The Dream Master by Roger Zelazny Read Free Book Online

“I’d keep stepping in all those piles of leitmotifs.”
    The great egg drifted out into the office, soundless as a cloud. Render heard a soft growl behind as he drew it toward the desk. He turned quickly.
    Like the shadow of a bird, Sigmund had gotten to his feet, crossed, the room, and was already circling the machine and sniffing at it—tail taut, ears flat, teeth bared.
    “Easy, Sig,” said Render. “It’s an Omnichannel Neural T & R Unit. It won’t bite or anything like that. It’s just a machine, like a car, teevee, or dishwasher. That’s what we’re going to use today to show Eileen what some things look like.”
    “Don’t like it,” rumbled the dog.
    “Why?”
    Sigmund had no reply, so he stalked back to Eileen and laid his head in her lap.
    “Don’t like it,” he repeated, looking up at her.
    “Why?”
    “No words,” he decided. “We go home now?”
    “No,” she answered him. “You’re going to curl up in the corner and take a nap, and I’m going to curl up in that machine and do the same thing—sort of.”
    “No good,” he said, tail drooping.
    “Go on now”—she pushed him—“lie down and behave yourself.”
    He acquiesced, but he whined when Render blanked the windows and touched the button which transformed his desk into the operator’s seat.
    He whined once more—when the egg, connected now to an outlet, broke in the middle and the top slid back and up, revealing the interior.
    Render seated himself. His chair became a contour couch and moved in halfway beneath the console. He sat upright and it moved back again, becoming a chair. He touched a part of the desk and half the ceiling disengaged itself, reshaped itself, and lowered to hover overhead like a huge bell. He stood and moved around to the side of the ro-womb. Respighi spoke of pines and such, and Render disengaged an earphone from beneath the egg and leaned back beneath the egg and leaned back across his desk. Blocking one ear with his shoulder and pressing the microphone to the other, he played upon the buttons with his free hand. Leagues of surf drowned the tone poem; miles of traffic overrode it; and the feedback said: “… Now that you are just sitting; there listening to me, saving nothing, I associate you with a deep, almost violet, blue…”
    He switched to the face mask and monitored one—cinnamon, two— leaf mold, three deep reptilian musk… and down through thirst, and the tastes of honey and vinegar and salt, and back on up through lilacs and wet concrete, a before-the-storm whiff of ozone, and all the basic olfactory and gustatory cues for morning, afternoon and evening.
    The couch floated normally in its pool of mercury, magnetically stabilized by the walls of the egg. He set the tapes.
    The ro-womb was in perfect condition.
    “Okay,” said Render, turning, “everything checks.”
    She was just placing her glasses atop her folded garments She had undressed while Render was testing the machine. He was perturbed by her narrow waist, her large, dark-pointed breasts, her long legs. She was too well-formed for a woman her height, he decided.
    He realized though, as he stared at her, that his main annoyance was, of course, the fact that she was his patient.
    “Ready here,” she said, and he moved to her side.
    He took her below and guided her to the machine. Her fingers explored its interior. As he helped her enter the unit, he saw that her eyes were a vivid sea-green. Of this, too, he disapproved.
    “Comfortable?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay we’re set. I’m going to close it. Sweet dreams.”
    The upper shell dropped slowly. Closed, it grew opaque, then dazzling. Render was staring down at his own distorted reflection.
    He moved back in the direction of his desk.
    Sigmund was on his feet, blocking the way.
    Render reached down to pat his head, but the dog jerked it aside.
    “Take me, with,” he growled.
    “I’m afraid that can’t be done, old fellow,” said Render. “Besides, we’re not really