The Fall of the Dream Machine.

by Dean Koontz.

PART ONE

STAGINGS FOR A REVOLUTION.

Chapter One.

The world is spinning on an axis two degrees different than it was a moment ago....

Her/your hair is tangled over his/your face, losing him/you in a honey world of softness, a hay world of smells. Her/your hands are upon him/you, ma.s.saging flesh of shoulders, neck, and thigh, playing delicate symphonies on his/your body.

LISA THE LOVELY: Her/your eyes are blue; her/your lips are warm and red. There Her/your eyes are blue; her/your lips are warm and red. There is is a sun going nova in her/your flesh a sun going nova in her/your flesh.

MIKE THE MANLY: He/you is strong; he/you is gentle. There is a sun going nova in his/your flesh too He/you is strong; he/you is gentle. There is a sun going nova in his/your flesh too...

LISA THE l.u.s.tY: Tigress, clawed and clutching Tigress, clawed and clutching...

MIKE THE MUSKY: Id desires personified and magnified . Id desires personified and magnified . . . . .

Thunders roar and lightnings flash and it rains stones.

Now there is a relaxing wherein they/you hold hands and say sweet things and occasionally raise onto elbows for brief moments to kiss and be kissed, to laugh and smile and sigh. The shadow-filled bedroom is a womb: the walls are dark and rea.s.suring, the mattress almost a belly in the way it enfolds them/you. It is the Time After. And though it is not as exhilarating as the Time During, it is less frustrating than the Time Before. Everyone waits for all of Show for the Time During. Sometimes it comes in the afternoon and in strange places. But most often, as now, it is the late evening. And waiting until evening is a long, long time to wait.

Especially if you are a pale worm that experiences only through Show. Especially then.

"Great show, Mike," Limey said, spitting the words around the edges of the cigar clamped tightly between his teeth. "Especially some of those Time After comments to Lisa. Inspired! d.a.m.n, you'd think you really loved her!"

Mike Jorgova straightened his tie and slipped the ends of the magnetic tack behind shirt and in front of tie. There was no real sense in answering Limey, for no one listened to a Performer anyway. Besides, his ability in Show was not worth commenting on, for he would not be a star much longer. He did not wish to discuss that which was about to become past history, a part of his life worthy of forgetfulness. If things worked out right in the next few hours, today's show had been his last.

"Tomorrow we have you two doing it in a bath house on a crowded beach," Limey said. "That was my idea."

Mike controlled his rising anger-and rising gorge. "Isn't that just a bit too much? I mean, what with all those people about."

Limey did not catch the sarcasm. Limey caught very little beyond the exact dictionary definition of a word. Inferences and inflections were too far above him. "No. Not too much, Mike. That's the point. You'll be frightened of all those people and the possibility they may discover you. That will be something different-fear and s.e.x."

"Perhaps I'll be too afraid to-"

"Now you know that isn't possible, Mike. You'll be able."

And he knew he would. There were drugs that would make him able even in the middle of an elephant stampede. He would be very competent, very able indeed. If he was there. And if all plans worked and the G.o.ds smiled favorably, he would not be there ever again.

He slipped into his greatcoat, the prototype of the model that was currently so popular with the viewing public. He wondered, briefly, how much Show got in royalties from the manufacturer of the Jorgova Greatcoat.

"Fredrick!" Limey called out in his gravelly voice. The door to the small dressing room opened and the bodyguard came in. "Mr. Jorgova will be going home," Limey said. "See that he arrives there safely."

"Yes sir," Fredrick said. His bulging muscles seemed to ripple, visible even under all those layers of clothes. The vibra-pistol was an ugly lump on his breast, cancerous.

"Tomorrow, Mike," Limey said, stepping into the hall and disappearing around a rack of sequined costumes.

Mike resisted an urge to speak comradely with Fredrick. It was Fredrick who would help him escape, and the excitement of the fast approaching break stirred his tongue. As if antic.i.p.ating Jorgova's thoughts, the bodyguard pointed to the four corners of the room where the beetle-like bodies of microphones dotted the crevices. Mike pulled his gloves on, smiling. He could wait to talk. Actually, he had only spoken with Fredrick twice before. The first time had been two weeks earlier. They had left the studios, were crossing the macadamed parking lot. When the big man had begun to speak in whispered tones, Mike had thought that it was because he was a new bodyguard and did not understand that security forbade him to speak to his charge. Then the words had begun to seep into his ears: "I'm with the Revolution. We want to free you. Will you cooperate? Think about it and answer me tomorrow night when we cross the lot; there are microphones everywhere else." The second time, Mike had done the talking: "Help me."

He could have answered the first night. There was absolutely no need to think anything over. It was not fun to share one's life with the rest of the world. There were seven hundred million subscribers to Show. Seven hundred million people watched over his shoulder, felt what he felt, knew what he knew (or most of what he knew, anyway), were what he was. All those G.o.dd.a.m.ned people wherever he went, doing his thing with him. It wasn't even funny to speculate that Lisa had made love to three hundred or so million men tonight-and not just to him. It was not really humorous in the least.

"Let's go," Fredrick said, walking briskly to the door.

"Yes, let's," he answered, following and going through the portal the other held out of his way.

He had had a bodyguard now for four weeks-ever since the Revolutionists had freed Tom Storm, the star of the second shift. A new boy had to be moved in to take Storm's place, a sixteen year old with little experience, hardly in command of his emotions.

They pa.s.sed the racks of clothes, the old props gathering dust, the card tables where stage helpers got a few minutes of relaxation and lost most of their weekly pay. They came, eventually, to the set for the first portion of the second shift show. The new boy, Ben Banner, sat with the ridiculously older Ellen Heart at a dimly lighted table in an out-of-the-way cafe, his hand on her knee-kneading it instead of caressing it. Mike would not have paused to watch, except for the Fade Out. Ellen began to grow hazy. A gray-black film glowed over and immediately around her. She was a ghost person for a brief moment-there and not there, real and unreal. Then, just as quickly as it had begun, it ended. All the technicians were on their feet, running, listening to the dials tell them what the delicate instruments recorded. The dials were not really dials, for they spoke, they did not show. But they were still called dials. No one knew why. There were a number of shrugged shoulders but no I've-got-it! expressions.

Fredrick pressed on his shoulder to remind him that they had a time schedule to meet if they were to bring off his escape. He continued walking, turning into the main corridor that led to the large simu-wood doors at the end of the blue-tiled tunnel. Fade Outs were a relatively recent development, he mused as he walked. They had begun two months before when the toto-experience relays had been inserted to replace the ninety percent relays that had been in use. There were now half a dozen Fade Outs a week, at a minimum. Each time, the Performer appeared to get fuzzy, frayed at the edges, a smokeman. One moment there was a real actor, the next there was a phantom-like (reportedly) the image on an ancient television screen during a thunderstorm. The Performer did not remember those seconds of Fade Out at all. His mind was a blank except for what seemed to be s.n.a.t.c.hes of talking that had not been spoken on the stage or anywhere in the studio. Aside from that-the partially heard babble of voices-there was nothing. It was an eerie blank. He knew. He had Faded Out twice.

The door opened automatically at their approach, and they stepped out into the cold wind that spit bits of snow and ice at them, stinging their faces. Far above, a yellow moon glowed briefly between clouds, was gone into darkness. Jorgova stepped into the back of his limousine floater, slid to the end of the seat to give Fredrick room, and reminded himself that the car was bugged just as the dressing room had been. Just as his bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom were.

The driver, an anemic slug of a man in a blue and yellow Show uniform, pulled from the parking lot onto the broad expanse of the superway, catching the eastbound auto-guide and flipping the controls to robo. They fluttered along in silence, flakes of snow cracking against the gla.s.s like soft bullets, some louder than others as the temperature neared the underside of the freezing mark, coming from zero. Sleet. The orange-topped guard rails flicked past, tiny sentinels, each with a bright phosph.o.r.escent cap, always at attention.

At the first exit, the chauffeur flipped off the robo, pulled the floater off the guide beam, and descended the twisting ramp. At the very bottom, Mike braced himself, following Fredrick's example. In a moment, he saw why they had braced. A light pickup rammed the nose of their own vehicle and tumbled both craft into an open drainage ditch full of mud and slush that slopped over the windows, then fell back into smaller waves that lapped at the doors.

Fredrick reached across the back of the front seat, brought the barrel of his vibra-pistol down solidly on the skull of the driver. The man slumped sideways onto the seat, too meek to offer even a moan. "C'mon," Fredrick said.

A third vehicle, a nondescript Champion, dull gray, pulled up beside them. The doors swung open; they climbed in. "Welcome to freedom," the driver called over his shoulder. He was a red-faced man with a great number of freckles, and broad, white teeth.

Freedom. But they had not gone a hundred yards before the helicopter flitted down over the trees, beating its dragon wings fiercely, focusing its luminous eyes on them, washing them with almost liquid brilliance.

Fredrick opened his door, placed the gun on the top of it and sighted on the aircraft. A thin, green pencil beam, almost invisible, flowed from his weapon, ended in a puff of blue-white smoke, blinding the dragon in one eye. An answering beam smashed the gla.s.s out of the wrap-around rear window. Fredrick fired again, hit again. But the gunman in the helicopter returned the fire, catching Fredrick squarely on the temple and ripping his skull apart like a muskmelon.

"Close the door!" the driver shouted.

But Mike found he was paralyzed. He could not force his fingers to move, let alone his arms. His body was locked in a fear grip, and the fingernails of that imaginary hand were biting into him, hurting. He could not move, merely look. The headless corpse lay across the seat, blood gushing from torn veins. Fredrick was dead. And Fredrick had been the only one of these people he knew even remotely. And he had spoken to Fredrick only twice in his life! Suddenly it all seemed rather wild, rather improbable. He was running away from something he knew into something he could never conceive of. He had never been free. He had, from birth, been raised and groomed for Show. He had been taught how to sharpen his emotions for transmission. He had been taught complete control of his sensitivities. He had been, shortly, spoon fed. Death had been only a rumor. Here it was a reality; and from the driver's lack of shock, it seemed to be a common reality. He wanted to leap from the car, but his legs denied him.

The driver cursed, shoved the corpse from the seat, then turned back to the wheel. He slammed down on the accelerator, pulled onto the adjoining secondary road that branched away from streetlights and into darkness. The helicopter, though it now had no spotlights, was following. The pounding of its rotors shook the roof, made the floater bobble up and down on its own air cushion. The driver cut the headlamps, swerved into another side road that veered off toward a dense forest. Still, the helicopter was there.

A fountain of flames sprang up in front of them. Purple and cinnabar. Pretty Pretty, Jorgova thought and was immediately shocked that he could think of anything beautiful so soon after the corpse without a head had spewed blood over him.

... On his face...

He wiped the wet droplets from his cheeks and looked at them, his hands moving freely now. He had not noticed the dampness until this moment when he felt something trickle toward his chin. Fredrick's blood was all over his face. There was a sticky pool of it on the floor. Gray-white brain matter and chunks of hair-matted bone stuck to his coat and trousers. He was, very suddenly, sick on the floor.

When he could manage to look up again, he could see flames bursting nearer and nearer the car. The tunnel of the forest loomed ahead. If the helicopter pilot realized what they were speeding toward, the shots would no longer just be warnings. He was not particularly frightened by that thought. He was not scared of Death so much as Uncertainty. Death would be better than going through all of this to face something and someone he had never been raised to cope with. That That was frightening. That was terrifying! was frightening. That was terrifying!

The flames struck the hood, washed over the windscreen, roared across the roof.

The floater slipped off the smooth path of the road, bobbled across the drainage ditch and a number of boulders, coming within an inch or so of a few of them, then swung back onto the road again-successfully avoiding the fire. That time. The second time the flames struck, they bit at the roof. It was so violent a burst that the interior padding caught fire from contact with the metal roof. Mike began pounding at it with his hand, burned himself.

"Your coat!" the freckled driver shouted.

He struggled out of the bulky garment, wrapped it about his arm, began thumping it against the ceiling. There was a great deal of smoke. The fire, however, seemed to be smothered. He kept thumping to be certain.

The forest was close.

The trees looked like beneficent G.o.ds to him.

Flames coughed over the trunk. A full blast struck them broadside, fused the control wires of the underslung air system, and sent the car rolling into the cavernous maw of the trees that swallowed the road. They were not so much as a leaf in October wind, spinning, tumbling, tossing. There was a clanging of things falling loose and rattling across the road into darkness. There was the squeal and crunch of metal collapsing beneath its own weight.

Mike clutched the rear of the front seat, tried to remember to keep his body limp so that the crashes would damage him as little as possible. When the floater finally came to a halt, lying on its roof under a canopy of pine boughs, he was uninjured, save for a few bruises. His largest problem was the thick splotches of blood and upchuck on his clothes. He shucked off his sport jacket, trying to rid himself of the overwhelming stench.

Someone was at the door. He prepared himself for Limey's face, Limey's cigar glowing insanely in the cool, dark air. But it was not Limey. It was not even anyone in Show uniform. "You okay in there, you three?"

There was a grunt from the direction of the front seat. The freckled face appeared, strained in something that might have been pain, might have been fear, might have been both. "Fredrick was killed back at the underpa.s.s. I think my arm is broken."

"You?" the stranger said, turning to Mike.

"Okay. I think."

"Well, let's get out of here. They're landing that d.a.m.n whirligig now."

Mike stepped through the door, helped the new stranger wrench the dented front door open and extract the driver. The man's arm was definitely broken. Bone jutted through in one place, sharp and white and b.l.o.o.d.y.

They ran to a larger limousine waiting with its lights out a few hundred feet down the lane. Just as they climbed in, a vibra-beam tore at the earth in front of the car, set the ground steaming. To Mike's surprise, the driver turned the floater to face the Show guards instead of running. The beams crackled against the windscreen, glanced off the hood and fenders without doing damage.

"Vibra-proof," the new stranger said, smiling.

"And expensive," Jorgova added.

The blades of the air system stuttered, and the car jolted for a moment as one of the guards went under. The other Show man jumped to the side of the road, kept firing. The chauffeur swung the car around, veered toward the man. He was an excellent driver. His hands worked as smoothly as a concert violinist's, plucking and drawing at the wheel. The limousine clipped the remaining guard with its front b.u.mper, sent him in a death plunge over a hundred foot drop onto spiked rocks.

"We're behind schedule," the newcomer said. "Let's move."

The chauffeur accelerated. Trees flashed by, gray shadows against the darker shadows of the night.

Immediate danger behind, Mike began to think, once again, of his situation, his apartness. He turned to the man who seemed to be in charge. "What is expected of me?"

"What?" the other asked, looking at him, more than curiosity clouding his dark eyes.

"What do I do to earn this freedom?"

"Nothing," the other man said. "We have freed you because-"

Mike forced self-a.s.surance into his voice and into his own heart. "Don't give me any propaganda line. You are leading some sort of revolution against Show. It's supposed to be taboo, but the stories float through the studios, fast and thick. What do you want of me?"

The stranger remained silent a moment, then sighed. "There is no sense leading you in slowly. And I don't blame you for being determined to know where you stand. You will be behind a desk throughout the Revolution-when it comes. You will never go back into Show again. Other men will do that."

He felt as if he were being shoved along, carried with the tide instead of riding atop it. "I want to be in the front lines," he snapped. He did not want to be in the front lines, really, but he had to gain some control over what was happening to him or he'd be nothing more than he had been in Show-a puppet, a tool.

"That's impossible! We need you too much to risk-"

"Either I work in the front lines or I get out here," he said, taking hold of the door handle.

They stared at each other, one trying to outlast the other. There was no sound but the purring of the air system, the whoof whoof of an occasional gust of air sweeping across the car. of an occasional gust of air sweeping across the car.

The chauffeur and the man with the broken arm were listening, waiting.

"You really mean it," the other man said at last.

"You're d.a.m.n right I do."

More silence. At length: "All right. You win." He turned to the chauffeur. "Blake, take us to Dr. McGivey's instead."

"Then I'm on the front lines?"

"Exactly."

It had not been heroism or anything remotely like it that had driven him to demand to be in the thick of action. He had been sinking again into a swamp where the currents twisted him without any regard to where he wished to go. Had they demanded he fight, he would have demanded a desk job. He felt as if he were guiding his fate now. And he felt, very slightly, better. "What will I do, specifically?"

The stranger offered his hand, shook. "First, I am Andrew Flaxen. I'm some sort of officer in this whole thing; I'm not sure what exactly." They stopped shaking. "Your mission, since you demand action, will be to rescue Lisa Monvasa from Show."

The night rushed past like coal dust.

Chapter Two.

She undressed without turning the lights on. She suspected them of having planted cameras recently.

She made a game of seeing things in the shadows: a dog's head, ears flattened in rage, teeth gritted; a matronly woman bending over a loaf of homemade bread, sticking- what?-toothpicks into the product; a spider...

Something else...

But she could not see herself.