Dream Thief (11 page)

“My friends call me Spence.” Now it was Spence's turn to be flattered. Adjani, true to his calling, seemed to know intimately the nature of his work.

“Tell me, Spence, do you think we'll be able to put our crews to sleep for, say, a year or two on a trip between stars?”

“That's a tough one.” Spence puffed out his cheeks and let the air whistle through his teeth. “It is not entirely out of the question. Though I admit right now it looks like a long shot. This is still virgin territory we're exploring, you understand. Our expectations are likely to run beyond our abilities for some time to come.”

“You are a pioneer, Spence. And a cautious one. That is good.” Adjani smiled at him. “Packer asked the question with ulterior motives, I surmise.”

“Oh, how so?” Spence raised his eyebrows and regarded Packer with mock suspicion.

“See! What did I tell you? He's a quick one all right. Yes, I admit it. I had something in mind and I though I might get a little comfort from your answer.”

“Olmstead is leading the research trip this year since he's taking sixteen of his third-year students with him. He dreads the flight.”

“It isn't the flight I mind. It's my third trip to Mars and I get so
bored.
Five weeks is a long time to occupy oneself aboard a bucket—I wouldn't mind a long nap.”

“It would hot
take
five weeks if you and your HiEn theorists would stop theorizing and perfect the plasma drive,” jibed Adjani.

The big physicist pulled a hurt face and shook his head wearily. “See, Spence? See what I have to put up with? Now it's my fault that we have no plasma drive. Just between you and me, Dr. Reston, I think Adjani is a saboteur sent from Cal Tech to disrupt our experiments.
They
would like to be first to patent the plasma-ion drive.”

“I've been thinking about coming along on the research trip myself. Director Zanderson has asked me.”

“Then you must come, by all means,” said Adjani.

“Not so fast. Do you play pidg?” Packer fixed him with a hard look.

“After a fashion, yes. I've not had a great deal of zero-G experience. But I like the game.”

“Fine. That settles it. You must come and you must be on our team. The faculty and students always have a pidg tournament during the Mars cruise. It has become something of a tradition, and an object of intense competition. The only trouble is, not many of the faculty indulge in the sport.”

“They lose consistently,” remarked Adjani.

“I really haven't made up my mind. I have so much to do here…”

“If Zanderson has suggested you go, I would think seriously about it. He does not extend the invitation to everyone. You are fortunate to have it come so soon.”

They talked a long time, though to Spence it seemed only seconds, when Olmstead Packer's wife came to pry her husband loose to mix with some of her friends. Adjani excused himself as well and vanished into the press around the buffet. Spence felt naked and obvious, having no one to talk to. The camaraderie he had experienced with the two men evaporated all too quickly.

“I thought I'd never get you back,” said a voice behind him.

He turned to see Ari standing there. She seemed always to be popping up unexpectedly. “I'm drifting—save me,” he said.

“It didn't look to me like you needed saving. It looked like you were having a good time.”

“No, I mean now.”

She smiled shyly and said, “I'll save you. Would you like something to eat? Daddy will be most disappointed if you don't at least try the mousse.”

“I'd love to try it.”

Ari led the way to the buffet and Spence followed gladly. He had begun to feel that above all else he did not want to be lonely anymore.

T
HE BUFFET LOOKED AS
if it had been attacked by sharks.

“Daddy's pride and joy—look at it now,” lamented Ari. She handed Spence a plate and took one herself. “Oh, well, we might as well join in the plunder. Let's dig in.”

They inched their way along the table laden with platters and serving dishes containing a varied and exotic fare: shrimp on ice, salmon aspic, sweet and sour meatballs, souffles of several kinds, quiches, a great cheddar wheel, cold roast beef and ham, baby lobster tails, relishes and pickles, brandied pears, deviled crabs, avocados stuffed with chicken and tuna salad, petits fours, cakes, and many other delicacies, some of which Spence did not readily recognize.

Not that it made a difference whether he recognized any particular dish. Ari adroitly ushered them through the snarl of elbows and reaching hands and filled both plates while Spence tagged after her trying not to spill anything.

“Oh, no,” sighed Ari as they arrived at a great empty bowl; the cut glass vessel appeared to have been recovered from a mud wallow. “Just as I feared. The mousse is gone. Too bad. But I think I know where there may be some more. Follow me.”

They edged through the crowd and dodged diners who stood on the periphery holding their plates to their mouths. She led him away from the confusion of the gathering, through a dim passageway, and into a room which had been transformed into a makeshift kitchen; it looked more like the staging area for a major battle. Several employees of Gotham's food service worked over platters, valiantly attempting to reconstruct beauty from the spoils on the plates before them, replacing wilted lettuce and replenishing depleted items. They worked deftly and quickly, shouldered their trays, and faced once more into the fray.

“We should have come here first,” murmured Ari. “It's quieter. Here's the mousse, or what's left of it.” She picked up a spoon and shook a healthy dollop onto his already overflowing plate.

“It will take me a week to eat all this.”

“Nonsense. I've seen you eat. Remember?”

He looked around for a place to sit. There were no chairs in the room at all.

“Shall we join the others?” asked Ari.

“I would rather face lions.”

She raised an eyebrow. “That was the right answer. I know a place that may not have been discovered. Come along.”

They ducked out through a side door and across the hallway into a small vestibule. He gathered the room was a sort of private sitting room. Bookshelves lined the walls on three sides; on the fourth there was a large, abstract green painting above a low couch. A table in front of the couch bore the telltale traces of diners who had eaten and departed, leaving behind the litter of their repast.

“Daddy calls this his reading room. He says it's cozier than his library or office. Most often he just comes in here to nap.”

They sat down on the couch and fell to eating at once. Spence sampled a bite of each of the items on his plate in turn before devouring them one at a time.

“It's very good,” he mumbled around a mouthful.

“Only the best for our guests.”

He regarded her with a look of genuine gratitude. “Thanks for inviting me. I don't usually—” He stopped. “I'm glad I came.”

She looked down at her plate. “I'm glad you came, too. I guess I didn't think you would.”

“To tell you the truth, I didn't either.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I don't know. Maybe I'm just a pushover for chocolate mousse.”

“Then we'll have to serve it more often,” she said gaily. “But you're not eating yours.”

He glanced down at his plate. It had become a muddied palette of confused colors and textures. He put it down on the table in front of him. “I don't like mousse,” he admitted.

She laughed then, and to Spence it seemed as if the room suddenly brightened. “Silly, then why did you let me give it to you?”

“I don't know, you seemed to be enjoying yourself.”

Ari blushed slightly and lowered her head. “Well, I am.” She seemed to become flustered then and said no more.

Silence reclaimed the room and laid a gulf between them. It grew until neither one wanted to cross it. The atmosphere became sticky.

“Ari, I'm not too good at this sort of thing.” Spence was surprised to hear his own voice bleating uncertainly into the vacuum.

“You don't have to say anything,” said Ari. She raised her blue eyes to his. “I understand.”

“It's just that I…” Words failed him.

“Please, it isn't important.” She smiled at him and cocked her head to one side. “I think we should rejoin the party. Daddy will wonder what happened to me.”

“You're right.” Spence stood slowly. Ari remained seated, and he looked down on her and then offered his hand and helped her to her feet.

“Thanks,” he said softly.

They crossed the room and Ari turned, putting on her jaunty demeanor again, once more the vivacious hostess. “We'll be lucky if they don't eat the tablecloth as well,” she said as they passed the buffet.

“Well, next time I get hungry for mousse, I know where to come,” said Spence.

She turned to him and placed her hand on his arm. “I hope you won't wait that long.” Before he could answer she whirled away into the crowd and was gone.

SPENCE WALKED BACK TO
his quarters alone in a mood of fluttery anticipation, almost wonder. He had forgotten his anxiety of only hours before; in fact, he had forgotten a great many things. What had taken possession of him now left no room for those darker thoughts. Though he had no name for what he felt— having never felt it before—he knew it to be in no small way connected with the person of Ariadne Zanderson.

The warmth of the feeling surprised and confused him. It was wholly beyond his rational ability to describe. It seemed to defy objective analysis, leaving him fumbling for an explanation like a man groping for a light switch in a dark room. That the elusive feeling might be love did not occur to him.

He punched in his code and the panel whispered back, admitting him into the darkened lab. Neither Tickler nor Kurt were to be seen; he guessed they had finished and gone lone ago. That suited him. He did not care to think about the project, Tickler, or the scans. All he wanted was to throw off his jumpsuit and flop into bed—which he did, after leaving an alarm call with MIRA.

SPENCE PEERED INTO T H E
depths of a vast chasm as the rumble of underground thunder shook the rocks he clung to fearfully. His inward parts trembled to the awesome roar. Below him, whirling in the seething darkness, he could see strange shapes churning and grinding, sending up a fine blue powder like a velvet mist.

Great jagged flashes of blue lightning rent the air and peeled away the darkness of the pit. He looked down and saw clearly into the tumbling mass below. In the fleeting illumination of the lightning he saw the groaning, shuddering, grinding contents of the pit: bones. The enormous skeletal remains of gigantic prehistoric creatures, thrashing in perpetual motion.

A bolt of lightning raked the rock on which he perched and he felt his hands torn away as he fell backward into the chasm. He twisted in the air, his fingers clawing empty space for a hold on the rock. It was too late.

Spence plunged screaming into the whirling dance of the bones.

Down and down he spun, turning and turning. The fine blue grit ascending on the warm updrafts stung his eyes and filled his nose and mouth, choking him. He squirmed and gasped as black mists closed around him.

The sound of the terrible rumbling thunder gradually died away. He dropped like a stone through formless space. He felt nothing and heard nothing—only the beating of his own heart and the thump of his blood as it pounded in his ears. He felt as if he would fall forever. He told himself the notion was absurd.

Perhaps,
thought Spence,
I am not falling at all.
But what else could it be? All at once a new terror seized his mind: he was shrinking. Instantly he could feel himself becoming smaller— dwindling by fine degrees, becoming ever smaller. Though he had no point of reference by which to gauge himself, he felt that by now he must be very tiny. And still the shrinking continued.

This is the way it will end,
thought Spence. The universe imploding on itself, racing back into its flash of creation, compressing its atoms back into that single elemental spark from which all matter was born. And he was part of it; he was one with it. Now and forever.

THERE WAS NO WAKING
this time. Spence was fully conscious of his surroundings, and was aware, too, that he had been conscious for some time. There simply was no dividing line he could point to and say, “Here I was asleep, and here awake.” The shadowy line between waking and dreaming had been erased. It no longer existed. In Spence's mind dream and reality had merged.

Before him hung the shimmering iridescent halo of blue light with its tendrils glowing faintly as they waved in the darkness of his quarters. The luminous tendrils seemed to be reaching out for him, pulling him up into the green shining halo. He felt the rising, pulling, falling sensation and knew that he had felt it before in just this way.

He knew that he had experienced all this before—the shining wreath, the glistening tendrils, the shapeless mass moving darkly in the center—he knew it, but there was no memory of it. There was simply a knowing.