Wine of the Dreamers by John D. MacDonald Page A

curious about his world, that I intended no violence. I sat down again and he asked, again with that touch of humor, what I wanted to know.”
    “It sounds so dull!” Leesa said.
    “It did not seem so. We spent the entire dream in talking.They call the third world Ormazd. It seems to be named after some principle of goodness. They each live alone, quite simply, and at a considerable distance from one another. They give great care and attention to training and teaching their young. He seemed to ‘speak’ to me as if I were a child. They live for the development and progress of pure thought, thought independent of all emotion. They have been progressing in that pattern for twenty thousand years. The reading of minds is part of that progress, and he told me that when they had at last eliminated all language and all words, they had eliminated all possible misunderstanding between people. They have no crime, no violence, no war.”
    “And you say it isn’t dull?” Leesa asked.
    “Here is what puzzles me the most. I know he knows about us. He told me to dream about other worlds rather than about his. But the mental word he used was not exactly ‘dream.’ It was more like scan, or measure or survey. I tried to question him and got that grim mental laughter. He said we are powerless to disturb them. When I said I was seeking knowledge, he said that it could do no possible good to give it to me. He said it was too late. Too late for us. He said it would be easier for me to stay away from their world. And then in that odd laughter-of-the-mind, there was sadness for a moment. I had the feeling he had not meant to let me see the sadness. It was very quick, and all I got was something about a great plan having failed. I could feel his pity. I was very glad when I woke up at last.”
    “The first two worlds sound much better,” she said.
    “I can dream of any world I please now that my first three dreams are done,” he said. “I went to Jord Orlan and he told me the Law.”
    “Can you tell me?”
    “It is forbidden. But of course I will tell you. We both know too many forbidden things already, Leesa. This is the Law as he told it to me. If ever the dream creatures on any world make machines which will take any of themfrom their own world to some other world where they can live, then the dreams will end.”
    “Why will they end?”
    “I asked that. He said that it is the Law. He said that a long time ago the first world came dangerously close to building such machines, but the Watchers obeyed the Law and caused the people of the first world to destroy their own machines time and time again until there were great explosions and now the world is a long way from building such machines. The third world has no interest in building such machines. The danger is on the second world. He said that he is afraid that too many of us have forgotten the Law. In his lifetime he has destroyed, he said, three great ships on the second world. He said we should all be dreaming in the second world, but many will dream of nothing but the first world. Jord Orlan roams the second world in every dream, looking for the great machines that will end the dreaming.”
    “If it is the Law,” Leesa said, “then it must be done.”
    “Why? You and I have learned to read and to write. Only you and I can read the old records, fit the old spools to the viewing machines. Jord Orlan is firm and kind, but he no longer questions anything. He did when he was young. Now he accepts. He does not ask for reasons. That is blindness. I will know why , and if the reason is good, I will obey. What is the meaning of my life? Why am I here?”
    “To dream?”
    He could never forget the first three dreams, not even after eight years of dreams had been superimposed on those first ones.
    While others dreamed their idle amusements and mischiefs and sensations, Raul had made the dreams and the waking times all a part of the same search. On the silent upper levels he spent