Zelazny, Roger The Dream Master (He Who Shapes)

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"I'm sorry. I'll be more careful."
"Very good."
He walked on across the country.
"I forget the next part."
"So do I."
They left the stream far behind them.
They walked through the bending grass, across flat, borderless plains; and all but the peak of the sun's
crown vanished over the horizon.
Where sun-down shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie . . .
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"Did you say something?" she asked.
"No. But I remember again. This is the place'where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the
square miles far and near.'"
A dark mass off to their left gradually took on a more dis-tinct form, and as they watched they could
make out the shapes of the great bison of the American plains. Apart from rodeos, cattle shows, and the
backs of old nickels, the beasts stood now, individual and dark and smelling of the earth, slow, and huge,
and hairy, all together they stood, horned heads lowered, great backs swaying, the sign of Tau-rus, the
inexorable fecundity of spring, fading with the twi-light into the passed and thepast where the
humming-bird shimmers, perhaps.
They crossed the great plain, and the moon was now above them. They came at last to the opposite end
of the land, where there were high lakes and another brook, ponds, and another sea. They passed
emptied farms and gardens and made their way along the path of the waters.
'Where the neck of the long-lived swan is curving and winding,' "she said, seeing her first swan in the
moonlight drift over the lake.
"'Where the laughing gull scoots by the shore,' " he answered, "'where she laughs her near-human
laugh."
And across the night there was laughter, but it was like that of neither laughing-gull nor human, for
Render had never heard a laughing gull. The chuckling sounds he had shaped from raw emotion chilled
the evening around him.
He made the evening come warm again. He lightened the
darkness, tinted it with silver. The laughter dwindled and died. A gull-shape departed in the direction of
the ocean, dark and silver, dark and silver, turning.
"That," he announced, "is about all for this time." "But there is more, so much more," she said. "You
carry menus about in your head. Don't you remember more of this thing? I remember something about
the band-necked par-tridges roosting in a ring with their heads out, and the yellow-crowned heron
feeding upon crabs at the edge of the marsh at night, and the katydid on a walnut tree above a well, and.
. ."
"It is rich, it is very rich," said Render. "Too rich, per-haps."
They passed through groves of lemons and oranges, under fir trees, and the places where the heron fed,
and the katy-did sang on the walnut tree above the well, and the par-tridges slept in a ring on the ground,
heads out.
"Next time, will you name me all the animals?" she asked. "Yes."
She turned up a little path to a farmhouse, opened the front door, and entered. Render followed her,
smiling. Blackness.
Solid, total black as only the black of absolute empti-ness can be.
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There was nothing at all inside the farmhouse. "What is the matter?" she asked him, from somewhere.
"Unauthorized excursion into the scenery," said Render. "I was about to ring down the curtain and you
decided the show should continue. Therefore, I kept myself from providing you with any additional props
this time."
"I can't always control it," she said. "I'm sorry. Let us go back now. I've mastered the impulse."
"No, let's go ahead," said Render. "Lights!"
They stood on a high hilltop, and the bats that flitted
past the partial moon were metallic. The evening was chill
and a harsh croaking sound arose from a junkpile. The trees
were metal posts with the limbs riveted into place. The grass
was green plastic underfoot. A gigantic, empty highway swept past the foot of the hill.
"Where are we?" she asked.
"You've had your Songof Myself," he said, "with all the extra narcissism you could stuff in. Nothing
wrong with that in this place up to a point. But you've pushed it a little too far. Now I feel a certain
balancing has become neces-sary. I can't afford to play games each session."
"What are you going to do?"
"The Songof 'Not Me? " he stated, clapping his hands. "Let us walk."
. . .Where the Dust Bowl cries for water, said a voice, somewhere and they walked, coughing,
. . .Where the waste-polluted river knows no living thing, said the voice,and the scum is the color
of rust.
They walked beside the stinking river, and she held her nose but it did not stop the smelling.
. . .Where the forest is laid to waste and the landscape is Limbo.
They walked among the stumps, stepping on shredded branches; and the dry leaves crackled underfoot.
Overhead, the face of the leering moon was scarred, and it hung by a thin strand from the black ceiling.
They walked like giants among wooden plateaus. The earth was cracked beneath the leaves.
. . .Where the curreted land bleeds into the emptied gouge of the strip-mine.
Abandoned machinery lay about them. Mounds of earth and rocks lay bald beneath the night. The great
gaps in the ground were filled with a blood-like excrescence.
. . . Sing,Aluminum Muse, who in the beginning taught that shepherd how the museum and the
process rose out of Chaos, or if death delight thee more, behold the greatest Graveyard!
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They were back atop the hill overlooking the junkheap. It was filled with tractors and bulldozers and
steamshovels, with cranes and diggers and trucks. It was piled high with twisted metal, rusted metal,
broken metal. Frames and
plates and springs and beams lay about, and the blades and shovels and drills were all smashed. It was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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