Raul stammered, “I... I made up the words. I guessed about open worlds.”
“You must understand it is heresy to ever consider the creatures of the dreams as reality. The machines for dreaming have a simple principle, I believe. You are familiar with the vague, cluttered dreams of childhood. The machines merely clarify and make logical these dreams through some application of power. They are limited in that there are only three areas, or worlds, in which we can dream. In time you will become familiar with each world. But never, never delude yourself by believing that these worlds exist. The only possible world is here, on these levels. It is the only conceivable sort of surroundings which will permit life to exist. We become wiser men through dreaming.”
Raul hesitated. “How long has this world of ours existed?”
“Since the beginning of time.”
“Who... who made it? Who built these walls and the dream machines?”
“Again, my son, you come close to heresy in your questions. All this has always existed. And man has always existed here. There is no beginning and no end.”
“Has anyone ever thought that a larger world might exist outside the levels?”
“I must ask you to stop this questioning. This life is good and it is right for all of the nine hundreds of mankind. Nothing exists beyond the walls.”
“May I ask just one more question?”
“Of course. Provided it has more sense than your previous questions.”
“I have seen that this world is large, as though many more men once lived in it than do now. Are our numbers smaller than in times past?”
Orlan abruptly turned his back. His voice came softly to Raul’s ears. “That question has bothered me. I have not thought of it for a long time. When I was very small there were over a thousand of us. I have wondered about this thing. Each year there are one or two togas or robes for which no children are born.” His voice strengthened. “But it will be of no importance in our lifetime. And I cannot believe that man will dwindle and die out of the world. I cannot believe that this world will one day be empty when the last person lies dead with no one to assist him into the tube.”
Orlan took Raul’s hand. “Come and I will take you to the case assigned to you for all of your life.”
Orlan did not speak until they stood, on the twentieth level, before the empty case. Orlan said, “At your head, as you lie therein, you will touch that small knurled knob. It has three stations for the three dream worlds. The first station is marked by a line which is straight. That is the most beautiful world of all. The second station is marked by a curved line which stands on a base. You will find that world frightening at first. It is noisy. The third station, marked with a line with a double curve, is to direct the machine to create the third world, the one we find of least interest. You will be free to dream at any time you desire. You will shut yourself inside, set the knob for whichever world you desire, then disrobe and take the metal plate between your teeth and bite down on it firmly. The dream will come quickly. In your dream you will have a new body and new, odd, pointless skills. I cannot instruct you how to acquire change and mobility in the worlds of dreams. That is something you must learn by doing. Everyone learns quickly, but the actual procedure does not lend itself to words. You will dream for ten hours at a time and at the end of that time the machine will awaken you. Then it is best to wait for a new day before dreaming again.”
Raul could not resist the chance to say, “When the lights are bright in the walls and floors, we call it day, and when they are dim, we call it night. Is there any particular reason for that?”
Jord Orlan’s hand slid quickly down from Raul’s naked shoulder. “You talk insanely. Why do we have heads? Why are we called men? Day is day and night is night.”
“I had a childhood dream where we lived on the outside of a great globe and there was nothing over us but space. The other globe, which we called the sun, circled us, giving light and heat. Day was when it was overhead. Night was when it was on the opposite side of the globe.”
Orlan gave him a queer look. “Indeed?” he said politely. “And men lived on all sides of this globe?” Raul nodded. Orlan said triumphantly, “The absurdity is apparent! Those on the underside would fall off!” His voice became husky. “I wish to warn you, my son. If you persist in absurdities and in heresies, you will be taken to a secret place that only I know of. It has been used in times past. There is a door and beyond it is an empty coldness. You will be thrust out of the world. Is that quite clear?”
Sobered, Raul nodded.
“And now you must dream of each world in turn. And at the end of three dreams you will return to me and you will be told the Law.”
Jord Orlan walked away. Raul stood by the case, trembling. He lifted the glass door, slid quickly in and lay on his back on the softness.
He unwound the band of fabric and thrust it from him. The soft throb of power surrounded him, tingling against his naked limbs. He set the knob at figure 1, which Orlan had not known as a figure, as a mathematical symbol.
The metal plate was cool to his touch. He stretched his lips and put it between his teeth. Putting his head back he shut his teeth firmly against the metal... and fell down into the dream as though he fell from the great red sun to the brown dusty plains near the ragged mountains.
He fell remote and detached in the blackness, limbless, faceless...
All motion stopped. This then, was the precious dream? Absolute nothingness, absolute blankness, with only the sense of existence. He waited and slowly there came to him an awareness of dimension and direction. He hung motionless, and then detected, at what felt like a great distance, another entity. He felt it was a sense that was not sight or touch or hearing. He could only think of it as an awareness. And with the power of his mind he thrust out toward it. The awareness heightened. He thrust again and again and it was a sudden merging. The thing he merged with fought him. He could feel it twist and try to turn away. He held it without hands, pulled it toward him without arms. He pulled it in and merged it with himself and pushed it back and down and away from him so that it was shrunken into a far small corner.
And Raul Kinson found himself walking on a dusty road. His arm hurt. He looked down at it and he was shocked to see the stringy leanness of the arm, the harsh metal enclosing the withered wrist, the dried blood where the metal had cut him. He was dressed in soft rags and he smelled the stink of his body. He limped on a bruised foot. The metal band on his wrist was in turn connected to a chain affixed to a long heavy pole. He was one of many men fastened to one side of the pole, with an equal number attached to the other side. Ahead of him, bare strong shoulders, oddly dark, were crisscrossed with wounds, some fresh, some very old.
The thing he held pressed down, writhed, and he released the pressure, a pure mental pressure he could not understand. It seemed to flow up into his mind, bringing with it strong fear and hate and the strange words of a strange tongue which, oddly, had meaning to him. These others were his comrades. Yes, they had fought together against the soldiers of Arrud the Elder, seven days’ march away. Death was better than captivity. Now there was nothing to look forward to but an empty belly, a life of slavery and savage punishment, a ceaseless, hopeless desire to escape and return to the far green fields of Raeme, to the cottage where the woman would wait for a time, where the children played by the mud sill of the door.
Vision and other senses began to fade. Raul found that he had released the mind of this man too far, that he had given the man the power to thrust him back into the nothingness. So once again he exerted control. In a short time he found the necessary delicate balance — with the captured mind thrust down, but not so far that language and circumstances became meaningless, yet with a sufficient control so that his own will would not be thrust out. With the maintenance of a proper balance, it was as though he existed on two levels. Through the mind of this man, this person who called himself Laron, he felt the hate and the hopeless anger, and also, through the alien invasion of his mind, a secondary fear of madness.