Dreamers

by James Gunn

  He was not good-looking, he knew. His dark hair was wispy, his nose was sharp, his lips were thin and a bit bloodless, and his body was weak. He looked nothing at all like the Paris of his dream, whose sturdy body and handsome appearance drew the envy of all men and the admiration of all women, many of whom begged for his touch. Even Helen. And yet in this, the real world, good looks did not matter so much. The fact that he dreamed so well made him a man of importance. He was famous throughout this urban center, and perhaps through others as well, and popular, too, though such things went in cycles. He had been wanted by many and loved by some.

  He turned away from the mirror, nevertheless, with a strange mixture of satisfaction and discontent and was surprised to see a woman standing beside the lift shaft beyond the bed. For a moment he didn't recognize her.

  Joy? No, “Zoe!” he said. “What are you doing here?"

  She smiled apologetically, ingratiatingly. “I came to see if you were all right."

  “Why shouldn't I be all right?” he asked. He was annoyed by this intrusion upon his privacy, and he didn't care if she knew it. He had not posted, it is true, nor forbidden entry, and in the urban center people came and went freely, as mood moved them, but his dream was so recent, so vivid still in his mind, that he felt interrupted, invaded.

  “I came several times while you were dreaming,” she said. At his look, she added quickly, “You told me I might."

  He remembered now. He had told her something like that when they had met—how long ago? yesterday? the day before? as recently as that?—at the party in the commons for—for that composer who was so popular now. Bach? Bacharach? Bachman. And he had been attracted to this blonde girl with the blue eyes who had stood apart from the allegro movements of the others, and they had talked a bit of dreams and dreaming, and he had said to her, idly as it seemed to him, “Come see me if you wish, and I will tell you what it is like to be a dreamer."

  “I came several times, and you were still stretched out there upon the bed,” she said, and he would have been moved by her concern had not the vision of Helen risen before his eyes.

  Helen, thy beauty is to me

  Like those Nicean barks of yore...

  “The bed,” Zoe went on, “I've never seen one that color before—it looks like blood. The whole room is red like that. And—the tubes to the console made it seem as if you were a prisoner and some vampire had you, and you never woke up—” She sensed that she was babbling and stopped.

  His annoyance dwindled as her pretty confusion grew. “Perhaps it was a bit longer than usual,” he admitted. He held out his hand to her, and she put her hand in it. It was soft and ordinary and a bit sweaty. “Sit down.” He ordered the soft chairs out of the wall and the bed lowered into the floor. “It's not that frightening, being a dreamer. Those tubes to the console are a two-way system. They provide me with sustenance and occasionally inspiration and a soporific to keep me asleep until the dream is done or the time is up—I can't stay under too long or I lose control as the dream takes over—and at the same time they sample my blood proteins and analyze them for memories. All of it is recorded, of course, for later editing."

  “I know you're a famous dreamer,” she said. She sat on the edge of her chair, leaning toward him. “But I've never understood how it works."

  “What you want to know is what happens when I dream."

  “I've taken a cap or two of yours,” she said, blushing a little as if in recollection. “Actually I've taken lots. I shouldn't tell you that, I guess. But yours are so—so vivid, so lifelike."

  “I dream in color,” he said, scoffing at it a little as if it were something he had not earned. “Not everybody does, you know. And I have trained myself to control my dreams, by thinking about them, by talking about them, by replaying them. It's an art form, you see. When there isn't anybody else about or anybody I want to talk to, I tell them to the console."

  “You can tell them to me,” Zoe said shyly.

  “Of course,” Samuel said, brushing her offer away casually. “I'm both a free lance and a commission dreamer. I dream what I like—or sometimes, if the commission appeals to me, I will dream to order. Now, for instance—” He stopped. Suddenly he didn't want to talk about it—to her or anybody.

  “You're dreaming something on commission?” she prompted, looking up at him expectantly, her eyes wide with appreciation, her face transparent.

  “A dream,” he said, “about the most beautiful woman in the world."

  Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

  To the glory that was Greece

  And the grandeur that was Rome.

  “Is she?” Zoe asked, and then added quickly, “The most beautiful woman in the world?"

  “Yes."

  “Would you let me share the dream?” she asked hesitantly. “Would that be illegal or unethical?"

  “Yes,” he said quickly. And then, “No, not unethical. After all, what can the commissioner pay? But the dream isn't ready. I'm not ready to release it. And—and there's a matter of art to be considered."

  She frowned. He noticed the way she caught her lower lip between her teeth. Her teeth were white, and her lips were red and kissable. She was a remarkably pretty girl with a good body, and she was clearly anxious to please. She was no Helen, but no one was.

  He got up from his chair and held out his hand to her. “I haven't been very hospitable,” he said gently. “Come. I'll tell you about my dream.” At his command the round bed rose from the floor, and he led her to it, and he cooled his feverish dreams between her silken thighs.

  * * * *

  The child who will be born today will bring ruin to Ilium.

  He and his mother must be destroyed.

  I stand upon the broad stone tower by the south gate that some call the Scaean Gate. Ilium is built upon the end of a long ridge that rises as it extends to the east. The ridge has been carved out of the rock by the flow of rivers, the Simois to the north and the Scamander to the west. Pious fools believe the Scamander an ancestor of mine. Its sources are in the hills and foothills of Mount Ida, far to the southeast; it runs directly below the low hill of Ilium until it is joined by the Simois after it emerges from a swamp to the north, and they flow together into the Hellespont. Beyond the Scamander is a broad plain extending from the southeast, where the Scamander emerges through a rocky gorge, to the north and the Hellespont. To the west the plain ends in hills higher than Ilium; between them I can see the blue glint of the Aegean Sea. To the northwest, beyond the Hellespont, I can see the twin peaks of Samothrace, and if the weather were clearer to the west, I could see the summit of Mount Athos.

  But I do not look at these things. I look to the north at the three lines of black ships drawn up on the banks of the Hellespont. Except for occasional departures as messengers or to carry the raiding parties that have ravaged our coast and nearby islands, the ships have squatted there, like eternally patient vultures, for nine long years. By now the sails and cordage, even the wooden hulls, must be rotting, and the Achaeans, if they wished to return home, would risk their lives in leaky ships.

  But they do not wish to return. They think only of killing and burning and looting, and they will keep making war until they destroy Troy or they are dead.

  I can see them now, black dots moving between the ships and the rough huts thrown up in front of them. They live like pigs, these Achaeans and their allies, and we—because we are besieged and crowded within these walls—live little better. It is my fault, all of this, and I feel a persistent sense of guilt. All this bloodshed, all this agony and deprivation and destruction, all this rage and terror because of the love of one man and one woman. There is a disproportion here that I must think about.

  But not now. I reach out and put my arm around the still-slender waist of Helen, who stands beside me on the tower, and I look at her lovely face and I know that it is worth it. If this were nearly twenty years ago and I had known then how it would all come out, I would do it all again. All the
butchering and misery that our illicit love has brought upon our worlds only makes the loving more intense. Like a frame for a picture, the warfare encloses it, makes it a world apart, brightens the colors, darkens the shadows, focuses the attention.

  The first Achaean to set his foot on Troy will be the first to die.

  Perhaps this is how these credulous savages feel about the prophecies that surround their lives, as if they see the future by flashes of lightning. They often know what will happen, like Protesilaus leaping ashore at Troy, but they go forward, moved by some blind acceptance of a destiny woven for them at their birth or by a courage or an arrogance stronger than their fear of death.

  Helen stirs within my arm and looks up at me, and I feel her love as strong as mine. I do not care where it comes from, whether it was fated by the gods from the beginning or whether I will it so and Helen is the reflection of my own desire. She is mine, by our passion as well as by what we have sacrificed, and we make the nights brilliant with our love.

  “The Achaeans are restless this morning,” she says. “I think they are preparing another attack."

  “We have beaten them back each time from the walls of Ilium,” I tell her. The only fear I wish her to feel is the fear that gives an edge to appetite.

  “Yet Troy is destined to fall,” she says with a shiver I feel against my arm and the side her shoulder and hip touch. “Cassandra prophesies it, and her twin, Helenus, confirms her vision. Even Calchas, the Trojan renegade, has told the Achaeans that they will be victorious."

  I hold her tight to ease her apprehensions. “Prophecies are often wrong."

  “This is a luckless site,” she says, refusing to be comforted. “So your founder, Dardanus, was told, and Ilus, builder of Troy, believed. You know how many times it has been destroyed. Within the memory of your father's generation it was sacked by Heracles after Laomedon refused to pay Poseidon and Apollo for building the wall. Laomedon and all his sons perished, save your father Podarces, renamed Priam, who was awarded the throne by Heracles."

  “More likely it was an earthquake,” I say.

  “What is a shaking of the earth but the wrath of Zeus?” she asks, wide-eyed. “Besides, it was prophesied by Aesacus, your half brother, that you would be the ruin of your country. And when you awarded Aphrodite the golden apple, you earned the hatred of Hera and Athene."

  She is a creature of her times, with all its customs, beliefs, and superstitions. Our love would not be the same if it were otherwise. And yet today I would not have her reinforce my concerns. I stop her mouth with a kiss, and as I draw back, feeling the familiar stirrings, I say, “I have heard that Achilles has quarreled with Agamemnon over some woman; Achilles has retired from the battle and has sworn to fight no more."

  Her face, which was gloomy with foreboding, brightens with hope. These primitives can believe in the Fates and in their capricious gods and yet hope for something unexpected to happen. Is it because their gods are capricious, because there is so much divining, reading of signs, and prophesying that much of it must be contradictory or ambiguous, even if all is false? And how much that comes true is simple self-fulfillment?

  “That's good news,” she says. “Achilles is a savage. He's as big as a bull and as swift as a deer, and he lives only to fight and kill. Besides, they say that Thetis, his divine mother, made him invulnerable when he was a baby."

  “Lots of Trojans believe that,” I say, “and the news that he will not be in the battle is bound to encourage them."

  “But how did you learn about Achilles?” she asks.

  I smile. “I, too, have my powers."

  “I know of those,” she whispers, and leans against me, her eyes half-closed.

  I kiss her again. My heartbeat quickens, and I calculate. “I must put on my armor for the battle,” I tell her, “but if we return now to the house I built for you, there might be time ... before I must leave."

  She walks, as eager as I, back to the house-of-many-rooms, with its spacious halls and its intimate chambers where ecstasy awaits us.

  * * * *

  Samuel swam up from blackness through successive layers of gray into the light. A pink oval loomed over him. After a moment it resolved itself into the face of Zoe.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Why shouldn't I be all right?” he answered angrily. His head was still filled with Helen; his body was still warm from touching hers. And he had had this conversation before.

  “You were groaning and twisting,” she said. “I couldn't stand thinking that you were suffering."

  “What business is it of yours?” He sat up, realizing for the first time that the slender needles had already been withdrawn. Not only had she awakened him, she had instructed his console, and that was bad manners even from the most intimate of friends. Now he was really angry. “What are you doing here?"

  “I thought—” she began. “After yesterday. You said...” She got up from her knees beside the round bed, her face flushed with embarrassment. “But if you don't want me here...” She turned toward the drop shaft.

  Samuel felt guilty as he watched her walk away from him. She was very young, very naive. Because he had tried to forget Helen in her anonymous arms, she had presumed that he was interested in her. It had been nothing to him but momentary forgetfulness, and little of that. Perhaps it had been more to her. Now she felt rejected and ashamed. “Wait,” he said.

  She turned back, her face illuminated by joy, and Samuel realized, abstractly, that she was almost—yes, truly—beautiful. She was beautiful and sweetly formed and a gentle person whom he thought was loving and kind, and it was not her fault that she had come to him at the wrong time, that she was not Helen. He owed her something, an explanation, a little courtesy.

  “I'm grumpy when I'm awakened,” he said, and then, because it sounded as if he were diminishing his work, he added, “Besides—I'm an artist, and no less an artist because I work in dreams."

  “I know you are,” she said. “I understand how you feel."

  He doubted that. At her age everything was personal. But she appreciated that he wanted to excuse his behavior. “Well, happy dreams,” he said, and went into the lavatory. When he returned to the room, he was surprised to find her sitting on the bed.

  “You said you liked to talk about your dreams,” she said, as if explaining her presence.

  “Not this one."

  “What is so special about this one?"

  His quick response had told him something about his dream that he had not yet really faced, that it was special, that he didn't want to share it with anyone. At least not yet. “Nothing,” he lied. “It's just that the world I'm dreaming is strange. I haven't figured it out yet. It's a world I'm still exploring. I haven't got it under control."

  “I thought you made it up,” she said, smiling at him, giving him all her attention as if he were the only person in her world.

  He summoned a chair from the wall, not wanting to sit on the bed with her as she apparently intended, not wanting to get further involved. “I have to start somewhere. My subconscious needs something to work on—data, details, structure. A dream without data seems thin and unreal. Usually I pop a piece of fiction or a history, just to get started—not too much, or it gets turgid and unmanageable."

  “Where did you start on this one?"

  “This one was unusual. It was both fiction and history. I popped a bit of history by a historian named Laurence, but mostly I used an epic by an ancient poet. Not much of either, you understand, or my imagination would be limited. Just background, hints, suggestions."

  “Who was Helen?” She said the name as if Helen were a rival.

  Samuel almost laughed. She was no rival to Helen. “When I was asked to dream the most beautiful woman, he said, hiding his reaction in talk, “I asked the console for references. That was the name it provided most frequently. Helen. Legend, myth, maybe reality as well. In mythology, she was the daughter of Leda by Zeus, who lay with her in the fo
rm of a swan."

  The words came to him unbidden: unable to “push the feathered glory from her loosening thighs."

  “The gods were always doing that in Greek myths,” he continued, “impregnating women in the form of swans or bulls or rivers. Maybe it was a good way for the women to explain embarrassing pregnancies."

  “But what about Helen?” Zoe asked impatiently.

  “She grew up to be so beautiful that all the Greek princes came to the palace of her foster father, Tyndareus of Sparta, as suitors. Tyndareus was afraid to choose any of them for fear the rest would fall upon him. Finally Odysseus, always described as shrewd or wily, suggested that Tyndareus make the suitors swear on the bloody pieces of a sacrificed horse that they would defend Helen's husband, whoever was chosen. She married the richest of them, Menelaus, who eventually succeeded Tyndareus as king of Sparta."

  Zoe shrugged. “That doesn't seem so wonderful."

  “That's only where it started,” Samuel said. “Paris, the son of Priam, king of Troy, came to visit Menelaus—there are many complications, but this is a simplified version—fell in love with Helen, eloped with her, and ten years later the Greeks and their allies arrived on the shores of Troy. They had sworn to destroy the city of Ilium, to slaughter its men, to carry off its women into concubinage and slavery, to loot its treasures. My dream begins where the epic starts, after nine years of battle and siege. Conditions are getting desperate; I think some climax is coming."

  “Don't you know?” Zoe asked, surprised.

  “I have intimations, but I avoid too much foreknowledge. I shape it as it happens."

  “Who are you in the dream?"

  “Whom do you think? I'm Paris, of course."

  Zoe shivered. “It sounds like a savage kind of life."