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  “You were dreaming, too?” Sitting up now, he was staring at her intently.

  “I don’t know that it was my dream. I suppose I must have been experiencing your dream.” She met his gaze unflinchingly. “You not only projected onto your surroundings, Flinx. You projected on me, too. Or into me.”

  “Tell me about your dream, Clarity.”

  When she had finished, he sat in silence for a long moment before replying. “It’s different from mine. But not so different that I don’t think your experience is related to what I go through.”

  “Then you were projecting.” She remembered what it was like to be at once fascinated and frightened of this man. It was no less so now, even though six years had passed.

  “Not intentionally.” His eyes held a mixture of pleading and concern. “I would never do that. But when I’m asleep I have no control.”

  And maybe for not much longer when I’m awake, either, he thought as he considered what had taken place on Goldin IV. Clearly, he could no longer play with his talent, let it ebb and flow within his mind subject only to his whims and the circumstances of the moment. Now he was going to have to fight every hour to keep control of it lest he affect or injure others, however unintentionally.

  But what could he do when he was asleep? How could he ensure that he would not harm those around him? Clarity had suffered some kind of dream episode that, although not as specific as his, apparently incorporated some of the same effects. He eyed the fallen flowers and dead ground cover. This time it had only been a few plants. This time.

  What if next time instead of affecting her dreams, his distorted, errant abilities impinged on her as forcefully as it had on the local vegetation? What if, next time, he woke up next to a twisted, blackened body?

  A runaway drive—that’s what I am, he berated himself. Or at least, that was what he was in danger of becoming. How many sentients would have to suffer until he gained control of himself? And if he never did gain control, if these involuntary projections continued to increase in intensity and become more widespread, would he at last have the courage to do something permanent about it? The only trouble with suicide, he reminded himself, was that there was no future in it.

  “You wanted to talk to me about these dreams, Flinx.” He could feel the fear within her, but he remembered her as having courage. Over the intervening years that had not changed. He wondered if he would have had the guts to confront someone like himself.

  “You say your dreams are different. Different how?” She peered attentively at him, anxious to learn, keen to understand.

  He let his gaze, but not his mind, drift. “You said you had an overwhelming feeling of being in danger, of being threatened.” She nodded. “But you never saw anything specific?”

  “That’s right. There was just an all-encompassing sense of doom. I don’t know if that’s a strong enough word. It was . . . foul. And when a part of it went through me . . .” Her words failed her, but her emotions did not. What he perceived within her then was far more evocative than any description she could have provided. “It’s not just a feeling of evil for you?” she continued. “You actually see something in these dreams?”

  “Some of the time. When the dream begins I’m traveling past stars and systems, past what sometimes seems like everything, only I know it isn’t. Though the dream deals with vast spaces the distances involved seem finite.” He lowered his gaze from the blue sky. “That’s the sense I have of the evil I encounter—distant and vast but finite and drifting in the middle of a vast emptiness.”

  “It didn’t seem very finite to me,” she muttered, “but, then, I didn’t experience the kind of specifics that you do.” A gnawing fear was growing in her. Though she’d heard this story before, she knew she had to pursue. “What’s it like—this evil?”

  He shrugged. “It defines itself by what it is. I’m not trying to be solipsistic. I don’t know how else to put it into words.” He sighed heavily. “Sometimes I have a sense of it as a natural force, like gravity or a Bose-Einstein condensate. Sometimes I perceive it as a conscious entity. Sometimes as both at once—if that doesn’t sound too crazy.”

  “Not any crazier than this.” She indicated the dead flowers, the blackened ground cover around them. A deeper fear shot through her that he sensed immediately. “You’re not by any chance channeling this malevolence, Flinx?”

  “No!” he snapped back so sharply that she flinched and Pip rose momentarily. “I resist it at every turn. I’m not even sure it’s aware of me, in the way we think of awareness. The scale of physical, or maybe metaphysical, values is so different that I’m not sure this whatever it is is even capable of being conventionally aware of me.” His voice fell. “And then there are times when I think, when I’m convinced, that it’s looking directly at me.”

  “Looking? It has eyes?”

  “Some organ capable of perceiving with, anyway.” He regarded her helplessly. “I’m trying hard to find suitable referents for things I don’t understand, Clarity.”

  Her tone was sympathetic. “What happens when it perceives you?”

  “I run.” Puzzlement and confusion played with his expression. “It’s a wholly mental retreat. I have no control over any of this.”

  “Of course you don’t.” She tried to sound encouraging. “It’s a dream.”

  “That’s what I choose to think. But there are times when it feels like I’m being guided, or directed, by something else—some other consciousnesses that are forcing me into these dreams and pushing me outward to confront this evil. It doesn’t matter anymore. I told you this years ago. Whether all this is taking place of my own volition or under some kind of outside influence, I came to the conclusion that it’s up to me to do something about it.”

  “You still think you can do something about it?” She frowned. “How can you do something about a malevolence you can sense only in dreams? And what difference does it make, anyway?”

  “You said you saw nothing in your dream,” he said.

  “That’s right. No light, no color: just darkness.”

  “That’s what there is in the places where this manifestation holds sway. Nothing. No stars, no planets, no life. Nothing. These dreams have convinced me, Clarity, that the nothingness is coming this way. And that’s what it will leave in its wake: nothing.” He made a sweeping gesture that took in ground, forest, lake, sky, and by inference everything beyond.

  “All this will disappear. Life and sentience will vanish from this portion of the cosmos. Everything will become extinct and have its place taken by this evil. Everything.” He turned back to her. “Don’t you remember before when I told you how I felt about this, in Owngrit, on Gorisa?”

  She sat in silence for a while, taking in the flower trees, the lake, the rolling, color-clad hills, because she felt she had to. This talk of vast malevolences and all-encompassing evil had left a growing darkness in her soul that needed pushing back. All the more so because she had indeed heard of it before—six years ago.

  “And I thought you just needed to talk about headaches. It’s this stupid purpose of yours again, isn’t it? The same thing those outlandish Ulru-Ujurrian creatures entangled you with back on Gorisa. I didn’t know you could repeat the experience without them around.”

  “It’s the same thing I felt then, Clarity. I’m sure of it.” He sidled a little closer and was gratified that she didn’t draw away. “As my abilities mature, the headaches intensify and so do these dreams—even without the Ulru-Ujurrians around to prod and manipulate. And, just like I told you on Gorisa, I can’t escape the impression that because of my talent, it’s incumbent on me to do something about this oncoming darkness. That feeling hasn’t changed, either.” He shrugged. “I still see it as my purpose, yes.”

  She remembered what had happened, on that distant, highly developed world she had once thought to make her home. “I was hoping maybe you had gotten over that. But you’re still trying to come to terms with it, aren’t you? Still trying to
become a complete human being. This separated us once before. Why can’t you forget about it, Flinx? Tell yourself it’s not your responsibility. My God, can’t you make that part of it go away? You said back then that nothing may happen involving this emptiness, this evil, for a very long time.”

  He had to correct her. “I said that we may have a little time. I couldn’t be more specific about it then any more than I can now.”

  “Well, can’t you leave it at that? I don’t understand how you can give your whole life to trying to combat something that exists only as a recurring nightmare. It’s just your dream, after all.”

  He looked away from her. “I’m not sure about that, either, Clarity.”

  It took a moment for the significance of his reply to sink in. “Are you trying to tell me that somebody else is participating in your dreams? Functioning in them? That’s impossible.”

  “Is it? Didn’t I just project something of what I was experiencing into your dream? If I can do that, who’s to say some other entity can’t project what it’s feeling or dreaming onto me? Remember what I said about feeling that I was being guided, or directed?”

  Having to deal with Flinx and his nightmares was difficult enough. That another—or several others—might also be involved opened up a whole range of possibilities, none of them to her liking. “But there’s nobody else here, Flinx. Not this time. Nobody but you and me. The Ulru-Ujurrians aren’t around to impel you.”

  He put a comforting hand on her leg. “Just because you had to be close to me to be influenced by my dream doesn’t mean that I have to be physically proximate to whatever may be influencing my dreams.” He pointed across the lake. “It could be in the hills or back in the city or not even on this world. I don’t know. I’m still trying to understand what’s happening. I haven’t had time to try to get to the how it’s happening.”

  “You said ‘whatever.’ Not ‘whoever.’ Then you do have some sense of what may be influencing you?” She struggled to remember all the confusing details of that singular day so many years ago. “Is it the Ulru-Ujurrians again?” She looked around. “Even though they’re not present?”

  “I do sometimes have the feeling that they’re behind at least some of what’s happening to me. But I have no proof.”

  “I thought they were nice, even if they and their world are under Commonwealth Edict. If they’re the ones making you suffer like this, then I guess I was wrong about them.”

  “I said it was just a feeling,” he corrected her. “There’s a sense that other entities are involved as well.” His expression tightened. “I keep trying to identify them, but it’s difficult. They’re only components of dreams, and the evil within the emptiness is so dominant that it’s hard to focus on anything else. One source I think I know for sure—it’s a device, a very ancient device. The other two are still pretty indistinct. From one I get these constant feelings of warmth—I suppose that could be the Ulru-Ujurrians, but I’m not sure—and from the other nothing but the color green. I guess that could be them, also.” He put a hand to his head. “Like I said, everything is complicated and imprecise—pretty hard in that context to identify anything for certain.”

  She eyed him dubiously. “Just a color?”

  He nodded. “And sometimes I’m not sure even of that. It’s all so maddeningly complex and constantly changing, and my thoughts are never clear. Except for one thing: that these perceptions and I and this oncoming evil are all bound together somehow and that I have no choice but to try to do something about it. That hasn’t changed. It’s my purpose, my responsibility as a sentient being to contest evil, no matter what form it may take, no matter how extensive its scope.” He took one of her hands in his. “And now you’re bound up in it, too, because you’ve shared some of it, if only in the form of a passing contact.”

  She wanted to pull her hand away, but did not. “That one touch was more than enough for me, thank you very much. I want to help you, Flinx, but I don’t want anything to do with some great emptiness and unimaginable evil and some vague, dubious purpose. Life is too short. I’m only a single human being. So are you, if you’ll only pull yourself back from these bizarre dreams long enough. You’ve already sacrificed most of your life because of it. Don’t surrender the rest.”

  It was a persuasive argument, an appealing argument. One he had already reflected on many, many times before. “Clarity, don’t you think I’d like to? Don’t you think I want to have a normal life? I’d give anything not to be caught up in this. But I don’t have a choice. It’s not up to me.”

  This time she was the one who took his hand in hers. “Of course it is, Flinx. Who else would it be up to? Just set it aside. I know you can’t eliminate all thoughts of it completely. It’s too strong, too much a part of you. All I’m saying is, let the cosmos find another savior. Live out your life. Let someone else take on this preposterously colossal burden. There’s really nothing you or any other individual can do in the face of something so big, anyway. Let all these dream-penetrating, thought-twisting entities, whatever they are, deal with it. Would you try to stop a sun going nova? Could you if you wanted to?” She smiled. “I don’t think so.”

  “Not by myself, no,” he murmured thoughtfully, “but I have the inescapable feeling that I’ll have a lot of help in this—that I’m a key to it, but not the magnitude. You’re right in saying that I’m just one individual. But a very small key can open a very big door.”

  “Keys are easily damaged.” She released his hand. “I say let these interfering entities find themselves another key. I’ll listen to you, Flinx. I’ll help you if I can. I’d like to see your headaches go away. But you’re right about one thing, I think. If you don’t stop them and the dreams that they make worse, they are going to kill you. I wouldn’t want to see that happen.”

  “Neither would I,” he admitted readily. “How do we go about doing that?”

  “I don’t know.” Her lips were set firmly. “But I do know that we’re going to try. Because if we don’t make the dreams go away, and you don’t die, then you’re liable to continue projecting them on me, and I’ll do whatever I can to keep from having to go through that experience ever again.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  William Ormann, vice president of Ulricam Corporation’s marketing operations in Sphene, was ostensibly a contented man. In his early thirties, he had risen to hold a position of some importance within a well-respected company whose products were known and appreciated on many worlds. Fortified by modern medicine, he had his health. Assisted by modern surgical technology, he had his looks. Which, to be honest, were once again in need of a little in the way of artificial augmentation. He commanded a substantial salary and bonuses, lived in a beautiful two-bedroom house by the beach, was more or less liked by his colleagues, valued by his superiors, and was all but engaged to the most attractive researcher in the company, if not the entire city. The little matter of his last marriage had ceased to be a complication in his life nearly ten years ago.

  If he did not have everything, he certainly was well on his way toward acquiring it. Not only was his job good, but, he enjoyed it. And he had the privilege of doing it on Nur, the most envied world in the humanx Commonwealth.

  He and Clarity Held had been going together, dating, romancing, courting, whatever convenient sociological appellation one should choose to append to their ongoing relationship, for about a year now. There had been other men in her life. Ormann had been prepared to hear about them from the time when he had first managed to catch her eye. Given her beauty and intelligence, it would have been irrational to have expected anything else. She had also informed him that she would, if and when it suited her, continue to see other potential partners besides him. That, too, he was prepared to accept. After all, she had without question or comment allowed him the same flexibility.

  He did not move too fast, which she clearly appreciated. It was hard to watch her go out with others, though the emotional pain was salved somewhat by
his own relationships. Gradually, and especially during the past six months, they had by mutual agreement seen less of others and more of each other. Everything was looking very well indeed. He had the career, he had the income, he had the respect, and with time and patience, he was sure he would have the fitting partner.

  Then the redhead showed up.

  At first, Ormann found it amusing that some callow youth from Clarity’s past should put in so unexpected an appearance. As she had already told him, she was five years older than her visitor. That made Bill Ormann, if not old enough to be this Philip Lynx’s father, at least more than old enough to look at the newcomer from a position of complete confidence. Admittedly, the youth was mature beyond his years, but that still could not obviate the age difference.

  Furthermore, he was downright weird. The way he looked at other people, at his surroundings, the strange manner he shambled down a corridor in search of Clarity, all pointed to a confused if not disturbed individual. Much of the time he kept his head down and stared at the floor, as if this would somehow lessen his lankiness or diminish his presence. Sometimes when he spoke it was as if he were hesitant to form words, as if his brain were one step behind his tongue.

  After their initial meeting, Ormann almost felt sorry for him. All he could see that Lynx and his Clarity had in common was some shared work history from her time on Longtunnel and that both of them possessed identical exotic pets. Observing the two of them on subsequent occasions, the notion that there might be something deeper between them never crossed Ormann’s mind.

  That was a month ago. Since then, Clarity had been spending more and more of her free time in the tall young man’s company. She was apologetic, she was polite, she was never evasive, but she was firm. And each hour, each day she spent with Philip Lynx was one less hour and one less day she spent with Bill Ormann.