Jerry Sohl I, Aleppo

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Volunteers can handle this, that Ruaha must return, cut short his trip to the
Far Reaches. That is their right, but I, Aleppo, as leader of the
Volunteers, will not wait for someone else to do the job for which I have
Volunteered.
We have talked it over, Adrea and I. She is grief-stricken, as well she might
be, for when Ronsard vanished, part of her vanished with him.
But she was able to think clearly. What can be done? How can we
prevent human scientists from moving into Our world and taking another of Us
and then disintegrating him or her?
We will keep the vigil, We Volunteers. I, Aleppo, will move into the arena,
leaving Adrea as rear-guard head of the Volunteers. I will determine what is
happening, using what special powers I have.
I will not be reduced, divided or dismembered as Ronsard was.
Ronsard did not know what was happening to him and he reacted with rashness
rather than brain.
I will be on guard. With my jeweled scimitar I will slay, cut to pieces, any
who would diminish me or any of Us in the Consciousness Pool. I will fight to
the death the enemy who has destroyed one of Us. In this way I
will make it so that the dream people will never again have to fear entering
hosts.
We do not need Ruaha when We have Aleppo.
I am Aleppo. I await the moment to move.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Gary Carmody lay on the ebony table trying to keep calm but knowing his heart
was beating like a jackhammer and that cold sweat was running off him. He was
looking into the moist eyes of Kathleen Keegan and that didn't help matters
any. She was holding his hand; both their hands were like ice. "I don't want
you to do it," she said, and she appeared to be on the edge of tears. Gary did
not trust himself to reply. She knew why he was there, why he was doing it,
and so did he, and it was the last place he thought he'd ever be, considering
the events just prior to the resumption of the experiments.
At this moment his only hope was that he would live through it and that it
would not be his last dream as it had been Ralph's and Casimir's.
He kept looking at Kate's eyes and he saw the worry and concern there.
"It's time," Max Easton said. "Everything's set."
Sam said stoutly, "We'll be ready for anything, Gary, believe me.
Nothing's going to happen to you."
Kate turned away. "I wish I could believe that. With all my heart I wish
I could."
"It's okay," Gary said. "I know the risks." Now Kate's eyes were spilling over
with tears as she prepared a syringe for the injection. She hesitated, she and
Gary locked eyes for the last time, and then the trinopterine coursed through
Gary's veins.
His dream began.
Gary had been the first one at the lab the morning after he'd phoned
Easton and Easton had phoned the others. When Kate, who was first to arrive
after Gary, came in, she embraced Gary, and as she did so she saw the empty
tank. "How could he do it?" She walked to the tank then and looked through it.
"Sam's always been such a steady guy. Our anchor."
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"He went over the edge," Gary said. "He loved Ralph and Casimir. It got to
him. He felt he had to do something."
"I know," Kate said. "It got to all of us. But he's destroyed the only
evidence we had. Cassoit won't let us proceed now."
When Max came in with Sam, Max said he intended to say nothing about the
missing weight lifter at the hearing into Casimir's death. "I
won't lie," he said. "I just won't offer anything."
"You don't have to do that for me," Sam said, still looking spaced-out.
"I'll take the blame. I'll resign from Meta."
"You'll do nothing of the kind," Max said. "You're too good a man to resign.
We all hated the thing in the tank. Any of us could have murdered him for what
he did."
Sam said gloomily, "But by actually doing it, I blew the project."
Max then told them Sam hadn't ruined anything, that he intended to abandon the
project anyway. "It's too dangerous."
"We can't do that!" Kate wailed.
"I'll volunteer for the ebony table," Sam said. "I've got to do something to
make up for what I did. We'll trap something."
"And die in the attempt?" Max shook his head. "I won't let you do it."
He said he had expected good work from his people, but he didn't feel it was
his right to expect them to risk their lives. He sighed. "And that's what we
do every time one of us dreams."
It was then that Gary told them of his dream of the night before. Max listened
in a curious state of agitation and said, when Gary finished, that it didn't
seem like a dream to him even if it happened on the moon. He blinked his eyes
and was obviously thinking furiously. "We have the hooded man and the girl in
the tunic and they want to know the location of the lab. That makes too much
sense for a dream."
"The girl introduced herself?" Kate asked.
Gary said she did but he couldn't remember who she was, it was all so vague,
so dreamlike.
"Think," Max said. "Try to remember."
Gary closed his eyes. He was on the moon, he was looking at the sky, the girl&
"Her name is Adrea." He opened his eyes, surprised to have remembered. "And
the man's name& it was something like 'a leper.' No, it was Aleppo. I remember
now." The dream was becoming clearer in his mind. "I wasn't interested in
their names or what they were trying to do. I [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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