by Andre Norton
Oslan slowly shook his head. “It was real. Now Yul is free. We are here to prove that. I told you once, ‘Get out of my dream,’ I was wrong; it was meant to be your dream also. Now this is our reality… an empty Yul, a free world. And, in time, perhaps something else.”
His arms about her tightened. Not in anger or fear. Itlothis, meeting that brilliant green stare holding hers, knew that dreams, some dreams, never quite released their dreamers.
PART FOUR:
NIGHTMARE
I
“But I know nothing of this sector.” The youngest man in the room squirmed slightly in his easirest, as if that half-reclining seat, intended for maximum comfort was now giving more than minimum unease.
“Which is precisely why you are necessary for the operation,” came a cold-tinged reply from one of the three facing him, the Trystian whose feather crest held the slight fading of age.
“A Terrian of a wealthy clan, touring this sector,” the man to the Trystian’s left elaborated, “could visit Ty-Kry, order a dreamer’s services without comment or questions being asked in the wrong places. It is well known that our multi-credit class are ever avid to try new experiences. Your background would be impeccable, of course.”
Burr Neklass shrugged. He had never had any quarrel with that department of the service. Any background they supplied could be combed and recombed with impunity for the one using it. He would be provided with a life history dating back to the moment of his birth and it would be a flawless one. That was not the base of his present uneasiness.
Being who and what he was, he now came out frankly with that basic argument
“I am not an Esper.”
“You were chosen for that very reason,” Hyon returned. “Anyone testing Esper, and do not consider for a second that they will not investigate you thoroughly, would have no chance.”
“So I’m just bait.” Again Burr hunched his shoulders against the easirest. “And it appears very expendable bait.”
Grigor Bnon, the only true human on that inner council, smiled. It seemed to Burr there was an implied taunt in the curl of his lips as he did so. Bnon had a reputation, which it was said he delighted in, of being utterly un-human when it came to assignments.
“Very good bait,” he said softly now. “According to the record you are just the type meant to this trap, whatever it is or however it works.”
“Thank you so much, Commander!” Burr snapped. “And what if I say ‘no’?”
Bnon shrugged. “There is always that, of course. And it is your privilege.”
“And you want me to do it,” Burr returned silently. “You have been waiting a long time to catch me a hair’s space off orders, either way, ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ you’ll have me.” There was a sour taste in his mouth which could have come from biting hard on that realization.
“So I go in without any backman, then what if I turn up dead? Will you know any more than you do right now? You haven’t been able to monitor these dreams in any way…” His sentence had a slight lift which made it half-question. If they could monitor, get him out before the final fatal minute, that would put a different face upon the whole operation.
“Not in the way you think,” the third of those facing him spoke for the first time. Outwardly he was so humanoid that Burr might have accepted him for a Terran-descended colonist. Only his strange pupilless eyes and the fine down which covered the visible portions of his skin named him alien. “But there will be a backup for you. To have another man killed uselessly would avail us nothing at all.”
“I am grateful to hear that,” Burr put what irony he could in his reply to Corps Master Illan.
Illan appeared not to hear him. “We shall provide the dreamer you know; I have been informed that you were fully briefed, that these dreamers are either hired or purchased from the Hive. On the death of any purchaser, the dreamer must be returned, half of her price being repaid to the clan-family of her owner. If she is rehired, then it is for an agreed-upon time only.
“Osdeve, Lord of Ulay, purchased a ten-point dreamer two years ago. He was in the last stages of kaffer fever. Two days ago he died. This dreamer, Uahach, must now be returned to the Hive. It is the general custom that once an outdreamer so returns, she is not resold for at least a year, since each owner or hirer programs the dreamer to his taste and she must have a rest before such reprogramming.
“However, the Foostmam of the Hive is not one to suffer idle minds. She will allow Hive dreaming for Uahach, providing that the one who purchases the girl’s time is willing to accept any dream and does not require a certain briefing.
“You will be a tourist, wanting simply to try a dream as part of your travel experiences. Therefore, Uahach would answer your purpose as well as any other. You have heard of her and can ask for her with an excellent reason…”
Hyon paused for breath and Burr shot in his question.
“How did I hear of her if I have never been in Ty-Kry before?”
“Osdeve was off planet three years ago. He visited Melytis. As the person you will be on Ty-Kry you made his acquaintance there. In fact he spoke so much of dreaming that you came to Ty-Kry lured by his stories.”
Burr was frowning a little. He had no doubts about their meeting in Melytis, that would be so expertly documented that it would stand now for the truth. But he was puzzled concerning another point.
“This Uahach, how can you be sure of her?”
“She is an agent… or will be by the time she returns to the Hive,” Bnon explained. “With some plasta buildup she’ll be Uahach; she is an Esper and has been undergoing dream study for some time. We had her long before the assignment computer selected you.”
And this unknown “she,” Burr accepted, was taking even a far greater risk than they expected him to accept. Dreamers were born, though they underwent vigorous training to achieve the status of A or E, ready to guide someone through their imagined worlds.
“Yes, she is one of us,” Hyon once more took over. “And her being unattached at this moment is what brought us together. We had to wait for just such a circumstance. Five deaths and no answers!” For the first time the Trystian showed outward emotion. “There is too leading a pattern: two diplomats, an engineer who had made recently a discovery, which left him so wealthy that he was about to set up his own research laboratory, two men of great possessions whose dream deaths brought about almost galaxy-wide confusion. Someone is troubling waters in order to collect the flotsam of such storms.”
“Maybe they all had weak hearts… I hear that action dreams can be tough to take,” Burr suggested, though he did not believe his own words.
Bnon snorted. “You do not Hive-dream if you do not present a certificate of health to the Foostmam on your first visit. They may not follow up what happens to the owner of a dreamer, but one-time dream excursions within the Hive are well supervised so that this sort of thing does not happen. They want no accusation of killing off their clients. It would be ruinous for their business.”
“Yet it has happened,” Burr pointed out. “Five times.”
“Five times within the space of one planet year,” agreed Hyon.
“But if these deaths are arranged, aren’t they playing it reckless?” Burr mused, more to himself than the other three. “I should think they would be waiting for the authorities to do some investigating.”
“The planet authorities,” Hyon returned, “have done what they could. But they cannot shut down the Hive, nor are they even allowed to screen the dreamers, that could be fatal. And Ty-Kry is dreamer-oriented. The dead were all from off planet and such as would not cause any local stir. In fact, Villand and Wyvid were both traveling incognito and not officially. But the authorities were enough concerned to call us in, a step which is revolutionary as far as they are concerned, as the locals resent to a high degree off-world contacts. They made the proviso when they did that we were not to appear there officially either, and they will give no open help to any investigation we might start.�
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Burr grinned without mirth. “Do they know about your planted dreamer?”
“No. And they are not to know either. The Hive has a monopoly on its product. To learn that a dreamer might be created by artificial means would turn the whole planet hostile. There is a religious significance to the existence of these girls and that we dare not meddle with.”
“But what would make me so important they would try their game a sixth time?” Burr wanted to know.
“Burr Neklass has become owner of an asteroid which is nearly pure Bylotite,” Hyon answered.
Burr’s eyebrows lifted in unbelief. “Is there any such thing?” he asked wonderingly.
“It exists, yes. And it is under the guardianship of the Patrol. All rights are now on record in your name. You have no near family, and…” Hyon paused as if to give extra emphasis to what he would say next, “one of your partners in Neklass Enterprises has been approached, very cautiously but with enough seriousness to be understood, to discover whether, at your death, the Bylotite will be included in your general estate. I do not doubt that there is already on record, perhaps not on Ty-Kry as there would be too pointed, a will ready to turn this estate over to whoever makes the highest bid for your life.”
“Fine, you do have me well hammered in, don’t you?” Burr scowled. “So, I’m good bait for murder. All right, when do I lay myself all ready and waiting on the Hive altar?”
“You will be briefed at once,” Hyon said. “Then you will take your own space cruiser to Ty-Kry. There you will proceed to make yourself very visible as a man of great wealth who wants to try the unusual. I think there will be no difficulty in your finding the Hive welcoming and you will then ask for Uahach…”
“And get down to a good death dream,” Burr finished for him. “Thank you, one and all, for this exciting assignment. I shall remember you in my dreams!”
II
Her figure hidden in a dull gray sack of a robe, her hair cut so close to her head that it seemed less than half a finger in length so that the dream helmet would fit more easily, the slight figure sliding out of the carrying chair could have been any age from pre-teen to elderly. Her face was blank of any expression as she moved with the air of one still inhabiting those dreams which were her trade. The guard flung open the door and she stepped into the noiseless, curtained secrecy of the Hive.
As she moved down the central hall her eyes kept their, fixed stare, but inwardly she was recognizing that which she had never seen before, but which the intensity of a mind-to-mind briefing had made plain to her. She was not Ludia Tanguly any longer, but Uahach an A dreamer with a ten-point rating. And it had been two years, a little more, since she had left the Hive to which she now returned. Luckily they had been able to so dip into the dreamer’s mind that her double was familiar with all she saw, knew well the routine for returning.
Uahach turned toward a door to her right and stood, impassive, waiting for the spy ray to announce her. When the barrier split in two, she entered.
The room was small, containing only two chairs, not easirests but of the archaic hard-seated kind. It would seem that the Foostmam made no concessions of comfort for those who sought an interview. A memory control stood between the chairs, within easy reach of the ruler of the Hive. And there was a blank screen on the wall to one side. While the Foostmam herself sat waiting Uahach’s arrival. She gave no verbal greeting, only raised a hand to signify that the dreamer might sit in the second chair.
“You have not come very speedily,” the woman observed. “Your late lord died four days ago.” Her tone was monotonous. If she meant her words as a question, they did not carry that inflection. And if she offered a reproof for tardiness, that, too, could only be guessed at.
“I was not released by my Lord’s heir until an hour since. I then vision-messaged at once,” Uahach’s own voice held the same absence of meaningful accent. She had let her hands fall limply in her lap, sitting as one who had been under orders all her life.
“True. It was necessary for the Hive to remind the Lord Ylph that our contract was only with his predecessor. His reluctance to release you has been duly noted in the records. Perhaps he had thought to bargain… because of your rating and the satisfaction your Lord took in your dreams. We, however, do not bargain. And you are returned. Your dream records have been fed into the archives. For the present you are on inactive status. The Lord Osdeve required much research; it may even be necessary for you to undergo an erase.” Now there was a faint shadow of some emotion in the Foostmam’s eyes. “The records must be studied to the full, I do not wish to order an unnecessary erase.”
Uahach remained outwardly impassive, but inside her instinct for self-defense awoke. Had the Corps Master foreseen that? To undergo an erase would negate everything she was programmed to do. If that happened she would become Uahach in truth.
’There is this…” the Foostmam’s thin mouth snapped out each word as if she cut it free with a knife. “We are getting more and more of a new type of client, off-worlders who seek sensations strange to them. The lore you studied for Lord Osdeve was largely action adventure. And you might be a Hive dreamer for a length of time, serving these newcomers. They would not find what you had to offer too familiar.”
“I am a Ten Point,” Uahach said.
“And so above Hive service?” The Foostmam nodded. “It is agreed. Yet you must be rebriefed before you are again hired for outside. Be assured that you shall not be downgraded in the least.”
“I shall be guided by you in this as in all else,” the girl gave the conventional answer. So Bnon had been right, already the first move of her game had been made.
“You are a true dreamer,” the Foostmam replied with her conventional dismissal words. “I have given you the Chamber of the Mantled Suxsux. Dial what you may need. Your credit is unlimited.”
Uahach arose and raised one hand to touch her forehead, the Foostmam replying with a perfunctory copy of that gesture. To be told that her Hive credit was unlimited meant that she was still rated a very valuable piece of merchandise. As she moved along the hall, ascended the twenty steps to the next floor she was already planning what she must do now. And since the Foostmam had suggested that she was to be hired in Hive service she had every right to start learning all she could.
The library of tapes owned by the Hive was the most spectacular collection of general information gathered anyplace in the galaxy except at Patrol Headquarters. Travelers’ tales from thousands of worlds, history, strange stories, anything which could enrich the worlds the dreamers created for their clients, was at the call of those within the Hive. But was there any method of locating the special tapes either of the suspected dreamers had called upon? That was one fact they had not been able to ferret out for her. She knew the names of those dreamers, Isa and Dynamis. Both were action dreamers, neither one supposedly of ten-point rank, and both never hired outside the Hive. Uahach’s memories, which had been sifted as well as the Patrol science could manage, had supplied a hazy picture of Isa. Dynamis was totally unknown. She was young, one of the Late Dreamers, whose talent developed enough to be measured only when she entered adolescence and not in early childhood when most of them were found and brought in for training.
Isa had survived the two dreams which had killed her clients… but just barely. She was, by all accounts the planet law enforcers passed along, now a near vegetable. Dynamis had had better luck. Though it had been necessary for her to undergo, the Foostmam had sworn, a lengthy period of reeducation.
The dreaming itself was not too complicated an affair, though it was particular to this world. Linked by a machine which capped both dreamer and client, the dreamer entered into a hallucinatory state in which the client partook of vigorous action, some type of which he selected in advance. He could so return into the past, explore other worlds, venture into the speculative future. If a lengthy dream was desired, both dreamer and client could spend as long as a week so engaged, fed intravenously. And at any point
the client could demand to break the dream.
Yet five men had dreamed themselves into death, and had not awakened. Once, perhaps twice, a faulty machine, a weakened heart, or some natural fatality could have occurred, but five were far too many.
The Foostmam had had, as Uahach well knew, every machine tested before the authorities. She demanded, and in this she was backed by those same authorities, certificates of health from every would-be client. And those were the result of examinations which could not be faked. The law in Ty-Kry had no wish to continue a scandal which was growing far too fast for comfort. The dreamers, long in use by the natives, had recently become a prime tourist attraction, the worth of which the rulers of the planet fully recognized.
Yet, in spite of all such safeguards, one dreamer was brainwashed into idiocy and five men were dead. Five men whose deaths could be turned to the credit of others off world. Suspicion was heavy, now there must be proof.
She came to the door bearing the painted design of the fabled creature the Foostmam had mentioned, and knew the chamber to be one of coveted single rooms within this warren. She was, indeed, being shown that her value to the Hive had in no way diminished.
Though the room was considered luxurious by any dreamer who had not been quartered in one of the sky towers of the Lords, it was a small one with few attractions. There was a couch formed of piled cushions covered in dull greens and grays; nothing must distract the attention of a dreamer, lure her attention from her work. Against one wall was a reading screen with a slitted block before it into which any tapes she desired could be fitted. On the opposite wall was a small board with a row of buttons; she could there order the bland, nearly tasteless food high in protein and nourishment which was the usual meal of her kind.
A curtain hung before a small private bathroom. That, too, was gray, as was the thick carpet on the floor. Uahach sat down on the divan, wondering if the Foostmam had some hidden method of viewing the chambers of her charges. That point certainly could not be overlooked, and she must never be off her guard.