Roger Zelazny
The Dream Master
I
Lovely as it was, with the blood and all, Render could sense that it was about to end.
Therefore, each microsecond would be better off as a minute, he decided—and perhaps the temperature should be increased... . Somewhere, just at the periphery of everything, the darkness halted its constriction.
Something, like a crescendo of subliminal thunders, was arrested at one raging note. That note was a distillate of shame and pain, and fear.
The Forum was stifling.
Caesar cowered outside the frantic circle. His forearm covered his eyes but it could not stop the seeing, not this time.
The senators had no faces and their garments were spattered with blood. All their voices were like the cries of birds. With an inhuman frenzy they plunged their daggers into the fallen figure.
All, that is, but Render.
The pool of blood in which he stood continued to widen. His arm seemed to be rising and falling with a mechanical regularity and his throat might have been shaping bird-cries, but he was simultaneously apart from and part of the scene.
For he was Render, the Shaper.
Crouched, anguished and envious, Caesar wailed his protests.
"You have slain him! You have murdered Marcus Antonius —a blameless, useless fellow!"
Render turned to him, and the dagger in his hand was quite enormous and quite gory.
"Aye," said he.
The blade moved from side to side. Caesar, fascinated by the sharpened steel, swayed to the same rhythm.
"Why?" he cried. "Why?"
"Because," answered Render, "he was a far nobler Roman than yourself."
"You lie! It is not so!"
Render shrugged and returned to the stabbing.
"It is not true!" screamed Caesar. "Not true!"
Render turned to him again and waved the dagger. Pup-petlike, Caesar mimicked the pendulum of the blade.
"Not true?" Render smiled. "And who are you to question an assassination such as this? You are no one! You detract from the dignity of this occasion! Begone!"
Jerkily, the pink-faced man rose to his feet, his hair half-wispy, half-wetplastered, a disarray of cotton. He turned, moved away; and as he walked, he looked back over his shoulder.
He had moved far from the circle of assassins, but the scene did not diminish in size. It retained an electric clarity. It made him feel even further removed, ever more alone and apart.
Render rounded a previously unnoticed corner and stood before him, a blind beggar.
Caesar grasped the front of his garment.
"Have you an ill omen for me this day?"
"Beware!" jeered Render.
"Yes! Yes!" cried Caesar. " 'Beware!' That is good! Beware what?"
'The ides-"
"Yes? The ides-?"
"—of Octember."
He released the garment.
"What is that you say? What is Octember?"
"A month."
"You lie! There is no month of Octember!"
"And that is the date noble Caesar need fear—the nonexistent time, the never-to-be-calendared occasion."
Render vanished around another sudden corner.
"Wait! Come back!"
Render laughed, and the Forum laughed with him. The bird-cries became a chorus of inhuman jeers.
"You mock me!" wept Caesar.
The Forum was an oven, and the perspiration formed like a glassy mask over Caesar's narrow forehead, sharp nose, chin-less jaw.
"I want to be assassinated too!" he sobbed. "It isn't fair!"
And Render tore the Forum and the senators and the grinning corpse of Antony to pieces and stuffed them into a black sack—with the unseen movement of a single finger— and last of all went Caesar.
Charles Render sat before the ninety white buttons and the two red ones, not really looking at any of them. His right arm moved in its soundless sling, across the lap-level surface of the console—pushing some of the buttons, skipping over others, moving on, retracing its path to press the next in the order of the Recall Series.
Sensations throttled, emotions reduced to nothing, Representative Erikson knew the oblivion of the womb.
There was a soft click.
Render's hand had glided to the end of the bottom row
of buttons. An act of conscious intent—will, if you like— was required to push the red button.
Render freed his arm and lifted off his crown of Medusa-hair leads and microminiature circuitry. He slid from behind his desk-couch and raised the hood. He walked to the window and transpared it, fingering forth a cigarette.
One minute in the ro-womb, he decided. No more. This is a crucial one... Hope it doesn't snow till later—these clouds look mean . ..
It was smooth yellow trellises and high towers, glassy and gray, all smoldering into evening under a shale-colored sky; the city was squared volcanic islands, glowing in the end-of-day light, rumbling deep down under the earth; it was fat, incessant rivers of traffic, rushing.
Render turned away from the window and approached the great egg that lay beside his desk, smooth and glittering. It threw back a reflection that smashed all aquilinity from his nose, turned his eyes to gray saucers, transformed his hair into a light-streaked skyline; his reddish necktie became the wide tongue of a ghoul.
He smiled, reached across the desk. He pressed the second red button.
With a sigh, the egg lost its dazzling opacity and a horizontal crack appeared about its middle. Through the now-transparent shell, Render could see Erikson grimacing, squeezing his eyes tight, fighting against a return to consciousness and the thing it would contain. The upper half of the egg rose vertical to the base, exposing him knobby and pink on half-shell. When his eyes opened he did not look at Render. He rose to his feet and began dressing. Render used this time to check the ro-womb.
He leaned back across his desk and pressed the buttons: temperature control, full range, check; exotic sounds—he raised the earphone—check, on bells, on buzzes, on violin notes and whistles, on squeals and moans, on traffic noises and the sound of surf; check, on the feedback circuit—holding the patient's own voice, trapped earlier in analysis; check, on the sound blanket, the moisture spray, the odor banks;
check, on the couch agitator and the colored lights, the taste stimulants... .
Render closed the egg and shut off its power. He pushed the unit into the closet, palmed shut the door. The tapes had registered a valid sequence. "Sit down," he directed Erikson. The man did so, fidgeting with his collar. "You have full recall," said Render, "so there is no need for me to summarize what occurred. Nothing can be hidden from me. I was there." Erikson nodded.
"The significance of the episode should be apparent to you."
Erikson nodded again, finally finding his voice. "But was it valid?" he asked. "I mean, you constructed the dream and you controlled it, all the way. I didn't really dream it— in the way I would normally dream. Your ability to make things happen stacks the deck for whatever you're going to say—doesn't it?"
Render shook his head slowly, flicked an ash into the southern hemisphere of his globe-made-ashtray, and met Erikson's eyes.
"It is true that I supplied the format and modified the forms. You, however, filled them with an emotional significance, promoted them to the status of symbols corresponding to your problem. If the dream was not a valid analogue it would not have provoked the reactions it did. It would have been devoid of the anxiety-patterns which were registered on the tapes.
"You have been in analysis for many months now," he continued, "and everything I have learned thus far serves to convince me that your fears of assassination are without any basis in fact." Erikson glared.
"Then why the hell do I have them?"
"Because," said Render, "you would like very much to be the subject of an assassination."