The Dream Master

by Roger Zelazny

  ters of Light. The following morning he arose eagerly, tapped the skin he had touched to love and cried, 'Awake! Awake! It is time for you to render me my perpetual supply of bits!' She opened one eye and stared up at him. 'How long have you been doing your bitf she asked him. 'Thirty years,' said he. 'And how old does that make you?' she inquired. 'Uh—forty-five,' he replied. She yawned then and smiled. 'Is that not rather old to be believing in Angels of Light?' she asked. Then he went off and did his other bit, of course... . Now let me have a little soothing music, huh? That's good. Really makes you wince, doesn't it —You know why?—Where do you hear soothing music these days, any­how? —Well, in dentists' offices, and banks and stores and places like that where you always have to wait real long to get served. You hear soothing music while you're under­going all this massive trauma. The result of this? Soothing music is now about the most unsoothing thing in the world. It always makes me hungry, too. They play it in all those restaurants where they're slow in waiting on you. You wait on them, that's what it is—and they play you this damn soothing music. Well... . Where's that boy with the pitcher and the basin, anyhow? I want to wash my hands... . You hear about the AF man who made it out to Centauras? He discovered a race of humanoid creatures and got to work learning their customs, folkways, mores and taboos. Finally, he touched upon the question of reproduction. A delicate young female then took him by the hand and led him to a large factory where Centaurians were being assembled. Yes, that's right—torsos were going by on conveyor belts, and balls screwed in, brains dropped into the skulls, fingernails inserted, organs stuffed in, and so on. He voiced his amaze­ment at this, and she said, 'Why? How do you do it on Earth?' Then, taking her by her delicate hand, he said, 'Come with me over yonder hill and I shall demonstrate.' During the course of his demonstration she began to laugh hysterically. 'What is the matter?' he inquired. 'Why are you laughing at me?' —'This,' she replied, 'is the way we make cars.'... Fade me, Babes, and sell some toothpaste!

  "... Aiee! That I, Orpheus, should be torn into pieces by such as ye! But in a sense, perhaps, it is fitting. Come then, ye Corybantes, and work your will upon the singer!"

  Darkness. A scream.

  Silence ...

  Applause!

  She always came early and entered alone; and she always sat in the same seat.

  She sat in the tenth row, on the righthand aisle, and her only real trouble was at intermission time: she could never tell when someone wanted to get past her.

  She arrived early, and she remained until the theater was silent.

  She loved the sound of a trained voice, which was why she preferred British actors to Americans.

  She like musicals, not so much because she liked the music, but because she liked the feeling of voices which throbbed. This is also why she was fond of verse plays.

  She liked the Elizabethans, but she did not like King Lear.

  She was stimulated by the Greek plays, but she could not bear Oedipus Rex.

  She did not like The Miracle Worker, nor The Light That Failed.

  She wore tinted glasses, but not dark ones. She did not carry a cane.

  On a certain night, before the curtain went up for the final act, a spotlight pierced the darkness. A man stepped into the hole it made and asked, "Is there a doctor in the house?"

  No one answered.

  "It is an emergency," he said. "If there is a doctor here, will you please visit the office in the main lobby, immediate­ly?"

  He looked around the theater as he spoke, but no one moved.

  "Thank you," he said, and left the stage.

  Her head had jerked toward the circle of light when it appeared.

  After the announcement, the curtain was rung up and the movement and the voices began again.

  She waited, listening. Then she stood and moved up the aisle, brushing the wall with her fingertips.

  When she reached the lobby she stopped and stood there.

  "May I help you, Miss?"

  "Yes, I'm looking for the office."

  "It's right there, to your left.

  She turned and moved to her left, her hand extended slightly before her.

  When she touched the wall she moved her hands quickly until they struck a door jamb.

  She knocked upon the door and waited.

  "Yes?" It opened.

  "You need a doctor?"

  "You're a doctor?"

  "That's right."

  "Quick! This way!"

  She followed the man's footsteps inside and up a corridor that paralleled the aisles.

  Then she heard him climb seven stairs and she followed him up them.

  They came to a dressing room and she followed him in­side.

  "Here he is."

  She followed the voice.

  "What happened?" she asked, reaching out.

  She touched a man's body.

  There was a gurgling rasp and a series of breathless coughs.

  "Stagehand," said the man. "I think he's choking on a piece of taffy. He's always chewing the stuff. There seems to be something back up in his throat. Can't get at it, though."

  "Have you sent for an ambulance?"

  "Yes. But look at him—he's turning blue! I don't know if they'll be here in time."

  She dropped the wrist, forced the head backwards. She felt down along the inside of the throat.

  "Yes, there is some sort of obstruction. I can't get at it either. Get me a short, sharp knife—a sterile one—fast!"

  "Yes, ma'am, right away!"

  He left her there alone.

  She felt the pulses of the carotids. She placed her hands on the heaving chest. She pushed the head further back­wards and reached down the throat again.

  A minute went by, and part of another.

  There came a sound of hurrying footsteps.

  "Here you are... We washed the blade in alcohol..."

  She took the knife in her hands. In the distance there was the sound of an ambulance siren. She could not be sure though, that they would make it in time.

  So she examined the blade with her fingertips. Then she explored the man's neck.

  She turned, slightly, toward the presence she felt be­side her

  "I don't think you had better watch this," she stated. "I am going to do an emergency tracheotomy. It's not a pretty sight"

  "Okay. I'll wait outside."

  Footsteps, going away . ..

  She cut

  There was a sigh. There was a rushing of air.

  There was wetness ... a bubbling sound.

  She moved the head. When the ambulance arrived at the stage door, her hands were steady again, because she knew that the man was going to live.

  "... Shallot," she told the doctor, "Eileen Shallot, State Psych."

  "I've heard of you. Aren't you ...?"

  "Yes, I am, but it's easier to read people than Braille."

  "I see—yes. Then we can get in touch with you at State?"

  "Yes."

  "Thank you, Doctor. Thank you," said the manager.

  She returned to her seat for the rest of the play.

  After the final curtain, she sat there until the theater was emptied.

  Sitting there, she still sensed the stage.

  To her, the stage was a focal point of sound, rhythm, the sense of movement, some nuances of light and dark— but not of color: It was the center of a special kind of briliance for her: It was the place of the pathema-mathema-poeima pulse, of the convulsion of life through the cycle of passions and perceptions; the place where those capa­ble of noble suffering suffered nobly, the place where the clever Frenchmen wove their comedies of gossamer among the pillars of Idea; the place where the black poetry of the nihilists whored itself for the price of admission from those it mocked, the place where blood was spilt and cries were uttered and songs were sung, and where Apollo and Dionysius smirked from the wings, where Arlecchino per­petually tricked Capitano Spezzafer out of his trousers. It was the place where any action c
ould be imitated, but where there were really only two things behind all actions: the happy and the sad, the comic and the tragic—that is, love and death—the two things which named the human condi­tion; it was the place of the heroes and the less-than-heroes; it was the place that she loved, and she saw there the only man whose face she knew, walking, symbol-studded, upon its surface. ... To take up arms against a sea of troubles, ill-met by moonlight, and by opposing end them—who hath called forth the mutinous winds, and 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault set roaring war—for those are pearls that were his eyes... . What a piece of work is a man! Infinite in faculty, in form and in moving!

  She knew him in all his roles, who could not exist with­out an audience. He was Life.

  He was the Shaper...

  He was the Maker and the Mover.

  He was greater than heroes.

  A mind may hold many things. It learns. It cannot teach itself not to think, though.

  Emotions remain the same, qualitatively, throughout life; the stimuli to which they respond are subject to quantita­tive variations, but the feelings are stock in trade.

  This why the theater survives: it is cross-cultural; it con­tains the North Pole and the South Pole of the human condition; the emotions fall like iron filings within its field.

  A mind cannot teach itself not to think, but feelings fall into destined patterns.

  He was her theater ...

  He was the poles of the world.

  He was all actions.

  He was not the imitation of actions, but the actions them­selves.

  She knew he was a very capable man named Charles Render.

  She felt he was the Shaper.

  A mind may hold many things.

  But he was more than any one thing:

  He was every.

  ... She felt it.

  When she stood to leave, her heels made echoes across the emptied dark.

  As she moved up the aisle, the sounds returned to her and returned to her.

  She was walking through an emptied theater, away from an emptied stage. She was alone.

  At the head of the aisle, she stopped.

  Like distant laughter, ended by a sudden slap, there was silence.

  She was neither audience nor player now. She was alone in a dark theater.

  She had cut a throat and saved a life.

  She had listened tonight, felt tonight, applauded tonight.

  Now, again, it was all gone away, and she was alone in a dark theater.

  She was afraid.

  The man continued to walk along the highway until he reached a certain tree. He stood, hands in his pockets, and

  stared at it for a long while. Then he turned and headed back in the direction from which he had come. Tomorrow was another day.

  "Oh, sorrow-crowned love of my life, why hast thou for­saken me? Am I not fair? I have loved thee long, and all the places of silence know my wailings. I have loved thee beyond myself, and I suffer for it. I have loved thee beyond life with all its sweetness, and the sweetnesses have turned to cloves and to almonds. I am ready to leave this my life for thee. Why shouldst thou depart in the greatwinged, manylegged ships over the sea, bearing with thee thy Lares and Penates, and I here alone? I shall make me a fire, to burn. I shall make me a fire—a conflagration to incinerate time and to burn away the spaces that separate us. I would be with thee always. I shall not go gently and silent into that holocaust, but wailing. I am no ordinary maiden, to pine away my life and to die, dark-eyed and sallow. For I am of the blood of the Princes of the Earth, and my arm is as the arm of a man's in the battle. My upraised sword smites the helm of my foe and he falls down before it. I have never been subdued, my lord. But my eyes are sick of weeping, and my tongue of crying out. To make me to see thee, and then to never see thee again is a crime beyond expiation. I cannot forgive my love, nor thee. There was a time when I laughed at the songs of love and the plaints of the maidens by the riverside. Now is my laughter drawn, as an arrow from a wound, and I am myself without thee and alone. Forgive me not, love, for having loved thee. I want to fuel a fire with memory and my hopes. I want to set to burning my already burning thoughts of thee, to lay thee like a poem upon a campfire, to burn thy rhythmic utterance to ash. I loved thee, and thou hast departed. Never again will I see thee in this life, hear again the music of thy voice, feel again the thunder of thy touch. I loved thee, and I am forsaken and alone. I loved thee, and my words fell upon ears that were deaf and my self upon eyes that saw not. Am I not fair, oh winds of the Earth, who

  wash me over, who stoke these, my fires? Why then hast thou forsaken me, oh life of the heart in my breast? I go now to the flame my father, to better be received. In all the passes of loving, there will never be another such as thee. May the gods bless thee and sustain thee, oh light, and may their judgment not come too heavy upon thee for this thing thou hast done. Aeneas, I burn for thee! Fire, be my last love!"

  There was applause as she swayed within the lighted cir­cle and fell. Then the room was darkened.

  A moment later the light was restored, and the other members of the Act a Myth Club rose and came forward to congratulate her on her perceptive interpretation. They dis­cussed the significance of the folk-motif, from the suttee to the immolation of Brunhilde. Good, basic—fire—they decided. "Fire... my last love"—good: Eros and Thanatos in a final cleansing burst of flame.

  After they had used up their appreciation, a small, stooped man and his birdlike, birdtracked wife moved to the center of the room.

  "Heloise and Abelard," the man announced.

  A respectful silence gathered about them.

  A beefy man in his middle-forties moved to his side, face glazed with perspiration.

  "My chief castrater," said Abelard.

  The big man smiled and bowed.

  "Now, let us begin..."

  There was a single clap and darkness fell.

  Like deep-burrowing, mythological worms, power lines, pipelines, and pneumatic tubes stretch themselves across the continent. Pulsing, peristalsis-like, they drink of the Earth and the thunderbolt. They take oil and electricity and water and coal-wash and small parcels and large pack­ages and letters into themselves. Passing through them, be­neath the Earth, these things are excreted at their proper destinations, and the machines who work in these places take over from there.

  Blind, they sprawl far away from the sun; without taste, the Earth and the thunderbolt go undigested; without smell or hearing, the Earth is their rock-filled prison. They only know what they touch; and touching is their constant func­tion.

  Such is the deep-buried joy of the worm.

  Render had spoken with the staff psychologist and had in­spected the physical education equipment at the new shool. He had also inspected the students' quarters and had been satisfied.

  Now, though, as he left Peter once again at the place of education, he felt somehow dissatisfied. He was not certain why. Everything had seemed in as good order as it had been when first he had visited. Peter had seemed in high spirits, too. Exceptionally high spirits.

  He returned to his car and drifted out onto the highway— that great rootless tree whose branches covered two continents (and once the Bering Bridgeway was completed would enfold the world, saving only Australia, the polar icecaps, and islands)—he wondered, and wondering, he found no answer to his discontent.

  Should he call Jill and ask about her cold? Or was she still angry over her coat and the Christmas that had accompanied it?

  His hands fell into his lap, and the countryside jumped up and down around him as he moved through the ranks of the hills.

  His hand twitched toward the panel once more.

  "Hello?"

  "Eileen, Render here. I didn't get to call you when it happened, but I heard about that tracheotomy you performed at the Play House..."

  "Yes," she said, "good thing I was handy—me and a sharp knife. Where are you calling from?"

  "My car. I just left Peter
at school. On my way back now."

  "Oh? How is he? His ankle... ?"

  "Fine. We had a little scare there at Christmas, but noth-

  ing came of it. —Tell me how it happened at the Play House, if it doesn't bother you."

  "Blood bother a doctor?" She laughed softly. "Well, it was late, right before the last act..."

  Render leaned back and smiled, lit a cigarette, listened.

  Outside, the country settled down to a smooth plain and he coasted across it like a bowling ball, right in the groove all the way to the pocket.

  He passed a walking man.

  Beneath high wires and above buried cables, he was walk­ing again, beside a great branch of the road-tree, walking through snow-specked air and broadcast power.

  Cars sped by, and a few of their passengers saw him.

  His hands were in the pockets of his jacket and his head was low, because he looked at nothing. His collar was turned up and heaven's melting contributions, the snowflakes, were collected on the brim of his hat.

  He wore rubbers. The ground was wet and a little muddy.

  He trudged on, a stray charge within the field of a great generator.

  "... Dinner tonight at the P & S?"

  "Why not?" said Render.

  "Say eight?"

  " 'Eight.' Tally-ho!"

  Some of them dropped down out of the sky, but mainly they came spinning in off the roads ...

  The cars released their people onto platforms within the great car-hives. The air-taxis set theirs free in landing areas, near to the kiosks of the underground belt-way.

  But whatever the means by which they arrived, the peo­ple toured Exhibit Hall on foot.

  The building was octagonal, its roof an inverted soup bowl. Eight non-functional triangles of black stone provided decora­tion at each corner, without.

  The soup bowl was a selective filter. Right now, it was sucking all the blue out of the gray evening and was glowing faintly on the outside—whiter than all the dirty snows of yesterday. Its ceiling was a cloudless summer sky at eleven o'clock in the a.m., without a sun to mar its Morning Glory frosting.