Dean Wesley Smith - A Time To Dream

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A TIME TO DREAM

by Dean Wesley Smith

Dean Wesley Smith has sold over twenty novels and around one hundred short stories to various

magazines and anthologies. He’s been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and has won a World

Fantasy Award and a Locus Award. He was the editor and publisher of Pulphouse Publishing, and has

just finished editing the Star Trek anthology Strange New Worlds.

Captain Brian Sable of the Earth Protection League could tell there would be a

mission. Tonight was the night. The first mission in over a week. The border

skirmish on the third moon of the Garland Star Cluster must have flared up again. Or

something else threatened the security of Earth. The League was needed to stop the

threat. He was needed, and he was ready.

Across the small nursing home room the old clock on the wooden dresser ticked,

echoing in the small space and dim light, demanding his attention just as it did every

night as he lay in his bed, awake, waiting. When he’d first arrived at the Shady Valley

Nursing Home outside of Chicago six years earlier, that old clock had let him count

down the seconds until he died. Long seconds, never-ending seconds that he had

wished would go by faster.

Now the loud ticking of that old clock in the night counted the minutes until the next

mission, until the time he could become young again. And the time waiting, getting

older and closer to death went by too fast now.

Far too fast.

Now he wanted to stay alive, to stay with the missions and the Earth Protection

League, to get the chance to be young enough to wear his Proton Stunners and fight

the good fight against the enemies of Earth.

The clock ticked.

Time went by.

Down the dimly lit hall outside his room’s door a nurse laughed at an unheard joke.

Captain Brian Sable coughed, the sound weak and pitiful in the silence of the nursing

home.

He glanced at the clock. He could barely see the hands in the light from the hall, but

he could tell it was only a little after ten in the evening. It was still far too early for

them to come for him.

He tried to roll his ninety-one-year-old body over on its side, but only succeeded in

shifting the sheet slightly under him. He hadn’t had the strength to pull himself out of

bed for over two years, let alone roll over. And he couldn’t remember the last time

he’d walked across this small room on his own to the bathroom. A nurse’s aide

always had to carry him and plop him on the cold toilet, then carry him back to his

bed or wheelchair.

He laughed, and the laugh again turned into a rough cough that sent his old heart

pounding. He forced himself to calm down and to not think about how he was at the

moment. He hated thinking about how old he was, how frail his body had become,

how dependent on others he now was. He reminded himself that none of that

mattered like it used to.

Now he had the missions for the Earth Protection League. The missions gave his old

life purpose, his continued liv-ing in this way station of the dying a valid reason. And

even though there hadn’t been a mission for almost a week, he knew tonight was the

night.

He could tell.

It was all in the details. For example, the night nurse had left the rail on his bed

down. The nurse never did that, except on mission nights.

They had also cleaned him up early and put him to bed. They never did that either

unless there was a mission to run.

Of course, when he had first talked to them about the missions after his first one,

they had all laughed at him. They had said there was no such thing as the Earth

Protection League. They claimed that he had just had a strange dream.

But he knew better.

He’d gone on a mission, gotten young again. He had helped Earth defend itself

against the evil scum of the galaxy. And since that night he’d gone on many, many

more missions.

Tonight he was ready again.

Hell, he was always ready. There was nothing else for him to do.

The clock ticked the night away minute by minute, second by second. On the night

of a mission, waiting was the hardest. Sometimes he wished he couldn’t tell when a

mission was. It would make sleep easier.

So he forced himself to think about other things. First he thought about his

long-dead wife, Margaret. She would have laughed at him if she knew what he was

doing. But she wouldn’t have minded. She had always supported him in everything

he did, one of the many things he had loved about her.

Their children, Strom and Claire, didn’t have time for him much anymore. They had

their own lives, their own jobs, their own kids to raise. He hadn’t bothered to even

hint to them about the missions. There would have been no point. They were part of

his past, his life as a grocery store owner. None of that compared with his life now

as a captain in the Earth Protection League.

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