- Chapter 3
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Chapter 3: In the Dreampool
The dreampool theater was lighted only by a deep-sea gloom. The pool was encircled by a smooth, padded ledge; the water itself radiated the ocean-blue light. The water was still, and its depth visually indeterminable. The water appeared simply to merge with the inner wall, and only the glow could be seen in its depths. Good place to dive and never come up, Carlyle thought, though of course the depth was illusory.
The intensity of the light fluctuated as they moved about, varying inversely with their proximity to the water. "Whass?" Cephean queried, loping around the pool and coming back to eye Carlyle suspiciously. The riffmar fluttered to a halt.
"Dreampool," Carlyle said. "Rigger crews use it to help develop rapport. Intimacy. I didn't want to use it because it was designed, really, for human minds—and frankly it can be pretty damn personal." He swallowed. "Well, we're going to test it between a human and cynthian."
Cephean's flickering eyes seemed to turn inward. The riffmar shuddered sympathetically. "H-no-o, no-o!" he hissed. He glared at Carlyle and drew back defensively, his whiskers pointing forward.
Carlyle exhaled through his teeth. He wasn't asking; he was telling. This was something that had to be done. "Cephean," he said sternly, "if you don't, we will be adrift in this spaceship for the rest of eternity. Now, maybe you wouldn't mind that for yourself, but how do you like the thought of looking at me until you die, eh?"
Cephean shivered. Hissed.
"That's what's going to happen, because we're not going to fly this ship again until we've had a session in the dreampool." He held his breath, keeping his anger and his uncertainty in check. How far did he dare assert himself?
The cynthian muttered and, to his surprise, acquiesced. "Hyiss."
Carlyle sighed gratefully, and explained the procedure. Then they sat at the pool's edge, ninety degrees apart from one another—Cephean having to splay his hind legs and sit stiffly upright to fit on the ledge. "Now," Carlyle said, "look straight into the water, and let your mind follow your eyes. Listen to my thoughts and do exactly as I do."
The cynthian hissed an acknowledgment, and Carlyle let his gaze drift down to the center of the pool. He studied the luminous surface. He remained aware of Cephean's attention, and of his own worries; but as he stared into the water his tensions began to subside. His thoughts focused themselves, without guidance, onto the pool with its internal glow. Something began perturbing the water beneath its surface, causing a subtle wavering in the light. Soon it was the variations rather than the light itself which he watched—shimmerings in the cool sapphire-emerald bath. The flickering of an open flame, but without warmth—it was alive, and it reached out and entered his gaze with the energy of an alert, probing mind . . .
* * *
The first thoughts were his own memories, focused both through his own eyes and the eyes of another. Murky. Then deadly clear:
Sedora's fluxfield chamber's secondary shield curved around him like a queer eggshell, sealing him into the serviceway between the outer shield and the main core baffling. The mutter of voices from the wall intercom barely reached him, and he worked at his chores with some relief at being alone and having his thoughts to himself. Not that he minded his four new crewmates, but he had only been with them for a few weeks, and that was hardly enough time for real relationships to develop. It was good to be off, to be out of the rig, to worry about simple machinery for a while.
That anomalous reading, now, was probably a misalignment in one of the feedback elements, a bit too steep to be compensated for from the bridge. It was easily corrected, except for the awkwardness of just moving around in this damn chamber suit. He stooped and took a flow reading, turned a handscrew, and then backed it off a hair. There was a flow surge for some reason, but it only lasted a moment before the readings leveled off again. He played the screw back and forth very slightly; it wasn't a critical adjustment, but it was always good to have the flux-pile working as smoothly as possible. Finally (did he hear a ringing, an echo of some kind?—hard to tell, probably his own heartbeat pulsing in his ear), he moved over to check the other elements, one by one.
When he finished the final adjustment, he rubbed his forehead against the suit faceplate, trying to scratch an itch over his eyebrow. It was time to be getting back to the bridge. And there was that ringing again—was it coming from the outside?
The exit was on the far side of the pile, and it took him a few minutes to work his way around the circular catwalk. He stopped at the intercom. "This is Gev. Adjustments are all right in here. Has the power smoothed out in the net?" His voice was dull, a muffled echo inside the chamber suit.
No answer. And there was that noise.
Then the exit port opened, and clanging exploded around his head: general-alarm klaxon. Stunned, he sealed the hatch and hurried to the prep-room intercom. "Bridge! Bridge!" Still no answer; either no one was in the net, or communications circuits were out. The alarm meant a vital systems failure.
He quickly checked the pile console; there was no danger here, but there was a massive interruption in the net circuit. He headed for the bridge at a run. The suit still encumbered him; panting, he flipped open his visor for more air. He shouted into a corridor intercom, and this time he was answered by a hiss. The corridor illuminators flickered but remained alight.
He mounted the ramp to the bridge—and gagged as he inhaled a lungful of smoke. Choking, he slapped his visor down and panted rapidly, hoarsely, to draw filtered air through the suit. The bridge was gloomy and filled with acrid haze. He moved cautiously, squinting and blinking tears and thinking: there is burning flesh in this smoke. The instrument panels were blackened but no longer burning. He turned to look at the rigger-stations in the outer circle of the bridge. His stomach dropped. His crewmates were dead in their alcoves; their bodies still smoldered in the rigger-seats. Marc, the com-rigger, his neck and cheeks collapsed, his eyes sunk in their sockets, smoking. Gayl, Abdul, Niesh—all the same. He stared at each one for the same long minute. Numbness blocked every nerve, every emotion, every thought except a detached awareness of horror.
For a time he did not move at all. But gradually the haze began to clear from the bridge, and he knew what had to be done. He remained shock-calm, and though the stench continued to burn in his nostrils and his stomach threatened to convulse, he did not become sick. Garbed still in the chamber suit, he wrapped the four bodies and carried them to a small, unused freezer-hold. He ventilated and scrubbed the bridge, and he finally shut off the clamoring alarm. He examined the instruments and recorders, and he reconstructed and logged the accident to the best of his ability. And then he went to pieces.
He stayed in the commons; he was afraid to leave. Through tears and shakes and stuttering outcries to an empty ship, he relived and relived the accident. It had been a freak happening: a Flux abscess. Uncontrolled energies from the Flux had flared through the net, cauterizing every delicate nerveway tied into it—including the space communicators, the neural foam of the rigger-stations, and the riggers themselves. What had caused it? There was no way to be sure. Perhaps a subjective firestorm, a nightmare brought to life by the fantasies of one of the riggers. Perhaps a gravity-abscess, an unexpectedly close approach to an analogue of a star or black hole from normal-space. Perhaps something altogether different, some uncharted phenomenon of the Flux. It was always so difficult to know; abscesses existed along that delicate boundary between fantasy and subjective reality, and few witnesses ever survived to tell.
And might his own tinkering with the flux-pile have contributed to the accident? He thought not. He prayed not. But how could he be sure? Would he have to chase back the demon of guilt, too?
It had been his luck that he had been out of the net, his luck that he had not died with the others.
Luck? He was in a crippled ship, with fluxwave communications completely burned out. He was alone, more alone than he had ever been in his life, more alone than he had ever dreamed possible. And Sedora was a four-rigger freighter. Was it even conceivable that it might be flown by just one?
Reliving the horror for the hundredth time, he tried to summon the living faces of his dead crewmates. But they were gone now; he could recall neither their faces nor their names. A mercy, perhaps—but lord, the emptiness of having forgotten the last humans he might ever see.
(Whasss?)
Eventually, though, other names returned to him: Janofer, Legroeder, and Skan. The names began to click through his head like the chatter of a rad counter, rhythmically: Janofer Legroeder and Skan. Janofer Legroeder and Skan.
The faces came later, as he stalked the commons, battling with his thoughts—or as he moved dazedly about the bridge, watching the healers slowly regenerate the neural foam in the rigger-seats so that he could make the attempt to fly. The faces of friends, and their voices—along with the memories, the dread.
Finally it was time to discover whether or not he could, in fact, fly. When the pilot-rigger station was ready for use, he suppressed his apprehension and entered Sedora's net. It glowed fuzzily about him, shimmering, reflecting his nervousness. Hours went by as he struggled just to become settled again in the net, to establish a basic vision. And when at last he did, he was astonished to sink his fingers into the stuff of space and to feel the ship moving at his bidding.
Sedora, as it turned out, could be flown by one; but she was ponderous, and she flew as though laden with water. He could work only short, numbing shifts, and even then his endurance was strained. The ship moved on its course; but his thoughts flew ahead to the Hurricane Flume, the maelstrom to which all currents in this region of space led. There was no escaping the Flume. He could shape it to the image of his choice, but he could not make it less treacherous. He tried to consider alternatives; but there were no alternatives. The Flume danced constantly in his mind, and he was sure that he hadn't a chance in a thousand.
Therefore hope, when it appeared, was exceedingly strange. It was in the fourth day after he began flying that he noticed the signal—a part of the windrush, the starsong of the net. But like a warbling bird it twittered incessantly and would not be ignored. Finally he decided that perhaps he was hearing a distress beacon. With nothing to lose, and with tightly suppressed excitement, he wheeled Sedora upward into the clouds to find the source of this distraction. The search very nearly drained him—ten hours, in all, of purring through crazy blue skies with golden veils and spun hair arching across the stars like a yellow-brick road.
But in the end he found it: a flattened raisin of a spacecraft, drifting abeam of Sedora in the queer, atmospheric near-distance of the Flux. He grappled it in his net and took it spiraling up with him through layered images of space, through regressing visions, into spinning darknesses . . . until the stars exploded in bright pricks of light. Withdrawing from the net, he looked out through the clearplex port into normal-space.
The ship drifting alongside Sedora was squat, strange. Alien.
Suited, he left through the sidelock and floated across. He rested, enjoying weightlessness and gazing off into the galaxy; it was splendid and brilliant around him, exotically beautiful. From space, Sedora was silent, a gun-grey cetacean linked to him by a snaking lifeline. He turned, and his soles touched the alien hull. As he searched for an airlock he wondered who or what he might find—and whether, perhaps, the strangeness was only beginning.
(Hyiss?)
Before the disaster, though, was departure—boarding Sedora at Deusonport Field, with mixed and hurt feelings. It was Lady Brillig he wanted to fly. But if they said that a tour as helper-rigger on a slowship might teach him, then helper-rigger he would be. Deusonport Field: scattered clouds, blue-tinged sun, green hills and forest about the perimeter. Should be a cheery sight upon return. Relaxed, amidst the frenetic commerce of the Aeregian planets.
But what should be so troubling about the leaving behind of friends? (Who asked that? Who is wondering?)
Earlier still, Lady Brillig out of Jarvis on Chaening's World: Legroeder and Skan as usual; and Janofer, never quite stationary—her moods like air currents, never remaining simply petulant or contemplative or buoyant or depressed, but always a turbulent mixture, and her attention rarely focusing for long upon any one friend, but forever shifting from one to another to somewhere beyond thought. Why could he not have been closer to them? To her?
But why desire closeness? Rejoice in isolation. (Who?) (Whass?)
Before Lady Brillig there was only the training, the school. The buffeting among childhood peers. Homeless, familyless. (Hyiss!) (What?)
And . . . earlier? . . . later? . . . the flight-shell of another spacecraft altogether: the battery of riffmar in turmoil, working to confused commands while he fought to control his fury and discover what was wrong. The riffmar were maddeningly inept, never mind that they responded directly to his control. Mindless plants! he shrieked soundlessly, but it was not a curse so much as a statement. Oh, why oh why had he come such a way to this nowhere place in space to be stranded? Why had he let Corneph get to him like that?
A riffmar, confused by his unsure control, stumbled near. He swatted it with his left paw and flattened it. Six more left, by damn, and they'd better start flying! But they wouldn't, not unless he determined what was stalling the craft, and instructed them. If only he knew more about these things!
(Strange, to be flying without knowing . . .)
Bring me syrup, he ordered, and glared at the two riffmar scurrying to comply, wrestling between them a large stalk from the bin. He took it moodily in his jaws and sent the two off to tend the riff-bud cultures, and then to feed themselves. While they were wriggling their tendril toes into the nutrient beds, he crunched the sweet stalk and brooded.
He had left Syncleya in a terrible fury. Actually, a tantrum. True, it wasn't his time yet to learn to fly (not for another four seasons), and he had taken the shell from the space-docks without knowing if it had been properly checked and prepared—all right, that was questionable judgment, admittedly, and perhaps he had compounded the error by heading for deep space rather than one of the worlds—but who would have thought that a simple shell could malfunction? Everyone knew that flying was bloody simple—use your riffmar to run the shell, nothing complicated, and let your mind steer the ship, like the interdreaming of the quarm, but with no other broil-damn minds cluttering up your thoughts.
(You had never flown before? But . . .)
(Hone-ly held-hers f-hly!)
(Elders? Then you aren't . . . very old. Oh.)
Lord-o, it wasn't the same for the others. He just had to get away from the quarm and from Corneph's incessant nagging, never letting him rest for a moment without conforming to the quarm. Share, merge, unite, never leave a thought untouched. Here: become a plant, become an alien (he had never even seen an alien!). Broil-dammit! Was he strange, just because he alone could not stand it?
Ooh, to be free of them! That's why he had fled! But he'd never meant to make it permanent.
(Did the others offend? Is that why you do not wish company?)
(Whass?)
Now he was stalled, stalled! Why would the thing not fly? Seated in his sunken dais, he grilled the riffmar on their findings (though he had not been tending them, so how could they have found anything?). He hurled abuse at the quivering creatures, and finally he leaped screaming, scattering them in fright. Odomilk! he shrieked, and when it was brought he sucked on the pods with a vengeance, while the riffmar huddled in their nutrient beds. Nothing like pungent odomilk—but still, there were the riffmar to be attended to. Certain chores they could perform by rote, but hardly what he was demanding now. And he had best be careful; there were only six of the sluggards left. Here, an idea: perhaps there was a maintenance recorder.
Humming, he set the riffmar to locating the memory cube and then, once they found it, to obeying the cube's silent recitation. Hey-now, the thought-flow amp seemed to be working, so maybe it was just the controls out of kilter. That was more like it—a pity he hadn't thought of the recorder sooner, but after all he was a forest-singer and not a flight-crafter. Corneph—that sot-rotted nuisance would be unbearable if he knew of this. His bloody arrogance could drive anyone from home. Corneph, with his stinking empathic whistle, diving like a fool into the quarm and dragging you off on a mindlark whether invited or not. Lord-o-lord, to be rid of him was worth even this!
A riffmar peeked shyly at him, awaiting recognition.
Useless plants! He recognized it with a powerful swat. Hah! Two with one blow!
Oh damn, now, he needed those two to fly!
Alarmed, he prodded the limp ferns—but it was no use; they were dead. He sprang to all fours, whiskers curling and twisting. What had they been meaning to tell him?
The four living riffmar huddled at the control tree, so obviously paralyzed with fear that he approached with unusual caution. What had they learned?
Ssss. They quivered, struggling to coordinate a reply. Hssshell ffly . . . h-need more uss. One of them collapsed, strained beyond its limit, and the others lifted it gingerly and carried it to the nutrient bed. Ssssss.
That was it, then; he was finished. He had caught the image before it faded. The controls had been upset by a passing storm; now, with the help of the maintenance memory cube the problem had been corrected, and all he needed to fly again were six riffmar to operate the controls. And all he had left were four.
Rage boiled in his stomach. He could not fly with only four, and there was no way to speed the growth of the young buds. He could switch on the distress beacon, but there would be no one to hear it; he was far beyond cynthian space. So that was it; he was finished.
He was also embarrassed beyond description.
A groan erupted from his throat, and through a deepening haze he saw the riffmar shrinking from him. Damn them! Wailing, spitting, he leaped at the control tree—rebounded with a crash of breaking elements—and launched himself at the riffmar. Two of them fell to his claws, but in his madness he lost his thought-control, and the other two fled shrieking to safety behind the nutrient bed. He forgot them and bounded back over his dais; he skidded, and slammed broadside into the wall. He staggered away, stunned, and hurled himself yowling into the control tree again, where with a smashing of splinters he tumbled, battered, to the deck.
Later, on awakening, he tore savagely into his stock of bramleaf, and he gorged himself on odomilk. He ignored the riffmar, ignored the broken tree, ignored the shell's warbling distress beacon—and concentrated solely on glutting himself to the limit on bramleaf and odomilk. When he finished he sank groaning into the dais, laid his head upon his tail, and slept.
(My god, such violence! Have you no discipline? No wonder you can't coordinate worth a damn in the net.)
(Ffsssss—hyou who kannoss kheef hyor mines h-where iss be-hlongss, Caharleel!)
On awakening this time, he hissed in pain. His stomach was a hard knot of complaint; his fur was matted and disheveled; he wanted badly, oh so badly, to regurgitate, or, failing that, to die. He fumed in silent agony, his eyes watering, his thoughts orbiting one another in meaningless jokes. Could he maybe work the little knobs himself, with his big, clumsy paws? Yeh. Ooh, to throw the fiercest tantrum in history! But he could hardly move, for the abdominal cramps.
Eventually his head cleared somewhat, and he turned grimly to the final challenge: arranging for himself a good, classical demise. He looked balefully at the two riffmar sssking in the nutrient bed, and his blood heated once more.
But no; he must spare them, at least for the moment.
Had he grounds for demise? Dereliction in space was embarrassing, to be sure. Depressing, infuriating, humiliating. But was it humiliation enough? It was hard to be certain, and he had little experience in such matters. What he really needed now, for a demise that would even put Corneph to shame, was to be perceived as being a victim rather than an idiot.
(Demise? What do you mean, "demise"?)
Later, mulling, and gnawing at his tail, he was startled by a CLUNGGG reverberating through the shell. And a buzzing outside—was there something out there? Someone? Fascinated, nervous, he moved over to the wall and listened. What, what? There were thumps, small thumps moving in a progression around the outside of the shell. Lord-o, now what? Was space itself going crazy?
He listened more carefully, and extended the range of his thoughts beyond the inner shell. Why, there were the stars and space—too broil-damn much space!—and . . . an alien! He pulled back, sputtering, and then reached out again. A creature from another shell, a biped, enclosed in a form-fitting suit of some kind. Walking about on the outside of his, Cephean's, shell. Searching . . . for him?
Blood rushed to his head, then ebbed. And suddenly the meaning came clear. The creature had heard the distress beacon—and who had activated that, anyway?—and he was here for a rescue!
Now what better humiliation could be asked?
Feeling suddenly much brighter, he sent the two riffmar to ready the airlock to receive the alien—and to prepare the space-balloon, since clearly they would be transferring to the alien's ship. While he, with assurance at last, began plotting a truly graceful demise.
Carlyle broke into the memory. Cephean, you mean you came aboard with me . . . (vision of the cynthian and the two ferns, plus baggage, drifting across space in the flimsy clear bubble, squeezing with considerable prodding into Sedora's airlock; Cephean clawing the bubble open like a plastic bag) . . . meaning from the start to . . . kill yourself?
Fffssilly ssfhool! Hnow hyou haff h-made me ffssay iss!
But can't you see I'm trying to help you get home again?
Ffssthufid! H-noss h-my home-ss.
Carlyle, facing the cynthian through a gauzy veil: Cephean, if we get out of this, you can find a way home. I'll help you. Is humiliation the only reason you're not cooperating? You want to scuttle my ship, destroy it, take me down with you? Wouldn't you rather go back—laugh at Corneph, make him look like the fool instead?
Cephean lurched about in great agitation, almost crashing through to Carlyle's side of the veil: H-no, no! Noss Corneph hin mi-mind-ss! H-noss hafter thiss!
Cephean, I didn't take you off your ship to embarrass you, or even just to save you. I needed help as badly as you did. There's no humiliation in offering help, and that's what I want you to do—offer me help.
The boundary layer shimmered like a curtain, threatening to part, and Cephean pushed his face close to it to peer at Carlyle. Ssso? Whass-about hyor frenss hyou halways heff?
You mean Janofer, Skan, and Legroeder? They're not here in person—they're different. I thought you knew. They're out of my memory and imagination—sort of like your quarm, I guess.
Hyou heff no quarm! Scornfully. (Or perhaps enviously?)
No. But we wish we had something like it, or something like what you saw between the others and me in the net. But wishful thinking is as close as we come. We're alone. The way you seem to wish you could be.
Hyiss.
We're condemned to it. Except for short times, when we're in the dreampool—and then it's scary, but we do it because it helps us work together in the rig. The way I want you and me to work.
H-why hyor frenss noss helff?
They were never there. That's my whole point. I was flying alone in the net—just me, with my memories. Perhaps I could do it again for a while, but never long enough to get us through the Flume.
Whass iss Flume?
Again? Here:
The Flume. Breakup of the Reld Current, and the vicious spawning ground of new currents. The Flume varied in detail with each vision of the Flux, but in its most basic character remained the same. It was a place riggers passed at peril and with utmost attention to control. They were like ancient sonarmen—sounding their ocean depths carefully, guessing shrewdly at reflection layers, scattering layers, deep transmission layers. The only certainty was change, the intrinsic frailty of any given condition. Things happened fast: a vortex luring a ship into subtle pathways to unknown space; a waterspout lifting a ship whole and pinwheeling it lifeless back into the sea; white-water rapids smashing a ship and flinging the pieces to the heavens. Or: the ship dancing across the flux-eddies like a skipping-stone over water, the reins of the net allowing the rigger to guide it through the danger zones, to master the flow and bank into the chosen exiting current, and to send the ship high and fast toward its destination.
H-we kann noss!
Yes we can, Cephean. That's why we're here—to learn how. Are you ready for an experiment in cooperation?
The cynthian drew back, sputtering. Whass?
The setting changed abruptly. They stood together on a hillside meadow under a beaming sun. The meadow lay upland in a range of rugged hills; all around and down-land from it sprawled pockets and cushions of forest. Whass! Cephean was astonished and indignant, and his eyes flashed like copper buttons in his black velvet face. This, Carlyle perceived, was a bit like the tricks old Corneph used to pull. Well, too bad. This is your world, isn't it, Cephean? Syncleya?
Hyiss. Suspiciously? Or angrily? Either way, Carlyle could sympathize. The dreampool drew from both of their minds; and probably Cephean did not realize that neither of them was wholly in control of the process.
There was a sound of giggles, badly suppressed. The two riffmar poked their heads out of the grass, and sat up hiccuping.
Another sound—a hissing chortle, from the top of the hill. It was Corneph, gazing down with delight; he was a somewhat smaller version of Cephean, with a brown and white streak down his black breast. (Carlyle sensed sudden malevolence—from Cephean.)
Not far downslope from Corneph, Janofer sat serenely watching; and presumably Skan and Legroeder were somewhere about.
That's the whole cast, Cephean. Carlyle turned, scuffling his feet in the turf; he breathed great lungfuls of the open air, and gazed about at the almost torturously green countryside. Will you show me around?
Cephean spat and sputtered in perplexity, and finally pawed his nose, his tail lashing about behind his head. Hyiss, ss-all righ-ss. He sprang downhill on all fours, the riffmar hurrying at his heels, and vanished into the woods. Carlyle followed, surprised by the sudden display of speed. He found Cephean in the woods, unconcernedly waiting beneath a stand of slender, smooth-trunked trees.
Ssthoff.
He stopped. Clearly Cephean had something to show him. The cynthian sat and simply looked off into space, his molten eyes wide. The riffmar stood perfectly still.
A sound passed through the air like a shadow, a musical tone. Or had something touched just his thoughts, and not the air at all? He couldn't tell what it was that he was hearing—even when the note repeated itself, and other notes followed, notes of different pitch and different timbre. Clear, piping notes—but were they in the air or in his mind?
Notes fell like rain. Reedy mournful sounds, and crystalline belltones, and a shower of melohorns, and a whole skyful of tones for which he had no name. There seemed to be no melody. But other patterns emerged, as though from the depths of his mind, blossoming into his thought. Visuals: of colors and of blending, sagging clays, of red sands tumbling, sliding from cliffs. And smells: of fresh-cut greens and broken cedar. His vision blurred, and instead of seeing Cephean he saw a whole community of cynthians, crafters at work—directing riffmar and the larger, brawnier roffmar at construction tasks. In the background, low-slung pack delmar grumbled and sighed. The controlling thought-commands rushed cacophonously through his skull.
The vision shifted with merciful speed, and he glimpsed a quarm, a circle of female cynthians, the everyday telepathic clamor subdued to an intense mumble; a circle of minds traipsing together in other worlds. The vision shifted again, and here were cynthians at study (investigating what?), their sparkling eyes gazing into oddly shaped crystals. Hum of probing thoughts; and instructions for younger cynthians (such as Cephean?). The vision shifted again, and broke altogether.
The music-rain trickled wetly, and stopped. He looked at Cephean in amazement. The cynthian was now resting, utterly relaxed, beneath a cleverly woven bower of trees. Carlyle blinked. Had the trees bent themselves to Cephean's designs? The music had so engaged him, he had seen nothing of what had happened. You did that? he whispered.
Hyiss.
The visions—had they been a deliberate presentation, or a distraction, or merely background noise?
The question died unasked. A boisterous scream shattered the stillness—and Carlyle whirled about in consternation and looked back through the woods, squinting. What the hell? he wondered. The scream sounded again, louder. Finally he looked up. An enormous flying beast soared low over the woods, then descended, crashing through the trees, and landed on the forest floor with a CRUMP and a horrible strangling noise.
Carlyle's throat constricted at the sight. It was a koryf, a dragon-creature from the wilds of Garsoom's Haven. He had seen a real koryf once, on that world. The beast had so terrified him that he had humiliated himself by hiding and abandoning his guide to face the creature alone. The guide had escaped unscathed, fortunately, but Carlyle's pride had not. The humiliation and the fear rushed back now, and before he even realized what he was doing, he was looking frantically—and futilely—for a place to hide.
The koryf was hideously crumpled and gray, like a deflated elephant skin hung on a misshapen skeleton. Even from a distance its stench was gagging, and its teeth were highly visible, long and yellow. The beast screamed again, and spat acid saliva that fell smoking among the trees.
Whassss! Cephean hissed shrilly.
Carlyle glanced at him blankly, then came to his senses. Quickly he explained to Cephean what the creature was—and that it was going to try to kill them. This one's from my memory, he said woefully. He wheeled around, looking for a place of safety.
The koryf furiously beat its wings, smashing tree branches recklessly; and it lurched toward them with a cry of death. Carlyle backpedaled, urging Cephean to flee. But the cynthian was paralyzed by indecision—until the laughter of another cynthian (that toad, Corneph!) hissed through the woods. In sudden fury, Cephean raked his ears forward and flashed his teeth. SSTHOFF! he shrieked at the monster.
The koryf lunged, spitting and wailing, and tore a tree apart with its jagged incisors. Sputtering, astonished, Cephean fled after Carlyle.
You can't stand against it, Carlyle insisted, huddling behind a tree. Cephean glared at him. The riffmar scuttled on past and didn't stop.
Carlyle tried frantically to remember just what it was one did do against a koryf. We can't outrun it, not far, and we can't fight it unarmed. We'll have to outwit it.
Sss-how?
Suddenly he remembered. It's stupid. It's telepathic but it's stupid.
The koryf was crashing very close now. His words spilled out in a jumble. We have to distract it—it can only concentrate on one thing at a time. If we can each get its attention, we'll confuse it. Then—I don't know, but if we don't do at least that much it will kill us for sure.
Corneph, somewhere, hooted.
Hyou bross heem, Caharleel! Cephean said accusingly, not specifying whether he meant Corneph or the koryf.
Carlyle scrambled and shoved Cephean ahead of him. The koryf lumbered through the last shielding trees. The stench was terrible. Carlyle ran with Cephean until he had gained some distance from the beast and then sagged, gasping, with his back to a tree. Cephean snarled in the direction of the koryf, and turned to resume his complaint. His whiskers quivered with anger as he stared at Carlyle.
Carlyle was saved from an inquisition by the sound of Janofer's voice. He had no choice, Cephean. Carlyle looked around in amazement; but Janofer was nowhere to be seen. He can only get so much help from us, Cephean—we are not so real as we might seem. But Cephean, you can help if you will only try. Do what he says now—you must, for all of us! Her voice was soft, as always, and urgent—and it stirred warmth in Carlyle, along with a trace of bitterness and humiliation. Could a cynthian sympathize with such weaknesses in a human?
Cephean snorted and looked off into the woods—thinking, rubbing his tail against his ears, pawing at his whiskers. Finally he dipped his head around to face Carlyle. Whass h-we d-hoo?
The koryf screamed as it discovered their location and began smashing its way toward them. Entire trees toppled before the creature, and the air was fouled with sulfurous gusts.
Carlyle shouted instructions: You run to the right and I'll run to the left! We'll both try to keep its attention. Keep it confused, and keep track of me, too. Now GO!
The nearest tree suddenly erupted from the ground, its roots dangling. The koryf shook the tree in its jaws, dirt flying in all directions, then dropped it with a crash and set to the attack. Carlyle and Cephean bolted in opposite directions. The koryf hesitated, infuriated—then lunged after Cephean. Carlyle turned, screaming: STOP! STOP!—but when the koryf gave no notice he took a deep, full breath and charged hard on the beast's tail.
His first thought was to throw stones to distract the monster; but there were none lying in reach, so he scooped up a clod of earth in each hand and when he was near enough threw them both, with all his strength, at the koryf's head. He missed. But he found a broken branch on the ground, and—as the koryf snapped close to where Cephean crouched, hissing—hurled it straight on target. The branch glanced from the koryf's head—and that got its attention. The beast swung about in rage. Screaming, it set upon Carlyle.
He ran in terror. He ran until his lungs ached for wind, and then he stopped and looked back. The koryf was following him; but stalking the koryf, at a safe distance, was Cephean. Good, so far. But the koryf was dangerously near, its acrid breath warm in Carlyle's face. Carlyle waited, ready to dash, and projected his thoughts in an effort to bait the koryf: Come to me, come to me!
The beast spat hideously. Suddenly into Carlyle's mind came an image of red, dripping flesh. He stiffened with horror, thinking that it was the koryf's thoughts he had intercepted—but the koryf suddenly lumbered to a halt and looked back at Cephean, slavering. Carlyle realized then what the cynthian was doing, and he projected his own image of bloody meat, gruesome and (he hoped) appetizing. The koryf's eyes flashed back around, half a second faster than its head motion, and it fixed Carlyle with a raspy-breathed gaze. Before it could decide to attack, though, an image of a wounded, struggling animal appeared, and again the koryf turned with a thrashing of its wings toward Cephean. Carlyle backed off by a few steps, and projected the same image, larger.
The koryf's confusion lasted about a minute; then it made its decision and charged full-bore after Cephean. Carlyle whooped after it, screaming and hurling branches and clods of soil. The creature ignored him, intent on its prey; but after Carlyle had struck its head with several chunks of wood, it finally turned, shrieking loathsomely, and advanced upon Carlyle. Backing away, Carlyle stared fearfully at the creature, thinking that Cephean would be too slow to save him; but the baiting images reappeared in his mind, and the koryf paused in its attack.
This time they were able to hold the creature longer. Carlyle was so delighted by the sight of the koryf glowering with indecision that he shouted: We're doing it, Cephean!—and at once the spell was broken, and the koryf turned on him, teeth snapping. Carlyle ran, and he did not stop running until he was out of the trees and realized that he was dashing headlong across open meadow.
Stupid! he thought. The koryf broke out of the woods directly behind him and began to close the distance between them. Carlyle cut to his left, reeling from the hot breath. The koryf was beating its wings for flight, for a swooping kill. Cephean! he cried—and at that moment the cynthian appeared at the forest's edge and literally screamed an image of a gutted, bleeding animal. Carlyle staggered—but so did the koryf. The creature hesitated. Carlyle echoed the cynthian's image; the koryf vacillated.
Carlyle thought quickly and framed in his mind an image of a snoring mouse. He concentrated all his thought on that image: a tiny, weary, sleepy animal. Cephean reinforced the image at once. The koryf grew more confused, and suddenly seemed less vicious. Outside the forest cover, it appeared uglier and more gangling—still terrifying, but less mythical. Carlyle thought of sleep . . . peace . . . satiation. He envisioned himself after gluttonous eating: logy, muddleheaded, too sluggish to even think of moving. That image, too, was reinforced—a cynthian gorged on odomilk.
The koryf folded its wings and settled down to observe from a more comfortable position. It seemed an oversized, large-jawed bag of bones. Its inclination to attack was failing. Lowering its weighty head to the ground, it seemed to decide that there was no point in making hasty judgments.
Two minutes later, it was snoring loudly and vulgarly—and Cephean was studying Carlyle with flickering, astonished eyes.
Carlyle caught his breath. Finally he grinned. There was Janofer at the edge of the forest now, smiling. And there Corneph appeared and hissed grudgingly, his smirk gone. That seemed to please Cephean.
Carlyle wondered what the cynthian was thinking. But if Cephean had believed Janofer earlier, did any of the rest matter?
* * *
Carlyle lifted his eyes to peer across the dreampool. His neck ached, and it cracked painfully when he stretched. His arms and legs were sodden; he was drenched with sweat. The theater seemed incredibly hot. He gazed at Cephean. The cat was grumbling and sliding down from the ledge with something less than his usual poise.
Carlyle stepped down also. He nodded to the cynthian, but that was all; and clearly Cephean felt no more like talking than he did.
About an hour had passed in the dreampool theater.
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