Dream thief

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  SPENCE STEPPED FROM HIS sanibooth actually whistling. He felt better than he had in weeks. Rested, alert, and happy. He had slept the whole night long, the sleep of the dead. And not one dream had intruded upon his slumber-at least not the dreams he had learned to fear of late: those without color, without form, which seemed born of some alien, sterile intelligence, which came into his mind and left him shaking and drained, but without memory.

  Whatever had been bothering him was now gone, or so he hoped. Perhaps it had only been the strain of adapting to the confines of the station. GM was the largest of the orbiting advancement centers; it was also the highest. Actually, it was the world's first self-sustaining space colony, maintaining an orbit three hundred and twenty thousand kilometers above the earth around a point astrophysicists called libration five. That distance, or rather the thought of that distance, sometimes had a strange effect on newcomers. Some experienced symptoms of claustrophobia; others became nervous and irritable and had difficulty sleeping, or had bad dreams. Often these problems were not immediately apparent; they developed slowly over the first weeks and months of the rookie jumpyear and had very little in common with the allied problem of space fatigue, which only seasoned veteransthose in their fifth or sixth jumpyear-seemed to contract. That was something else entirely.

  So Spence, feeling very pleased with himself that he had weathered the worst and had come through, rubbed his body with a hot, moist towel to remove the fine, blue powder of the personal sanitizer and then tossed the towel into the laundry port. He dressed in a fresh blue and gold jumpsuit and made his way into the lab to reweave the dangling threads of his project.

  He slipped into the lab quietly and found Dr. Tickler hunched over a worktable with an array of electronic gear and testing equipment spread out around him.

  "Good morning," said Spence amiably. There was no real day or night, but the Gothamites maintained the illusion, and the station flipped slowly over on its axis on a twelve-hour cycle to help in the deception.

  "Oh, there you are! Yes, good morning." Tickler bent his head around to observe Spence closely. He wore a magnifying hood which made his eyes bug out absurdly, like two glassy doorknobs splotched with paint.

  "Anything serious?"

  "One of the scanners is fritzing. Nothing serious. I thought I would take the opportunity to set it in order."

  Spence detected a slight rebuff in Tickler's clipped tone. Then he remembered he had missed the work assignment he made for last night.

  "I'm sorry. I-I wasn't feeling very well yesterday." That was true enough. "I fell asleep. I should have let you know."

  "And the days before that?" Tickler tilted his head forward and raised the hood to look at him sharply. Before Spence could think of a suitable reply, his assistant shrugged and said, "It makes no difference to me, Dr. Reston. I can always get another assignment-not with so prestigious a colleague, perhaps, but one where my services will be taken seriously.

  "You, on the other hand, I suspect, would find it somewhat difficult to secure an assistant at this late date. You would be forced to postpone your project, would you not?"

  Spence nodded mutely.

  "Yes, I thought so. Well, the choice is yours, but I will put up with no more of this. I respect your work, Dr. Reston, and I will have mine so respected. Now"-he smiled a stiff little smile devoid of any warmth-"now that we understand one another I am sure there will be no further problems."

  "You are correct," returned Spence woodenly. He felt like a schoolboy who had been tardy once too often and now had been properly scolded. That was bad enough, but he hated being reminded that he was only on GM by way of a generous grant and could not chart his own course beyond the narrowly defined limits of the grant. He had no money of his own, at least not the kind needed to pay for a berth aboard even the smallest space lab, let alone GM. By sheer brainpower alone he was here; that and the goodwill of the GM Advancement Board.

  "I can assure you that there will be no further misunderstandings. Now, we will begin where we should have last evening."

  As they worked together, readying the lab for the next battery of experiments, the happy inner glow rekindled Spence's spirits. He did feel better than he had in weeks. And, after all, it could have been worse for him: Tickler could have requested reassignment. That would have really bollixed up the works and made him look bad before the Board.

  In the end he came around to feeling fairly grateful to Tickler for the reprimand. He had it coming, maybe even needed it to settle his mind on his work once more. And he felt a little sorry for Tickler-an older man, himself a C-level Ph.D., reduced to playing lab assistant and watching younger men advance in his place. One had to feel sorry.

  As he passed by the control booth with its huge reading board he caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection of the halfsilvered window. He saw a young man leaving his twenties, lean, slightly above average in height, straight of limb and steady of hand. Large dark eyes looked out from under a brown thatch of hair which, no matter how it was combed, always appeared rebellious. The face showed a quick intelligence and by the thrust of a firm jaw a decisive resolve almost bordering on stubbornness. It was a face which did not easily show emotion, but one which was saved from being completely cold and aloof by a full, sensitive mouth perched above a deeply cleft chin. …

  THE SHIFT WORE AWAY and by the end of it he was ready to begin the next round of sleep experiments. He celebrated the return of his will to work by treating himself to an hour in Gotham's arcade playing Rat Race, his favorite hologame. It was one of the latest generation of hologames featuring a biofeedback variable that homed in on the player's mental and emotional reflexes. In his present good spirits Spence racked up half-a-million points before the rats caught him and he turned the game over to a group of impatient cadets. He left the noisy arcade and was soon strolling idly along his favorite path among the great green ferns of Central Park.

  He had stopped to steep himself in the damp, earthy atmosphere of the place-eyes closed, face tilted upward to receive shield-reflected sunlight, drawing great gulps of air deep into his lungs-when he heard a rustle behind him. Reluctantly he turned to allow the other to pass, and as he opened his eyes discovered himself blinking into two liquid orbs of china blue fringed with long dark lashes.

  "You!" Spence jumped back involuntarily.

  The disarming intruder laughed and replied gaily, "I thought it was you; I see I was right. I never forget a face."

  "You startled me. I didn't mean to shout at you."

  "You are forgiven. I've been following you. You certainly wander around an awful' lot. I almost lost you several times."

  "You were following me?"

  "How else was I going to apologize? I happened to see you in the concourse-I always come down to the park, every day."

  "Apologize?" Spence kicked himself for babbling like an imbecile. "For what?" he added.

  "For my shocking behavior yesterday. I'm sorry, really. I had no right to treat you that way. Very unprofessional of me."

  "Oh, that's all right," he muttered.

  The young lady chattered on. "It's just that it was close to the end of the shift and I was getting a little giddy. I do that when I get tired. And anyway, Daddy has been gone so long I'm afraid I've kind of let the decorum of his office disintegrate."

  "Daddy?" Another inner kick.

  "Oh, there I go again. I'm always getting ahead of myself somehow."

  "You mean your father is the director of GM?"

  "Yes-the colony, not the corporation."

  "Then you're his daughter…" Buffoon! What are you saying?

  "That's right," she laughed. "It makes it nice that way."

  "You work for him? I mean…"

  "No, not really. I was just helping out because both he and his assistant are gone. I didn't have anything else to do. They've been gone all week setting up some sort of field trip or something."

  "That sounds interesting." Spence was dying for somet
hing half-intelligent to say. At least he had passed imbecile and was now merely moronic.

  "Does it? I suppose so, to a scientist, I mean. I have no desire to go tramping around on Mars or anywhere else. I didn't even like the jump up here very much."

  Spence had heard about such "field trips," as she called them; at least once a session various cadets would be chosen to take a trip to one of the extra-terrestrial bases to see firsthand the work going on there. Mars was without doubt the deluxe trip. Anyone who made that one would add an appreciable amount of prestige to his credentials.

  "When is the-ah, field trip supposed to take place? I hope you don't mind my asking. Would you like to walk for a while? My name is Spencer. Spence."

  "I know. I looked it up in your file, Dr. Reston." To his look of mild surprise she added, "Oh, it wasn't hard. I told you I never forget a face. And I remembered the bar code on your jumpsuit."

  "Right." They began to walk slowly among the ferns and leafy trees. Now, however, Spence was aware of a new scent among the musky odors of the tropical garden. A fresh clean scent: lemons, he decided.

  "I'm Ari. It's short for Ariadne, only if you ever call me that I'll never speak to you again."

  For an instant Spence considered that would be an extremely unfortunate event, but then realized he hardly knew the girl at all. "Hmmm." He screwed up his face into a contemplative scowl. "Ariadne-that's Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Minos of Crete. She gave her lover Theseus a ball of twine which he used to escape the labyrinth of the minotaur."

  "Very good!" She laughed and clapped her hands. "Not one person in a thousand remembers that."

  "Oh, I regard myself something of a classicist," remarked Spence with a mock-serious air. "Ari. It's a nice name. I like it."

  "I like yours, too." They stopped walking. As Spence turned to look at her he could feel his nerve evaporating. "Well, it's been nice talking to you," she said. "I do have to go now. Maybe we'll run into each other again sometime." She hesitated. "Bye."

  She turned quickly and ducked under a large frond and Spence watched her dart away like a deer, her long blonde hair flagging behind as she disappeared among the green shadows. He stood perplexed by the strange mix of emotions which assailed him. He was sorry to see her go; and yet he told himself that he could not feel that way, that he had never seen her before yesterday, that she was just like every other girl he had ever met. Still, a vague sense of loss settled on him as he continued to walk the garden paths.

  4

  … SPENCE STUMBLED BRUISED AND bleeding across a rocky, alien landscape. Over his shoulder Earth, a beautiful, serene blue globe, rose full in the black, formless sky. He winced with pain as needlelike shards of tiny cinders sliced the soles of his bare feet and scraped the flesh away from his knees and the palms of his hands when he fell. He felt a cool wetness on his cheek and lifted a hand to his face.

  Tears. He was crying.

  Then he was standing on the top of a low mountain overlooking a lush green valley. Around him a gentle breeze played among tiny yellow flowers, shifting their sunny heads playfully with each gust. The air bore a sweetly pungent scent and seemed to vibrate with a faintly audible tinkling sound which reminded him of bells.

  In the valley below, small white houses, each surrounded by its own neat acreage, dotted the slopes in an orderly fashion. He could see the minute figures of people going about their daily chores, moving in and out of the little houses. An atmosphere of unfathomable peace and wholeness enfolded the valley like a golden mist and Spence was crying-heartbroken because he did not belong in that valley, among those people who lived in such simple splendor.

  The air grew cold around him. The fragile yellow flowers shriveled at his feet. The tears froze on his face. He heard the empty howl of frigid winds roaring down as if from incredible heights. He looked down in despair and watched the verdant valley wither and turn brown. The whitened wisps of dried grass and leaves flurried about him in the savagely gusting wind.

  He shivered and wrapped his arms tightly across his chest to keep warm. He glanced down at his feet and saw that he stood upon hard, bare earth. He saw something sparkle and beheld a small pile of diamonds glittering in the icy glare of a harsh, violent moon. They were his tears-frozen where they had fallen. The earth would not receive them. …

  SPENCE WAS AWAKE LONG before he opened his eyes. He simply lay and allowed the waves of feeling to wash over him, filling the cavernous emptiness inside his chest with fiercely contending emotions. He felt like a leaf tossed in a tempest, a rag blown before the glowering storm. He lay with his eyes clamped shut and tried to make sense of it all.

  At last the storm subsided and he wearily opened his eyes and got up, placing the scanner cap on its hook. He sat for a moment on the edge of the couch experiencing a mild light-headedness which he had not noticed before. The moment passed and he stood up slowly, and in doing so his hand brushed his headrest. He stared at it as if he had never seen it before. The light sky blue of the pillow's case bore two darker stains side by side. He touched them lightly, knowing what they were. The pillow was damp with his tears. …

  "… AND I CAN'T HELP feeling that it was a mistake to use myself as a subject in the research, that's all." Spence was speaking quietly, but with some conviction to Dr. Lloyd, head of the BioPsych department of Gotham. He had sought out Dr. Lloyd as a sympathetic ear.

  "But I disagree, Dr. Reston. I was on the academic board that evaluated your grant proposal. I voted for it; I think it is quite sound, and if I may say so, quite insightful. How else can a scientist fully evaluate subjective data without himself experiencing the phenomena which produce the data? Your work with tyrosine hydroxylase interaction with catecholamines is little short of revolutionary. I think you have touched upon a very viable research model, and one which, if successful, could pioneer the way for some very prime developments in sleep science. Your research is key to the LTST project as a whole. Speaking as a colleague, I'd like to see you continue. I think that is imperative."

  Spence was not hearing what he had hoped to hear. Dr. Lloyd, with great enthusiasm, was defending Spence's own pro posal against him.

  "Perhaps there would be a way to restructure the project, maybe-"

  Dr. Lloyd smiled benignly and shook his head from side to side slowly. "You haven't given it a proper chance. Why not see where it will take you?"

  "I could interpose another subject into the same design-I wouldn't have to…"

  "No, no. I can understand your anxiety. But you have already done so much. How do you know that you are not even now evincing some of the signs of LTST yourself? Eh? Have you thought of that?"

  "But-"

  "Dr. Reston, believe me, I admire your work. I would hate to see anything augur ill for the progress you've already made. Your career is in its ascendancy. You will go far. But as a friend I must warn you. Don't tinker with your design now. It would not look good to the Board. You would not wish to appear, shall we say, undecided? Wishy-washy?

  "I am afraid the Board would take a dim view of any changes at this late date. And, as a member of the Board, I would have to agree."

  "I suppose you're right, Dr. Lloyd. Thank you for your time." Spence rose reluctantly to his feet and his colleague led him to the door with his hand on Spence's shoulder.

  "Any time, Dr. Reston. Please feel free to stop by any time. That's what I'm here for." Lloyd chuckled, delighted that he could be of help to the legendary young Dr. Reston. "Go back to your work. I should tell you we're all watching your progress with the greatest interest."

  "Thank you. Good-bye, sir."

  "Don't mention it. Good-bye. Come by any time."

  Spence had met with a brick wall of his own making. He had not considered it before, but it made sense that GM would want him as much as he had first wanted them. His presence would lend to the overall prestige of the Center, and now that they had him they were not going to let anything happen to him that would lessen his value as a
contributor. They were not about to let anything stand in the way of Dr. Reston's glorious success, not even Dr. Reston himself.

  He walked gloomily back to the lab, feeling trapped. What was happening to him? Was he losing his sanity? Was this how it started?

  The dreams were back, end they were beginning to exert more and more control over his sleep state. He awoke in the morning drained and unrested, his emotions on the ragged edge. The dreams themselves he could not remember. They were shadowy forms which moved barely beyond the edges of consciousness.

  Was Lloyd right? Was he undergoing the strain associated with long-term space travel? If so, how was that possible? He had not been on GM long enough. Was there some mechanism which acted to somehow speed up his own experience-the encephamine injections, perhaps? Or was there some other explanation?

  Only one thing was certain: the dreams had returned to haunt him.

  Perhaps he should do as Dr. Lloyd suggested, simply follow where his mind would take him. Spence shrank from the thought. There was something in him that rebelled at that suggestion. Irrationally rebelled, it seemed, because it was solidly logical advice. Yet something within Spence-his spirit, his conscience, that tiny inner voice-screamed a warning at the thought of abandoning his reason to the design of the project. Even if it was his own project.

  Spence sought to quell this inner mutiny as he walked back to the lab. There was no reason not to continue as planned-no scientifically objective reason.

  He entered the lab with the faint whisper of the sliding partition. The lights were off and Tickler was gone. The lab was quiet. He stepped in and the door slid closed behind him, leaving him in complete darkness and silence.

  He turned to fumble in the blackness for the access plate in order to switch on a lighting panel overhead. As he wheeled around, the faintest trace of a glimmer caught his eye. He stopped and turned back slowly.