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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58670 ***
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+                            Dreamer's World
+
+                            By Bryce Walton
+
+_They wanted a world without war. The answer was simple: Stay in bed._
+
+[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science
+Fiction, May 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+A warning hum started somewhere down in the audoviso.
+
+Greg stared. Perspiration crawled down his face. This was it. This was
+the end of the nightmare. This had to be Pat Nichols.
+
+After seventy-two hours in which Greg had had to do without anesthesia!
+Seventy-two hours of reality! Seventy-two hours of _consciousness_!
+Consciousness. Reality.
+
+Greg didn't know how he'd managed to remain sane.
+
+It seemed incredible that a man who had advanced to Stage Five in
+the Dream Continuity Scale, and who had been in anesthesia most of
+the time, could suffer seventy-two hours of boring, drab, dreary and
+revolting reality. And still be sane.
+
+Pat Nichols was the answer. Her body faded into slim and luscious focus
+on the three-dim screen. Her brooding eyes and wide mouth that curled
+so reprovingly.
+
+[Illustration: _In his mind was the certainty: This is no dream._]
+
+She had gone psycho. Had fled from the Cowl into the dreadful Outside,
+seventy-two hours ago. Gone to join that fanatical group of Venusian
+Colonists, those outlaw schizoids who planned to start over on Venus.
+
+"Pat!" Greg's hand reached as though she weren't just a three-dim
+image. "Listen, Pat! Thank the Codes, you haven't blasted yet. I've
+been crazy, waiting for this call. Pat, I can't even go into integrated
+anesthesia without you around. My dreams don't seem to focus right."
+
+"That's too bad, Greg," she said.
+
+He moistened his lips slowly. He slid his hand toward the warning
+button beneath the table. Her eyes didn't notice, never left his face.
+Accusative, sad eyes.
+
+He felt sick. He pushed the button. Now! Now Drakeson up on the
+apartment roof would trace the point of her call. He'd chart her
+location with the rhodium tracker beams. Then the two of them would
+go and pick Pat up and prevent that insane, suicidal, one-way trip to
+Venus.
+
+She might consider it a very unfair thing, but then she was psycho.
+She'd be glad of it, after she was brought back, brain-probed, and
+re-conditioned. The thought made Greg even more ill. Brain-probing and
+re-conditioning involved months of a kind of mental agony that no one
+could adequately describe. The words were enough to give anesthetic
+nightmares to any Citizen. But, it was for the good of the Cowls, and
+of the psychos.
+
+Her voice was sad too, like her eyes. "I was hoping you would join me,
+Greg. Anyway, I called to tell you that in about five hours, we're
+blasting. This is goodby."
+
+He said something. Anything. Keep her talking, listening. Give Drakeson
+a chance to employ the rhodium tracker, and spot her location.
+
+A kind of panic got loose in Greg's brain. "Pat, don't you have any
+insight at all? Can't you see that this is advanced psychosis, that--"
+
+She interrupted. "I've tried to explain to you before, Greg. But you've
+always preferred anesthesia. You loathe reality. But I'm part of
+reality."
+
+Yes. He had dreams. The anesthetic cubicles, Stage Five where a man was
+master of thalamic introjection, dream imagery. A stage where any part
+of reality was supposed to have faded into utter inconsequence. But Pat
+Nichols had always been a part of his conditioned personality pattern.
+By taking her out of it, fate had struck him with an unbalance in
+psyche that disturbed the sole objective of life--to dream.
+
+"But that's a suicide trip, Pat, and you'll never have a chance to be
+cured of your schizophrenia, even if you do get to Venus--"
+
+Her interruption had weariness in it.
+
+"Goodby, Greg. I'm sorry for you. That silly status quo, and futile
+dreaming. It will never let you realize what a fine man you are. You'll
+decay and die in some futile image. So goodby, Greg. And good dreaming."
+
+She was gone from the screen. Maybe from earth, unless he got out there
+and stopped her before that suicide ship rocketed out from its hidden
+subterranean blast tube.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Greg Hurried. He didn't realize he could function so rapidly in the
+world of physical reality. In seconds he had zipped thin resilient
+aerosilk about his body, and was running across the wide plastic mesh
+roof toward the heliocruiser in which Drakeson was waiting.
+
+Greg felt the physical power flow as he ran. It sickened him. The
+conditioners kept the body in good shape, but only to allow the
+cortical-thalamic imagery faculties to function better. Actual physical
+business like this was revolting to any Cowl citizen. Any sort of
+physical and materialistic activity, divorced from anesthesia, might be
+a sign of encroaching psychosis.
+
+That was the fear. That fear of psychosis that might lead to violence.
+To change. The Cowls over the Cities protected them from any physical
+interference with an absolutely stabile, unchanging and static culture.
+But the Cowls hadn't been able to protect the Citizenry from insanity.
+During the past year, psychosis had been striking increasingly, without
+warning, indiscriminately.
+
+Greg dropped down beside the thin ascetic figure at the controls. He
+grabbed Drakeson's arm.
+
+"Did you pick it up, Drake?"
+
+"Uh-huh," Drakeson drawled. His mouth was cynical, his gray eyes
+somber. "Traced it down to a ten meter radius, but it's underground.
+About five miles out of Old Washington, just inside the big
+radioactivated forest east of the Ruins. About half an hour's flight as
+the crow might fly. If there was a crow left."
+
+"Then let's go. Lift this gadget out of here!"
+
+A spot of nausea bounced into Greg's stomach at Drakeson's reference
+to what the big Chain blow-up had done to almost all high cellular
+life forms, including crows. Only insects and a few shielded humans
+had withstood the radiation. Most higher complex cellular organisms
+had paid for their complexity. But thanks to the establishment of the
+Cowled Cities and the Codes of non-change, non-violence, they wouldn't
+have to pay again. No chance for social change now that might lead to
+another such disaster.
+
+If they could only trace the cause for this psychosis epidemic--
+
+Greg hadn't thought about it at all until Pat had started talking
+peculiarly, then when she had broken up completely and left the Cowl,
+then it had hit home, hard.
+
+The heliocruiser lifted slowly under Drakeson's awkward guidance. Only
+the Controllers, the Control Council Guards, could work the gadgetry
+of the City with practiced ease. Everybody else, naturally, was
+conditioned to various anesthesia states, and had no reason to deal
+with materialistic things.
+
+The cruiser lifted until it was flying directly beneath the opaque
+stuff of the Cowl, lost in the dazzling rainbows of sunlight shattering
+through.
+
+Drakeson said. "We'll keep up here. Maybe the Controllers won't see us."
+
+"What?" A peculiar coolness slid along Greg's spine.
+
+"Maybe they won't see us," repeated Drakeson, and then he smiled wryly.
+"Listen, Greg. You're way ahead of me in the Dream Continuity. You're a
+lot further away from reality than I am. More impractical. So listen to
+a word or two before we try to break through the Cowl.
+
+"We've never been Outside, don't forget that. It's dangerous. You
+haven't considered any of the angles. For example, I picked up a couple
+of shielding suits which you hadn't thought of. And two small wrist
+Geigers. If I hadn't thought of them, then we'd probably have been
+contaminated with hard radiation out there, and would have been thrown
+into the septic pools for about six months."
+
+Greg shivered. That would have been very bad.
+
+"It's deadly out there; poisonous, Greg. Only the insane have wanted
+to go Outside for the last few years, and only the Controllers have
+been out, and then only to try to track down the hiding places of the
+Colonists. You hadn't considered that, but I did. So I had to steal a
+couple of heat-blasters, from the Museum...."
+
+"You what?" Greg stared at the two deadly coiled weapons Drakeson
+dragged from beneath the seat. "Do the Controllers know?"
+
+"They've probably found out by now, or will very soon," Drakeson looked
+grim. "They'll be after us with sky-cars and para-guns. And they're
+sure to slap a psycho label on us. They would anyway, probably, for
+just going Outside. But having destructive forbidden weapons on us,
+they're sure to, and we couldn't go Outside without weapons, Greg."
+
+That was right, Greg knew. Paralysis guns wouldn't have been enough out
+there. Drakeson said softly:
+
+"Is she worth it, Greg? We may have to be brain-probed. Is she worth
+that kind of pain?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Greg's stomach seemed to tie up in knots. Brain-probing, psychometry.
+Greg whispered hoarsely. "She's worth it, Drake. And besides, it's
+ridiculous to think that we'll be suspected. I'm only interested in
+preventing Pat from making that suicide trip. The Controllers have the
+same interest."
+
+"But that's their job. You and I aren't supposed to be concerned with
+reality. They've gotten very sensitive this last year. They can't
+take any chances. At the least sign of disintegration, they have to
+apprehend and send you to psychometry."
+
+Greg said. "You trying to get out of your bargain, Drake? If you don't
+want that carton of Stage Five dream capsules, then--"
+
+"Oh no, I'll take a chance to get that carton. I never thought I'd get
+a chance to experience such premature dreams. It's worth the gamble, we
+might get away without being probed."
+
+Greg's head ached. Reality always gave him a headache. He wasn't used
+to it. A man who had reached Stage Five had been an anesthesiac too
+long to find reality comfortable.
+
+"I know the Codes," Greg whispered. "Legally, there's no reason to
+be apprehended just for leaving the Cowl. And as for the blasters,
+well--we can drop them off, hide them, if the Controllers get after us."
+
+The cruiser moved down the sloping arc of the Cowl toward the dark
+patch that Greg recognized as a merging chamber. The plastic spires
+of the City reached up around them as though reaching for the sun.
+Only a few human figures could be seen far below, on roofs, and in the
+streets. A few low stage humans not in anesthesia.
+
+Greg crawled into the shielding suit. He took over the unfamiliar
+controls while Drakeson got his own shielding suit on. They weren't
+heavy, but were sluggish material that could throw off ordinary
+radiation.
+
+Behind him Greg heard Drakeson's harsh yell. "Sky-cars! Ten of them!
+Shooting up out of the Control Tower and coming right toward us! Merge,
+and merge fast, Greg, if you still want to go Outside."
+
+Inside the thick sheeting of the suit, Greg's skin was soaked with
+perspiration. His face was strained as he moved the cruiser into
+the first lock chamber. The cruiser had to move through a series of
+locks to the Outside. A precaution to keep bacteria, radiation, other
+inimical elements from coming in while an exit from the Cowl was being
+made.
+
+One by one the locks opened and closed as grav-hooks pulled the cruiser
+through. It was a precariously balanced culture, this one inside the
+Cowls, Greg thought. Like living inside a gigantic sealed test-tube.
+Any slightly alien elements introduced into that test-tube could make
+it a place of sealed death in a short time. A rigidly controlled,
+non-changing environment. That was fine, except that some humans within
+it had a habit of changing, and for the worse. Retrogression, psychosis.
+
+Psychometry was trying frantically to find the cause. It seemed obvious
+that the Venusian Colonists might be causing psychotics to appear in
+order to swell their ranks of volunteers to go to Venus to start a "new
+dynamic, progressive order." Madness. Suicide.
+
+Progressive evolutionary philosophies meant change, and change might
+lead anywhere. But eventually it could only lead to another horrible
+_Chain_. One Chain had been enough.
+
+The earth had been thoroughly wrecked. The few survivors had set
+up the anti-reality standards, the Cowls and the Codes--and the
+Controllers. They established the Dream Continuity that led to the
+various anesthetic stages.
+
+But people went insane. They disagreed. They fled the Cowls. Venusian
+Colonial Enterprises resulted. It was organized insanity. A neatly
+planned psychosis, with grandiose delusions of justification. They
+would save humanity! Madness. Schizophrenia.
+
+Venusian Colonization had been organized three years before. At least
+four known spaceships had been constructed, stocked, and blasted. They
+changed their subterranean hideouts after each blast. It had just never
+occurred to Greg that Pat could go psycho and join them.
+
+It was even more ridiculous for the Controllers to suspect _him_ of
+being psycho.
+
+He felt a little better as the cruiser broke out beyond the Cowl and
+into the blazing natural sun of noon. It blinded Greg. Frightened him a
+little.
+
+He'd never seen the sun before, except dimmed by the Cowl.
+
+He sent the cruiser climbing rapidly above the weird grotesque terrain.
+Drakeson jumped into the seat beside him. His face was white.
+
+"Open the converter feed valves wide, Greg! Clear open! The Control
+cars aren't stopping at the merger. They're coming on through. They're
+right behind us."
+
+Greg looked back. Ten sky-cars, and within neuro-gun range. He jerked
+the converter wide open. Acceleration slammed him back hard. He knew
+now what fear was. In dreams you never suffered it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The audio in the control panel cracked out.
+
+"Dalson! Drakeson! Turn around! Re-enter the Cowl. Return immediately.
+This is a Control Council order. Do so or we fire with full charge
+neuro-blasts."
+
+Paralysis guns. And full blast. Greg swallowed. They meant business.
+And without even a formal enquiry!
+
+Drakeson said in a whisper. "What are we going to do?"
+
+Greg didn't know. How could they think he was psycho?
+
+Drakeson licked his lips. "I don't want to go under the brain-probers,
+Greg. Nobody does. I don't want to be re-conditioned. I want to stay
+like I am. I'm not psycho. And they'll brain-probe us sure if we don't
+turn around and go back. And even if we do--"
+
+The audio's cold impersonal voice said:
+
+"This is the last order. The neuro-guns are ready to fire."
+
+Greg's mind ran in mad circles. He tried to think. He felt Drakeson
+move, and then he saw Drakeson's hand with that infernal injection
+solution jiggling around in a big hypodermic syringe.
+
+"I've just given myself another shot, Greg. You'd better have another
+right now. If we land down there we'll need all the adrenolex we can
+get."
+
+Greg hardly felt the injection as he tried to think, clarify his
+situation. I'm not psycho, he thought desperately. I'm doing something
+a little bit different, but it isn't psychosis.
+
+But good integrated citizens would not fight against the orders from
+Control. All right. He would submit to brain-probing. But he'd get
+Pat out of that trap she was in first. He might be able to talk her
+out of it if he could get to her personally, be with her a while. The
+Controllers certainly couldn't. They'd drive her away into space as
+soon as she saw them.
+
+The solution. A legality. He knew the Codes didn't he?
+
+He yelled back at the pursuing sky-cars via the audio:
+
+"Don't fire those neuro-guns. This is Greg Dalson speaking. There's
+a law against any aggressive destructive action on the part of any
+Citizen."
+
+The audio replied. "The neuro-guns aren't destructive. Temporary
+paralysis."
+
+Greg said. "This cruiser is at a high altitude and traveling fast. If
+you paralyze us now, the cruiser will crash. By using the neuro-guns on
+us, you will be destructive, homicidal."
+
+A dead silence greeted this statement. Greg went on. "I'm a Stage Five
+citizen. Legally, there's no restriction against going outside the
+Cowl. I'll report your action and attitudes to the Council if you fire
+those neuro-guns."
+
+Drakeson choked something unintelligible. His face was deathly pale.
+"Clever," he whispered. "But that clinches it. When we do go back, it's
+psychometry for us, Greg."
+
+Finally the audio answered. The voice was not so cold. It had a tinge
+of emotionalism. It said. "A technicality, but it does prevent us from
+firing the neuro-guns. However, we feel it our duty to remain with you
+until you do return to the Cowl. Because of the recent epidemic of
+psychosis, we find this authorized by the Control Council...."
+
+Greg savagely flipped off the audio. Drakeson said. "If they stay on
+our trail, we'll lead them right to Pat. They'll scare her away before
+you get a chance to talk with her, and try to prevent her from going on
+the ship."
+
+"I know," Greg said. "I know. We've got to figure something--"
+
+He looked down at the fantastic semi-organic flora below. "How far to
+go yet, Drake?"
+
+"About three minutes."
+
+"All right. We'll set the cruiser down here, and walk to where Pat is."
+
+Drakeson choked. "That's suicide," he said. "We won't have a chance."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Greg didn't have time to be surprised at his own actions. He pulled
+Drakeson's hands away from the controls. Drakeson was trying to stop
+him from bringing the cruiser down.
+
+Drakeson gasped. "Even with the heat-blasters, we'll never get a
+hundred meters away from where we land. I figured on landing directly
+over the place--"
+
+"So will the Controllers," Greg said. He hurled Drakeson back, heard
+him sprawl on the mesh flooring where he lay, half sobbing.
+
+Greg angled the ship down abruptly. "As soon as we land, I'm running
+for it," he called back. "The Controllers will be down there swarming
+all over us, and I don't want to lead them to where Pat is."
+
+Drakeson crawled over to the bunk and sat on it. "All right," he said.
+"I'm with you. It's too late to get out of it now. For a carton of
+premature dreams, I've gotten myself stuck with a psycho tag. I'm
+stuck with it anyway, now. Might as well go on, and stay out of the
+brain-probers as long as possible."
+
+Greg felt a tingling crawl up his wrists as they dropped down above
+the gigantic, semi-organic forest. Mutated cells in the process of
+change had played havoc with the pre-Chain life forms. According to
+what little he had gotten from info-tapes, there was no longer any
+distinction or at least very little, between organic and inorganic
+life, outside the Cowls.
+
+Psycho. He'd still argue with Drakeson about that, but he didn't have
+time. He wasn't psycho. As soon as he persuaded Pat to abandon the
+flight, they'd give themselves up, return to the Cowl, and things would
+return to normal, to anesthesia, Stage Five, then Six, then Seven, on
+to the final eternal dream.
+
+That's the way it was going to be.
+
+And if they had to suffer the hells of brain-probing and the awful
+ego-loss of re-conditioning, then they would do that too. It was
+for the good of the Cowls, the preservation of the Codes. A noble
+sacrifice. Must be no change. No menace to stability. Any suggestion of
+change made one suspect.
+
+Greg's eyes misted as he brought the cruiser to a half-crash landing.
+Even as he tried to bring his blurred vision into focus, he was running
+to the exit. He had the sliding panel open. He was up to his knees in
+writhing tendrils. He was running through a crimson twilight.
+
+Behind him, he heard Drakeson tearing through the tendrils, and
+clutching vines. Overhead he could hear the drone of the sky-car's
+atomurbinic motors. Whether they would land and continue the search on
+foot through the deadly forest, Greg couldn't know.
+
+He didn't know anything about the Controllers' methods. "How far,
+Drake," he yelled through the inter-person audio. Drakeson came running
+up beside Greg. Severed strings of torn, still living life-stuff
+writhed from his shoulders and legs.
+
+"I'd say about half a mile straight ahead. That's a long way through
+this nightmare."
+
+Greg screamed. A broad mushroom-like growth had opened a mouth. A
+gigantic, sickeningly gray mouth full of deadly, flesh-eating acid.
+
+A flower-bright vine with great tensile strength raked Drakeson in
+toward that gaping maw.
+
+Drakeson's arms were held tight against his sides. He was
+straining--helpless. Through the glassine mask of his helmet, Greg saw
+Drakeson's face turning red with constriction.
+
+His voice came to Greg in a burst of fear. "The gun, Greg! The
+heat-blaster--quick--"
+
+Greg leaned forward, staring in rigid fascination. Fleshy stocks swayed
+toward him. Other mouths opened, petal mouths. Gigantic floral traps,
+and cannibal blooms.
+
+"Greg! Greg!" Drakeson was framed now by that great cannibal maw.
+
+Greg had the heat-blaster up. He had it leveled. But he couldn't
+depress the firing stud.
+
+"Drake! I can't! I can't!"
+
+How could any integrated man be deliberately destructive? How could any
+sane person--kill?
+
+"I can't--Drake--" The awful conflict seemed to rip through his
+body. He felt the sweat, hot and profuse, rolling down his face. He
+concentrated on that gun, on his finger, on the firing stud.
+
+The cannibal blossom was closing. Sticky juices dripped over Drakeson.
+He was screaming. Greg's finger lifted. He could not fire.
+
+The Codes said no destruction. No killing. The Codes had been
+established after the great Chain disaster. Violence begets violence,
+the Codes said. And once begun, it was accumulative, like the snowball
+rolling down hill.
+
+Greg sagged. His knees buckled. He sprawled out in the slippery muck.
+Tendrils swished softly and hungrily around him. He heard a shout. He
+tried to twist his head. Figures blurred before his eyes, and he heard
+the deadly _chehowwwwww_ of a terrific blast.
+
+The last thing he remembered before the dark wrapped him up softly and
+warmly, was the cannibal plant exploding in a million fragments of
+stringy tissue, and Drakeson falling free.
+
+_I didn't fire_, he was thinking. _Someone else saved Drakeson. But I
+think I might have done it. My finger--it was moving--bending--or was
+it? No. I couldn't have been destructive. Couldn't have killed._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Consciousness came back to Greg. Painfully. It came back slowly and it
+took a long time. He lifted his eyelids. He raised himself to a sitting
+position. He stared down a gloomy, phosphorescent corridor. It was
+obviously subterranean. It was damp, chill. Cold luciferin light glowed
+from lichen on walls and low ragged ceiling.
+
+It was long and it finally curved, he decided. But he could look back
+into a long slow curve of corridor and ahead into the same. Here and
+there, the mouths of branch corridors came in.
+
+He looked at his hand. It still clutched the butt of the heat-blaster.
+
+He felt strange. The surroundings were very real, yet they seemed
+somehow not real. The shock of trying to fire that blaster when the
+sanity in him shrieked "No!" had been too much for him. The shock had
+blanked him out.
+
+He breathed a deep sigh of temporary relief and triumph. He hadn't
+killed. He thought of Drakeson. Somebody had saved him. Someone had
+killed. Not the Controllers. They could employ only the neuro-guns to
+paralyze. So he decided that Colonists had probably saved Drakeson.
+
+Terror gripped Greg then. He remembered Drakeson yelling at him, the
+distended eyes, the straining face. And how he himself had almost given
+in, had almost killed.
+
+_Had almost gone psycho._
+
+But he hadn't. That was the important thing. He was still a sane,
+integrated part of the Cowls and the Codes. And after a test like
+that, he figured that nothing could break him. Let them send him to
+psychometry. Let them clamp on the brain-probers and leave them on for
+months. They'd not find any psycho tendencies in Greg Dalson.
+
+Greg tried to reason. But he had no place, no foundation, for a
+beginning. He didn't know where he was, or why he had been left here.
+He knew that someone, the Colonists probably, had saved Drakeson from
+that plant thing. Some mental pressure had blacked him out, he thought,
+and then what? He didn't know.
+
+Which way? It didn't seem to matter. He started walking.
+
+He was bone-weary. His head throbbed. His eyes burned. And he was
+afraid. He had gotten himself into a completely un-Codified situation.
+He was lost, helpless, outside the protection of the Cowls, the Codes,
+and anesthesia.
+
+He was surrounded by reality. Reality in all its essential horror.
+Conflict. Physical danger. Uncertainties. Materialistic barriers. All
+the old shibboleths that the Cowls and the Codes and the anesthetic
+dreams had protected him from.
+
+And all because of Pat Nichols.
+
+But he'd stood a big test. And he'd won. He hadn't killed. He wasn't
+destructive. He--
+
+The cry touched his ears and died. It was too violent and filled with
+pain and terror to make any definite impression the first time. He
+crouched. His eyes distended. The scream came again, and this time it
+chopped through him. His nerves seemed to shrivel and curl beneath the
+repeated onslaughts of the screams.
+
+Then he was running. He didn't know why, except that he had to run. He
+ran with fearful, gasping desperation. But he didn't know why.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He ran past the mouth opening into the main corridor. Then came back
+and ran into the darker, strangely-lighted artery. He ran harder. And
+yet he wasn't running. Not all of him. As he ran, he was conscious of
+some undefinable, but terrific conflict.
+
+Beneath the suit, his skin burned with sweat. He felt the rigid pattern
+of tensed neck and jaw muscles.
+
+_I don't feel at all familiar. Something's very wrong. Everything's
+wrong. I'm displaced, like something that has slipped into an alien
+dimension._
+
+He stopped, quickly. His heart seemed to swell, burst with terror.
+Terror and something else. The something else came, and with it came
+horror of itself. The emotion, and then horror of the emotion. He stood
+shivering, his teeth clacking like an ancient abacus.
+
+"Pat!" He screamed her name. The cry pounded back into his ears inside
+the helmet.
+
+This wasn't Drakeson. This was Pat. Pat was going to die now. Not
+Drakeson.
+
+The walls were--_alive_. They were not like the walls of the corridors.
+This was a circular chamber, and the walls were sagging and undulating
+like part of a giant's flesh. He heard heavy sluggish sounds.
+
+Masses of the gray viscous stuff sagged, changed form, remolded itself
+into monstrous shapes.
+
+Pat! Only her face and part of her upper body were visible now. The
+shielding of her suit had been cracked wide open by pressure as the
+semi-organic thing, whatever it was, had closed around her.
+
+The walls rushed in as Greg stumbled drunkenly. The ceiling sagged
+lower. Long knobs fell, like globules of paste, then lengthened into
+shapeless tendrils that snapped out at Greg.
+
+He fell back.
+
+Pat's scream penetrated again. No beauty remained in her face now. Her
+eyes were sick. Her lips were loose and trembling.
+
+"Greg--help me--help me--see what it does--the others--"
+
+He saw the others then. Maybe he hadn't noticed before, because his
+mind didn't want him to see.
+
+Husks. Pallid wrinkled husks, sucked dry and shriveled. Several figures
+not recognizable anymore, hardly recognizable as human. Just vaguely
+human, broken, sucked dry.
+
+His mind seemed covered by a grotesque shadow. His flesh crawled and
+his throat turned dry, and perspiration made a stream down his throat.
+He felt his eyes looking down at his right hand.
+
+It held the heat-blaster. The skin felt tight as though it would split
+as he gripped the heavy butt of the coiled weapon.
+
+He concentrated on the finger that was frozen on the firing stud. If he
+could destroy, then he was insane. His experience with Drakeson, that
+had been no test at all compared with this. This was Pat. Pat, and she
+was dying--dying unspeakably.
+
+This was the great test of his sanity. He concentrated on the finger.
+He must keep it frozen. He must back out of here. Get away, get back to
+the Cowl, back to anesthesia and sleep.
+
+The finger raised slowly from the stud. His feet lifted as his body
+moved fitfully back, back, back--
+
+"Greg--help me, Greg--"
+
+Her eyes stopped him. They tumbled into terrible clarity. She whispered
+starkly.
+
+"Greg--help me--kill it, Greg. For me--Kill it."
+
+He felt his lips part in a great and terrible cry of torture. His
+shoulders began to twitch slightly. His arms and fingers took up the
+jerky rhythm. Horror and a violent crimson flood of unfamiliar emotions
+mushroomed like a volcano of madness. Something began crumbling away.
+
+He lurched forward. He felt the heat-blaster heaving, throwing out its
+deadly load. The gun had weight and power in his hand as he crouched
+lower and moved in.
+
+The power load swathed in long slicing arcs. Steam and sickening stench
+fell around him. He moved in. He stumbled forward kicking out to right
+and left at the quivering slices of stuff that were falling around him.
+
+Destruction. Kill. Death. This was all three, and in a giant, almost
+inconceivable quantity.
+
+Her face through the steaming cloud. Her throat moving as she
+swallowed. Brightness, the brightness of disbelief and impossibility
+coming into her eyes.
+
+He kept moving in until the monstrous mutated gray thing was thoroughly
+dead. Until every separate tendril and patch was blasted to smoke. Then
+he lifted her broken body in his arms.
+
+Tears fell on the opaqueness of his helmet. "I'm sorry, Pat," he
+choked. "I'm sorry it didn't happen sooner. I'm sorry I waited too
+long--but it isn't easy--to let yourself go insane."
+
+Something was wrong. Pat! Pat! She seemed to be fading away from
+him, drifting away, melting into tattered veils of cloud. Her face
+became only two bright glad eyes, then they also melted together into
+a radiant pool. He toppled into the pool. He sank down, a wonderful
+lifelessness spreading through him.
+
+He closed his eyes. Something was beginning to be very funny. In the
+thickening dark, he laughed a little. And in that laugh was a crazy,
+climbing note of--triumph.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He opened his eyes. He was laughing, in a kind of soft hysteria. He was
+on a couch. Not a dream couch, but just a plain hard bed. He sat up
+stiffly. Pain tingled down his legs. He saw Pat Nichols. And another. A
+man. He remembered him vaguely, one of the first who had escaped from
+the Cowl. His name--yes--he remembered now. Merrol.
+
+Pat Nichols, alive, and smiling. Very beautiful too in a brief aerosilk
+bra and shorts and sandals. Her hair was a dark lovely cloud flowing
+down over bare shoulders.
+
+"Hello, Greg," she said softly. "Welcome to--the Colonists."
+
+"What?" He swung his legs around. "I don't understand. Not entirely."
+
+Merrol, a gaunt elderly man, nodded from behind a desk. Merrol's hair
+was gray and sparse. Strange, seeing a man who showed age. Within the
+Cowls, one never grew physically old.
+
+Pat said, "This is Ralph Merrol, Personnel Director of Venusian
+Colonization Enterprises."
+
+Greg's numbness was filtering away beneath Pat's warm glad eyes. He
+raised his hand. The heat-blaster was still gripped in his fingers. It
+evidently hadn't been fired.
+
+"It was all illusion," he said. "The scene in the cavern. It never
+happened?"
+
+Merrol's care-lined face nodded. "It happened, but in your mind, Greg.
+We rescued you and Drakeson from the cannibal plant. We brought you
+here. You had lost consciousness. We put you under the hypnosene rays,
+and put you through an experience that was quite real to you. We proved
+something to ourselves, and to you. Greg--you're sane now."
+
+Greg tried to understand. The thing didn't make sense yet, but the
+glimmerings of the truth were beginning to solidify in his aching brain.
+
+"Sane? But I killed. I wanted to kill. I wanted to destroy, and I did.
+That's hardly the actions of a--sane man."
+
+Merrol smiled thinly. "From our point of view it is, Greg. We consider
+ourselves sane. We consider the Cowled Cities, and the Codes insane.
+It's relative I supposed, but I think we can convince you, if we
+haven't already."
+
+Greg looked at Pat. She smiled. He smiled back. "Justified or not,"
+he whispered. "I'm here. Sane or insane, I'm one of the Colonists
+now I guess. Unless I want to return to the Cowls, be probed and
+re-conditioned."
+
+Pat whispered. "Do you, Greg?"
+
+He shook his head. "Not now. I'm tired. I don't want to now. Maybe I
+never will. All I want now, is rest."
+
+Merrol leaned across the desk. "Before you rest, you'd better get a
+few things straight, Greg. We want you to be convinced that you're
+doing the right thing. We feel that the big Chain blow-up shocked
+the whole human race into a mass psychosis, comparable to individual
+cases of hysteria, schizophrenia, escape from reality. That's why
+the non-change, non-aggressiveness Codes were established. Also, the
+anesthesia, the Dream Continuity Scale--nothing but hysteria on a mass
+and planned basis."
+
+Merrol got up. He walked around and sat down beside Greg.
+
+"Carried out to its inevitable end, this could only lead to mass
+racial suicide. That's obvious. It was a static dead end. A few people
+recovered from the psychosis. They escaped, and formed the Colonists.
+But their own welfare wasn't the most important thing.
+
+"They concerned themselves then with the freeing of the Citizens of
+the Cowls from their psychosis. The world is untenable on a large
+scale now, due to radioactive poisoning. It will remain untenable for
+some time. Meanwhile we decided to Colonize Venus. We've established
+Colonies there. Thriving communities, but the important thing is this,
+Greg--it's given new impetus and enthusiasm to those who become sane
+and escape the Cowls. It presents a big challenge and solidifies the
+cure.
+
+"It's bigger than Control has any idea that it is. It will take a long
+time yet, but we'll win. You have noticed the increase in so-called
+insanity in the Cowls. It really means just the opposite. Our numbers
+are increasing by leaps and bounds."
+
+Greg said, "The Controllers think you're using some psychological or
+physical pressure to create these--cures."
+
+Merrol smiled. "We've got a recruiting system. Drakeson, for example,
+is a spy. We have spies all over the Cowls."
+
+Greg stared. "Drakeson?"
+
+A door opened. The lean cynical man entered, nodded, and stood beside
+Pat. His eyes shone more brightly as he looked at Greg.
+
+"That's right," Drakeson said. "Remember the two injections. I said
+they were adrenolex. They weren't. Our spies inside the Cowls are
+equipped with a supply of a certain aggression factor. It used to be
+called Kappa, or K, for killer. This factor is handed down through
+the generations in the general cell protoplasm. It forces aggressive
+tendencies. It makes a man capable of physical aggressive action, and
+able to kill, if he has to. High motivation is required though, in most
+cases. With you, my probable death wasn't enough. It took the vision of
+Pat here in the clutches of a monster to make the Kappa factor work on
+you, Greg."
+
+Greg rubbed his eyes. Pat came over and he took her hand, held it
+tightly. A warmth came out of her and into him, into his mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Drakeson went on. "We isolated the Kappa factor, made it into solution.
+We all have it, even the anesthetic citizens of the Cowls, but the mass
+shock psychosis won't let it work. However, a strong overload of Kappa
+injection will sometimes break the psychosis, force the person back
+into an aggressive personality, capable of destruction. Each individual
+carries an armament of between 200 and 800 particles of the Kappa
+factor after we give an injection. It took 1600 particles to break your
+suicidal hysteria."
+
+Pat squeezed his hand. Greg looked up. He grinned with a kind of glad
+embarrassment.
+
+"I don't know yet whether to thank you or not. Frankly though, I do
+feel better."
+
+He thought of the Cowls. Test-tubes, glass cages, and dreams that led
+finally to the final anesthesia, death. He shuddered, and tried to push
+the memory out of his mind. It seemed unhealthy now. Unclean and--yes,
+it did seem insane.
+
+He raised his eyes to the ceiling. He saw the self-inverting three
+dimensional mechanism that had given him that starkly real adventure
+in which he had been able to kill, for Pat. A dream sequence, partly
+hypnotic, partly created by cathode image activating the multi-phase
+AC. A high harmonic of multi-phase AC field hanging over him, and a
+focusing radiator. Dream. Nightmare.
+
+He looked at Pat. "I think I'll take reality now," he said softly. He
+felt the pull on his arm, and he got up. She led him through a door and
+into a soft twilight. He held her tightly against him.
+
+She whispered. "The ship's waiting for us, Greg. The next ship. You're
+already on the passenger list. You see, I knew you'd come with us. I
+was hoping so desperately, I couldn't think any differently."
+
+He kissed her. He held her more tightly as though--as though--
+
+He felt her warm muscles tense against him. Her eyes widened.
+
+"Greg! What is it?"
+
+He shook his head. "I--I got to wondering if this too, might not be
+just a dream. I've been in anesthesia too long maybe. How can I know
+what's real and what isn't real?"
+
+He felt her warm moist fingers on the back of his neck. He felt her
+lift on her toes, pull his face down. She kissed him. Her voice was
+husky, and her breath was warm on his lips.
+
+"Do you know now, Greg? Is this a dream?"
+
+He shook his head. His voice was hoarse.
+
+"No--no--this isn't a dream."
+
+She laughed softly. They moved away, down the corridor toward the ship.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dreamer's World, by Bryce Walton
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58670 ***