Dream thief

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Suddenly the interior of the hive blazed with white light and the air sang with a superhigh-pitched hum. He threw his hand over his eyes and fell on his face.

  He waited. Nothing happened.

  He cautiously raised his head and saw before him on a low pedestal an oblong object shaped like a coffin and bearing three narrow cylinders topped with spheres. The spheres were transparent and filled with liquid. On the floor beside him sat his own broken sphere next to the low base on which sat the ovals, one of which he had pushed and which apparently had illumined the place. It was this low base or console of sorts he had stumbled over, breaking off the sphere which may have been attached to it.

  The light which had blazed so brightly emanated from beneath the pedestal of what looked more than anything like a translucent sarcophagus. It gleamed darkly, its facets like shining scales of a reptile, showing gray as the light came through and around them.

  He rose and went to it, rubbing at one of the plates as he would have rubbed at a fogged window pane, trying to peer inside a forbidden room. The contents, if any, could not be clearly made out.

  Spence turned once more to the small console. He had pushed the center oval with some effect. Now he chose the oval stone on the right and carefully pressed it.

  Again the high-pitched hum and as he watched, eyes riveted on the sarcophagus, one of the three spheres of liquid slowly began trickling through the cylinder and into the murky depths of the mysterious box. When the first sphere was empty the process was continued with the second sphere, and likewise by the third in its turn.

  Spence tiptoed to the oblong box and pressed his face to the dim plates. He saw an indistinct mass of intricately interwoven material. It was fibrous and reedy, shrunken and withered, vaguely man-shaped like a mummy. But it was not a mummy. The thing lay in about six centimeters of liquid on which floated, as far as he could make out, a thick film of dust.

  He supposed the device to be some kind of machine for growing food. It was the first thing that came into his mind, for with the light and water and the floating nutrients the apparatus reminded him of a greenhouse in miniature, though a greenhouse of a design he was sure no man on Earth had ever seen.

  He waited for the last of the liquid in the third globe to trickle into the greenhouse chamber and then he went back and pressed the third oval.

  The hum which filled the room now made a deeper sound, and he imagined the interior of the hive growing warmer almost immediately.

  He went to the growing tank and placed his hands on the sides. It did feel warmer to the touch, but he could not be certain. He waited for a little while and nothing else happened, or seemed about to.

  He decided to conduct a hive-to-hive search to see if he might turn up any more of the strange greenhouses. This he did and was disappointed. Finding no more of the devices nor anything else of interest, he returned somewhat dejected to the first dwelling.

  During his search Spence had puzzled over the voice that had beckoned him and thus brought him back from the brink. Twice he had heard it-the first time it had awakened him from the sleep of death just in time. The second utterance had directed him to the hive which, alone of all the others, contained the growing-machine and the water. This had also saved him.

  Spence had once seen a map of the world drawn by a sailor in the eighth century. The map conceived of a flat world where known perils were clearly marked. Toward the edges of the world, where the boundary between the known and the unknown had been drawn, the mapmaker had written the words, here be dragons.

  Anyone who spoke of the supernatural within Spence's hearing he summarily lumped into the same cast as the ignorant and superstitious Byzantine sailor. Regarding religion, Spence had slightly more respect, but only a shade more. He considered it in its milder expressions a form of harmless do-goodism, the refuge of weaker minds perplexed and frightened by the world they saw and their own inability to change it. It was a psychological holdover from a time long past when men, yearning for order but not knowing how to create it, conjured up a Supreme Being who was not affected by the daily ebb and flow of change, who was not part of the confusion because he stood outside it. And if he did not help resolve the chaos of the world, he at least did not add to it and so was conceived to be benevolent in his dealings with his creatures.

  He allowed that faith in this God-Being was a minor virtue of sorts, in the same way kindness to dumb animals or small children was a virtue. He did not mock it as a rule-such virtues had a place in the world-but he did not find anything in it to recommend it for himself.

  And yet, he had prayed-if one could call it a prayer-to this same Supreme Being in his own moment of doubt and pain. This, he concluded, had been the act of a drowning man, one who might not have believed in life jackets, but who was nevertheless willing to try one as a last resort before the waters closed over his head forever.

  He had done it out of weakness, and understandably so.

  But the voice-that was something different. He had heard it.

  He could not argue it away; its presence still lingered in his mind.

  Spence settled down in the room with the growing-machine to brood and wait for any new developments. He would sleep and wait; if nothing more seemed forthcoming he would take his water and retrace his route back through the tunnels, or try to find another way back to the surface. The latter plan seemed to offer more promise since he doubted he would be able to climb back up along those tunnels with any success: the walls were too smooth and slippery and steep.

  7

  … THE TUNNEL, GLOWING GENTLY with a subtle blue green shimmer, wound up and out of the planet's interior. Spence, clinging with fingers and toes to the slippery surface had, by sheer strength of nerve and will, dragged himself up to the very entrance of the underground shaft. Before him, glimmering coolly, stood two doors.

  As he approached the doors he understood that one door led out onto the surface of the Red Planet and the other contained the answer to his dreams. With this realization came a moment of dizzying indecision. His heart began to race. Sweat beaded on his face and neck.

  Which one should he open? Which freedom did he desire more?

  He raised himself and placed his hand on the knob of the door nearest him and stepped into an empty room. At once his heart sank-he had been tricked. There was nothing here to help him.

  But as he stood blinking into the room's dim interior, a mist gathered, boiling out of the floor in front of him, rising in a dense cloud.

  The vapors churned and he saw red sparks like lightning darting in thin streaks, and he could see a shape dimly emerging as if it were being knit together out of the vapors. He watched as the shape took on a vaguely human form.

  The cloud receded, falling away in curling tendrils to reveal a creature remarkably manlike but fashioned out of different stuff entirely.

  The thing, motionless, towered over him, its smooth, hairless skin gleaming golden and wet with beads of moisture. He felt a tremor pass through him as the man-being drew its first breath.

  He felt the urge to turn away, to run and hide himself from its presence, but he could not move; he was held by an inescapable force. He buried his face in his hands and peered through trembling fingers at the stern, spare features. The eyelids flickered and raised slowly, and two great yellow eyes, like those of a cat, glared down on him. He shrank away from their sight.

  But the monster saw him and saw through him, piercing him to the innermost recesses of his heart. It raised one lanky arm and opened its mouth to speak.

  He fell to his knees as if to beg for mercy from the creature, but it stepped forward with surprising quickness for something so tall. it scooped him up in strong arms and carried him into the darkened corner of the room, which suddenly changed into a wide, brightly lit corridor with an arched ceiling, joined by other corridors which led away from it at regular intersections along the way.

  The golden being carried Spence effortlessly with long, sure strides and at
last came to a great domed room which was filled with exotic-looking machines and strange instruments. He placed Spence in a kind of bowl-shaped chair and put a thin transparent shell of a helmet on his head. The creature bent over a low bank of spheres mounted atop one another and Spence felt a warm sensation sweep over him.

  The creature looked at him and asked, "Who are you? Why have you come'?" …

  THE PAIN WAS A laserknife that sliced through his brain, carving it neatly in half in one effortless stroke. One moment Spence had been standing atop one of the taller domed hives searching the underground cavescape for anything resembling an entrance or exit. The next thing he knew he was lying on his side with the pain bursting in fireballs inside his head.

  He had plunged through the thin shell of the structure when the portion he was standing on collapsed with a brittle crack under his weight. He landed on his side and when he made an attempt to move, the pain had exploded in dazzling colors.

  He lay back panting for a long time until the pain subsided enough for him to roll over and put his hands on the floor to push himself up. The effort left him head down, retching with dry heaves. He fell into a fit of coughing and tasted blood in his mouth when he was finished. He looked down and saw flecks of blood in the thick dust. With a stab of horror he realized that he had broken one or more ribs and that at least one of the broken ribs had punctured his lung. He fell back and a long sobbing wail burst from his throat; tears rolled down his cheeks as he rocked back and forth in the debris around him, howling in despair and agony.

  Sometime later, whimpering with pain at every step, he dragged himself back to the first hive and lay down near the water sphere. The hours blurred and ran. The fire in his side increased unbelievably. Spence teetered on the brink of consciousness, often tipping over the edge. Fever raged as he coughed and the lung filled with fluid, threatening to suffocate him. Any but the smallest movement brought crescendos of pain booming through his body. His chest felt as if it were clamped between white-hot pincers.

  Spence lay in a dream world, half awake, half swooning in his own sweat. He roused himself periodically to sip water from the sphere and then fell back weakly following each exertion.

  Time passed; he had no idea how much time. The already confused hours merged together and he could not easily tell his waking moments from dreaming ones-they all fused and mingled like beads of wax on a heated plate.

  It was during one of his rarer waking moments that he heard the pulsing hum of the machine next to him; actually, it occurred to him that he had been hearing it for some time. He turned his head and shifted his body slightly to get a better view.

  The gray translucent sides of the coffinlike box had grown murky, as if clouds of vapor swirled within. As he watched he saw tiny flashes, like red lightning arcing from point to point within the plated box, illuminating the interior.

  Stirred by this sight he inched himself closer and slowly, painfully edged high enough to press his face against one of the lower plates to peer inside.

  He saw a bubbling mass of gelatinous material, glistening in the light of the tiny flashes. The oozing stuff had covered the dry reedy material with a quivering layer that gave off a heavy vapor like a steam. He noticed the dim outlines of a form beginning to take shape-a form that was vaguely familiar.

  Spence drifted in and out of consciousness, waking, sleeping, fainting. Weakened by hunger and the agony tearing at him like a ravenous beast, he could not be certain of what he was seeing or when. The room, his thoughts, the pain, the machine-all took on the airy illusory quality of one of his dreams.

  Reality dissolved around him.

  He moaned, howled, and sang crude songs; he laughed like one demented and wept like lost innocent. rasps, Hand e long strange sounds: sighs and gurglings, g Pt, g quaking wheezes. He could not be certain that all these did not emanate from himself, but they seemed to come from within the growing – box.

  At some point the light from the sarcophagus's pedestal changed from white to a rosy pink, bathing the room and Spence in the ruddy illusion of vitality. Soon afterward the upper portion of the machine separated from the lower portion. There was a rushing gasp of escaping vapors and the room was filled with an acrid smell like burnt rubber.

  He lay with his head lolling on the floor, choking and gagging. But as the interior of the plated box cleared, he raised him self feebly over the edge to look inside.

  He saw a body stretched out in deathlike repose-humanoid, with limbs and torso like a man's, but remarkably elongated. Its features, and the details of its body, remained unformed as if it were made of clay and only partly finished. There was no sign at all of life-the thing could have been a statue whose sculptor had been called away before finishing his work.

  Twice more in lucid moments Spence looked into the machine. Each time it seemed that the thing had become more developed, though the exact changes were hard to pinpoint.

  By the hour he became weaker and more unstable. The pain in his chest was a constant piercing throb. He lay curled around his water sphere, without the power to raise his head. He slept long and fitfully, his sleep tortured by the torments of a broken body and troubled spirit. He dreamed strange and fantastic dreams and saw things which terrified him.

  In one of these frightening visions he ran down a stinking, garbage-filled street pursued by shrieking black demons with flashing teeth and shining eyes. Nowhere could he hide or escape them.

  They followed him in a pack like wolves, snarling in evil rage.

  In what might have been another dream he saw the form of a golden being rise from the gray-plated coffin. He saw the moisture glistening on the smooth, hairless skin, and he heard the swift and sudden inhalation of air drawn into its lungs. He saw the eyelids slowly raise to reveal two large, almost luminous yellow eyes which regarded him with a coldly reptilian stare.

  Then he was aware of smooth walls in the lighted corridor sliding past him and he thought he was back at Gotham, riding in one of the trams. He turned his head and saw a long, three-fingered hand gripping his shoulder and he looked up into the huge yellow eyes.

  When next he regained consciousness he was in a room filled with odd-looking devices and he was surrounded with a filmy substance which hung over him like a limp tent made of cobwebs. The tent glittered and pulsed with energy. He glanced down and saw a red, ragged gash in his side surrounded by putrid green-black flesh, swollen and disfigured. His flesh was skewered by two long white needlelike objects which caused a tingling sensation in his bones.

  Then he dreamed that he stood under a wide blue canopy atop a high mountain and felt the cool air whipping at his clothes. He saw an ancient castle set on a peak just above him and black birds circling slowly in the air, keening their sharp disapproval. A voice formed words inside his head that danced and made sparkling images, but the words had no meaning and the images were utterly foreign to any realm of his experience.

  And then there was only darkness-blessed darkness and release.

  8

  … THE MESSAGE HAD BEEN puzzling enough, but the young man standing before her was no less cryptic. Ari regarded his smiling face suspiciously and answered slowly, "I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. I haven't seen Dr. Reston for several weeks."

  Kurt nodded reassuringly. "I understand. Dr. Reston wished his whereabouts to be kept secret, but he has communicated with us and wanted me to contact you."

  "You said you had a message from him?" Ari stated firmly, not giving away her sudden flourish of hope.

  "Yes, I was just getting to that. He said that he was fine and to tell you that he missed you very much. He was looking forward to getting back and seeing you."

  "Is that all? Did he say anything about his work?"

  "Oh, yes. He said that his work was going very smoothly, and that he was very glad he'd gone-apart from missing you, that is. I take it he likes you very much."

  Ari ignored the comment, but the young man smiled so sincerely she felt like an o
gre for suspecting him. He obviously was telling the truth.

  "I think so," Ari admitted.

  "And you like him-I can tell. Did you know he was going to Mars?"

  "Certainly, I-" Ari paused, glancing quickly at the cadet's face. He seemed genuinely interested. "That is, I suppose I did. He doesn't confide in anyone very much, you know."

  "You can say that again. I just figured he might have told you-that birthday gift and all. We didn't even know he'd gone. Don't you think that was odd of him to sneak off like that?"

  "Was it that big a secret then?" asked Ari. "I assumed he told those who needed to know."

  "It must have slipped his mind," Kurt laughed. "Well, I better be going." The panel slid open and the young man made to leave. "By the way, is there anything you want me to tell him for you-in case he contacts us again?"

  Ari smiled and shook her head. "No, nothing that can't wait. Just tell him to be careful and that I'm anxious to see him again."

  "Will do. Good-bye, Miss Zanderson. See you around."

  "Good-bye, Mr. Millen." The portal slid shut.

  The whole visit seemed innocent enough, but she could not help feeling that something more, something unspoken, lay behind it. After all this time, why had he come? Why now? Furthermore, something he said sounded suspicious to her. What was it?

  She hoped she had not given Spence's secret away. Perhaps she was just being overly protective. Perhaps Spence had resolved his problem as he hoped he would and wanted to let her know. He would have sent his cadet with a message. It was plausible enough.

  Then why couldn't she accept it? Surely, there was something more here than simple female vanity. Ari had had the impression that when Spence decided to break silence she would be the first one he contacted. She felt betrayed, but told herself she was just being silly. Beside, she should be happy that he was all right.