The Dream Master

"Then it is a deficiency on the part of the people who write the booklets," said the boy. "Any human experience should be describable and interpretable—by a good enough writer."

The officer squinted at him.

"Say that again, so

"I said that if your booklets don't say what you want them to say, it's not the fault of the material."

"How old are you?"

"Ten."

"You seem pretty sharp for your age."

The boy shrugged, lifted one crutch and pointed it in the direction of the Gallery.

"A good painter could do you fifty times the job that those big, glossy photos do."

"They are very good photos."

"Of course, they're perfect. Expensive too, probably. But any of those scenes by a real artist could be priceless."

"No room out there for artists yet. Ground-breakers go first, culture follows after."

"Then why don't you change things and recruit a few artists? They might be able to help you find a lot more ground-breakers."

"Hm," said the officer, "that's an angle. Want to walk around with me some? See more of the sights?"

"Sure," said the boy. "Why not? 'Walk' isn't quite the proper verb, though..."

He swung into step beside the officer and they moved about the exhibits.

The scaleboats did a wall crawl to their left, and the claw-cans snapped.

"Is the design of those things really based on the struc­ture of a scorpion's pincers?"

"Yes," said the officer. "Some bright engineer stole a trick from Nature. That is the kind of mind we're interested in recruiting."

The boy nodded.

"I've lived in Cleveland. Down on the Cuyahoga River they use a thing called a Hulan Conveyor to unload the ore-boats. It is based on the principle of the grasshopper's leg. Some bright young man with the sort of mind you're interested in recruiting was lying in his back yard one day, pulling the legs off grasshoppers, and it hit him: 'Hey,' he said, 'there might be some use to all this action.' He took apart some more grasshoppers and the Hulan Conveyer was born. Like you say, he stole a trick that Nature was wasting on things that just hop around in the fields, chewing tobacco and being pesty. My father once took me on a boat trip up the river and I saw the things in operation. They're great metal legs with claws at the end, and they make the most godaw­ful unearthly noise I ever heard—like the ghosts of all the tortured grasshoppers. I'm afraid I don't have the kind of mind you're interested in recruiting."

"Well," said the officer, "it seems that you might have the other kind."

"What other kind?"

"The kind you were talking about: The kind that will see and interpret, the kind that will tell the people back home what it's really like out there."

"You'd take me on as a chronicler?"

No, we'd have to take you on as something else. But that shouldn't stop you. How many people were drafted for the World Wars for the purpose of writing war novels? How many war novels were written? How many good ones? There were quite a few, you know. You could plan your back­ground to that end."

"Maybe," said the boy.

They walked on.

"Come this way?" asked the officer.

The boy nodded and followed him out into a corridor and then into an elevator. It closed its door and asked them where they wished to be conveyed.

"Sub-balc," said the lieutenant colonel.

There was scarcely a sensation of movement, then the doors opened again. They stepped out onto the narrow bal­cony which ran around the rim of the soup bowl. It was glassite-enclosed and dimly lit.

Below them lay the pens and a part of the field.

"There will be several vehicles lifting off shortly," said the officer. "I want you to watch them, to see them go up on their wheels of fire and smoke."

" 'Wheels of fire and smoke,' " said the boy, smiling. "I've seen that phrase in lots of your booklets. Real poetic, yes sir."

The officer did not answer him. None of the towers of metal moved.

"These don't really go out, you know," he finally said. "They just convey materials and perso

"Yes, I know. Did a guy really commit suicide on one of your exhibits this morning?"

"No," said the officer, not looking at him, "it was an accident. He stepped into the Mars Grav-room before the platform was in place or the air cushion built up. Fell down the shaft."

"Then why isn't that exhibit closed?"

"Because all the safety devices are functioning properly. The warning light and the guard rail are both working all right."

"Then why did you call it an accident?"

"Because he didn't leave a note. —There! Watch now, that one is getting ready to lift!" He pointed with his pipe.

A blizzard of vapors built up around the base of one of the steel stalagmites. A light was born in its heart. Then the burning was beneath it, and waves of fumes splashed across the field, broke, rose high into the air.

But not quite so high as the ship.

... Because it was moving now.

Almost imperceptibly, it had lifted itself above the ground. Now, though, the movement could be noted.

Suddenly, with a great gushing of flame, it was high in the air, darting against the gray.

It was a bonfire in the sky, then a flare; then it was a star, rushing away from them.

"There is nothing quite like a rocket in flight," said the officer.

"Yes," said the boy. "You're right."

"Do you want to follow it?" said the man. "Do you want to follow that star?"

"Yes," said the boy. "Someday I will."

"My own training was pretty hard, and the requirements are even tougher these days."

They watched two more ships lift off.

"When was the last time you were out, yourself?" asked the boy.

"It's been awhile..." said the man.

"I'd better be going now. I've got a paper to write for school."

"Let me give you some of our new booklets first."

"Thanks, I've got them all."

"Okay, then... Good night, fella."

"Good night. Thanks for the show."

The boy moved back toward the elevator. The officer re­mained on the balcony, staring out, staring up, holding onto his pipe which had gone out.

The light, and twisted figures, struggling . .. Then darkness.

"Oh, the steel! The pain as the blades enter! I am many mouths, all of them vomiting blood!" Silence. Then comes the applause.

IV

"... the plain, the direct, and the blunt. This is Winches­ter Cathedral," said the guidebook. "With its floor-to-ceiling shafts, like so many huge treetrunks, it achieves a ruthless control over its spaces: the ceilings are flat; each bay, sep­arated by those shafts, is itself a thing of certainty and stability. It seems, indeed, to reflect something of the spirit of William the Conqueror. Its disdain of mere elaboration and its passionate dedication to the love of another world would make it seem, too, an appropriate setting for some tale out of Mallory..."

"Observe the scalloped capitals," said the guide. "In their primitive fluting they anticipated what was later to become a common motif..."

"Faugh!" said Render—softly though, because he was in a group inside a church.

"Shh!" said Jill (Fotlock—that was her real last name) DeVille.

But Render was impressed as well as distressed.

Hating Jill's hobby, though, had become so much of a reflex with him that he would sooner have taken his rest seated beneath an oriental device which dripped water on his head than to admit he occasionally enjoyed walking through the arcades and the galleries, the passages and the tu

So he ran his eyes over everything, burnt everything down by shutting them, then built the place up again out of the still smoldering ashes of memory, all so that at a later date