The Dream Master

he would be able to repeat the performance, offering the vision to his one patient who could see only in this man­ner. This building he disliked less than most. Yes, he would take it back to her.

The camera in his mind photographing the surroundings, Render walked with the others, overcoat over his arm, his fingers anxious to reach after a cigarette. He kept busy ig­noring his guide, realizing this to be the nadir of all forms of human protest. As he walked through Winchester he thought of his last two sessions with Eileen Shallot.

He wandered with her again.

Where the panther walks to and fro on the limb over­head . ..

They wandered.

Where the buck turns furiously at the hunter...

They had stopped when she held the backs of her hands' to her temples, fingers spread wide, and looked sideways at him, her lips parted as if to ask a question.

"Antlers," he had said.

She nodded, and the buck approached.

She felt its antlers, rubbed its nose, examined its hooves.

"Yes," she'd said, and it had turned and walked away and the panther had leapt down upon its back and torn at its neck.

She watched as it bayonetted the cat twice, then died. The panther tore at its carcass and she looked away.

Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock...

She watched it coil and strike, coil and strike, three times. Then she felt its rattles.

She turned back to Render.

"Why these things?"

"More than the idyllic must you know," he had said, and he pointed.

... Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou.

She touched the plated hide. The beast yawned. She studied its teeth, the structure of its jaw.

Insects buzzed about her. A mosquito settled on her arm and began to sting her. She slapped at it and laughed.

"Do I pass?" she asked.

Render smiled, nodded.

"You hold up well."

He clapped his hands, and the forest was gone, and the swamp was gone.

They stood barefoot on stirring sands, and the sun and its folding ghost came down to them from the surface of the water high above their heads. A school of bright fish swam between them, and the seaweed moved back and forth, polishing the currents that passed.

Their hair rose and moved about like the seaweed, and their clothing stirred. Whorled, convoluted and twisted, pink and blue and white and red and brown, trails of seashells lay before them, leading past walls of coral, heaps of seasmoothed stone, and the toothless, tongueless mouths of giant clams, opened.

They moved through the green.

She stooped and sought among the shells. When she stood again, she held a huge, eggshell-thin trumpet of pale blue, whorled at the one end into a concavity which might have been a giant's thumbprint, and corkscrewing back to a hooked tail through labyrinths of spaghetti-fine pipette.

"That's it," she said. "The original shell of Daedalus."

"Shell of Daedalus?"

"Know you not the story, m'lord, how the greatest of artificers, Daedalus, did go into hiding one time and was sought by King Minos?"

"I faintly recall..."

"Throughout the ancient world did he seek him, but to no avail. For Daedalus, with his arts, could near-duplicate the changes of Proteus. But finally one of the king's ad­visers hit upon a plan to locate him."

"What was that?"

"By means of this shell, this very shell which I hold be­fore you now and present to you this day, my artificer."

Render took her creation into his hands and studied it.

"He sent it about through the various cities of the Aegean," she explained, "and offered a huge reward to the man who could pass through all its chambers and corridors a single strand of thread."

"I seem to remember..."

"How it was done, or why? Minos knew that the only man who could find a way to do it would be the greatest of the artificers, and he also knew the pride of that Daedalus-knew that he would essay the impossible, to prove that he could do what other men could not."

"Yes," said Render, as he passed a strand of silk into the opening at its one end and watched it emerge from the other. "Yes, I remember. A tiny slip-knot, tightened about the middle of a crawling insect—an insect which he induced to enter at the one end, knowing that it was used to dark laby­rinths, and that its strength far exceeded its size."

"... And he strung the shell and collected his reward, and was captured by the king,"

"Let that be a lesson to all Shapers—Shape wisely, but not too well."

She laughed.

"But of course he escaped later."

"Of course."

They mounted a stairway of coral.

Render drew the thread, placed the shell to his lips, and blew into it.

A single note sounded beneath the seas.

Where the otter is feeding on fish...

The lithe torpedo-shape swam by, invading a school of fish, gulping.

They watched it until it had finished and returned to the surface.

They continued to mount the spiny stairway.

Their heads rose above the water, their shoulders, their arms, their hips, until they stood, dry and warm, on the brief beach. They entered the wood that breasted it

and walked beside the stream that flowed down to the sea.

Where the black bear is searching for roots and honey, where the beaver pats the mud -with his paddle-shaped tail.. .

"Words," she said, touching her ear.

"Yes, but regard the beaver and the bear."

She did so.

The bees hummed madly about the dark marauder, the mud splattered beneath the tail of the rodent.

"Beaver and bear," she said. "Where are we going now?" as he walked forward again.

" 'Over the growing sugar, over the yellow flower'd cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist field,' " he replied, and strode ahead.

"What are you saying?"

"Look about you and see. Regard the plants, their forms and their colors."

They walked on, walked by.

" 'Over the western persimmon,' " said Render, " 'over the long-leav'd corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax.'"

She knelt and studied, sniffed, touched, tasted.

They walked through the fields, and she felt the black earth beneath her toes.

"... Something I'm trying to remember," she said.

" 'Over the dusky green of the rye,' " he said, " 'as it ripples and shades in the breeze.' "

"Wait a minute, Daedalus," she told him. "It's coming to me, slowly. You're granting me a wish I've never wished aloud."

"Come let us climb a mountain," he suggested, "holding on by low scragged limbs."

They did so, leaving the land far beneath them.

"Rocks, and cold the wind. High, this place," she said. "Where are we going?"

"To the top. To the very top."

They climbed for a timeless instant and stood atop the mountain. Then it seemed that hours had passed in the climb­ing.

"Distance, perspective," he said. "We have passed through all of that which you see beneath you. Look out across the plains and the forest to the sea."

"We have climbed a fictional mountain," she stated, "which I climbed once before, without seeing it."

He nodded, and the ocean caught her attention again, beneath the other-blue sky.

After a time, she turned away, and they started down the opposite side of the mountain. Again, Time twisted and shaped itself about them, and they stood at the foot of the mountain and moved forward.

" '... Walking the worn path in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush.'"

"Now I know!" she said, clapping her hands. "Now I know!"

"Then where are we?" asked Render.

She plucked a single blade of grass, held it before him, then chewed it.