by James Gunn
“What?” he asked.
“The dream?” Zoe repeated. “Don't you recognize it?"
He looked puzzled.
“It's your Paradise. We all voted on our favorite Samuel dream, and the Paradise won. It's all in your honor, you know. You're the best dreamer in the center, maybe in the whole world."
It was, of course, his Paradise, complete with Adam and Eve but without the serpent. Satan had not yet appeared. And, of course, without God. Unless he were God, the dreamer of the dream.
As if to verify Zoe's estimation of his status, the other young people began to drift past him, pausing in their effortless enjoyment to tell him of their admiration.
“You're the greatest dreamer of them all, Samuel."
“I always try yours first."
“Sometimes I pop the others, but I always come back to yours."
“Your dreams have color and taste."
“The others just don't satisfy."
“Vivid. Sensational!"
“Never stop dreaming! Promise you won't!"
“Magnificent. It's the only word."
“Are you working on something now? You must, you must."
“A new Samuel? I can hardly wait!"
He had no more than a word or a smile for any of them, beautiful, empty vessels of other people's dreams. It was not their fault that they were butterflies dreaming that they were people. It was not their fault that this dream of his was shallow and forgettable, that it lacked structure and contrast, that it was an early folly he would like to forget. It was only their fault that their taste in dreams was inadequate. What would they say if they knew that he was dreaming a world so savage, so violent, that their sheltered spirits would never be able to contain it.
He knew what they would say: They would beg for it, beg for experience, beg for raw emotions, for blood-red savagery, and for guilty love. If he weren't kind, he would give it to them and let them shudder in a world they could never understand. But he knew he wouldn't, not yet anyway, for the world of Ilium and Helen was a world he didn't wish to—couldn't—share.
All he could do, like God, was drive them out. “Get out!” he shouted at last, tormented beyond endurance by their lack of understanding. “I can't stand you anymore. Get out!"
They fled before his wrath, uncomprehending, unsinning. If he had held a sword in his hand, like Hector or Achilles, he would have slain them as they ran. At last only Zoe was left, standing wide-eyed and afraid beside the drop shaft.
“You too, Zoe,” he said. “You most of all."
“You're not well, Samuel,” she said, with a courage he hadn't expected of her and in other circumstances might have admired. “You're thin. You're sick. I'll bet you haven't eaten. It's Helen, isn't it? She's doing this to you."
“That's nothing to you."
“But I love you,” she said. “That gives me a right. You're all I want. You're all I think about. I'll do anything."
Perhaps she felt about him the way he felt about Helen, Samuel thought. For a moment he felt sorry for her. Then he pushed pity away. “You don't love me. You don't know what love is. It's—it's—” It's what I feel for Helen. No one has ever felt that way before.
Heavenborn Helen, Sparta's queen,
(O Troy Town!)
Had two breasts of heavenly sheen,
The sun and moon of the heart's desire.
Suddenly she was at his feet, her arms around his knees, like Adrestus in front of Menelaus, and said, “Give me a capsule! Let me be Helen! You will love me then the way you love her."
Samuel pushed her away, though she tried to cling to him. “Don't be stupid!"
He watched her creep away, his heart turned to ice at the thought that someone might share his dream.
* * * *
While Agamemnon was sacrificing to Zeus and Apollo at Aulis, a blue serpent with blood-red markings on its back darted from beneath the altar and made straight for a plane tree nearby. It climbed the tree to a sparrow's nest and devoured eight nestlings and their mother. Nine years would pass before Troy could be taken, but it would be taken. Lightning flashed on the right as the fleet set sail.
To be taken from the guilty joys of Helen's arms to the violence of battle is anguish, and I never become accustomed to it, no matter how often repeated. Absence from Helen's bed grows until I must be with her, but something continually returns me to the fighting. Hector would call it honor, but I have none.
The Achaean wall is coming down. Sarpedon, Glaucus, and their Lycians attack a section of the wall defended by Ajax and Teucer. Boulders torn from the wall hurtle through the air, smashing helmets and skulls. Teucer wounds Glaucus in the arm with an arrow, but part of the battlement comes away in Sarpedon's hands before he is staggered by Teucer's arrow and Ajax's spear.
In the confusion of the battle Hector rallies his company. “Come on, you Trojans! Pull down the wall! Burn the ships!"
He picks up a gigantic rock lying beside the gate and hurls it against the high double doors. They break at the hinges and burst inward. Hector leaps through, two spears in his hand, and we follow close behind, either through the gate or over the wall from which the defenders flee. The Achaeans panic as our fury is loosed among the hollow ships.
They scatter before us. We will win, we will win, I think. My will is triumphant. We will destroy the barbarians and burn their ships, and the land of Troy will know peace again.
Hector like a bronze spearpoint in front of us, we hack and cut our way through the Achaean troops. But somewhere another will, resistant to my desires, seems to be at work. The Achaeans turn and face us with a wall of shields, an impenetrable hedge of spears. Our avalanche loses momentum, slows, and stops.
But the slaughter never relents. Arrows and spears flying through the air drop men on either side of me. Even Hector, struggling to strip the armor of Amphimachus, falls back before Ajax's spear. When he has regained the Trojan lines, he sees the head of our brother-in-law Imbrius drop like a ball at his feet.
On our right flank and on our left our kinsmen and allies fall, but we fight bravely, and I kill many of the Achaeans with my arrows, including Euchenor.
Euchenor was destined to die in bed of a painful disease or to sail with the Achaeans and be killed at Troy.
I look up and see Hector standing in front of me; he is breathing hard, and his hands are on his hips. “Paris, you pretty-boy, you woman-crazy seducer,” he begins, as always. “Where are Deiphobus, Helenus, Adamas, and Asius? And what have you done with Othryoneus?"
“Maybe I've deserved your abuse in the past,” I say, “but not today. We've held our ground here, and I've fought as bravely as anyone. But all the friends you ask for are dead except Deiphobus and Helenus, and our brothers were wounded and have withdrawn. So lead us on. We'll follow with as much courage as we have. Nobody can ask for more than that."
We follow him to the center of the battle in front of the Achaean ships. He charges into the enemy lines, where Ajax is leading the defense, and we come after him, deafening the heavens with the clash of our weapons. Hector hurls a spear at Ajax, and it strikes squarely—but somehow the Achaean's life is spared by two baldrics that cross his chest.
As Hector retreats, Ajax throws a boulder that has been used to prop up a ship. It strikes Hector on the chest just over the rim of his shield; his second spear drops from his hand, and he falls in the dust, crumpled under his shield and helmet.
The Achaeans rush forward, eager to drag Hector away, but we surround him quickly. Polydamas, Aeneas, Agenor, Sarpedon, and Glaucus lift up his huge body and carry him out of the fight. Anger and terror battle inside me. I have not considered the possibility that Hector might die, and I wonder what will happen to us—to Helen and me and all the Trojans. For all his bluster, Hector has kept Achaeans from the gates of Ilium. I know this now, and I know that I cannot take his place.
He must not die, or if he is already dead, I must restore him to life if I can. As his horses drive away, I hear him
groan, and relief sweeps through my body. At the ford of the Scamander Hector's men lay him down and pour water over him. After a moment he opens his eyes, sits up, and vomits dark blood, but then he falls back, still near death.
While he is gone, the fight turns against us. Little Ajax and then Big Ajax cut their way into our ranks, followed by Peneleos, Antilochus, Meriones, Teucer, and Agamemnon himself. The fall of Hector has filled us with terror; our retreat turns into a rout as we fall back across the palisade and trench to reach our chariots, leaving the field strewn with our dead.
Hector must be restored, I think, and at that moment Hector is there, once more at the head of the troops, urging us, leading us into battle again. I almost believe that a god himself precedes Hector into battle, waving panic in the Achaean faces, for they resist only briefly, then break. We slaughter them singly and together. Again we reach the ships, but here they turn to fight, until a clap of thunder heartens us, and we are among them with our horses and chariots, and the Achaeans climb to the black sterns of their ships.
The battle rages on the beach. “Zeus has given us the victory today!” Hector shouts. Ajax, defending a ship from the deck with a long, pointed pole, calls out to the Achaeans, “Remember your duty! We must either die here or fight now, save the ships, and live!"
But this day belongs to us. The Achaeans are driven back from the first line of ships, and Hector shouts, “Bring fire! The ships are ours!"
Trojans run from the rear, flaming torches held high. Some are killed, but at least one gets through, and a ship begins to burn. The victory overwhelms me, and as I will myself to Helen's side, I think that the end is near.
* * * *
This waking period was different. Others had been like furloughs from a war to which he must soon return, but this was the peace after victory.
For the first time in many periods Samuel had an appetite. He spent some moments selecting a dinner: shaped protein, vegetables, salad, all with appropriate sauces and dressings. It would be a kind of celebration. He tried to think of someone he might share it with. Not Zoe. He didn't want to get that started up again. He realized, with a bit of depression, that there wasn't a single poppet he would wish to spend a period with, and he had no friends he ever wanted to see again.
He was a man alone. He had always been alone. Even as a young man, before he had found his vocation, he had been alone even among a crowd of others. He had been, he thought, a little like Zoe; he gave her credit for that. He would celebrate alone.
He had something truly wonderful to celebrate. After some anxious moments the dream of Ilium was finally under control. It would be, he knew, his finest creation, and his longest. It had everything—love, war, death—and every emotion, every sensation. And it would be not simply a sensation cap but a true epic, proportioned, artistic, exquisite. It would make his fame in his world as lasting as that of the old blind poet in his.
Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.
The urban center would echo with praise for Samuel the dreamer, the greatest dreamer of them all. It was all there in the console waiting to be edited, to be given final shape, and then it could be released to the world—maybe even to other urban centers. The poppets would pop it, and then...
Well, he didn't want to think about that now. One last episode would wrap it up, and then he could begin to think about artistic form and release and the fame that this longest and greatest of dreams might bring.
His dinner was ready. He removed it from the autochef. It steamed attractively. The odors were good, the colors were right. He sat down appreciatively to the meal, but after a few bites his appetite left him, and he pushed the tray into the disposer. His dependence on intravenous feeding for so long had shrunk his stomach, he thought. Or perhaps it was only the comparison with his dream food—the watered wine; the great greasy, half-cooked haunches of beef and sheep; the tough, coarse bread. It all seemed better in his dream, even if he might gag if he had to face it now.
The trouble was—that world was more real than his life here in this crimson room. He would have to wean himself away from the dream. Dreams always had a great advantage over reality, especially for a disciplined dreamer like himself, who could shape it to his desires, and the possibility always existed that one dream might become so attractive that he would want to dream no other.
But that would make him no better than a poppet. They went that way, popping a variety of capsules when they were young but as they got older returning more and more often to one particular dream until that was all they popped, until, in some cases, they stayed under continually, dreaming their lives away.
Some philosophers said that there was no objective reality anyway. There was no world outside the self that any two persons could agree upon. So it made no difference whether one lived in the so-called real world or in some dream world. Everything, they said, was subjective.
But his pride, his sense of personal value, Samuel thought, insisted that he was the dreamer; as an artist he dreamed many things. He was in control, not someone else; he was not the slave of memory, he was its master.
He wished, for a moment, that he had his dinner still in front of him. He could have eaten it now. He would have showed his traitorous body who was master.
He was no Paris in love with Helen to the point of sacrificing for her his honor, his city, the lives of his friends and his children, his brothers, his parents. He was no Hector either, impelled to be a hero, to risk his life for the admiration of his comrades, to rage at the command of glands within his body. Nor was he an Agamemnon, to concern himself continually with the promises and whims of the gods, or to sacrifice Iphigenia so that his fleet might sail from Aulis.
He was the dreamer, not the dream.
And yet, he thought, he must return just one more time. To wind it up, he told himself.
“Samuel?” someone repeated.
He had heard it before, he realized, but deep in thought, he had not responded.
“Are you all right?” People kept asking that, he thought.
Samuel looked up and felt an unpleasant shock as he recognized his visitor. It was Regi, the owner—no, merely the commissioner—of his dream. “What is it, Regi?” he asked.
Regi took a step forward from the lift shaft. “I thought there was something wrong with you,” he said. He was older than the young people Samuel usually saw. He was dark-haired and a bit fleshy, a connoisseur rather than a poppet, a collector rather than a user. “The dream I commissioned. Your console keeps giving me excuses. Surely it's ready by now."
“I'm sorry,” Samuel said.
“I have information to the contrary,” Regi said stubbornly, advancing another step into the room.
Was he threatening violence? Samuel wondered. No one was violent anymore. “Where would you get information like that?” he asked. And then he said, “Zoe!"
“It doesn't matter where I got the information,” Regi said, “but the fact that you know where such information might have originated suggests to me that it is true."
“Zoe has her own reasons for lying,” Samuel said. “But the truth is that your commission is not completed. In fact, I must tell you that it will never be completed. I can't do it. If you want it done, you'll have to take it to another dreamer."
Regi stopped his menacing advance. His demands became an appeal. “But you accepted the commission. I was counting on it. Nobody else could handle it. It would be worthless."
“It can't be helped,” Samuel said. “I can't guarantee success. Sometimes I fail."
Only it was not failure but elation that filled his heart as Regi accepted his denial and turned toward the drop shaft. Now the dream was all his.
* * * *
Troy will not be taken without the aid of Achilles.
I have anticipated too much.
Fresh Achaean troops have entered the battle for the hollow ships. Someone identifies them as the Myrmido
ns, swarming like ants toward the victorious Trojans. They are led by the fearsome Achilles himself.
It cannot be Achilles, I tell myself. I will that it not be Achilles. But he is dressed in Achilles’ armor, which the credulous say was forged by Hephaestus himself, he carries Achilles’ distinctive shield and his bronze sword with its silver-studded hilt, and he leads the Myrmidons.
Our lines waver when we see them come. Men of known courage look to right and left as if to find a place where they can hide from death. Suddenly the spears of the Myrmidons are falling among us; men crumple around me. The Trojan ranks break; our warriors fall back in total confusion. The Myrmidons extinguish the fire in the one half-burnt Achaean ship we had set alight, and then, roaring like a great animal with a single throat, the armed savages burst among us.
Now the other Achaeans, once apparently beaten, join in our pursuit. They strike down our leaders, Pyracchmes and Areilycus, Thoas and Amphiclus, Atymnius and Maris, Cleobulus and Lycon, Acamas and Erymas.
We flee across the Achaean wall and trench for a second time that day, the rattles and creaks of chariot wheels, the war shouts of the Achaeans, the thud of blows, the screams of wounded horses, the groans of dying men, all smothered in a haze of dust raised across the plain of Troy as we race for the walls of Ilium.