Richard Paul Russo - Watching Lear Dream

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RICHARD PAUL RUSSO

WATCHING LEAR DREAM

AT NIGHT SAMUEL SAT beside his old friend Lear and watched him dream, Lear's

dreams manifested in the air above his prone and twisting figure, malformed

creatures and almost familiar people and half-living machines that threatened to

become fully substantial and take on strange and complicated lives of their own

in this world. Samuel, too, had once dreamed dreams like these.

But now he kept watch over his old friend. Kept watch over Lear's dreams. And

destroyed those dreams.

Samuel and Lear. They were the last of their kind.

Samuel acted as a gatekeeper, human Cerberus, guarding the natural world from

the supernatural. Doing so, he kept Lear alive. Watching over him, preventing

the old man's dreams from becoming primed realities loosed and wreaking havoc

upon the world, he held back the executioner's axe. As long as Samuel kept

Lear's dreams at bay, DivCom allowed Lear to live.

Lear had once been a DivCom hero. So, too, had Samuel, and the other

twenty-seven like them. They had dreamed into existence strange and powerful

creatures and superhuman beings, incredible living weapons and organic

star-jumping ships, and then, in full control of their creations, directed them

against the invading forces of an alien civilization that attacked them from

somewhere near the heart of the Milky Way. And they had triumphed.

But the others were all dead now, most of them killed during the conflict,

others by accident or old age; two by suicide. Only Samuel and Lear remained,

and they were no longer needed, the conflict years ended, no other foreseen.

They would have been useless even if needed -- Samuel had no more dreams, and

Lear had lost all control of his own. Neither was a hero anymore.

For years Samuel kept watch over Lear, fought Lear's dreams, and dispatched

every one. For years.

Until the day Lear dreamed Teresa back to life.

DivCom had settled the two of them on a sparsely inhabited world, almost

primitive, habitable but lacking exploitable resources. Set them up in a small

house several kilometers upstream from a village that straddled a swiftly

flowing river which poured over stones and crashed around boulders as it came

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out of the dark and craggy mountains. Another hundred and fifty kilometers

further downstream, the river -- much wider and slower by that point -- emptied

into a vast inland sea. Neither Samuel nor Lear had ever seen the inland sea,

and Samuel was certain they never would. He and Lear would live out the rest of

their lives in this house, never going much farther than the village. They would

die here.

Three people stayed with them at the house, two men and a woman provided by

DivCom to cook and clean and garden and maintain the house, to accompany Samuel

and Lear on shopping trips into the village -- for food and supplies, books and

music, clothing and news capsules B and to go with them on those occasions when

Lear felt the need to spend an afternoon or evening or both in the local tavern

drinking himself into a stupor.

The day Lear dreamed Teresa back to life, Samuel was down by the river, dozing

in the shade of a dense tree. The summer air was still and hot, but in the

shade, so close to the river, it was cool. Samuel was half asleep, and he was

almost dreaming.

A normal dream, a human dream, one that would never manifest in the air above

him, never threaten to come to life. Fragmented and incoherent, the dream images

overlaid the thick and leafy branches above him: red and orange flames, a black

vehicle on fire in the snow .... And then he realized Lear was inside the

vehicle, screaming through the flames and the black smoke and Samuel knew Lear

would be burned alive...

The flames scattered, Lear's face dissolved, then coalesced into Carpentier

staring down at him.

"Wake up!" Carpentier was saying. A member of the DivCom contingent, he did most

of the cooking and cleaning a bit of gardening. Errand boy.

Samuel blinked, pushed at Carpentier's arm. "Go away," he said. He wanted his

dream back, even the awful dream of Lear burning alive. Any dream.

"It's Lear," Carpentier said. "He's dreaming."

"Now?"

"Now." Nodding his head. "He wanted to take a nap." A shrug. "He's an old man."

Then so am I, thought Samuel. Yet it was somehow more true of Lear.

"Hurry!" Carpentier insisted.

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Richard Paul Russo - Watching Lear Dream

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