The Last Dream - Gordon R. Dickson, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
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HE FELT HIMSELF BEING WRENCHED AND FLUNG—
AS IF ACROSS SOME IMAGINABLE DISTANCE OF TIME OR SPACE…
The aged face of the man who called himself James Rater Bailey had worn a snarl when they left him
alone in the cell with Doug. His gnarled fingers clutched at the tattered charms he always wore about his
throat and he muttered something, as if praying to the devils it had been said he worshipped.
Doug has never sought help, knowing he could expect none. It had been a fair fight after he was
attacked, and the hoodlum’s death had been an accident. Doug could have escaped if he had not called
for an ambulance. But he had not asked for mercy even after he had learned the drunk was the son of the
state’s Governor. He had faced their gas chamber without pleading.
“Doug.” The old man’s voice had been urgent. “I came to help you—for your grandfather’s sake.”
Doug snorted. “Miracles don’t work against cyanide.”
“Doug, listen. You won’t believe me—nobody ever did. But take this!” A tiny capsule had fallen from
his crooked hand.
Now, fighting the spasms from the deadly gas, Doug seemed to be dreaming . . of another time and
place…
THE LAST DREAM
GORDON R. DICKSON
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
These stories have appeared previously, in a somewhat different form, as follows:
“St. Dragon and the George,”
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, September 1957. © Fantasy House,
Inc., 1957.
“The Present State ofIgneos Research ” and “Ye Prentice and Ye Dragon,”
Analog
, January 1975. © Conde
Nast Publications, Inc., 1974.
Page 1
“A Case History,”
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, December 1954. © Fantasy House, Inc.
“The Girl Who Played Wolf,”
Fantastic
, August 1958. © Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., 1958.
“Salmanazar,”
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, December 1957. © Mercury Press, Inc., 1962.
“With Butter and Mustard,”
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, December 1957. © Fantasy House
Inc., 1957.
“The Amulet,”
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, April 1959. © Mercury Press, Inc., 1959.
“The Haunted Village,”
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, August 1961. © Mercury Press, Inc., 1961.
“The Three,”
Startling Stories
, May 1953. © Better Publications, Inc., 1953.
“WalkerBetween the Planes,”
Worlds of Fantasy
#2, 1970. © Universal Publishing and Distributing Corp., 1970.
“The Last Dream,”
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
, July 1960. © Mercury Press, Inc., 1960.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
ST. DRAGON AND THE GEORGE
THE PRESENT STATE OF IGNEOS RESEARCH
YE PRENTICE AND YE DRAGON
A CASE HISTORY
THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WOLF
SALMANAZAR
WITH BUTTER AND MUSTARD
THE AMULET
THE HAUNTED VILLAGE
THE THREE
WALKER BETWEEN THE PLANES
THE LAST DREAM
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EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
by Sandra Miesel
All real living is making—of truth and beauty, of goodness and love. “If you are not making,” said a wise
man, “you cannot possibly be happy because it is the destiny of every man to be a maker.” What remains
potential in the many is actual in the artist. Then he in turn offers his work and shares his happiness with
the many.
In his well-known analysis of fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien describes the literary artist as a subcreator who
gives the Secondary World he makes “the inner consistency of reality.” By realizing imagined marvels, he
builds a place that commands active belief, not the mere suspension of disbelief. To visit such a
Secondary World is to find our dreams of loveliness, horror, and whimsy come true. A measure of the
enchantment that refreshes us there may return to the Primary World with us and awakens splendors in
everyday things. Once we have wandered in the forests of Faerie, “a tree is a tree at last” even if it grows
beside a car-clogged city street.
It is a blessing that fantasy “fans fresh our wits with wonder” lest we smother in mundane chaos and
corruption. Values only fleetingly glimpsed in our Primary World stand out clearly in a well-made
Secondary One. Thus it can offer a satisfying vision of moral harmony unattained here. In particular,
fantasy speaks to our sense of justice. We want to see the ogre slain, the witch bested, the cripple
healed, the prince and princess live happily ever after. Nihilists who delight in letting “doom come and
dark conquer” pervert the very essence of fantasy and mock the longing for joy that animates it.
What is made in fancy may yet be made in fact. Humorously or grandly, humbly or nobly, modern
fantasy carries on the work of mankind’s oldest stories. It leads each of us readers beyond ourselves to
discover that each of the Hero’s thousand faces is our own.
J.R.R. Tolkien “desired dragons with a profound desire.” Yet even the keenest draconophile must set
some limits to intimacy.
ST. DRAGON AND THE GEORGE
A TRIFLE DIFFIDENTLY, JIM ECKERT RAPPED WITH HIS CLAW on the blue-painted door.
Silence.
He knocked again. There was the sound of a hasty step inside the small, oddly peak-roofed house and
the door was snatched open. A thin-faced old man with a tall pointed cap and a long, rather
dingy-looking white beard peered out, irritably.
“Sorry, not my day for dragons!” he snapped. “Come back next Tuesday.” He slammed the door.
It was too much. It was the final straw. Jim Eckert sat down on his haunches with a dazed thump. The
little forest clearing with its impossible little pool tinkling away like Chinese glass wind chimes in the
background, its well-kept greensward with the white gravel path leading to the door before him, and the
riotous flower beds of asters, tulips, zinnias, roses and lilies-of-the-valley all equally impossibly in bloom
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at the same time about the white finger-post labelled S. Carolinus and pointing at the house—it all whirled
about him. It was more than flesh and blood could bear. At any minute now he would go completely
insane and imagine he was a peanut or a cocker spaniel. Grottwold Hanson had wrecked them all. Dr.
Howells would have to get another teaching assistant for his English Department. Angie…
Angie!
Jim pounded on the door again. It was snatched open.
“Dragon!” cried S. Carolinus, furiously. “How would you like to be a beetle?”
“But I’m not a dragon,” said Jim, desperately.
The magician stared at him for a long minute, then threw up his beard with both hands in a gesture of
despair, caught some of it in his teeth as it fell down and began to chew on it fiercely.
“Now where,” he demanded, “did a dragon acquire the brains to develop the imagination to entertain the
illusion that he is
not
a dragon? Answer me, O Ye Powers!”
“The information is psychically, though not physiologically correct,” replied a deep bass voice out of thin
air beside them and some five feet off the ground. Jim, who had taken the question to be rhetorical,
started convulsively.
“Is that so?” S. Carolinus peered at Jim with new interest. “Hmm.” He spat out a hair or two. “Come in,
Anomaly—or whatever you call yourself.”
Jim squeezed in through the door and found himself in a large single room. It was a clutter of mismatched
furniture and odd bits of alchemical equipment.
“Hmm,” said S. Carolinus, closing the door and walking once around Jim, thoughtfully. “If you aren’t a
dragon, what are you?”
“Well, my real name’s Jim Eckert,” said Jim.
“But I seem to be in the body of a dragon named Gorbash.”
“And this disturbs you. So you’ve come to me. How nice,” said the magician, bitterly. He winced,
massaged his stomach and closed his eyes. “Do you know anything that’s good for a perpetual
stomach-ache? Of course not. Go on.”
“Well, I want to get back to my real body. And take Angie with me. She’s my fiancee and I can send
her back but I can’t send myself back at the same time. You see, this Grottwold Hanson—well, maybe I
better start from the beginning.”
“Brilliant suggestion, Gorbash,” said Carolinus. “Or whatever your name is,” he added.
“Well,” said Jim. Carolinus winced. Jim hurried on. “I teach at a place calledRiveroakCollege in
theUnited States —you’ve never heard of it—”
“Go on, go on,” said Carolinus.
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“That is, I’m a teaching assistant. Dr. Howells, who heads the English Department, promised me an
instructorship over a year ago. But he’s never come through with it; and Angie—Angie Gilman, my
fiancee—”
“You mentioned her.”
“Yes—well, we were having a little fight. That is, we were arguing about my going to ask Howells
whether he was going to give me the instructor’s rating for next year or not. I didn’t think I should; and
she didn’t think we could get married—well, anyway, in came Grottwold Hanson.”
“In
where
came
who
?”
“Into the Campus Bar and Grille. We were having a drink there. Hanson used to go with Angie. He’s a
graduate student in psychology. A long, thin geek that’s just as crazy as he looks. He’s always getting
wound up in some new odd-ball organization or other—”
“Dictionary!” interrupted Carolinus, suddenly.
He opened his eyes as an enormous volume appeared suddenly poised in the air before him. He
massaged his stomach. “Ouch,” he said. The pages of the volume began to flip rapidly back and forth
before his eyes. “Don’t mind me,” he said to Jim. “Go on.”
“—This time it was the Bridey Murphy craze. Hypnotism. Well—”
“Not so fast,” said Carolinus. “
Bridey Murphy
...
Hypnotism
… yes…”
“Oh, he talked about the ego wandering, planes of reality, on and on like that. He offered to hypnotize
one of us and show us how it worked. Angie was mad at me, so she said yes. I went off to the bar. I was
mad. When I turned around, Angie was gone. Disappeared.”
“Vanished?” said Carolinus.
“Vanished. I blew my top at Hanson. She must have wandered, he said, not merely the ego, but all of
her. Bring her back, I said. I can’t, he said. It seemed she wanted to go back to the time of St. George
and the Dragon. When men were men and would speak up to their bosses about promotions. Hanson’d
have to send someone else back to rehypnotize her and send her back home. Like an idiot I said I’d go.
Ha! I might’ve known he’d goof. He couldn’t do anything right if he was paid for it. I landed in the body
of this dragon.”
“And the maiden?”
“Oh, she landed here, too. Centuries off the mark. A place where there actually were such things as
dragons—fantastic.‘’
“Why?” said Carolinus.
“Well, I mean—anyway,” said Jim, hurriedly. “The point is, they’d already got her—the dragons, I
mean. A big brute named Anark had found her wandering around and put her in a cage. They were
having a meeting in a cave about deciding what to do with her. Anark wanted to stake her out for a
decoy, so they could capture a lot of the local people—only the dragons called people
georges—”
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