Tower of Dreams

Blaine woke gradually in the early dawn, the nightingale still singing. The deep blue twilight was cool as he slipped out of bed, the floor tiles chilly on his feet. He put on clothes and went outside, the kitchen screen door slapping quietly behind him. The air was just a little damp, perfectly still. A vague pinkish glow dimmed the stars above the eastern mountains. Other than the pausing, meditative song of the nightingale, the world was silent. Blaine went down the flagstone walk past the fig and orange trees, stretching and yawning in the deep blue, faintly purplish light that filled the garden like cool water. At the bottom of the garden a seven-foot concrete wall separated his villa from the next. He had stood for a minute rubbing his eyes and breathing deeply of the delicious air when there was a sound beyond that wall. It was a quiet, slapping shuffle, the sound of the cheap, brightly colored plastic sandals worn by peasant women in this part of the world. The sound struck Blaine with a strange excitement. He knew there were women in the next villa: he had heard their laughter and housework conversation many mornings. He had once seen three of them coming out of their garden door carrying plastic shopping baskets; by their long dresses and headscarves he had perceived that they were fundamentalist Muslims. He said in the direction of the wall: "Sabah el khair. Good morning." He said it quietly, but in the perfect stillness it could not have been mistaken in the next garden. The sound of sandals stopped. He had scared her, Blaine thought, at the same time wondering at himself for risking the wrath of his conservative neighbors by talking to their women, even over a wall. There was a scraping, as of something being dragged, and then a couple of thumps and a light exhalation, and two hands appeared at the top of the wall. A girl pulled herself up and straddled the wall easily, so that her long black robe was pulled up to the knee of a smooth white leg. Her robe covered her to the wrists and throat, but her head was uncovered. She was breathtakingly beautiful—so beautiful that with an electric jolt of shock and exhilaration Blaine realized that this was an Image, that he was dreaming—dreaming at last the lucid dream, the deep astral fantasy of the collective unconscious that the Icon scouts had sensed buried somewhere in the Jordan Valley. He tried to relax, to release the aesthetic rush of the Image so it wouldn't wake him, so he could scan the dream, memorize every detail: the beautiful Muslim girl smiling down at him, twilight the color of violet smoke etching clearly each exotic leaf in the garden, its stillness holding the liquid song of the nightingale. "Sabah el noor," said the girl softly, using the proper response to his greeting. "Morning of light." She was slender and erect, with dark eyes and thick, dusky hair. Her smile was a child's, though she herself looked in her late teens—delighted but tentative, shy, as if unsure whether she should be smiling at him at all. The small, bare foot thrust over the wall was high-arched and perfect. "Who are you?" Her voice—soft, guileless, inquisitive—gave him chills. He couldn't tell whether she was mentally undeveloped or simply innocent with the wide-eyed innocence of a cloistered village woman. "I am your neighbor, my sister. Who are you?" "My name is Buthaina. Oh! Your garden is so beautiful!" The breath caught softly in her beautiful throat, her tresses falling over her shoulders as she gazed back and forth, the dark eyebrows below her broad, high forehead raised. This was good, Blaine realized, trying to keep his excitement in check—this dawn scene in the Jordan Valley with a Muslim child-princess was as good as anything they had pulled down in Morocco. "I have a gardener who tends it," he said to keep her talking. "A gardener?" she gasped, fixing her wide eyes on him. "Oh Peace! How lovely that must be!" Blaine's eyes were tracking back and forth now, his trained dream-senses registering every detail: the smell of damp earth and jasmine, the nightingale's song, dawn highlighting the girl's stray tresses pink, the sky still dark blue behind her. And vaguely, from the garden behind the wall, the slam of a screen door. On an impulse he took a step forward and caught the girl's foot in his hand. It was cool and smooth as silk. "What are you doing now?" she said, laughing. Blaine laughed too, the touch of her bringing a full, happy feeling into him. Through her foot he felt a sudden jerk, as if something had yanked at her from the other side of the wall. She looked around so violently that she almost lost her balance. Then another terrific yank jerked her foot out of his hand and she fell backward. He heard her fall heavily to the ground behind the wall, and then mingled with her gasps and the sound of desperate struggling in dirt and gravel was the thick, bubbling hiss of someone else's breath. Then a heavy, sickening blow. The girl screamed. Blaine stood rooted to his spot, head swimming with horror. It was a dream, he reminded himself—not real, just a lucid dream; yet an Image dream, and never before had anything like this happened to him in the programmed euphoria of an Image dream. The girl was screaming incomprehensibly and there were more blows, the bone-breaking thud of fists and boots on a living body, the sounds receding as if she was being dragged away . . .