The Dream Master

by Roger Zelazny

  "... And he strung the shell and collected his reward, and was captured by the king,"

  "Let that be a lesson to all Shapers—Shape wisely, but not too well."

  She laughed.

  "But of course he escaped later."

  "Of course."

  They mounted a stairway of coral.

  Render drew the thread, placed the shell to his lips, and blew into it.

  A single note sounded beneath the seas.

  Where the otter is feeding on fish...

  The lithe torpedo-shape swam by, invading a school of fish, gulping.

  They watched it until it had finished and returned to the surface.

  They continued to mount the spiny stairway.

  Their heads rose above the water, their shoulders, their arms, their hips, until they stood, dry and warm, on the brief beach. They entered the wood that breasted it

  and walked beside the stream that flowed down to the sea.

  Where the black bear is searching for roots and honey, where the beaver pats the mud -with his paddle-shaped tail.. .

  "Words," she said, touching her ear.

  "Yes, but regard the beaver and the bear."

  She did so.

  The bees hummed madly about the dark marauder, the mud splattered beneath the tail of the rodent.

  "Beaver and bear," she said. "Where are we going now?" as he walked forward again.

  " 'Over the growing sugar, over the yellow flower'd cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist field,' " he replied, and strode ahead.

  "What are you saying?"

  "Look about you and see. Regard the plants, their forms and their colors."

  They walked on, walked by.

  " 'Over the western persimmon,' " said Render, " 'over the long-leav'd corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax.'"

  She knelt and studied, sniffed, touched, tasted.

  They walked through the fields, and she felt the black earth beneath her toes.

  "... Something I'm trying to remember," she said.

  " 'Over the dusky green of the rye,' " he said, " 'as it ripples and shades in the breeze.' "

  "Wait a minute, Daedalus," she told him. "It's coming to me, slowly. You're granting me a wish I've never wished aloud."

  "Come let us climb a mountain," he suggested, "holding on by low scragged limbs."

  They did so, leaving the land far beneath them.

  "Rocks, and cold the wind. High, this place," she said. "Where are we going?"

  "To the top. To the very top."

  They climbed for a timeless instant and stood atop the mountain. Then it seemed that hours had passed in the climb­ing.

  "Distance, perspective," he said. "We have passed through all of that which you see beneath you. Look out across the plains and the forest to the sea."

  "We have climbed a fictional mountain," she stated, "which I climbed once before, without seeing it."

  He nodded, and the ocean caught her attention again, beneath the other-blue sky.

  After a time, she turned away, and they started down the opposite side of the mountain. Again, Time twisted and shaped itself about them, and they stood at the foot of the mountain and moved forward.

  " '... Walking the worn path in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush.'"

  "Now I know!" she said, clapping her hands. "Now I know!"

  "Then where are we?" asked Render.

  She plucked a single blade of grass, held it before him, then chewed it.

  "Where?" she said. "Why, "Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot,' of course."

  A quail whistled then and crossed their path, the line of its young following as though pulled along on a string.

  "Always," she said, "have I wondered what it was all about."

  The passed along the darkening path, betwixt the woods and the wheat-lot.

  "... So many things," she said, "like a Sears and Roe­buck catalog of the senses. Feed me another line."

  '"Where the bat flies in the Seventh-month eve,' " said Render, raising his hand,

  She ducked her head, before its swoop, and the dark form vanished within the wood.

  " 'Where the great gold-bug drops through the dark,' " she replied.

  ... And it glittered like a 24-karat meteorite and fell to the path at his feet. It lay there for a moment like a sun-colored scarab, then crawled off through the grasses at the side of the trail.

  "You remember now," he said.

  "I remember now," she told him.

  The Seventh-month eve was cool, and pale stars began in the heavens. He pointed out constellations as they walked. A half-moon tipped above the rim of the world, and another bat crossed it. An owl hooted in the distance. Cricket-talk emerged from the undergrowth. A persistent end-of-day glow still filled the world.

  "We have come far," she said.

  "How far?" he asked.

  "To 'where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,'" she stated.

  "Aye," he said, and he put forth his hand and leaned against the giant tree they had come upon. Rushing forth from among its roots was the spring which fed the stream they had followed earlier. It sounded, like a chain of small bells echoing off into the distance, as it sprang into the air and fell again upon itself and flowed away from them. It wound among the trees, digging into the ground, curling and cutting its way to the sea.

  She waded out into the water. It arced over, it foamed about her. It rained down upon her and ran along her back and neck and breasts and arms and legs, returning.

  "Come on in, the magic brook is fine," she said.

  But Render shook his head and waited.

  She emerged, shook herself, was dry.

  "Ice and rainbows," she remarked.

  "Yes," said Render, "and I forget much of what comes next."

  "So do I, but I remember that a little later on 'the mock­ing-bird sounds his delicious gurgles, cackles, screams, weeps.'

  And Render winced as he listened to the mocking-bird.

  "That was not my mocking-bird," he stated.

  She laughed.

  "What difference? His turn was coming up soon, anyhow."

  He shook his head and turned away. She was back at his side again.

  "I'm sorry. I'll be more careful."

  "Very good."

  He walked on across the country.

  "I forget the next part."

  "So do I."

  They left the stream far behind them.

  They walked through the bending grass, across flat, borderless plains; and all but the peak of the sun's crown vanished over the horizon.

  Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie...

  "Did you say something?" she asked.

  "No. But I remember again. This is the place 'where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near.'"

  A dark mass off to their left gradually took on a more dis­tinct form, and as they watched they could make out the shapes of the great bison of the American plains. Apart from rodeos, cattle shows, and the backs of old nickels, the beasts stood now, individual and dark and smelling of the earth, slow, and huge, and hairy, all together they stood, horned heads lowered, great backs swaying, the sign of Tau­rus, the inexorable fecundity of spring, fading with the twi­light into the passed and the past—where the humming-bird shimmers, perhaps.

  They crossed the great plain, and the moon was now above them. They came at last to the opposite end of the land, where there were high lakes and another brook, ponds, and another sea. They passed emptied farms and gardens and made their way along the path of the waters.

  'Where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding,' " she said, seeing her first swan in the moonlight drift over the lake.

  " 'Where the laughing gull scoots by the shore,' " he answered, " 'where she laughs her near-human laugh."

  And across the night there was laughter, but it was like tha
t of neither laughing-gull nor human, for Render had never heard a laughing gull. The chuckling sounds he had shaped from raw emotion chilled the evening around him.

  He made the evening come warm again. He lightened the

  darkness, tinted it with silver. The laughter dwindled and died. A gull-shape departed in the direction of the ocean, dark and silver, dark and silver, turning.

  "That," he announced, "is about all for this time." "But there is more, so much more," she said. "You carry menus about in your head. Don't you remember more of this thing? I remember something about the band-necked par­tridges roosting in a ring with their heads out, and the yellow-crowned heron feeding upon crabs at the edge of the marsh at night, and the katydid on a walnut tree above a well, and..."

  "It is rich, it is very rich," said Render. "Too rich, per­haps."

  They passed through groves of lemons and oranges, under fir trees, and the places where the heron fed, and the katy­did sang on the walnut tree above the well, and the par­tridges slept in a ring on the ground, heads out.

  "Next time, will you name me all the animals?" she asked. "Yes."

  She turned up a little path to a farmhouse, opened the front door, and entered. Render followed her, smiling. Blackness.

  Solid, total—black as only the black of absolute empti­ness can be.

  There was nothing at all inside the farmhouse. "What is the matter?" she asked him, from somewhere. "Unauthorized excursion into the scenery," said Render. "I was about to ring down the curtain and you decided the show should continue. Therefore, I kept myself from providing you with any additional props this time."

  "I can't always control it," she said. "I'm sorry. Let us go back now. I've mastered the impulse."

  "No, let's go ahead," said Render. "Lights!"

  They stood on a high hilltop, and the bats that flitted

  past the partial moon were metallic. The evening was chill

  and a harsh croaking sound arose from a junkpile. The trees

  were metal posts with the limbs riveted into place. The grass

  was green plastic underfoot. A gigantic, empty highway swept past the foot of the hill.

  "Where—are we?" she asked.

  "You've had your Song of Myself," he said, "with all the extra narcissism you could stuff in. Nothing wrong with that in this place—up to a point. But you've pushed it a little too far. Now I feel a certain balancing has become neces­sary. I can't afford to play games each session."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "The Song of 'Not Me? " he stated, clapping his hands. "Let us walk."

  ... Where the Dust Bowl cries for water, said a voice, somewhere—and they walked, coughing,

  ... Where the waste-polluted river knows no living thing, said the voice, and the scum is the color of rust.

  They walked beside the stinking river, and she held her nose but it did not stop the smelling.

  ... Where the forest is laid to waste and the landscape is Limbo.

  They walked among the stumps, stepping on shredded branches; and the dry leaves crackled underfoot. Overhead, the face of the leering moon was scarred, and it hung by a thin strand from the black ceiling.

  They walked like giants among wooden plateaus. The earth was cracked beneath the leaves.

  ... Where the curreted land bleeds into the emptied gouge of the strip-mine.

  Abandoned machinery lay about them. Mounds of earth and rocks lay bald beneath the night. The great gaps in the ground were filled with a blood-like excrescence.

  ... Sing, Aluminum Muse, who in the beginning taught that shepherd how the museum and the process rose out of Chaos, or if death delight thee more, behold the greatest Graveyard!

  They were back atop the hill overlooking the junkheap. It was filled with tractors and bulldozers and steamshovels, with cranes and diggers and trucks. It was piled high with twisted metal, rusted metal, broken metal. Frames and

  plates and springs and beams lay about, and the blades and shovels and drills were all smashed. It was the Boot Hill of the tool, the Potter's Field of the machine.

  "What... ?" she said.

  "Scrap," said he. "This is the part Walt didn't sing about —the things that step on his blades of grass, the things that tear them up by the roots."

  They made their way through the place of dead mach­inery.

  "Haunted, too," he added, "in a way.

  "This machine bulldozed an Indian burial mound, and this one cut down the oldest tree on the continent. This one dug a channel which diverted a river which turned a green valley into a wasteland. This one broke in the walls of our ancestors' homes, and this one hoisted the beams up the monstrous towers which replaced them—"

  "You're being very unfair," she said.

  "Of course," said Render. "You should always try for a large point if you want to make a small one. Remember, I took you where the panther walks to and fro on the limb overhead, and where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock, and where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou. Do you recall what I said when you asked, 'Why these things?' "

  "You said, 'More than the idyllic must you know.' "

  "Right, and since you were once again so eager to take over, I decided that a little more pain and a little less pleasure might strengthen my position. You've already got whatever goes wrong. I catch it."

  "Yes," she said, "I know. But this picture of mechanism paving the road to hell... Black or white, really? Which is it?"

  "Gray," he told her. "Come a little further."

  They rounded a heap of cans and bottles and bedsprings. He stooped beneath a jutting piece of metal and pulled open a hatch.

  "Behold hidden in the belly of this great tank truck against the ages of ages!"

  Its fantastic glow filled the dark cavity with a soft green light, spreading from where it blazed within a tool box he had flung open.

  "Oh..."

  "The Holy Grail," he announced. "It is enantiadromia, my dear. The circle runs back upon itself. When it passes its beginning, the spiral commences. How can I judge? The Grail may be hidden within a machine. I don't know. Things twist as time goes on. Friends become enemies, evils be­come benefits. But I'll hold back time long enough to tell you a quick tale, since you regaled me with that of the Greek, Daedalus. It was told me by a patient named Roth-man, a student of the Cabala. This Grail you see before you, symbol of light and purity and holiness and heavenly ma­jesty—what is its origin?"

  "None is given," she said.

  "Ah, but there is a tradition, a legend that Rothman knew: The Grail was handed down by Melchisadek, High Priest of Israel, and destined to reach the hands of the Messiah. But where did Melchisadek get it? He carved it from a gigantic emerald he had found in the wilderness, an emerald which had fallen from the crown of Shmael, Angel of Darkness, as he was cast down from On High. There is your Grail, from light to darkness to light to darkness to who knows? What is the point of it all? Enantiadromia, my dear. —Good-bye, Grail."

  He closed the lid and all was darkness.

  Then, as he walked on through Winchester Cathedral, flat ceilings everywhere, a statue beheaded (said the guide) by Cromwell, off to his right, he recalled the follow­ing session. He remembered his almost-unwilling Adam-at­titude as he had named all the animals passing before them, led, of course, by the one she had wanted to see, colored fearsome by his own unease. He had felt pleasantly bucolic after boning up on an old Botany text and then proceeding to Shape and name the flowers of the fields.

  So far they had stayed out of the cities, far away from the machines. Her emotions were still too powerful at the

  sight of the simple, carefully introduced objects to risk plunging her into so complicated and chaotic a wilderness yet; he would build her city slowly.

  Something passed rapidly, high above the cathedral, uttering a sonic boom. Render took Jill's hand in his for a moment and smiled as she looked up at him. Knowing she verged upon beauty, Jill normally took great p
ains to achieve it. But today her hair was simply drawn back and knotted behind her head, and her lips and her eyes were pale; and her exposed ears were tiny and white and somewhat pointed.

  "Observe the scalloped capitals," he whispered. "In their primitive fluting they anticipated what was later to become a common motif."

  "Faugh!" said she.

  "Shh!" said a sunburnt little woman nearby, whose face seemed to crack and fall back together again as she pursed and unpursed her lips.

  Later, as they strolled back toward their hotel, Render said, "Okay on Winchester?"

  "Okay on Winchester."

  "Happy?"

  "Happy."

  "Good; then we can leave this afternoon."

  "All right."

  "For Switzerland ..."

  She stopped and toyed with a button on his coat.

  "Couldn't we just spend a day or two looking at some old chateaux first? After all, they're just across the Channel, and you could be sampling all the local wines while I looked . .."

  "Okay," he said.

  She looked up—a trifle surprised.

  "What? No argument?" She smiled. "Where is your fighting spirit?—to let me push you around like this?"

  She took his arm then and they walked on as he said, "Yesterday, while we were galloping about in the innards of that old castle, I heard a weak moan, and then a voice cried out, 'For the love of God, Montresor!' I think it was

  my fighting spirit, because I'm certain it was my voice. I've

  given up der geist der stets verneint. Pax vobiscum! Let us

  be gone to France. Alors!"

  "Dear Rendy, it'll only be another day or two..." "Amen," he said, "though my skis that were waxed are

  already waning."

  So they did that, and on the morn of the third day, when she spoke to him of castles in Spain, he reflected aloud that while psychologists drink and only grow angry, psychiatrists have been known to drink, grow angry, and break things. Construing this as a veiled threat aimed at the Wedgewoods she had collected, she acquiesced to his desire to skiing.

  Free! Render almost screamed it.

  His heart was pounding inside his head. He leaned hard. He cut to the left. The wind strapped at his face; a shower of ice crystals, like bullets of emery, fired by him, scraped against his cheek.