Universe Twister - Keith Laumer [4]
The bricks became clearer, gaining in solidity. Lafayette brushed aside vagrant wisps of distracting thought, giving his full attention to the image of the wall, holding it, building it, believing it. He had known dreams were vivid; they always seemed real as they happened. But this was perfect!
Carefully he worked on extending the range of the scene. He could see a flagstone path lying between him and the wall. The flat stones were grayish tan, flaking in flat laminae, almost buried in the soil, with tiny green blades sprouting between them. He followed the path with his eyes; it led away along the wall into the shadow of giant trees. Amazing how the mind supplied details; the trees were flawless conceptualizations, every branch and twig and leaf, every shaggy curl of bark as true as life. If he had a canvas now, he could paint them . . .
But suppose, instead of letting his subconscious supply the details, he filled them in himself? Suppose, for example, there were a rosebush, growing there beside the tree. He concentrated, trying to picture the blossoms.
The scene remained unchanged—and then abruptly began to fade, like water soaking into a blotter; the trees blurred and all around dim walls seemed to close in—
Dismayed, Lafayette grabbed for the illusion, fighting to hold the fading image intact. He switched his gaze back to the brick wall directly before him; it had shrunk to a patch of masonry a yard in diameter, thin and unconvincing. He fought, gradually rebuilding the solidity of the wall. These hypnogogic phenomena were fragile, it seemed; they couldn't stand much manipulation.
The wall was solidly back in place now, but, strangely, the flowers were gone. In their place was a cobbled pavement. There was a window in the wall now, shuttered by warped, unpainted boards. Above it, an expanse of white-washed plaster crisscrossed by heavy timbers extended up to an uneven eave line silhouetted against an evening sky of deep electric blue in which an early moon gleamed. It was a realistic enough scene, Lafayette thought, but a bit drab. It needed something to brighten it up; a drugstore, say, its windows cheery with neon and hearty laxative ads; something to lend a note of gaiety.
But he wasn't going to make the mistake of tampering, this time. He'd let well enough alone, and see what there was to see. Cautiously, Lafayette extended his field of vision. The narrow street—almost an alley—wound off into darkness, closed in by tall, overhanging houses. He noted the glisten of wet cobbles, a puddle of oily water, a scattering of rubbish. His subconscious, it appeared, lacked an instinct for neatness.
There was a sudden jar—a sense of an instant's discontinuity, like a bad splice in a movie film. O'Leary looked around for the source, but saw nothing. And yet, somehow, everything seemed subtly changed—more convincing, in some subtle way.
He shook off the faint feeling of uneasiness. It was a swell hallucination and he'd better enjoy it to the fullest, while it lasted.
The house across the way, he saw, was a squeezed-in, half-timbered structure like the one in front of which he was standing, with two windows at ground-floor level made from the round bottoms of bottles set in lead strips, glowing amber and green and gold from a light within. There was a low, wide door, iron-bound, with massive hinges; over it a wooden sign hung from an iron rod. It bore a crudely painted representation of the prow of a Viking ship and a two-handed battle-ax. Lafayette smiled; his subconscious had seized on the device from his ring: the ax and dragon. Probably everything in the scene went back to something he had seen, or heard of, or read about. It was a fine illusion, no doubt about that: but what was it that was changed?
Odors, that was it. Lafayette sniffed, caught a scent of mold, spilled wine, garbage—a rich, moist aroma, with undertones of passing horses.
Now, what about sound? There should be the honking of horns, the clashing of gears—motor-scooter