by Ryder Stacy
Rockson couldn’t breathe. Even his eyeballs hurt. They felt like lead ball bearings, boring back down into his brain. His vision narrowed, reddened.
“Have to do it,” he mumbled, and even that mumble gurgled back into his throat, his saliva choking him. Steeling his mighty-thewed legs, he gave it one more try, attempting this time to drop-kick the control lever. And with one mighty double thrust, his toe just touched the lever—enough to cut power, part way. The invisible pair of elephants on his chest became just a pair of donkeys. He was now able to reach up with his hand and pull the lever to the completely off position.
Suddenly there was total silence, total lack of the teeth-grinding vibration. All the klaxons and emergency buzzers kept ringing for a moment, and then they too cut off. Automatic systems must have begun repairing the damage he had done.
Rock hadn’t strapped in, and now, when he craned his neck up to see the array of dials, he floated weightless off the couch. He breathed easily, moved freely.
He twisted in the air, like a trapeze artist. He felt positively giddy due to the lack of oxygen all those minutes he had been accelerating. He checked the dials, hoping to find some indication of his course. He was no astronavigator, but as near as he could figure it, he was set on a course for the Earth’s planetary system. Evidently this baby had been programmed for its return trip before he’d boarded. Thank God for that. He’d have to coast most of the way, and then avoid scan-radar back at Earth.
He was exhausted. There was nothing to do for several hours now. He decided to get back down on the couch, strap down, and get some shut-eye.
But when he twisted in midair and started toward the couch, he drew in a sharp, icy breath of air—for he was already on the couch! Rockson saw his own body lying there!
Was he dead?
Fear as icy as a frozen icepick jerked into his heart, but he tried to look more carefully. Something was different. There was something wrong with this picture of himself! His body, below his face, was under some sort of covering—a sparkly blanket? No, a metallic chamber. He was seeing not the couch but some sort of iron lung-like capsule. His gaunt, dead face was staring up at him through the ugly metallic capsule’s face plate, his eyes open and staring in death, his mouth frozen in the last breath. Then he saw the boulder that had fallen and smashed the—the what?
The dream machine. He was inside something called the dream machine. And the machine was not in a spacecraft, but rather in some sort of huge, dark cave.
He just floated there, trying to control himself, trying to keep his mind away from total freak-out. He was on the brink of total screaming insanity, but he controlled, controlled. And Rockson tried to think logically—if a ghost can think, that is.
“I can think,” he thought, “therefore I am real. A real ghost? Let’s be reasonable. If I died, and I’m a ghost floating out of my own body, why the hell is my body in a capsule? Where is the spaceship? Conclusion: You might not be dead . . .”
His pounding heart slowed to a mere marathon-race rate. He spun his arm so that his floating body twisted about, drawing his horrified eyes up and away from his own dead frozen stare. The ghost Rockson looked around. It was a dark, huge cave, lit by a few emergency cannister lights. Under him was a stone tile floor scattered with broken pieces of equipment, some bloodstains . . . and other bodies of small men in red tunics, some holding sharp aluminum-looking cylinders—guns?—in their decaying hands.
Where the hell was this? This was something from a dream!
There were ethereal whispers now all around him. Rockson had visitors:
“Where are you?” he called. And they floated toward him—other ghosts. Floating about him, smiling, mocking.
A pale, semitransparent, naked Kimetta shook her finger at him. “You shouldn’t . . . be here,” she whispered like a hiss on the dark wind, as she floated alongside him.
“Where is here?” he shouted back, but his voice too was like a ghostly ice-whisper.
She just laughed and faded away.
Then Dovine’s fat form drifted past. Dovine was laughing like the ghost of Christmas present in the Dickens novel. And then came Kimetta’s father, chewing on grapes and wearing his laurel-leaf crown. The images, all as ghostly as his own airborne body, floated all around him, swirling out at him and laughing.
“Where am I?” he shouted again. “Tell me where I am!”
And this time Kimetta, Dovine, Warden Langdon, Ronette, all of them said in unison, “In a dream, Rockson. You’re in a dream, in a dream, in a dream.”
“Come back to us,” Kimetta’s ghostly voice pleaded. “Stay here, in reality. You don’t want to be dead do you?”
And then Rockson remembered. This cave wasn’t the dream. Esmerelda, and all those on that hateful asteroid, were the dream. “NO!” Rockson shouted. “I am not dreaming NOW. I won’t come back.”
Masked Ronette placed an ethereal kiss on his nonface. “What is dreaming?” she asked. “How do you know what is dreaming and what is real?”
“I know!” Rockson shouted, and they all faded away—screaming. He was alone again. Alone, and once more staring down at his body.
“I’m not dead,” he whispered, “not dead . . . yet.”
“Save yourself,” Kimetta’s voice whispered from the darkness. “Save yourself.”
“Save myself?” How could he?—YES! He managed to think heavy and his ghost body gained weight. Eventually ghost Rockson stood on the floor. He leaned over the capsule, holding down sheer terror. He looked inside the face plate. The Rockson inside was not dead. He was breathing with difficulty. He looked emaciated, near death. The capsule was dented, cracked at chest level; a large rock must have fallen from the cavern ceiling and smashed it, damaged it. Somehow Rockson the ghost knew that these capsules had life-support systems, and that this one’s system had been damaged by the falling rocks that now littered the floor near the capsule. That’s what had happened to the man—to the dreamer Rockson inside the capsule! He’s hurt.
“Maybe . . . so now what? What do I do?”
The ethereal-wind voice of Kimetta came again: “What would you do if it was somebody else in there?”
“Open the capsule. Open the capsule—can a ghost do these things,” he wondered. He touched his blue-white fingers to the latches and felt the metal, and he found that, ghost or not, he could exert some pressure on the latches. Better than that, he felt superstrong. He merely thought to unlatch the snaps and they came up, spraying hot, dry air out of the capsule. He reached in and lifted the body—his own body—up in his arms. “Oh my God,” he said, “what now?” He shook the sleeping Rockson.
“Wake up,” he said. “Please—wake up, so that I can wake up too!” Nothing. It was light, like a thin and dry rag doll, but it was still warm and breathing shallowly. Sobbing in confusion and fear, Rockson the ghost carried Rockson the nearly dead man over to a table, and placed him on top.
“What now?” he addressed the lingering ghosts above.
“What would you do,” whispered an ethereal Kimetta from the darkness, “if it was somebody else?”
“I KNOW!” he shouted. And the ghost Rockson immediately started to give himself, the dying Rockson, a careful examination. The wound in his chest looked bad. The ghost Rockson ripped apart the man’s tunic, revealing his bare and bloody chest. He gasped—if ghosts can gasp. It sounded faint, hollow.
The man’s ribs, his ribs, were actually caved in. His ribs were broken, bloody ribbons—not bones. SO WHAT? He couldn’t do anything about that now. He was no surgeon.
“Just keep him breathing. Someone is coming,” whispered dream Kimetta.
It seemed hopeless but he put his mouth to his own other mouth, and began CPR. In and out. In and out.
The other Rockson responded after a time, coughing out blood and bits of bone. Choking but strong breaths began to come more steadily.
Ghost Rockson felt relieved. For a moment he felt dizzy. Can ghosts feel dizzy? It was as if . . . as if
. . . yes! He was actually getting thinner, paler. He realized that he was fading away. He was becoming some sort of spiral in the air, a spiral of pure energy. Life energy. The man on the table breathed more easily, each breath stronger than the last. With the man Rockson’s every breath drawing in life energy, the ghost Rockson was losing his being. The ghost Rockson was being dragged into that now-breathing blue-white body. Into pain.
“Help!” he yelled. “No! I don’t want to—I don’t want to feel that man’s pain! It’s better to be a ghost! NO! I don’t want to . . .”
But it was no use. He was spinning, turning on a shiny silver cord, like bathwater going down a drain. He was slowly but surely being sucked into that body.
Pain! Oh Agony; awful excruciating pain at every breath. And noises, huge thundering blasts. The cave wall was shaking.
And a sharp light to the left as rock wall fell away. Figures clambered through the blasted-in opening.
“Rockson! Get Rockson out of the capsule! There may still be a chance,” someone ordered. Flashlight beams cut through the darkness and fell on the man lying on the table. “For the love of God!” someone exclaimed. “He’s gotten himself out of the capsule!”
A familiar huge, hairy shape loomed over him in the blinding light of a flashbeam. “Rockson! He’s hurt! Call surgeon!”
Archer! It was Archer!
Rock tried to smile, to focus his eyes. He could recognize the voice, smell the man looking at him with such pity. Archer had made it back!
Other hands, small, cold hands, touched and probed him. More pain. A small, faint voice, not meant for him to hear, whispered, “He’s in bad shape. We have to perform surgery immediately. Get him lots of whole blood. There’s surgical equipment in the back of the cave. Get the gas! I’ll perform the operation myself! Here, Archer. While I get the stuff, shoot this into his arm.”
And with those words he felt the prick in his arm. The pain eased. Rockson felt only a dark, pleasant oblivion.
Hours later, after stripping off the surgical mask, the Techno-survivor surgeon said to Archer, “I’ve done all I can. He’s still breathing, but I’m not sure I took care of all the internal damage. These mutant-types heal well. Any normal man would have died from those wounds. So I think he’ll live. But I’m worried about his brain—all that oxygen deprivation. I don’t know if he’ll ever come out of his coma.”
“He’s alive!” Archer insisted.
“We could bring him to Century City. But,”—Zydeco looked down at the floor—“brain damage is—irreversible . . .”
“No! I no believe that!” Archer cried, clutching the man’s lapels and lifting the frightened Zydeco off the floor.
And then Archer gasped and let go. Archer’s hat flew off and, as the Techno-survivor backed away, Archer started to scream and roar like a bear. There was a blue light shining from out of his head! As they all watched in awe, Archer’s crystal-implanted skull glowed. Each of the multifaceted crystals imbedded in his head started glowing.
“What the hell?” Zydeco said. “Archer, are you all right?”
“Shhh,” Archer said. “I’m getting a message through my crystals! The implanted crystals in my head have been quiet for years!”
“Message?” Zydeco was too amazed to comment on Archer’s sudden eloquence.
“From—the Glowers. Now, please, keep quiet!” Archer’s veins pulsed, and he moaned and nodded once in a while. Finally the light in the crystals in his head died out.
“What happened?”
“The Glowers gave me instructions to take Rockson someplace much closer than Century City. They say they will try to revive him. Three hundred thirty-one miles. Get me a map, before I forget. My brain hurts,” Archer said. “I don’t like talking so fast!”
Once he plotted out the way on the map, Archer became his old staring, inarticulate self again.
Quickly Zydeco and Archer arranged a stretcher to carry Rockson out. They placed him in the armored personnel carrier that they had stolen to break out of Zhabnovtown—and, wheels spinning, headed off toward the Glower encampment.
Twenty-Seven
The journey was swift and Archer’s directions kept them on course. But when the APC and the other commandeered Sov vehicles arrived at the spot where they expected to find the Glowers, there was no settlement there. “Could we have gotten the directions wrong?” Zydeco worried aloud.
“No!” Archer said, “I tell it right!”
Suddenly there was a humming. No, it was more like the wash sound of electrical currents in the air. Heads swiveled. Binocs were raised, scanning the rocky horizon. Zydeco saw it first: “THERE!” he gasped. “THREE of them.”
“Of what?” scientist Myra Flourite asked, focusing in on the same direction.
“I don’t know, honestly!” Zydeco gasped. “Three ships. God, they look like old pirate galleons; masts and sails and . . .”
“But there’s no water,” the white-smocked little surgeon exclaimed. “God, I see them, too. They’re coming fast! Must be sixty miles an hour. God, they’re not on wheels, the three galleons are floating over the surface of the sands!”
The strange ships weren’t the half of it. Huge, blue, glowing creatures manned the great sails’ ropes, steering the crafts with giant ships’ wheels, too. “Monsters!” Zydeco gasped. “Assume defensive positions!” Zydeco called out. The hot-ray men flattened out behind several boulders. Archer hit his forehead with a meaty left palm. “NO SHOOT! Yes, I remember,” he said, scratching his flickering, crystal-laden head. “I was on such ship many years ago. No, don’t shoot! They are friend!” shouted the not-so-gentle giant. “THEY’RE GLOWERS!”
The ships slid alongside them as they stood in a line of greeting. The mental words came out of a creature of glowing blue brilliance who leaned over. “ARCHER AND THE EIGHT CLOSEST TO HIM, CLIMB UP THE NETS WE THROW DOWN; GET ON BOARD. WE’LL SEND A SLING DOWN FOR THE STRETCHER. DO NOT TOUCH US OR YOU WILL SURELY DIE. THE REST OF YOU WILL RETURN TO REPAIR YOUR HOME.”
The big mountain man carried the stretcher containing Rockson over and put it in the lift. Once it was moving up, they all clambered up the soft, warm, plasticlike nets. The deck was awash with flickering blue energy. Everyone’s hair stood on end.
Up close now, the Techno-survivors were terrified. The things that had invited them on board stood in a phalanx, staring at them with saucer-shaped, green-yellow eyes. Zydeco and the other Techno-men huddled behind the massive frame of Archer. “You didn’t say the Glowers looked like this!” Zydeco exclaimed. “Are they human?”
And before Archer could answer, the lead Glower’s mind came into all of their minds at the same time. “WE LOOK SO STRANGE BECAUSE OUR ORGANS ARE OUTSIDE OUR SKINS, HELD BY CARTILAGE. WE ARE HELD TOGETHER BY ENERGIES OF THE MIND. THINK OF YOUR OWN BODIES TURNED INSIDE OUT. YOU WOULD LOOK MUCH LIKE WE DO. EXCEPT, OF COURSE, YOU WOULD DIE THAT WAY. BUT YES, WE ARE . . . OF HUMAN ORIGIN.”
That answer just seemed to make the Techno-survivors more frightened. So the leader of this band of Glowers sent a burst of mathematical models into the Techno-survivors’ minds, so that they might understand the nature of being a Glower more quickly in their own parlance. To Archer, of course, the model the Glower leader sent was much simpler, reminding Archer that the Glowers were the next step in evolution of mankind beyond the Rockson stage; that their evolution had been pushed forward—perhaps on another track entirely—by radiation; that they were the immortal children of the astronauts whose space station had been bathed in the rays of the nuclear war below them a hundred years earlier; that they were brothers, and Americans.
That eased minds only somewhat. Archer and Zydeco, with the rest of their party huddling behind them, faced the apparent leader, who communicated: “INTRODUCING YOUR MEMBERS IS NOT NECESSARY, WE SCAN YOUR MINDS. I AM THE TURQUOISE SPECTRUM. WE HAVE MET BEFORE, ARCHER, DO YOU REMEMBER?”
Archer nodded. He couldn’t tell this “man” from the others physically, but his radiant power was familiar
. Answering an unvoiced question from one of the Techno-survivors, the Glower leader spoke in all their minds:
“WE CALLED YOU TO THE NEAREST PLACE OUR SHIPS WOULD BE ABLE TO SAIL. OUR VILLAGE IS MANY MILES DISTANT, FAR OUT IN THE DESERT. WE WILL REACH IT IN A MATTER OF THREE AND A HALF OF YOUR HOURS. ROCKSON WILL NOT DIE IF WE REACH THE MEDICINE IN TIME.”
“Why didn’t you bring it?” Zydeco asked in a shaky voice.
“THE MEDICINE IS THE PLACE, NOT SOME DRINK,” Turquoise Spectrum responded immediately to the thought. “ONLY THE GREAT ENERGY OF THE AREA WE LIVE IN, AND ITS ANCIENT MEDICINE WHEEL, CAN EFFECT A CURE.”
Even as he spoke in their minds the great ships turned into the wind. Their sails shifted position under the guidance of the strange, inside-out beings that handled the guide ropes. The sails caught the wind (or the sunlight), and the ship slowly started to move in the direction from which it had come.
The other two ships followed. Zydeco’s thought: “Why three ships?” He was immediately responded to. “THOSE ARE GUNSHIPS. THEY CARRY . . .” There was a pause, as if there were no equivalent words. Finally the Glower leader’s thought continued. “THEY CARRY WEAPONS UNDREAMT OF EVEN IN YOUR WILDEST IMAGININGS. THERE ARE THINGS IN THE DESERT BETWEEN HERE AND WHERE WE INHABIT. THE ESCORT SHIPS KEEP US SAFE FROM INTRUDERS—INTERDIMENSIONAL BEINGS LET INTO THIS WORLD’S TIME-SPACE BY THE POWER OF THE NUCLEAR BLASTS LONG AGO. THESE THINGS DO NOT RESPOND TO REGULAR DEFENSES. YOU WILL SEE.”
About an hour into the trip, something like an alarm went off. As Zydeco, Archer, and the others watched in awe, the two gunships moved ahead of their “hospital” ship, where Rockson still floated over the deck in “medical stasis.”
“THEY ARE COMING,” the thought came.
“What?” Archer said aloud.
“SHHHH,” Turquoise Spectrum said in his mind. “WATCH.”