Gordon R Dickson - Sleepwalkers' World (5 page)

 

He felt the whiplash strike of his right hand jar against something that felt more like bone than flesh. As he lifted his arm to strike again, his head cleared and he saw that there was no need for a second blow.

Shaitan lay without movement, front down, huge shoulders pressing into the carpet, and his head turned on one side, eyes once more closed. The green carpeting under and near his neck was moist, darker than the surrounding material. Lucas stood above the tiny child-head, licking his own moist jaws. Gaby was climbing to her feet, a little unsteadily, one hand pressed against her forehead.

Rafe, clearheaded himself now, jumped to his feet and stepped to her. Her eyes looked at him uncertainly. She did not seem to know exactly who he might be, or where she was.

“Here,â€

 

The earlier pattern of stars which Rafe had gazed at over the British Isles had given way to an equatorial one before the aircraft began automatically to descend. It came down into a night of Caribbean softness, onto a dark body of land the full extent of which could not be seen, and which seemed utterly lightless from the angle of their approach. They landed with a crackling of branches, followed by silence.

In her seat, in the little glow of light from the instrument panel, Gaby still slept. Rafe reached out, opened the door on his side of the aircraft, and stepped down onto what felt like sand. The dark shape of coniferlike trees surrounded him. He turned back to the open doorway of the craft to speak to Lucas.

“I’m going to look around,â€

 

Rafe looked down at Ab, who smiled up at him, but stayed seated in the armchair. Here, side by side with his sister, he showed the family relationship. He was slim and long-boned, like Gaby, with brown eyes and brown hair that was beginning to recede from his temples. His mouth was cheerfully wide, and his gaze was frank and open.

“So you’re the Old Man of the Mountain?â€

 

And so Rafe Harald died.

But he was not allowed to remain dead. A time came when sight and hearing returned to him. He recognized that he lay on a white bed in a white room and that Gaby and Ab and others came to see him from time to time.

Then one day, without warning, a gray, shaggy head shoved itself over the edge of the bed, took his wrist gently in jaws that could have crushed it like a chicken wing, arid whined. Then words came back to him at last.

“Lucas?â€

PARADISE?

THE ENERGY CRISIS. SOLVED

THE POPULATION BOMB: DEFUSED

WORLD HUNGER: ELIMINATED

NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT: A REALITY

 

But at what price to humanity?

For the great power net which has brought
about these marvels has a deadly side effect:
the transmission beams that carry the power
cause all living things in their path to fall into
waking dreams, helpless against the force
that has awakened while all the world sleeps.

TK scanned and proofed. 2012 January (v1.0) (html)