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by Nicholas Waller ------------------------------------------------ Brancusi
sat back with a jerk, startling the kitten. He
rubbed his eyes. He had been projecting himself into his cityplan design! It
was such a vivid experience - he had almost caught a hint of baking bread - and
as he looked at the screen he smiled. To
ease his cramped muscles, he stood up and walked away from his workstation. He
felt satisfied, but tired; he had put in four hours with barely a movement of
his body, and that had no doubt helped push him into his oddly dreamy
mind-state. Pausing
only to turn on some music, he went to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a
chilled white wine. As powerful chords from a thousand years before burst into
sound around his head, he stared out through the picture wall. The grey fog of
Antarctic morning had given way to a glorious midday that shone with vibrant
wholeness. In the distance, he could see some of the Families drifting across
the grass to the lake, kids turning exuberant somersaults a few feet above
their yapping dogs. Soon,
he and Kaeti would have kids of their own, and then life would be complete... Except
for this damn headache. Brancusi shook his head, but that only made it worse.
The light outside grew brighter, the music harsher. Working too hard... Tears
came to his eyes, and he lay down on the settee and the shivering world grew
darker as the room slid from sight... A
spasm in his leg woke him. His back ached. He
opened his eyes to a throbbing darkness slashed with light from a hand-carried
lamp. He didn't know where he was. A
pain in his arm nailed him to something and he growled, grabbing and missing as
the hypodermic was removed. He looked up into the one eye of Clegge. "Careful,
Brak," said Clegge, his teeth gleaming with menace. "You're moving
out. Save your strength for the long drop." Clegge
moved over to - to Corin, and jabbed him too, and then left. Corin stirred, but did not wake. Brak
looked round the bare cell with a sinking heart as real memory seeped up,
prodded by the chemicals... Kaeti
and the kitten and their plans... They had seemed so real, and yet the more he
tried to hang onto them the more the memories twisted and evaporated into
nothing, leaving just a sense of loss and the knowledge that he was trapped in
the hiberhold of an interstellar convict transport beyond hope. And
now he remembered being locked in for the long haul... and the trial, and the look
on the faces of the crowds in the gallery... and the crime he had committed,
now he remembered that too, and shuddered. No wonder he had been sentenced to
Foul. Brak
hammered on the viewport cover; last chance to see the place from above. After
a couple of hefty blows the cover shot open, letting in light from the local
sun, and below, the browns and greys of Foul itself... Odd,
the sun. Were they moving towards it? No, it was expanding, getting whiter, brighter,
hotter, and Brak stood transfixed as he realised the ship was falling into the
exploding star and this was it... And
Barker fell out of bed. His
pyjamas were wet with sweat in the darkness of the winter night. A dream! By
far the most vivid he could recall. Relief coursed through his body, but his
heart was still thumping. It was amazing he hadn't woken his wife. He
untangled his feet from the sheets and stood up. He picked up his dressing gown
and padded out of the bedroom quietly. He needed a drink. It
was dark and cold in the hallway, and he felt his way carefully to the
bannister. Grabbing it, he stepped slowly down the stairs, expecting at any
moment for some forgotten obstacle to hit him in the face. What
time was it? He could hear the old clock measuring out its loud, patient ration
of seconds in the sitting room, a welcome reminder of normality. Felt like 4 in
the morning. It
was even colder in the sitting room, almost icy. Cold moonlight streamed in
through the windows, and he could see snow outside, piled unusually high for
October. By the dim light he could see the time - nine o'clock. Odd. Something
must be wrong. He
looked at the clock, and as he did he noticed that he could smell gas. The gas
fire? He looked down... just in time to see a little spark. The
fire was trying to light itself! He had never seen anything like it. Spark,
spark! Spark! And
then the gas caught and the fire blew up in a shattering explosion that
propelled Barker across the room, and he banged his head on the heavy coffee
table. Berrac
relaxed. There was real frost on his eyes, but through his barely parted
eyelids he could see people moving as if at a great distance. All wore masks.
Someone shone a bright light at him. "He's
coming round," said a voice. Tubbeh? "OK,
Dr Berrac!" said someone else. Rundgren, project leader. "You're back
in the real world now. No sudden movements. Take it easy..." Berrac
smiled. He was back; but those projected lives were more realistic than ever!
The dream state was so concrete, the assumed personalities so anchored in their
histories, it was hard to believe it was all a generated-dream simulation. "So
how was it?" asked Rundgren. "Outstanding...
Except at the end, the system was speeding up; I got into some locations and
out quickly and very violently... I feel like I died several times."
Berrac thought a moment. "And you know, for the first time I felt like a
vampire, like these were real people whose life force I was sucking..." Rundgren
and Tubbeh exchanged glances as they helped Berrac stand, carefully. All
around the circular lab people were watching impassively. Technicians, mainly,
but in the gallery there was a silent group of serious-looking men all dressed
in black. Berrac looked over at Rundgren, who tilted his head warningly and
winked. Tubbeh
helped Berrac into a wheelchair, and, with Rundgren walking alongside, wheeled
him out of the lab at a brisk pace. "You
were in for nine hours," said Rundgren. "And you're right, we had a
flutter in the later stages, so we pulled you out. Those guys watching -
they're military." "Are
they!" Berrac thought this over as they went down the corridor.
"Despite the convention?" Tubbeh
started pushing the wheelchair faster. Rundgren broke into a trot to keep up. "Yes,
I'm afraid so!" he said. "Nothing we can do about it." Tubbeh
was actually running now... "Hold
on," said Berrac. But Tubbeh paid no attention . With Rundgren's
assistance he got the chair up to full speed and sent it flying into the entrance
doors in the lobby. Berrac's head smashed into the plate glass, and his chair
tilted and he hit the marble floor, hard. Dazed, unsure what was going on, he
could see that where there had once been grass and trees and parked cars
outside there was now an empty red desert. And two suns? The
last thing he saw before blackness claimed him was a leather boot. Bra'akka
awoke with his back against the cold cliff, stung by ice particles whipped by a
vicious wind. He looked up at the remote High Stars but found no comfort there. Sleep
while the vile dogs of Telaar were after him? Madness! Clutching
his twinblade close to his chest he stood and started running north again,
running to where he hoped home would be. ----------------------- ©Nicholas
Waller, 1999 |