Behind the Eyes of Dreamers Page 5

  “I’ll stay with you if you want me,” said Gabe. “I moved into the room next door, but if you want me here, I’ll stay. Just tell me.”

  She shook her head, rolling it from side to side on the mat. “No.”

  “Think it over, at least.” He patted her hand. She withdrew it from him slowly and placed it under the coat.

  “No.” She was floating now. The room grew darker and the walls seemed to shimmer. Again she felt a wet cloth on her face.

  When she woke up once more, Gabe was gone.

  Suzanne wandered through the large downstairs room and took a seat next to the wall. She gazed at the people sitting around the tables. The tiny gray-haired woman was absent. Warren, Asenath, Oscar, and Felice were gone, as were others she had known only by sight: a big red-haired fellow, a bony middle-aged blonde, an acne-scarred Puerto Rican. She remembered the burned city, and then Joel.

  She picked up one of the metal devices near her. Three cylinders, woven together with metallic tubing, were joined to three globes. The cylinders rested on golden rectangular bases. The whole apparatus was about three feet in height. She wondered absently if they would ever be finished. She put the device down and waited for the Aadae to arrive with more components.

  She resumed watching the people at the tables. It was possible that some of them, even now, were planning a way to resist or defeat the aliens, but she doubted it. The city was still too vivid an example in their minds, most likely. Most of the resisters, the determined and forceful ones, had probably died there. This crowd’s like me, she thought bitterly. We’ll get by. She noticed that some of the people appeared uneasy and realized that she was glaring at them. She looked away.

  Gabe’s heavy denimed legs were in front of her. She waved him away, but he sat down in front of her anyway.

  “You had any breakfast, Suzanne?”

  “No.”

  “You should eat. If you want, I’ll get you some.”

  “I ate last night; I don’t want anything now.” She didn’t tell him she had vomited the meal in the bathroom, kneeling on the floor and holding her hair off her face with one hand. “Thanks anyway, Gabe,” she said tonelessly. He seemed to expand visibly at that, as if taking her words as encouragement. He hovered over her like a beast of prey, his brown beard making her think of a grizzly bear. She hated him at that moment. Always sniffing around; you wanted Joel to die, you son of a bitch. She was quickly ashamed of herself. He’s just trying to help. She grew conscious of the hairy legs concealed by her dungarees, and her halitosis; one of her teeth, with no dental care, was slowly, painfully, and aromatically rotting away. She almost chuckled at the thought of Gabe, or anyone else, desiring her sexually. She folded her arms across her breasts, knobby little things, and again thought of Joel and all the ways in which she had failed him. Yet part of her still knew that regret was her justification, enjoyable for those who were seasoned to it, a way of believing that things could have been different. Give me a thousand chances, and I would be the same. That thought too had its comforting aspects. Her mind curled up inside her and continued its self-flagellation with the willows of guilt, leaving its peculiarly painful and pleasurable scars.

  Gabe jostled her elbow. Neir-let and her companion were at the doorway, but this time they brought no components, only two small leatherlike pouches. Neir-let surveyed the room, apparently waiting for everyone’s full attention; then she began to speak in her musical voice.

  “We have almost finished assembly of these tools,” she said. Suzanne straightened her back at the words. “Only one thing remains.” The alien leaned over and picked up one of the metal objects. “Each of you should select one now, and keep it with you at all times.” Suzanne reached over for the one she had handled before and watched as everyone scrambled about. No one appeared angry or relieved; they clutched the objects passively and silently, then retreated to the walls, seating themselves on the floor.

  Neir-let opened her pouch and took out a small blue gem. It winked in the light and was seemingly answered by the blue stone embedded in Neir-let’s forehead. “You will place this in the small dent you will find in one of the globes. It will adhere to the surface by itself.” Neir-let and the other Aada began to move around the room, handing a blue stone to each person. Suzanne accepted hers from Neir-let and soon found the dented globe. She pressed the stone into the dent and waited.

  The task was completed by everyone in a few minutes. Neir-let walked back to the doorway and held up her arms. “What I tell you now will be the hardest thing to do,” she said. “You must sit with these tools and wait, concentrating on them as much as you are able. You may go outside if you wish, or sit by the road. If you grow weary, rest, then try again.”

  The two Aadae left the dome. Suzanne got up and began to follow them with her device. Gabe caught her by the arm.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Outside to concentrate,” she replied. “What else can I do?”

  “Don’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were trying to turn us into a group of zombies. Forget it. Let them try to force us; there’s no way you can compel a person to concentrate.”

  She pulled away from him and went outside. She didn’t care about the device. She wanted to get away from Gabe and the dome, sit alone with her thoughts. She walked toward the highway and seated herself next to the mound under which Joel lay. She would keep her vigil with him.

  She put the metal object down at her side and found herself distracted by the blue gem. It seemed to tug at her mind, drawing her attention to itself. She continued to stare at the stone, secure in its blue gaze. Her mind was steady, hovering over her body, able to look at the grave near her with no sadness. She was at peace.

  Somehow she managed to withdraw from the object. She rose unsteadily to her feet. It was almost noon. Her feet were asleep, her back stiff. She stomped around, trying to restore her circulation.

  “Suzanne.” Neir-let was standing by the mound. “You have seen?”

  “What is this thing? What does it do, Neir-let?” It was the first time she had addressed the Aada by name and her tongue slid uncertainly over the words.

  “It is a tool to build strength. It will aid you, but in a short time you will not need it, I think.”

  Suzanne turned from the alien, and noticed that a group of boys were playing baseball on the highway, while others sat on the side of the road in conversation. She saw only one woman, outside a dome, concentrating on her device. “No one else seems to be bothering.”

  “It does not matter,” Neir-let said. “One, or a few, will lead and they must follow. You will see. A few are more receptive.”

  Suzanne sat down again, with her back to the device. “You will see,” Neir-let’s voice whispered.

  Suzanne continued to concentrate, sometimes in the evenings, sometimes in the early mornings before the others were awake. Her days consisted of long periods in front of the device, punctuated only by the need to return to the dome for sleep and, less often, food.

  Gabe came to her once, as she sat by the highway. He carried her and her device back to the dome and insisted upon forcing food down her throat. He hid the device in his room, saying he would give it back when she looked healthier. Suzanne shrugged at this, by now indifferent to her bony limbs and slightly swollen belly. She wondered vaguely if she was pregnant; her period had not yet arrived. She spent several days lying on her mat, passively bearing Gabe’s ministrations and wondering what Joel’s child would be like. But after a week, her womb bled once more and she knew that there was now nothing left of Joel except the decaying body under a mound.

  She regained her strength and managed to steal her device from Gabe’s room while he slept. She fled from her dome and resumed her vigil farther up the highway. She ate her meals in another dome and slept in its large main room, arms draped over the metal object.

  She often began her meditations while a group of Aadae sat in the road greeting the dawn. Her mind became clearer, more
conscious of the things around her. She focused on a series of sharp images: the shadows of the seated, swaying Aadae, slender and elongated, rippling along the bumps and crevices of the pavement—

  the blinded eyes of the robed aliens, violet irises afloat on a sea of white, with pupils that became small dark tunnels into darkness—

  a strand of blue-black hair on a golden cheek, caressed by the invisible fingers of a breeze, becoming a long moustache over a lip—

  a blade of grass among its fellows, its roots deep in the ground, attempting to draw moisture from the dandelion that hovered over it menacingly.

  Her mind uncoiled and floated above her, drifting over the seated Aadae. The domes beneath her grew smaller, becoming overturned bowls on a table and then the tops of mushrooms. She was soaring over the burned bones of the city, strewn in a black pit, an omen to be read by a giant seer. She felt no fear as her mind traveled over the Earth and did not attempt to draw it back. She circled over the city. The highways were asphalt runes, incomplete, leading only to the pit.

  Her mind came closer to the ground and returned to her, rushing through the domes where people still slept, dolls thrown on the mats by a careless child. She was staring once again at the metal apparatus in front of her.

  Almost ready. It was a whisper, in her mind but not of it. The Aadae rose and began to walk back to their dome, leading their blinded sisters by the hand. Suzanne blinked. There were black spots before her eyes and she realized that she must have been staring at the sun for part of the time.

  Her body was a burden which she hoisted to its feet. She would rest, and feed herself, then let her mind roam again.

  An Aada near her began to wail. Suzanne opened her mouth and sang with her; her soprano was a bird flying over, then alighting on, the alien’s clear mellow contralto. She soared effortlessly, and her crystalline tones circled over the lower voice, then flew on over the clouds to the sun.

  Suzanne sat by the highway, away from the late afternoon shadows cast on the ground by the domes. She set her device in front of her and prepared her mind for its work.

  She was suddenly frightened, and remembered the morning, long ago, when she had fled from the Aadae in fear. Throw it away. She recoiled from the metal construct before her. Someone, please, tell me what to do. The world was silent, the road empty.

  Once more. She watched the blue stone on the device. It began to grow larger, drawing her mind into a blue vortex. She swam in a shimmering dark sea and shafts of light, sharp as spears of glass, pierced her eyes.

  She was hurtling over the Earth, following the sun to the west. She moved through the eye of a storm and danced on the pinwheel of clouds. The Earth shrank beneath her and she turned to the moon, brushing against its rocky lifeless surface. Its craters were empty, its mountain peaks sharp, its shadows cold. She fled from the moon and was lost in darkness, heavy black velvet draped over her, pressing at her.

  She pushed the blackness away. Now she was falling, spiraling uncontrollably toward the sun. Its flaming surface was a battleground screaming across space, crying for death, reaching out to immolate her. Two flares erupted on the surface and became wispy appendages, the arms of a lover seeking an embrace. No. The star thundered at her. Another flare rose and flung her into the emptiness.

  A whisper reached her, almost as insubstantial as the flare dissolving around her. Not yet, you are not ready. Frightened, she flew from the conflagration, moving outward until the planets were round pebbles and the sun only a distant lantern.

  An invisible web surrounded her, pulling her toward a far red ruby glittering among diamonds. She passed a young world, still boiling, streaked with red and yellow streams. The red star in front of her grew larger and she drifted through its diffuse strands, to be met on the other side by a shaft of blue-white light. A tiny white sun circled the red star, a fierce sentry ready to defend its tired companion. She was pulled on, past a large gaseous world where heavy tentacled beasts fought in green seas, past a blue star around which dead rocks revolved, past a yellow sun linking flare-arms with its twin. She struggled against the web around her. Take me back. The web traveled more rapidly and she could catch only a glimpse of the worlds she passed.

  Ahead of her lay clusters of suns, crowded together in the galactic hub, revolving slowly with companions or shrieking in death, murdering servant worlds around them. She whirled over them and retreated into memory:

  Herds of automobiles stampeded through the streets. Their motors were an omnipresent growl, a subliminal threat. Trucks, oblivious to the smaller beasts around them, rolled by majestically; smaller cars made up for their lack in size by the use of clever tactics and, occasionally, increased belligerence. Suzanne walked the streets on a summer evening, clinging to Joel. She gazed up at his face and his eyes were momentarily two suns winking at her. She jostled a red-nosed drunk, rubbed elbows fleetingly with a young blonde woman whose cold green eyes became a green gas giant surrounded by rings. Ahead, a well-dressed silver-haired man shimmered, brushing aside luminous wisps before disappearing into a bar. Two adolescent girls flirted with three muscular boys dressed in embroidered denim jackets twinkling with constellations. She sniffed at the summer air: acrid odor of sweat, exhaust fumes, a whiff of aftershave, a charcoal-broiled steak, sulfur, ammonia, dust. Voices shrieked, babbled, murmured, roared, giggled, and bellowed, underscored by the insistent rumbling of the vehicles around them. She and the others began to retreat from the sidewalks, yielding them to the night. From her window, she could see the lighted windows in the towers around her. A dog was baying below. She heard a thunderous roar, then saw light on the street beneath her. Men on motorcycles screamed by, night creatures in search of prey.

  A comet streaked past, throwing her from the starry city. She whirled through the tendrils of a nebula, spinning aimlessly into space. The intangible web which had held her disappeared. She was alone. She had no tears to cry for Joel, for her lost city, for the Earth now impossibly distant from her. She spun through the darkness, away from the pinwheels and discs of galaxies.

  Something nearby was tugging at her mind. She drifted toward it, unable to resist. She did not belong here with her small fearful mind and her passive ineptitude. She could not deal with anything out here; she could not understand the processes that produced this immense spectacle, nor could she deal with it emotionally except as a series of frightening visions. Her mind seemed to contract, pushing in upon itself. You are less than nothing here.

  Stellar corpses. She could not see them, but she felt their presence. Heavy chains dragged at her, drawing her on. She was a prisoner and assented to her bonds passively. It seemed somehow right that she should remain here, punished for having ventured too far.

  Ahead, she saw a circle of blackness, darker even than the space around her, a deep well blotting out the nearer galaxies.

  She was falling, tumbling forward into an endless pit. The black well grew wider. She cried out soundlessly and tried to crawl away with nonexistent limbs. But I should wake up now. The well surrounded her and she continued to fall.

  The web was around her once more. Pull away. She tried to grasp the mind near her. The black pit was luring her on, teasing her with strands of light, whispering promises. Resist. The other mind touched her and she clung to it, struggling away from the hole in space.

  Help me, she called to the other.

  Help yourself. She pushed and the hole became a distant blot, then faded from sight. Streaks of blue and red light raced past her and she was ripped into a thousand pieces, beads on the thread of time. A thousand cries echoed in the vault of space and became one scream.

  She was in the web, hovering over the Earth. She flew closer and rested above a pink cloud over her domed settlement. It was already morning below and she could see tiny specks huddled together on the highway.

  You will grow stronger, the other mind whispered to her. You will travel with the other minds of space, streaking among the stars with tachyonic beings who h
ave transformed their physical shapes ages ago. You will meet those who abandoned their bodies but lurk near their worlds, afraid to venture further. And if you are very strong, you may approach a star where the strongest dwell, ready to fight you if you intrude. They will try to fling you far away, but if you contend with them long enough, they will reveal their secrets and allow you to join them. Your mind will grow stronger with each journey, and when your body can no longer hold it, you will leave it behind, a garment which you have outgrown, and journey among the stars. You will learn all one can learn here and then move on to where there is only unending reflection. Do you understand?

  Yes. She was sitting by the highway once again, held by the receptacle of her body. Neir-let was with her, clasping her hand.

  “There is one more thing to do,” the Aada murmured. “Are you strong enough, or must you rest?”

  “Now,” said Suzanne. Her mind floated up, brushed against Neir-let’s, then leapt from her across the Earth. She was a spark, a burst of lightning striking every human brain she found, leaping from one to the next. She seized a group of minds and flung them away, watching them leap to other minds. Then she gathered them all to her and wove them into her net, four billion strands, and flung them from the Earth. They cried out to her, some in fear, others in awe, still others in delight. She drew them back and wound the fabric around her, caressing each thread.

  She was once more at Neir-let’s side. Exhausted, she rested her head on the Aada’s shoulder. Neir-let’s hand brushed her hair gently. Trapped in her body, Suzanne could still feel the bonds that linked her mind with all of humanity, and knew that they were now linked for all time. They would never be alone again, isolated and apart, shadows lingering in separate caves. However distant they might be, in thought or space, whatever they might do by themselves, they would all be joined as closely as lovers.

  Neir-let stood up and removed the blue stone from the metal device. “You no longer need this,” she said, gesturing at the apparatus. The Aada pulled a pointed knife from the belt over her briefs, reached over and pricked Suzanne’s forehead, then pressed the stone against it. Suzanne bore the slight pain silently, wincing a bit, becoming calm as the stone pulsed between her temples. “This will help you to focus your mind, but soon you will not need it either.”