Gordon R Dickson - Sleepwalkers' World by Gordon R. Dickson Read Free Book Online Page B

indifference that held him. Gradually, without realizing exactly how he had come to realize it, he woke to the fact that the small, gnawing uneasiness was a part of his mind which was somehow below, behind, or out of reach of whatever held the rest of him in a cocoon of indifference; and it was struggling against the effect of that indifference on the rest of his mind.
    He watched the activity of this small uneasiness for some while, as the aircraft bored silently through the upper atmosphere. As he continued to watch, its image sharpened. It was, he saw, that instinctive part of him which had never been able to admit that others could do something he could not. That element of him which was not capable of accepting defeat.
    It could not accept now the fact that he was being held physically and mentally inactive against his will. It insisted on trying to struggle. As his own feeling of it became clearer, there gradually seeped into his upper mind the concept that possibly he could carry on his thinking on his lower level where the nagging lived, without interference from what was holding him captive.
    He tried it.
    It was a strange way to think, he found. It required pure thought—thought without the color of emotion, without the concrete imagery of words or symbols.
    His own will and intent, considered this way, were a bundle of forces; against them, at the moment, another force was being applied to immobilize him. This other force was turning his own strength back upon himself. He recognized the outside force then, by an intuitive, spark-gaplike mental jump, as a broadcast similar to the power broadcasts that ei> forced slumber on the world during its dark hours. Only this was a broadcast that was more selective, inhibiting thought and movement without putting him to sleep.
    However—intuition sparked again in him below the level of conscious thought—if he could resist the ordinary power broadcasts, then this transmission also ought to be something he could resist—if he could only identify the pattern of its attack and work around it.
    Below the level of conscious thought, his mind began to wake and move about, feeling its strength on this lower level like a sleeping giant roused after a lifetime of slumber.
    Everything that could be done on a conscious level could be done here as well, he saw—but in different terms. It was as if the language of his thought had been forced to change from algebra to calculus. The two languages were apparently completely dissimilar, but they were joined together in the root that was himself.
    In fact, maybe he could do more with the calculus of thought than he had formerly been able to do with the algebra of it. He explored, feeling about like a blind man, with this lower level of his mind, and felt Gaby’s mind, close by, but unaware of his.
    He felt out for Lucas—and came up hard against the live and burning identity that was the wolf. Lucas, it seemed, thought more on this level than on the conscious, human level which was alien to him.
    Lucas was not with them on the aircraft.
    â€œWhy not?â€

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    PARADISE?
    THE ENERGY CRISIS. SOLVED
    THE POPULATION BOMB: DEFUSED
    WORLD HUNGER: ELIMINATED
    NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT: A REALITY
    Â 
    But at what price to humanity?
    For the great power net which has brought
about these marvels has a deadly side effect:
the transmission beams that carry the power
cause all living things in their path to fall into
waking dreams, helpless against the force
that has awakened while all the world sleeps.

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    TK scanned and proofed. 2012 January (v1.0) (html)