Wine of the Dreamers: A Novel

by John D. MacDonald

  “Come with us,” Leesa said.

  “No. I’m needed here. If your heresies turn out to be true, my people will need someone to explain it to them. My place is here.”

  They left and he closed the door, retaining for a moment the image of the two figures leaning against the wind, the six ships in the background. He went back to those who waited and told them very calmly that it was all over.

  FOURTEEN

  The light plates set into the control room walls made a soft glow. Air came through the tiny grills in a sound like an endless sigh.

  The entire control room was mounted on a shining piston that went straight down through the heart of the ship. The partitioned space along one wall, forty feet by ten, held the row of beds. Beyond the opposite partition were food stores, water tanks, sanitary equipment.

  Leesa lay on the bunk and he folded the web straps across her body, drawing them tight. The last strap circled her forehead.

  She looked up into his eyes. “Are we really ready?”

  “We have to be. And I’ll make a confession. If all this hadn’t happened, I was going to try it alone, without you.”

  “Maybe,” she said softly, “this is all just another dream, Raul. A more clever dream. Can you find Earth?”

  “I know the number for Earth. I’ll set it the way Bard Lane explained. And then, quite soon, we’ll know.”

  “Promise me one thing.”

  He looked down at her. “What is it?”

  “If we are wrong. If there are no worlds out there. Or if we lose our way, I want to die. Quickly. Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  He slid the partition shut and went to the control panel. His pilot’s couch was on rails so that, once he was in place, he could slide it forward under the vertical panel and lock himself in place. He strapped his ankles and his waist and pushed himself under to lie looking up at the controls. He activated the three-dimensional screen. There were the six ships, the tall white world, the sandy plain and the hills. He opened the book and took a last look at the reference number for Earth even though it had long since been memorized. He set the ten-digit number, six plus values and four minus ones, on the ten dials, checked it again. The replica ship was in neutral position. Only then did he strap the diaphragms firmly to his throat. He pulled the headband up and tightened it, slid his arms down into the straps.

  And softly as he could, he made the vowel sound. The ship shuddered, trembled. On the screen the tiny image moved slowly upward, upward. Now the stern was as high as the bows of the other ships. He strengthened the vowel tone and the replica ship remained in the middle of the screen, the planet moving away below it, the curvature beginning to show, the white tower world dwindling.

  He rashly strengthened his tone once more. A vast weight pressed his jaw open, punched down on his belly, blinded him by pressing his eyes back into his head. He heard, from a great distance, Leesa’s scream of pain. He ceased all sound. The pressure slowly left him. He was dizzy with weightlessness. His home planet had shrunk to the size of a fist. It appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the screen and the image of the ship had dwindled until it was a bright mote against the darkening screen.

  He took a weightless arm out of the strap, thumbed the knurled knob at the side of the screen. His planet slid off the screen and, by experimentation, he made the ship image grow larger. He moved close to it. The opposite knob seemed to rotate the ship itself end for end, but he realized that it merely shifted the point of vision. He adjusted it until he was looking forward from dead astern of the ship. The vast disc of the sun was straight ahead. He moved his hand to the replica ship and turned it through a ninety-degree arc to the right. As the sun slid off the screen, the replica ship moved slowly back to neutral. The screen showed distant spots of light against the utter blackness. He began to make the vowel sound again, cautiously at first, running it each time up to the limits of endurance, then resting in silence as the ship rushed, without noise, through the void. He understood that each time he made the sound he gave it another increment of speed. At last, no matter how loudly he made the sound, he could feel no answering downward thrust and he knew that the top limit had been reached.

  Somewhere, ahead, the time setting would take effect. He did not know where. He did not know how long it would be.

  FIFTEEN

  Four midnights passed. Bard and Sharan waited three hours each time. The appointment was not kept. No thrusting fingers of thought entered their minds, singing gladly of reunion. For the first three midnights, Bard and Sharan were gay with each other, laughing too easily.

  After the three tense hours of waiting had passed on the fourth night, Bard looked across the room at Sharan.

  “He told me that their attitude was heresy in his world, Sharan.”

  “Why haven’t they come? Why?”

  “Logically we can make either of two assumptions. One, that they have been punished, perhaps put to death by their own people. Two, that they have started the voyage.”

  There were lines of strain around her mouth. “And the third possibility?”

  “That it was a game they got tired of? That they have no ability to follow through on a course of action? Do you believe that, actually?”

  Her smile was weak. “I guess not. Isn’t it odd to feel that you know them so well, never seeing them?”

  “Not so odd. Not with shared thoughts. Not with two … souls, if I can use that word, sharing the same brain tissue. Sharan, we owe them something. We owe them the assumption that they were forced, somehow, to start the trip. I don’t know how long it will take. A month, possibly. Now just imagine what would happen if a ship of that description started to land here, or in Pan-Asia. Interceptor rockets would scream up. Shoot first and ask questions later. Our friends would be, within seconds, a large blue-white flash and a rain of radioactive particles. Have you thought of that?”

  She put her hand slowly to her throat. “No! They wouldn’t!”

  “Look, Sharan. According to Raul and Leesa, the rest of the Watchers believe, even when they can visit three other planets through the dream machines, that they are alone in the universe. What is the primary egoism of man? That his planet is the only inhabited planet, his race the life-apex of the universe. Thus any unknown ship can only be the ship of an enemy nation on this same planet.”

  “Then they have no chance!”

  “We are their chance, Sharan. We’ve got to let Earth know, somehow, that they are coming. They’ll laugh at us. But even so, if Raul and Leesa are in transit, it might mean that at the crucial moment, someone may decide not to push the button. I wish they had come to us once more. I intended to warn them, tell them how to go into orbit outside the reach of the rockets and make identification. The way it stands they’ll come directly in.”

  “If they never come, Bard?”

  “We’ll be the prize laughingstock of the century. Do you care?”

  “Not really.”

  “We must start by giving the true story of the end of Project Tempo. We’ll have to tell Bill Kornal first. Dr. Lurdorff will help us convince Bill. We’ve got to plant the story where it will get the maximum play from the press, radio, video, and everything else. That means that the four of us will have to put our cards, face up, in front of someone who not only can swing some weight around, but who has the sort of mind which might be receptive to this sort of thing. And Mr. X will have to have something to gain by carrying the ball. Any ideas?”

  “It sounds like it ought to be somebody in government.”

  “Or how about a columnist with a big following. Let me see. Pelton won’t do. I don’t think we could sell it to Trimball.”

  “Say! How about Walter Howard Path? He has his column and the newscast on video. And he’s the one that revived that ancient flying saucer business several years ago and claimed that the Air Force had never released the true data. He interviewed me, you know, after I walked out of that conference. He seemed nice, and the interview
he published was at least a little bit friendly.”

  “I think he sounds like our boy, Sharan. There’s the phone.”

  “So … so quickly?”

  “How much time have we got to waste? Do you know?”

  Sharan placed the call. It was almost four in the morning. Ten minutes later Walter Howard Path was on the line, speaking from his office-apartment in New York.

  “Dr. Inly? Oh, yes. I remember you very well, Doctor.”

  “Mr. Path, would you care to have the exclusive story of what happened to Project Tempo?”

  There was a long silence. “Dr. Inly, I wouldn’t be terribly interested in it if it turns out to be some fairly tawdry little intrigue. The story wouldn’t be good enough, and Tempo has been dead too long.”

  “Suppose I can show proof that Tempo was sabotaged by entities from another planet, Mr. Path?”

  “Oh, come now, Dr. Inly!”

  “Please hold the line. There is someone else here who wishes to speak to you.”

  Bard took the phone quickly. “Mr. Path, this is Bard Lane speaking. If you want to gamble on this story, I suggest you fly out here. We haven’t too much time to waste. I know that superlatives are sometimes distasteful. But this, Mr. Path, is the biggest story of this or any other century.”

  “What is your address there?”

  Walter Howard Path was a lean, enormously tall man with stooped shoulders, seamed cheeks and restless eyes. With his hands jammed in his hip pockets, he slouched over to the windows of the suite and looked down into the street. The four of them watched his motionless back. The conference lasted for five hours. Walter Howard Path had been angry at what he suspected was a ruse for one hour, incredulous for two more hours, grudgingly intrigued for the fourth hour, and obscurely frightened from then on.

  Without turning he said, “It’s a hell of a gamble, folks. Even when the fit is so good. Even when it answers so many questions about this crazy, violent planet of ours. Dammit, people won’t want to believe a thing like that. And the ones who will jump into line will be the faddists, the cultists, the chronic end-of-the-world kids.”

  The tape recorder had been switched off. Walter Howard Path ambled back to the small table, fiddled with the tape reel.

  He gave them all a weary smile. “So I guess I’ve got to hold my nose and go off the high board. Today is Wednesday. I’ll blow it in the Sunday column and on the Sunday night program. We better dig us a hole and crawl in and hold our ears.”

  “This is Melvin C. Lynn, reporting the news for Wilkins’ Mead and the Wilkins Laboratories, where the secret of your happiness was developed.

  “Tonight, listeners, I am going to give you a different sort of news program. Today a colleague, Walter Howard Path, broke a rather astonishing story. It is considered ethical in this newscasting field never to run down a competitor directly. However, your Wilkins’ Mead reporter feels that it is high time somebody took a lusty kick at Mr. Path’s little red wagon.

  “I have attempted to report the news to you honestly and sincerely. Sometimes I have fallen for a hoax. All of us have. But I have never been guilty of perpetrating one. Mr. Path has an enormous audience, far larger than mine. His responsibility to that audience is equally enormous. However, straight news reporting does not seem to satisfy our Mr. Path. You will remember his disinterment of the flying saucer hoax a few years ago. Possibly that sensationalism added a few more readers, a few more listeners.

  “This time, however, Walter Howard Path has overreached himself. You all remember the scandal of Project Tempo. A Dr. Bard Lane, physicist, was dismissed for incompetence. He had shielded a technician, a William Kornal, who had committed sabotage on the project. There was a rumored intrigue between Dr. Lane and Dr. Sharan Inly, a sexy young psychiatrist on the project. In the finale debacle, twenty-eight persons died in the premature takeoff of the project ship. For honest reporters, there was no more news to be reported.

  “Now let us examine what Walter Howard Path has done. He has gathered around himself a very unwholesome little group. Dr. Bard Lane, discredited physicist. Dr. Sharan Inly, sexy psychiatrist. Mr. William Kornal, unpunished technician guilty of criminal sabotage. Dr. Heintz Lurdorff, hypnotist and alleged psychiatrist. Remember that with the possible exception of Lurdorff, the other three have every reason to find some sort of excuse for their previous actions.

  “These five persons have cooked up the most fantastic story that ever hit these tired old ears. Long-range hypnosis from another planet! People like us who can come here on thought waves, or something, and make us do whatever they wish! Remind me to use those Martians or whatever they are as an excuse to my wife the next time I stay out too late. Now see how neatly it all fits. This is a wonderful country, listeners. No matter how crazy your story is, you can find somebody to believe you.

  “Let us check and see the possible results, if Walter Howard Path is permitted to use the power of the press, radio and video to spread this new yarn of his. Dr. Bard Lane will, in the minds of fools, be acquitted of mismanagement, negligence and preoccupation with pretty Sharan instead of his job. Sharan Inly will become the high priestess of the new cult, and probably do very well indeed, financially. Dr. Heintz Lurdorff will get some publicity to trade on. William Kornal will be able to say, ‘See? I didn’t do it. Them Martians did it.’

  “And how about Walter Howard Path? Priceless publicity on a story none of the rest of us would touch. Here is his master touch, though. He says that two of the alien people who grab us and make us do tricks are coming here in person, on a space ship, for goodness sake! A couple. Brother and sister. Raul and Leesa Kinson. Your Wilkins’ Mead reporter wonders how long it took our Mr. Path to think up those names. Ever play anagrams? Take that name. Leesa Kinson. Use the letters in it. You can make two words. ‘No sense.’ With four letters left over, a-l-k-i, a practically prehistoric slang word for alcohol. How long is Walter Howard Path going to feed us delusions out of the bottom of a bottle? How brazen can his hoaxes become?

  “Your Wilkins’ Mead reporter leaves you with this one thought. How can a responsible video network or a responsible publisher give house room to an irresponsible man like Walter Howard Path and still claim to function in the public interest?”

  “From the wires of the Associated Press. Yesterday morning one person was killed and three injured in a riot at Benson, Georgia. The clash was between the new cult which spends hours on hilltops watching for Walter Howard Path’s mythical spaceships, and a detachment of the Georgia State Police. The new cult calls itself Kinsonians.”

  Excerpt from an address given at the annual dinner of the American Medical Association: “It is not altogether strange that the mass hallucination of the late nineteen forties involving ‘flying saucers’ should now be duplicated by a similar mass hallucination involving ‘space ships.’ Even the most cursory study of the history of mass hysteria shows clearly a cyclical pattern, with the outbreaks averaging twenty to forty years between peaks of intensity. At the latest count the ‘space ship’ which we are to play host to, according to the Kinsonians, has been reported landing at twenty-six different places. It is no accident that the locations of the ‘landings’ correlate most amusingly with the activity of the Kinsonian groups in those places.”

  POLICY DIRECTIVE 7112 PUBLIC RELATIONS SECTION, ARMED FORCES

  1. As there is no desire to give special attention to unfounded charges regarding Project Tempo through any formal statement in rebuttal, all personnel are directed to refrain from commenting to representatives of the press.

  2. All military personnel directly connected with Project Tempo have been given changes of station to take them immediately outside the continental limits of the United States to new posts where the possibility of such interviews is lessened.

  3. Official position on this matter, to be announced later, is that in the light of current world tension it is of dubious value to the national effort that mass hysteria should be whipped to such a peak that industri
al absenteeism is at an unprecedented rate.

  4. All officers and EM who profess publicly any degree of belief in Kinsonianism and, when warned, shall persist in such belief, will be considered unfit for duty.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen of the vidio audience, we bring you that lint-headed wonder of the stratosphere, that little man who didn’t arrive in a space ship, that Yum-Bubble (Chew it, it’s good for you) comic, Willy Wise! Hey, Willy! What’s the matter, Willy? The cameras are over here, not up there on the ceiling.”

  “Don’t bother me, Harry. I’m watching for that space ship. You want to make a million bucks, Harry?”

  “That’s the difference between you and me, Willy. I need a million bucks.”

  “Get another laugh and you’ll need a job. Know what we ought to do? Put out some gunk to rub on your neck. I bet there are more cricks in more necks in this country than there are neckties.”

  “Willy, please look at the cameras. You’ve got a guest tonight. It’s a she.”

  “Somebody else can watch for that ship. Hello, honey. What’s your name?”

  “Sharan Riley, Mr. Wise.”

  “Nice name, Sharan. I played Sharon, Pennsylvania, once. I killed ’em in Sharon. You got an aunt or a half sister or something named Sharan Inly?”

  “Gee, no. She’s famous.”

  “Say, I just got a theory, folks. How about this? You ever see a good picture of that Sharan Inly? Here’s how it all happened. She meets up with that Lane guy, see. She likes him. She wraps those lovely arms around his neck and … Bingo! Ever since that moment, folks, Dr. Lane has been seeing space ships, Martians and little green men. Who can blame the guy? Up until that point he probably never had his nose out of a Bunsen burner, or whatever they use in those labs.”

  “Today in Albany, at the request of Governor LePage, a bill was rushed through the state legislature making it illegal for anyone to make public speeches in favor of Kinsonianism. Critics claim that the bill is an infringement of the right of free speech. The governor defended his action on the grounds that the State of New York is suffering a curtailment of the supply of food, power and other necessary items, arising from the absenteeism of the Kinsonians. The governor claims that the Kinsonians seem to feel that the arrival of the alien space ship will somehow be synonymous with the end of the world. Other states will await, with interest, the decision of the courts on the legality of the new measure.”