Fifty feet away the skycar settled. Swans glided silently across the
lake of glass without noticing anything; water-lilies moved in the
unchanging breeze. Glora Delar's eyes were on a level with his.
"Don't you know me?" Brooks shouted wildly. "You've got to! Andy
Brooks!"
She repeated his name.
"Yes, yes!" Brooks screamed. "Look at me--Andy Brooks! Remember the
Lost World of Anghar! Why dream of each other? Why should we fool
ourselves with dreams? I'm here now, I'm real, you're real! I've broken
a Class-A Law tripley to come here to you. Glora, you've got to see me,
talk to me!"
"An--ghar--"
"Listen to me, Glora! The World of Anghar. The Armies of Vasca. _Our_
dream. I was holding the castle. Vasca's fleets were laying siege. I
was guarding the seawall. How could it have gone on so long without you
knowing? It was our dream."
"Vas--ca--"
Sobbing frantically, Brooks turned. Two guards were leaping from their
skycar. One of them was shouting, "You there, halt! We've orders to
kill you if you resist."
"Get back!" Brooks cried. "Stay right there!" He lifted the neurogun.
Now he wished he'd brought the blastgun; he'd have blown these Guards
and their skycar in a million pieces.
The Guards came slowly toward him along the lake's edge. The swans
glided unconcerned. Brooks screamed defiantly. As he fired at one
Guard he threw himself to one side. The foremost Guard fell in silent
paralysis. Evidently reflex action caused him to accidently discharge
the meson blastgun. A blazing lethal flame mushroomed, and the green
lawn crackled to black char in a long smoking swath.
Brooks fired again. The other Guard dodged behind an alien looking tree
with orange leaves. Brooks ran wildly. "Glora--wait--"
* * * * *
She turned as Brooks ran past her. Her shoulder struck Carl Brittain
and the Actor's body toppled into the lake. He went under without a
struggle. The water opened and slid over his body again like thick
shiny glue. The swans glided over the spot. Brittain didn't come up;
there was no movement in the 'water'.
Brooks ran on after Glora who hadn't stopped walking. Behind him, he
heard the Guard shouting. He ran past a parked skycar. Beside it, a
couple sat shoulder to shoulder looking over the lake. They seemed
oblivious to the commotion.
Brooks grabbed Glora's arm and dragged her toward the skycar. "You'll
remember," he sobbed. "I'll see that you remember."
He slid the cowling back. As he started to drag the woman into the
seat, he hesitated. He stared into her face. The face he had kissed
many times in a thousand thousand adventure-dreams in a hundred
imagined worlds. It was the same, but somehow, different. Her eyes
returned his stare, unblinking, unrecognizing, unconcerned. Her flesh
was strangely unresponsive to his hands. No resistance, no compliance,
nothing at all.
The Guard was running and he was near. He stopped, leveled the meson
blastgun. "I don't want to kill you," he shouted hysterically. "Give
yourself up; I've never killed anything, and I don't want to kill you."
Brooks laughed crazily. "You'll kill her, too, if you fire at me.
You'll kill the dreams of millions of your fellow Workers if you kill
Glora Delar. Get back there now."
"You're too dangerous," the Guard said; "I've orders to kill you if you
don't give yourself up, because you're insane."
Andy Brooks laughed. He tried to push Glora Delar into the skycar. He
saw the Guard was going to risk a blast. He spun, dropped her body
between them. It had flashed through his mind--if she died with him,
then in a way, she would be his forever, only his, and she would never
be shared with all the other millions of Workers.
A blazing light burned and blinded him. He fell gasping and crumbling
with the deep and lasting agony. He lay in burning fog. He tried to
get up. He couldn't move. Through a thickening blur he saw the Guard
lurching toward him, his face white and contorted with horror.
Brooks' hand fumbled blindly, touched something. "Glora," he whispered.
He slowly twisted his head. He had to do that much.
The skycar was a smoking melting pile, unrecognizable. Beside him lay
something else, also smoking; a human outline, a framework of wire
and metallic joints, bits of cloth and melting fluid, springs, some
burned-out vacuum tubes, a condenser, a charred coil, other parts--all
running down through a framework, a skeleton of red-hot wire. Charred
hair sizzled in blue flame in the fine mesh of a metal skull. Glora
Delar--
The Guard stood over Brooks. His face twisted, his voice came through
a dense curtain of time and space and pain. "Been here for years, but
I never suspected such a thing. I knew something was queer, but this!
This is what they give us--puppets! Marionettes--wire and putty and
plastic! She was my favorite actress too--my pin-up girl! just a second
ago. Ha, ha, ha, funny isn't it? I fought for her a thousand times in
the Lost World of Anghar, against the Armies of Vasca. This is what
they give us for dreams!"
Brooks managed to turn his head so he wouldn't have to look at what lay
beside him. The two pretending lovers still sat shoulder to shoulder
by the lake. Beautiful golden people, staring over the water, romantic
lovers. They were oblivious to what had happened. The lake was colored
glass, unruffled. The clock-work swans glided over the shiny surface.
The perfumed wind blew unchanged through dutifully nodding leaves of
the water-lilies.
Above him, the great bubble over Studio City seemed to burst in a
million bright glittering shards.
"I'll tell everybody!" the Guard was shouting. "I'll tell all the
millions so they'll know!"
Then there was no sound but the wild fading cries of the Guard as
Brooks closed his eyes to sleep.
... _and this is one dream, he thought, that will be my own, my own._