Fugue
Most people actually know a good deal more than they may be aware of at any given moment. And perhaps one of the functions of dreams is to remind us of what we know, but will not let ourselves know on a conscious level....
“This revolt is hopeless, Ker-jon, because it only strikes at the symptoms of unrest, without touching the roots. You may succeed—you may unseat those now in authority. But whoever moves in will only perpetuate the tyranny against which you revolted—renew the same oppression, under different slogans.”
The Space Ark left its home planet, Urth, two thousand years ago Canopus IV time, arriving here in the Canopus System some five hundred years later. That is all we know for certain; the rest is mere conjecture.
Two salient features of the Space Ark’s unique social institutions stand out above the myth and fairytale of our ancestors, however. The first is the fabled story of the Mutant-makers, and when one studies the conditions surrounding this phenomenon, the fabled story becomes cold scientific fact. On a giant balanced-terrarium of a ship which was largely automatic, seemingly isolated forever in the vastnesses of interstellar space, our ancestors lacked even a modicum of external challenge. They thus had to create their own artificial stimuli or face an inevitable retreat down the ladder of decadence to barbarism. It appears that for a time they went too far: they created mutants. These in turn gave rise to a rigid caste-system on the Ark, a system which afforded an extreme in internal challenges and responses.
The second salient feature of the Space Ark’s social institutions was its favoring of the biolo-mental sciences over the chemi-physical sciences. This, again, proves to be an inevitable by-product of the Space Ark’s static environment. No physical world existed: physics became a useless dogma, a meaningless jumble of terms which bore no semantic relation to the world-at-large. On the other hand, the Space Ark was a universe of introversion. The biolo-mental sciences leaped ahead of what had developed into a something-less-than-static-civilization. This, as we have seen, gave rise to the Mutant-makers. But on a constructive level, it fostered the growth of a new science of psychology, vastly superior to the old Urth science, and, some suspect, considerably more refined than our own mental sciences. A particular manifestation of this lost science was the ability to project tri-dimensional images of dreams, to record them while the conscious mind slumbered, to play them back later and to interpret them unerringly....
—Andoos-Rob’t, A Short History of the Abortive Social Institutions of the Urth-Canopus Space Ark, Introduction.
Ker-jon awoke suddenly, sitting bolt-upright in bed. It was cool—night-period temperatures always were—but fine droplets of perspiration dotted Ker-jon’s forehead and dark sweat-stains discolored the armpits of his sleeping robe.
Over and over, one thought twisted through his mind; he was not a mutant; he was one-hundred percent normal homo sapiens and a bio-technician on the hydroponics staff at that. Yet—why did he always dream the same dream of a big hairless Ker-jon, his bald, shining dome topped with the three ridges of flesh which had manifested themselves in a series of mutations during the generation of his birth? Why did that dream always follow the same path....
He chuckled in spite of himself. The psych-technicians might yield the answer this time. He removed the electrodes from his temples, snapped the recorder off, rewound the dream-tape. Yes, he’d let the psycho-techs play with it in the morning, despite Cluny-ann’s warning.
When the morning gong sounded, Ker-jon crept softly from his room. His way would lead past the quarters of the female bio-technicians, and he hoped to avoid a meeting with Cluny-ann. But the slim, fair-haired maid knew of his appointment with the psych-tech, and she had other ideas. Ker-jon barely got past the portal to the female quarters when its door slid into the wall with a faintly audible hiss. Arms akimbo, Cluny-ann stood there facing him, the crown of her head hardly reaching his chin.
“Good morning, Ker-jon,” she greeted him coolly.
“Please, I’m busy.”
“I only wanted to see you for a moment, Ker-jon; just a moment, that’s all. Will you take breakfast with me?”
“No. I said I have an appointment.”
“You’re always rushing around like the enzymes we feed into the ’ponic-vats. I’m sure your appointment will keep. I’m also sure it is unwise, this appointment.”
Ker-jon prayed silently that she wouldn’t part her lips invitingly for a kiss, because then indeed he might decide to forego his appointment with the psych-tech. Apparently, that did not enter Cluny-ann’s mind. She merely walked out into the corridor, hands still on hips, blocking his path.
“Tomorrow we try to smash the Mutant-makers,” she told him. “But today you must carry your dream with you and have it interpreted. Won’t it keep? If something lurks in that dream which holds the key to our plans—poof! No more plans. Stay, Ker-jon.”
Gently but firmly, he pushed her out of the way, smiled for a moment when she struggled futilely against the muscles of his good right arm. He said, as he went on down the corridor, “We can take lunch together. I’ll feel more like eating after this nightmare is explained, anyway.”
The psych-tech, Ab’nath-Jawg, wore an immaculate white smock over his scrawny frame, a pair of spectacles over his big, watery eyes. Ker-jon saw no reason for the white smock; perhaps tradition said all psych-techs were to wear white smocks, and that was that.
“Ker-jon,” Ab’nath mumbled, looking at his records, “bio-tech first class, non-mutant, no mutations in the family line. Right?”
Ker-jon nodded.
“Your request for a visit says you’ve been having a dream which has recurred frequently. An unpleasant dream?”
“Ummmm, no; not in itself. But I think—”
“That somehow its implications are unpleasant for you—is that it? Yes? I see. May I have the tape, please?”
Wordless, Ker-jon handed him the little spool, waited while the psych-tech snapped it into place in a small projecting machine. After that, Ab’nath flicked a switch, and the lights in the little room dimmed.
In the center of the room stood a large transparent cube, as long in each of its three dimensions as a tall man. Within it now, lights pulsed, flashed, coalesced. Then they settled back, playing only at the corners, waiting.
Ker-jon held his breath. A tri-dimensional, full color replica of his dream filled the cube.
There was Ker-jon, but a hairless, three-ridged-mutant Ker-jon, and there in the crook of his left arm a slim blonde girl who could have been Cluny-ann, except that she too bore the marks of a mutant—different strain this time, with delicate silver scales covering parts of her fair body. Under a large bell-jar in the foreground, a compact black machine hummed shrilly, a light above its squat main body flashing on and off, on and off.
The queerest part of the dream was its background. Great concentric circles of color closed in on the bell-jar, broad bands of green, blue, red, orange, yellow. When first he’d had the dream, Ker-jon thought the circles emanated from the bell-jar, but clearly, this was not so. Rather, the bands of color surrounded it, almost as if they somehow attempted to crush it.
The dream Ker-jon did not think they could. He balled his right fist and struck down once, savagely, at the glass. It broke, but the machine hummed on and on. Ker-jon shrank back in horror, with a feeling of helplessness.
And that was all. Back to the cube came its flashing lights.
Ab’nath-Jawg scratched his balding head. “A very odd dream,” he admitted. “Do you know the girl?”
“She is Cluny-ann, my betrothed.”
“A mutant?” demanded the psych-tech.
“No. But then, neither am I.”
“Yet you both look like mutants in the dream. Interesting.”
Ker-jon frowned. “I didn’t come here to show you something interesting; I came to have the dream explained. Last night was the sixth time. The same pattern, no change.”
“Relax, my friend. These things take time. Strange, we don’t understand the radio with which we communicate between sections of our Ark, but histories will tell you that both radio and dream-machine function on the same principle. I don’t understand radio; I can only guess, but the dream-machine I know. The recorder is stimulated by electro-magnetic waves from the cerebrus when you dream. The projector takes these vibrations and reproduces the dream itself. A to B, back to A again. Simple.”
Ker-jon shook his head wearily. “I didn’t come for that, either. I know the theory—”
“Patience! Will you have patience? I will submit the record to a staff meeting of psych-techs this afternoon, and we’ll have an interpretation ready for you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow! Tomorrow might be too late.”
“That’s ridiculous, Ker-jon. Even if the dream manifests itself again tonight, so what? Tomorrow is soon enough.”
Ker-jon shook his head sadly, took his leave. He couldn’t tell the psych-tech that tomorrow might be too late because by then his fellow-conspirators would be floundering in rebellion. It all depended on him, of course: he had access to the master controls in the ‘ponics room. Few people did, and certainly no mutants. Ker-jon, then; but Ker-jon had a dream which bothered him, which awakened him, sweating and afraid, in the middle of the night....
Night-period. Dull blue lights casting eerie shadows in a little-used back room of the library. And six men who wove their plans for a coup-d’Ark when morning came.
Ker-jon sat on the floor with Cluny-ann, squatting near the dusty stacks which held the un-used physical science books. Not a volume here had been disturbed for perhaps a score of years—perhaps more. Why study the physical sciences when there was no real physical world with which to correlate your findings? Why study them when your universe was bounded with walls of glistening beryl-steel?
Cluny-ann sat near Ker-jon, but she kept her back to him, angrily. She’d hardly spoken a word since he returned from the psych-tech’s office, and lunch had been a sorry social failure.
Now Flam-harol got up, paced back and forth for a time, the dome of his three-ridged head gleaming under the blue lights. He licked his lips, fingered for a moment the central flesh-ridge atop his skull. Then he spoke in his deep, booming voice. “I can’t help it if I’m nervous; we mutants have waited long and long for this—”
A chorus of “ayes” seconded that, and Flam-harol went on. “We can afford no mistakes. We do or we die—tomorrow. One slip—just one—could be fatal. But in the end, if all goes well, we’ll smash the Mutant-making machinery, we’ll smash the rule of the Mutant-maker. I don’t have to tell you what that means. Whither we came from, that doesn’t matter. A world called Urth, but I cannot picture Urth—a huge world a hundred times or more larger than the Ark, a world where you live on the outside, not on the inside.
“I cannot picture it, and so I won’t try. But this I can picture. A hundred years ago, they started making mutants, to satisfy a warped craving for superiority. Half the people on the Ark now are mutants. Ridge-head, scaled, toe-less—what’s the difference? Mutants all, living in the worst quarters, relegated to inferior positions, scorned, ridiculed....
“Tomorrow, we end it; by evening, no more. Equality on the Ark, yes, but that’s not of primary importance. We will destroy the machinery which can make mutants. No fresh variants will arise, and that is more important. Now, your plans.”
Another ridge-head stood up. “At ten hours, twelve minutes, my men take the astro-room.”
A chunky mutant with scales covering his chest: “We converge, along with Flam-harol’s squad, on the armory. Also at ten hours, twelve minutes.”
Second scaled mutant: “The Mutant-maker’s quarters. We take the reins of government at ten hours, thirty five minutes.”
Lithely, Cluny-ann got to her feet. “The Chamber of Change, at ten hours, forty minutes. I lead my women there, and it is hoped that with so much confusion elsewhere, we’ll be able to destroy the machinery. But—”
“But what?” Flam-harol said. “We appreciate the aid of you non-mutants. Yet if you have any doubts—”
“It’s not that,” Cluny-ann told him. “I don’t think our revolution will be enough; that’s all.”
“What more is there?”
“I don’t know! If I knew, that would be different. I suspect that the whole thing may start over again before we know it.”
Flam-harol shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, something like this. We’re seeking to destroy effects, not causes. Whatever the causes are, we should root them out first.”
“The Mutant-maker and his government are the cause.”
“No. I mean deeper than that. I mean—oh, I don’t know! But something hovers in the background; I can feel it. A cause, a deepseated cause apart from any mutant-non-mutant bickering....”
Ker-jon stood up, smiling. “Don’t mind her,” he said. “Cluny-ann isn’t happy unless she can worry, I think. Now, my job is this: at ten hours I lock myself in control in the ’ponics room, and if necessary, we can hold that as a sword over any ornery heads. I’ll be ready to cut off the air-supply to any section of the Ark that needs such treatment, Flam-harol.”
The big ridge-head nodded. “That appears to be it, then. Till tomorrow, when I hope to meet you all again at noon....”