A Sudden Wild Magic

He slept, and the dreams of chemicals and lancets returned. But after a while, other things flitted behind those dreams, like birds going secretly from bough to bough inside the foliage of a tree. Behind the machines of the hospital, he had more than one glimpse of a blue fortress with five sides and odd-shaped towers, and occasionally there was rolling countryside with a subtly Mediterranean look. Eventually, as if the leaves dropped one by one from the tree and left the birds in full view, the hospital images fell away to show a deep tawny tone. He was somewhere very high up where everything was this curious color. There he accompanied several other people on what seemed to be an inspection of their borders and the defenses on those borders. He was relieved to find the defenses of Britain standing like a wall of amber. They were unbroken, and yet he had a feeling something was seeping under them. But as he tried to turn his attention to the defenses of Europe and the distant gamboge of America behind him, he found that the inspection party was moving on, outward and upward, on a voyage none of them had ever thought to make before. They seemed to be driven on by strong anger. He followed, in his dream, puzzled, and found that they came to the borders of the universe

The dream image of this outer boundary beggared description, since there were many boundaries, all weaving and writhing and partially interwoven like thick, honey-colored rainbows. Some even seemed to occupy the same space as others. The dream was forced to simplify. At first it looked like a bucket of water into which concentrated tawny dye had been stirred. But when none of the watchers could make sense of this either, the dream simplified again, and they walked the edges of fields that were also seashores, stretching from them in all directions, upward, downward, slanting and standing on end, piled up into the sky, and piled likewise into the transparent amber depths below. Mark marveled in his dream. He had not known there were so many.

Most fields ended as simple seashore, though some had low walls with gates in them, and some hedges or lines of trees. But the party walked along its own shore until they came to one that was different, because it was defended. In the dream, it was represented as a tangle of barbed wire all around the amber field. Though it looked dark and unnatural enough, there were moments when it took on the look of a giant hedge of brambles. Beyond it, a stretch of sand had notices stuck into it at intervals: BEWARE MINEFIELD. Even in the dream, Mark was aware he was seeing an absurd diagram of a threat he would otherwise not be able to visualize at all. He, together with the rest of the party, surveyed the defenses glumly. There was no way into that field. Then his eyes fell on a large pipe, leading under the barbed wire from the field where he stood. In the distance, beyond the mined sand, he could just see the pipe disgorging a gush of substance from his own field into that other, defended place. There was no doubt that this place was the one he had been looking for.

Meanwhile, someone else in the party was pointing out that the defended field seemed to have a satellite. It hung in the distance far out over the center of the field. It looked like a writhing amber lens.

“Laputa,” this person said.

“A James Blish city,” said someone else.

Mark brought dream-binoculars out and took a closer look at the distant undulating lens thing.

This was where the blue pentagonal tower was, he discovered, although now he could see that the structure was in fact more like a walled city with a flat base, built of some kind of blue stone. As he swept his glasses across it, he saw that it was old and that there were people in it, looking back at him through binoculars not unlike his own…

5

Mark awoke to find Gladys standing panting at his bedside with a supper of fish and chips. This surprised him rather more than her announcement that Maureen and Amanda were waiting for him downstairs. He struggled up and leaned against the creaking headboard, beset with anxiety. “What time is it? How long have they been here?”

“A bit after midnight. They both got here around eight,” she told him.

At least three cats were asleep on the bed. Another was curled up in his jacket. He stared at them with undiminished anxiety as he took the tray and thanked Gladys.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I wish you weren’t such a worrier, but I suppose it’s in your nature. Nobody knows where they really are.”