MALCOLM JAMESON: Science Fiction Collection - 17 Books in One Edition. Malcolm Jameson

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      CHAPTER XV

       A Vision

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      Allan Winchester saw things with uncanny clarity. Never, in life, had every doubt and misgiving been swept away to be replaced by the clear, unchallengeable, lucid truth. But now it was so. All was revealed.

      He saw himself the ruler of a mighty race, a race that governed not one planet but a hundred. He did not sit on a gilded throne, surrounded by sycophants and cringing servitors, but in a cool, quiet study, lined with books. Its windows gave out onto a sun-specked terrace and a park, beyond whose trees he could glimpse the spires of the perfect city.

      He ruled, yet he did not rule; for the laws were so just that they were never questioned or infringed. His people were contented; well-housed, well-fed and healthy. Each did, for the good of all, what he could; each received, according to his nature, his proper needs.

      Industry, art and science were welded into one harmonious whole, vigorous and flourishing, not for its own purposes, but for the better service of mankind. There was no waste, there was no shortage. The workers were happy. They were following the bent shown early in their childhood.

      Work that delighted the hand and eye was done by hand. Work that was distasteful was relegated to the machines.

      Poverty, disease and crime were words which had dropped out of the vocabulary. Lies and mutual recriminations no longer were bandied. There was no need for them. They had gone the way of slander, envy, jealousy, gluttony, greed and the other major vices.

      Winchester rolled over, blearily half conscious. His unthinking fingers groped for and found the half-drained ampule and crushed it. Again he inhaled the delicate aroma, and sank back into heavenly dreams.

      For what seemed to be an eternity, history unrolled before him as on a mighty scroll. He saw a great conquerors, and would-be conquerors, from the Hittites onward; the petty tyrants of business and the household; gangsters, feeding on blackmail, who once held cities in their clutches.

      Last of all he saw those who aspired to rule by violence, but lacked the intelligence — the common criminals of the jails. He talked with the great philosophers, long dead — Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides, Spinoza. He talked with Friedrich Nietzsche, the German thinker, whose vision of a "superman" had so infected German thought.

      He stirred uneasily. His dream was turning sour. Sleepily he reached for another ampule, but could not find it. He dropped back into unrestful slumber.

      Other shades came to trouble him. He witnessed the execution of the martyrs — benevolent men, but lacking in the will to fight. He saw Galileo offer a boon to humanity, only to withdraw it after torture. In a later century he saw artists and scientists fleeing from Europe like rabbits from a forest fire, not knowing how to resist a tyrant who understood only brute force —

      Winchester shuddered and opened his eyes. The jar above him was half empty. A warm, rosy liquid dribbled from his punctured arm and made a small pool on the floor. He felt a sudden impulse to rise and smash things.

      He bounded to his feet. With one sweep of the arm he demolished the container above him, saw it crash into a thousand fragments. Then he plunged into his bedroom, eager for action — but for what end, he did not know. He knew only that he had the urge to come alive again and do things, great things.

      The sight of himself in the mirror halted him in his tracks. He stared at the wild-eyed, desperate-looking apparition before him for a long, unbelieving minute. His nostrils quivered, and he trembled with a blind fury he did not understand.

      But in a moment reaction set in, and he staggered shakily to his bunk and fell across it. He suffered intensely for an hour or more, and then grew calm. He knew that what he craved was more Lotusol, but wisely he had stolen only a limited quantity. There was no more.

      At length he slept.

      For the next few days Winchester went quietly about his routine work, but there was never an hour that his brain was not seething. The dreams he had lived stayed with him, as clear and vivid as reality. He could not shake off the feeling that the devastating insight into human nature he had experienced was a revelation from some higher inner intellect. It was something that had to be digested and interpreted. Then he could apply it to his work.

      His work! How to proceed? Brute force must be fought with brute force, of course. There was nothing else tyrants understood. But he must be ever on guard against the misuse of even the forces he himself employed. What if another Dominguez should appear to help him, only to set himself up as another Khan?

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