longer) he had suffered a willing injection of novacain into the most painful area of his spirit. It was after the auto wreck, after the death of Ruth and of Miranda, their daughter, that he had begun to feel detached. Perhaps he did not want to recover certain empathies; perhaps his own world was now based upon a certain rigidity of feeling. If this was true, he was wise enough in the ways of the mind to realize it, and perhaps he had decided that such a world had its own compensations.

  His son Peter was now ten years old. He was attending a school of quality, and he penned his father a letter every week. The letters were becoming progressively literate, show­ing signs of a precociousness of which Render could not but approve. He would take the boy with him to Europe in the summer.

  As for Jill—Jill DeVille (what a luscious, ridiculous name! —he loved her for it)—she was growing, if anything, more interesting to him. (He wondered if this was an indication of early middle age.) He was vastly taken by her unmusical nasal voice, her sudden interest in architecture, her concern with the unremovable mole on the right side of her other­wise well-designed nose. He should really call her imme-

  diately and go in search of a new restaurant. For some reason though, he did not feel like it.

  It had been several weeks since he had visited his club, The Partridge and Scalpel, and he felt a strong desire to eat from an oaken table, alone, in the split-level dining room with the three fireplaces, beneath the artificial torches and the boars' heads like gin ads. So he pushed his perforated membership card into the phone-slot on bis desk and there were two buzzes behind the voice-screen.

  "Hello, Partridge and Scalpel" said the voice. "May I help you?"

  "Charles Render," he said. "I'd like a table in about half an hour."

  "How many will there be?"