Dream Thief

Dream Thief

Copyright© 1983 by Stephen R. Lawhead

ePub ISBN: 978-0-9567731-1-1

Mobi ISBN: 978-0-9567731-0-4

Published electronically by Lawhead Books

Visit
www.stephenlawhead.com

Cover design by Lina Bronson

Cover photo from NASA Science Photo Library

Interior design by Rickhardt Capidamonte for BookNook.biz.

Digital Editions (Kindle™, iPad™, Nook™ and others) produced by:
BookNook.biz
.

The Dragon King Trilogy

• In the Hall of the Dragon King
  
• The Warlords of Nin
  
• The Sword and the Flame
  

The Empyrion Saga

• The Search for Fierra
  
• The Siege of Dome
  

The Pendragon Cycle

• Taliesin
  
• Merlin
  
• Arthur
  
• Pendragon
  
• Grail
  
• Avalon
  

The Song of Albion

• The Paradise War
  
• The Silver Hand
  
• The Endless Knot
  

Byzantium

The Celtic Crusades

• The Iron Lance
  
• The Black Rood
  
• The Mystic Rose
  

Patrick

The King Raven Trilogy

• Hood
  
• Scarlet
  
• Tuck
  

Bright Empires

• The Skin Map
  
• The Bone House (2011)
  

by

Stephen R. Lawhead

For Harold

T
HE READING OF SCIENCE FICTION
written in years past is a reasonably entertaining activity. What did the author get right? What did he miss completely?

The re-reading of my own novel, written in 1983 when I was living in Lincoln, Nebraska and trying desperately to support my young family by writing three books a year and whatever magazine articles I could sell, has been both interesting and humbling. Somehow I did manage to predict a few things that eventually came to pass—a ‘wafer screen’, for example, equivalent to the current flat screen we all have on our computers and televisions. Others were missed entirely, of course. The worldwide web, smart phones, the nutritional benefit of chocolate: who knew?

With the publication of this novel as an e-book, I have been given the opportunity to clean up the grammar and syntax, check facts easily with Google and Wikipedia, even to improve the dialogue and round out the characters. In the event, I have done none of these things, preferring instead to publish the book as an artifact that must submit to the judgment of you, the reader.

The greatest temptation for an easy search-and-replace change existed with respect to Hocking, a sinister character whose physical disabilities and adaptive technologies immediately call to mind the great physicist Stephen Hawking whose work—whose very presence in the world, in fact—was unknown to me or many outside British physics in 1983. What an unfortunate, and somewhat eerie, coincidence to christen my villain ‘Hocking’ (whose actual namesake was a psychology teacher of my acquaintance). Nevertheless, I have elected to retain his name along with all the other unfortunate miscalculations, mistakes, and misdemeanors that may be present in the work.

After the publication of
Dream Thief
and then the twin volumes of the
Empyrion
series, I moved away from science fiction and into mythic and historical fiction. Twenty-seven years later I have returned to science fiction—sort of—in the BRIGHT EMPIRES series. Now, a technology that none of us would have dreamed of in 1983 makes it possible to bring back into print this volume which will, I hope, be enjoyed by readers of a new generation.

Stephen Lawhead
Oxford
2010

The center of every man's existence is a dream.
—G. K. Chesterton

T
HE MAN IS SLEEPING.
The huddled mass of nerves and sinews rests easily on the bed; outwardly there is no movement. Inwardly, the brain hums with random activity. A maintenance force continually monitors the man's internal activity by way of a vast trunkline of nerves.

At rest the network is dark. Momentary sparks of electrical impulses shunt their messages to and fro along the axons. At the outer fringes, the individual beads of light link up and begin their journey up the spinal column like midnight trains heading for the city. Eventually they arrive and send their impulses off into the tangled circuitry of the brain where each flash, briefly noted, dies out. Except for these momentary pinpoint flares, the system is dark and quiet.

Gradually, the sparks increase their activity; more messages are coming in, flooding the circuits. The lines begin to hum, glowing with energy. Impulses of light speed to their destination deep within the labyrinth, illuminating their passage. Soon the darkened webwork is alive with light—arcing, tingling, pulsing, throbbing with electricity. The man is waking.

THE DREAMS HAD BEEN
at Spence again. He could feel their lingering presence like a dimly remembered whisper. They were unsettling in a vague sort of way. Nothing he could put a finger on—haunting. There was a word that seemed to fit. He felt haunted.

Now, nine weeks into the project, he was not so sure he wanted to finish. That was a strange thought. For almost three years he had worked for nothing else but the chance to test his theories in the most highly respected advancement center: the orbiting space lab GM. It had taken him a year to write the grant proposal alone. And he was here; against considerable odds his project had been chosen. To back out now would be professional suicide.

Spence raised his head carefully from his pillow. He removed the scanning cap—a thin, plastic helmet lined with neural sensors—and placed it on its hook over the couch. He wondered how the night's scan had gone, but realized he was feeling less and less interested than before. When he had started the project, his first thought was to run to the control room to see his scan as soon as he awoke. Now he seldom bothered, although he still occasionally wondered. He shrugged and stumbled into the tiny sanibooth to begin his morning routine.

He emerged from his quarters and hurried off to the commissary without stopping by the control room.
I'll check in later,
he thought, not really caring if he did. He headed down the axial and joined the flow of traffic. The space station, even one the immense size of GM—or Gotham as it was called by those who considered it home—was beginning to wear on him. He glanced around at his colleagues, and at the well-scrubbed faces of the student cadets, and knew that he was in the presence of the brightest minds on any planet. But he watched as the cadets followed one another dumbly into Von Braun Hall and thought,
There must be something more.
Knowledge was supposed to set one free, wasn't it? Spence did not feel very free.

He suddenly felt an urge to lose himself among the eager students, and so allowed himself to be pushed into the lecture hall. When the line stopped moving he flopped into a cushioned chair. The overhead lights dimmed and the automatic transcriber poked its hood up from the seat directly in front of him. He absentmindedly flicked a switch at the arm of his chair which sent the hood sliding back into its receptacle. Unlike everyone else around him, Spence had no intention of taking notes.

He swiveled his head to his left and was shocked to find himself sitting next to a skeleton. The skeleton's sunken eyes blinked brightly back at him and the thin skin of its face tightened in a grimace. On anyone else it would have been a hearty grin.

“My name is Hocking,” said the apparition.

“I'm Reston.” Spence's mouth was dry and he licked his lips, trying not to stare.

Hocking's body was painfully thin. Bones jutted out at sharp angles, and his head wobbled uncertainly on his too-slender neck.
Why isn't the man in a hospital bed somewhere?
wondered Spence. He looked too weak to endure even sitting through the lecture.

Hocking rested in the hi-tech comfort of a pneumochair; his body, which could not have weighed more than eighty pounds, sank into the supporting cushions. He looked like a mummy in a sarcophagus. A thin tangle of wires made its way out of the base of Hocking's skull and disappeared into the headplate of the chair.
Obviously mind-controlled,
Spence considered; the chair probably monitored its occupant's vital signs as well.

“What level are you?” Spence heard his voice asking. It was an automatic question, one that opened every conversation between Gotham's inhabitants.

“A-level. Sector 1.” Hocking blinked. Spence was immediately impressed. He had never heard of anyone reaching that designation. To most people it was merely a theoretical possibility. “How about you?” Hocking nodded slightly in his direction. Spence hesitated. Ordinarily he would have been proud to share his designation, but it was embarrassing to him now.

“Oh, I'm C-level,” he said, and let it go at that. Spence knew that most of his countrymen never progressed beyond the lower sectors of E-level. Even those allowed aboard advancement centers were mostly D-level—although none were ever below Sector 2.

Spence realized he was staring again. Hocking shifted his weight awkwardly in the chair. It was clear that he suffered from some neuromuscular ailment—he had no muscle control at all, or at least very little. “I'm sorry,” Spence said at last. “It's just that I've never met an A-level before. You must be very proud of yourself.” He knew it sounded foolish, but the words were already out.

“It has its advantages,” Hocking replied. He flashed his grimace again.
“I've
not met many Cs.”

It was impossible for Spence to determine if the skeleton was joking or not. True, Cs were a rarity, and Bs were almost nonexistent, but on Gotham there were plenty of both. Before he had time to wonder further, Hocking spoke again.

“What is your specialty, Reston?”

“I sleep,” said Spence sarcastically.

“And do you dream?”

Spence prickled at the notion that this specter might know something about his special problem. He also noticed that Hocking's voice came not from his throat but from a source at either side of his head. The chair amplified his voice as he spoke. This colored Hocking's speech with an eerie cast, as it overlapped his natural voice somewhat and gave Spence the impression that Hocking was speaking a duet with himself. Hocking noticed his glance, and his voice automatically lowered a tone. Hocking had only to think and some need was accomplished. Having never actually seen one of the rare and expensive biorobotic devices, Spence wondered what else the chair could do.

THE LECTURE BEGAN AND
ended much as lectures do. Spence remembered nothing of it, except the feeling all through that the person sitting next to him was watching him, appraising him, sizing him up for some unknown purpose. Spence squirmed in his seat uncomfortably.

When at last the lecture was over, he stood up, turning to tell Hocking that he would see him again. On an orbiting university, no matter how huge, one always ran into the same people. But as he turned, he realized Hocking was already gone. He thought he glimpsed the back of the white ovoid chair in the flood that moved out the doors of the lecture hall, but he was not sure.