Perchance. Michael Kurland

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СКАЧАТЬ that were barred against her to the left and right. Gas lamps flickered in twisted brackets along the wall, and strange, horrible faces peered out from unexpected corners, their mouths twisted into grotesque greetings, and then disappeared at her approach.

      She was searching for something—something—what?—she couldn’t quite remember. There was something intangible that she needed desperately, and it was hidden from her behind one of these doors. But which one? The convoluted brass markings on the doors shrieked of hidden knowledge, scribed in a secret but once familiar script. But try as she might, they meant nothing to her, and the knobs shrank from her grasp.

      Onward she went, as the corridor widened, and the sky flashed orange from the great globe of a dying sun. She turned and found that the corridor had disappeared.

      She turned back.

      Wide, empty plains surrounded her now, endless miles of arid desert—dangerous, forbidding, deadly desert. The giant calla plants stood at distant intervals, their crests as high as their taproots were deep, and they whistled softly for her to approach. But she knew it would mean death.

      “Hello, “ the man’s voice said. “Where are we?”

      Man’s voice?

      She spun around. There was a man—no, not more than a boy—sitting—(sitting?)—sitting at a table—(table?)—a few yards from her. It was a round metal table, painted white, with a hole in the center. A white metal pole went through the hole and spread a wide umbrella over the table and the two chairs.

      This was somehow wrong. Out of place. Where had she seen the boy before?

      Could he be one of the Golden Orb? She looked at him closely, but could not detect the stain.

      Was he of Nimber blood? His ears were not pointed.

      She closed her eyes and turned around, and turned back and opened her eyes, and he was gone.

      Was gone.

      —Wasn’t gone at all. And neither were the table and chairs.

      “Who are you?” she asked. “And what do you here?”

      “I’ve been sent to watch you,” he said. “We weren’t sure whether you would be aware of me or not. My name is Delbit Quint. This is very strange.”

      “What is?” she asked.

      “I’m on your side, I promise you,” the lad said. “Don’t worry. But don’t trust Dr. Faineworth as far as you can spit.”

      “You do not speak sense,” she said. She sat at the table with him, under the crystal towers, and they sipped tall cups of blue fizz. “Tell me of yourself,” she said.

      “You’re dreaming,” he said.

      “That is possible,” she agreed. “Is not all a dream? And if not mine, then whose?”

      “No, no,” Delbit said. “I don’t mean in general. I mean here. Now. This is a dream.”

      The girl smiled at him. “Then I am dreaming you?” She reached across the dining-car table and patted his hand as the train entered a tunnel.

      “Yes...no.” Delbit looked around as the area went dark. “Hello?”

      They were standing atop a giant cube of polished metal, which gleamed silver in the bright, though sunless, sky. Around them was a flat, burnished plain, dotted with distant geometric shapes.

      “This is very disconcerting,” Delbit said.

      The girl now wore flowing robes of power, and clutched before her the Golden Orb, as a talisman to protect her from harm.

      Delbit was in his coveralls, and barefoot. The surface of the metal cube was cold under his feet.

      “You’re still here,” the girl said.

      “I am,” Delbit responded. “I feel like an intruder, but I can’t get out any more than you can. The doctor said that you probably wouldn’t be aware that I was here, but obviously that’s not so.”

      “What doctor?” the girl asked.

      The great cube they were standing on rumbled and rolled over, pitching them onto the slippery blue surface below. There was a grinding sound, and a great maw opened beneath them.

      “They’ve found us!” the girl screamed. “The Nimber!”

      Blackness surrounded them as they fell into the void.

      * * * * * * *

      “Transcribe it as accurately as you can,” Dr. Faineworth said, tapping the desk with his forefingernail. “Every nuance, every gesture, every word may be important.”

      “Yes, sir,” Delbit said. The doctor had provided him with a small desk, like a schoolboy’s, in a corner of his office, a supply of lined paper, and a pen and ink. For three days now, early every morning Delbit had been electrically attached to the mysterious girl’s sleeping mind, and had gone along as an uninvited guest into her dreams. It was the strangest experience of his young life: part of him lying on a hard leather couch, staring at the white ceiling, the greater part of him within the strange worlds of the girl’s unconscious mind. Then he had been disconnected from the apparatus and given breakfast. Then he had spent the rest of the morning and afternoon hand-printing out (because Dr. Faineworth couldn’t read his handwriting) every detail of the girl’s dreams.

      The job was not to his liking. What could be more personal than a dream? Being in the girl’s dreams was bad enough physically—or mentally—or whatever the right word was. It certainly seemed physically real while he was there. And the dreams all ended in sheer terror, a terror that washed over him while it engulfed the girl.

      But if it would help the girl get her memory back, it was worthwhile. And Delbit believed that Dr. Faineworth did want the girl to get her memory back. It was what the doctor planned to do after that that worried Delbit.

      * * * * * * *

      Down in the oppressive depths below the ruby palace of the Calla Host, in an ancient torture chamber whose walls were lined with instruments the use of which could only be dimly remembered but whose very appearance provoked terror, the Princess Whose Name Might Not Be Spoken awaited her fate.

      Slender silver chains encircled her body, binding her to the central pillar, and silver wristlets held her arms above her head. Helpless and proud she waited.

      Far away in one of the many ancient hewn-stone corridors that passed the chamber, she could hear the footsteps of the Archpriest of Loth, coming to wrest from her the dreadful secret of the Golden Orb. The sound, as steady as the dripping of water, relentlessly neared; now louder than the squeaking of the rats, now louder than the beating of her heart.

      “I don’t think I like this one,” said the boy (the boy?), the boy who—who—who was tied beside her. The serving boy who had been her companion on many a better-fated adventure, and now must share her doom.

      “Quiet, Vondar,” the princess whispered, “the Archpriest is blind. Do not aid him in finding us.”

      “Delbit,” СКАЧАТЬ