Dream Thief (57 page)

“No!” he cried, jumping up.

The soldier shoved him back with the butt of his rifle and Spence fell against the side of the truck. The leader of the guards called his men to him and there was a short secretive conference.

“I don't like the look of this,” said Gita. “What are they planning?”

Spence, horrified, ignored the comment and stared at the place where he had last seen their only hope sailing away and moaned, “Well, that's that. We're in it now.” He turned to his friends. “I'm sorry. I never should have gotten you mixed up in any of this. It's my fault.”

“Spence, for the last time stop apologizing. Do you have such a monumental ego that you believe this to be all your doing? This is just one more battle in the age-old struggle between the powers of light and darkness.”

Spence could take no comfort from this speech. He still thought of his trouble as
his trouble;
the thought that it might indeed have some larger significance did not console him at all.

THE TRUCK RUMBLED UP
a winding mountain track and rounded a curve cut in the side of the mountain. A tiny village swung into view.

“There it is,” said Adjani. “Rangpo—that is where the seminary of Ari's grandfather is located. You can see the walls of the old monastery just off over there. See them?”

Despite his black mood, Spence looked eagerly at the village. It was much as he had imagined it. “Why a seminary in such a small, backward place? Why not Darjeeling?”

“Who knows? Perhaps Rangpo was more receptive to Christianity. It is often the way of God to choose the least among us to do his will.”

It did not make sense to Spence, but he was learning that little about God made sense in the normal, rational way. “It isn't much of a place.”

Just then Gita, who had been gazing at the scenery, looked up and said with a shout, “What was that? Did you see it?”

“See what?” Spence looked in the direction Gita's wiggling finger pointed—behind them and skyward. He saw nothing.

“It was a flash of light. Very bright. Just there.”

“Lightning, most likely,” replied Spence, watching the gray clouds flowing down from the mountains. The sun had become a dim, hazy, dirty yellow ball without much warmth or light. “Looks like it's going to rain.”

“It was like no lightning I ever saw,” Gita maintained, though he offered no other explanation.

All three searched the sky from the back of the open truck, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. They settled back as the truck bumped along the steep, rutted road. They passed through Rangpo, barely slowing down, and reached the mountain road when the truck slowed and then stopped.

“Why are we stopping?” asked Gita, jumping up as the truck rolled to a halt.

Spence looked around. They were hemmed in on every side by tall trees and brush; he could neither see the mountain ahead nor the town behind. One of the guards came around the side of the truck and motioned them out with his rifle.

“Do as he says,” said Adjani. “I don't think this was in the plan.”

“What are they doing?” whined Gita. “Oh, something is very wrong!”

“Quiet!” snapped Spence. “Keep your wits about you! Adjani, ask him what's going on.”

Adjani spoke to the guard who seemed to be in charge and received no answer. Two of the guards hung back, as if fearing what was about to happen.

The three prisoners were shoved to the side of the road and the leader cried, “Halt!” He raised his rifle. The other guards stood close by, but did nothing. Their faces were pale and their eyes were afraid.

“They mean to kill us!” said Spence. He glanced at Adjani. “Tell them we'll pay them to let us go. Talk to them!”

Adjani raised his hands and called to the soldiers. Spence could not understand what he said, but it seemed to have little effect on the men—they still stood indecisively hanging back, waiting for the deed to be over. The leader gave a curt reply.

“It's no use,” said Adjani. “He says he has his orders.”

“Then let's run for it!”

But it was too late. The leader of the guards spoke a stern order to his men, and they reluctantly raised their guns and aimed at the prisoners.

“God, have mercy!” cried Gita, covering his face with his hands.

“Run!” screamed Spence.

He heard a sound and realized that it was the click of a trigger. He saw the glint of sunlight on the steel barrel of the gun and looked into the black bore, from which issued a tiny projectile. He threw himself to the ground and rolled toward the shelter of the trees behind them. Then he heard the report of the rifle exploding into the silence, shaking the leaves on the trees and sending birds into flight.

Spence glanced back, even as he rolled, and saw an amazing thing. The bullet cleared the barrel of the gun and drifted toward him leisurely. It moved with aching slowness, and appeared to lose power and sink back to earth. The missile tumbled end over end and dropped in a lazy arc to land before him in the road in a little puff of dust. It lay there gleaming and spent.

A look of wonder appeared on the faces of the guards. They glanced at one another nervously.

“Look!” yelled Adjani. He pointed ahead of them up the road.

There stood a tall, thin figure clothed in a radiant blue, skintight garment, his arms outstretched, holding a long glowing rod. Behind this figure stood a squat, roundish, bell-shaped object that shimmered as if through waves of heat.

The soldiers, too, saw the figure. They drew back. One of them fired his rifle and all watched his bullet sink feebly into the dirt at his feet. At this the soldier threw down his gun and backed away. The others turned and fled with him, leaving only the leader who mumbled something under his breath and then turned and ran after his men.

Spence was on his feet running toward the strange figure. Adjani and Gita came on more cautiously behind him.

When they reached their friend they found him embracing an extremely tall humanoid who gazed at them with great round amber eyes.

“Kyr!” shouted Spence, almost beside himself with relief. “You came! You saved our lives!”

Adjani's jaw dropped and Gita rubbed his eyes.

“Adjani, Gita …” said Spence turning to the astonished men, “Kyr, these are my friends.”

The Martian regarded them with a long, unblinking gaze as if reading their thoughts. “Men of Earth,” he said at last, “I am happy to meet you.” With that he slowly extended his long, three-fingered hand.

I
SHOULD MELT YOUR
flesh where you sit! I should blast your shriveled body to atoms! How dare you defy me!" The ancient eyes flashed fire and the voice croaked with murderous rage.

Hocking, for once, appeared at a loss for words. “I … I did not defy you, Ortu. Th-there must be some mistake.”

“There is a mistake and you made it when you gave heed to your own overreaching ambition. You will pay for this error, but first I want to know if you have any notion at all of what you have done. Do you have the slightest idea what you have ruined with your trifling, puny efforts? No answer?”

Hocking had never seen his master so angry. He thought it best to keep his mouth shut and weather the blast if he could.

“No? Well then, I will tell you,” Ortu spat. He raised himself up and sat on his cushions erect and commanding, though he had not moved from his place. His hairless head gleamed like a polished knob; the hanging folds of skin around his neck jerked with every venomous word. The gleaming circlet across his forehead glowed hotly, and the great yellow eyes, burning out of their enormous sockets, undimmed by age, pierced the object of their focus like laser beams. Hocking shrank even deeper into the yielding cushions of the pneumochair.

“Your meddling has jeopardized the work of a thousand years. Centuries of cultural and social conditioning have brought us to the precise moment of maximum vulnerability. The
tanti
is at last attuned to the exact mental frequency of the collective human mind. Mankind trembles on the threshold of our new world order, and does not even guess what is about to happen. Like dogs they await the coming of a master to lead them.”

“How has anything changed, Ortu? It is still as it was. Nothing has been lost.”

“Silence! A great deal has been lost! I thought you were smarter than others of your kind. Use that miserable brain of yours, then—think what you have done!”

Try as he might Hocking could not think what had gone wrong. He did not even know exactly how Ortu had found out about his plan to eliminate Spencer Reston.

"Does your tongue fail you? Well it might, since you do not fathom even the tiniest fraction of the whole.

“The
tanti
is ready, is it not? It has been tested relentlessly for many years.” Ortu sank back into himself, and glared dully at Hocking. “Its power has been increased a billion-fold.”

“Correct.” Hocking's mouth was dry and he croaked.

“With the
tanti
we possess the ability to control the universal subconscious and thereby control the behavior of every human being on earth. With it we can literally rule the world.”

“Control a man's dreams and you control his mind,” said Hocking. He had heard the maxim often enough.

“And yet, in the final calibration experiment what happens? Unexpectedly, we discover a man capable of resisting complete domination. How is this possible?” Ortu crossed his long thin arms across his narrow chest. “Answer me!”

“I don't know,” snapped Hocking. “Obviously, if I knew it would not have happened.”

“Well said. But do you not even now perceive your error? Did it never occur to you that where one man resists there may lie the secret of all men's resistance? That is why I wanted him brought here—to learn the secret of his ability to withstand control. Instead, you seek to eliminate him, to destroy him. If you had succeeded we would never know.”

“You saved him, didn't you?” Hocking fought down the twinge of fear that coursed through him as he remembered his unsuccessful attempts to kill Reston. “I fail to see how I have seriously harmed our plans, let alone damaged our overall contingencies.”

“Then allow me to illumine you, oh
wise
one,” mocked Ortu. Hocking colored under the scorn. “Reston has contacted a member of my race—”

“Impossible! It is beyond current physics …”

“It is
not
impossible. I have just said it has happened. It is a fact. He did not travel to distant galaxies, no. He has awakened one of the Guardians and has summoned him here.”

“I don't believe it!”

“You will believe it. Long ago when we on Ovs migrated we left behind in each city one of our own to guard all that we left behind against the day when others would come, that the knowledge gained should be wisely used and our treasures respected.”

“Reston could not have discovered this—no one on Earth believes Martians exist, much less Martian cities.”

"You, who believe nothing—how do you know what men believe in their innermost hearts? And why do you keep telling me these things are not possible when indeed they have happened?

"Men believe that their salvation will come from the stars, from benevolent beings who will show them the way.
That
is what men believe today. Have I not spent hundreds of years nurturing that belief? Creating wonders in the sky, strange and unexplained events on the ground? All to prepare the way for this final stage, for the willingness of humankind to accept a savior from beyond their world.

“It has all been part of the social and mental conditioning. Men speak of UFOs and watch the sky by night for a sign that their space brothers are coming. And why? Because I have willed it so. I, Ortu, have programmed it to be so.”

“How can one man, even a very stubborn man like Reston, change that?”

Ortu sighed. “Because within him is the force to withstand, and to undo all I have done. And the Guardian who is with him now will not allow our work to continue—he will see it stopped.”

“Why?”

“Because he must. It is his life-sworn duty.”

“Then they must all be destroyed,” said Hocking, for the first time speaking with anything approaching hope. “I was right after all.”

Ortu's head began weaving back and forth. “You still do not understand. Perhaps you are unable to comprehend what I have been telling you.”

“I understand that if our work is in danger we must take any steps necessary to eliminate that danger. We must stop them.”

“How do you propose to do that?” Ortu scowled.

Thinking fast, he said, “Your disciples could do it. Send them out to destroy our enemies.”

“You have left us no choice. I will summon them.” Ortu's head sank. For once he seemed to wear the full weight of his years. His voice sank into a rasping whisper. “Go now.”

Hocking swept out of the swirling, cloud-choked chamber and found Fundi lurking in the hallway nearby. “Bring his disciples at once!” he ordered. The servant hurried off on pattering feet to retrieve the chest of gopherwood containing the six teak boxes.

GITA, WHOSE WIDE ROUND
eyes never for a moment left the alien, kept hopping up and down in a kind of ecstatic dance, first on one foot and then on the other. He was beside himself, almost literally. And though he did not enter into the conversation with the others, he did not miss a word.