Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson Read Online Free PDF

underneath.
    “It’s Dr. Silverstein. Please let me in, Anne. I need to see you.”
    Silence. Then the door opened, almost defiantly. Luke understood. They were conducting a test.
    Anne was dressed in clothes a little too warm for the evening. The guard dog assigned to her lay beside the bed, eyeing Luke. Luke gazed back, and he knew. Painfully he squatted beside the dog, looked directly into its eyes.
    “Hello, Shadow-of-a-Dream.”

    They were first shocked, then afraid. “How did you know?” Anne demanded. Shadow-of-a-Dream had resumed her human form, which of course she had never lost. The girl was not a shape shifter. Only the human mind was.
    Luke addressed not Anne but the beautiful, naked child. “It was in the chapel—do you remember?” A brief vision, quickly gone, and he found himself slumped on a plain wooden bench, the girl kneeling beside him . “I thought I was dying, and I saw the same vision I’d seen from your alien caretaker, the one who raised you, outside the perimeter of the mind shield. Only this time you sent it, didn’t you, Shadow-of-a-Dream? Your own brain, worked on all those years and perhaps possessing more talent than most—you can cast the illusions, too. Not far and maybe not for long, but you can do it.” Brains more plastic than we once thought , Cardiff’s report had said, especially the brains of children .
    Both girls, one so clearly the child of civilization and one so much the opposite, both stared mutely. Luke said, “What did you do with the dogs?”
    Anne said sulkily, “Drugged. Hers and mine. We will not be guarded like criminals!”
    Luke said, “You got the sleeping pills from the infirmary. While you supposedly had the flu.” He didn’t ask how she had faked the symptoms; it was easy enough with various ingested substances, and she was a researcher.
    Anne said, “Don’t try to stop us!” But she was no threat. It was Shadow-of-a-Dream who held the long, wickedly sharp knife—and where had she concealed it when she wore no clothes?
    “Shadow-of-a-Dream,” he said quietly, “you don’t need that. I’m not trying to stop you. I want to go with you.”

    Three figures walked slowly down the corridor, open on one side to the warm summer night. The figures passed two or three people, all of whom saw a boy and girl holding hands, accompanied by their large mastiff.
    The strip of bare land beyond the corridor was not surveilled; the mind-shield was deemed strong enough to keep out illusions. These illusions, however, were inside the shield. Had anyone been watching from the windows of Christmas Landing, three dogs wandered over the dirt, as dogs always did. The ground was littered with dog poop.
    The mind-shield, a faint shimmer in the starlight, was under surveillance. But the dogs were not there long. They passed through the shield, and alarms began to ring. Within Christmas Landing, people responded.
    “Run!” cried Shadow-of-a-Dream. Luke ran, but only a short distance was necessary.
    “Go,” he gasped, and collapsed to the ground, thinking I didn’t need boots and jacket after all .
    Shadow-of-a-Dream stopped. She looked at him, and in her eyes he saw comprehension.
    Did the girl think then of Terry—Mistherd? Did she regret that he would not join her and Anne in the wild and enchanted Carheddin under the mountain? Terry’s bitterness would never permit that. More, he would consider Shadow-of-a-Dream’s return to the natives an act of weakness. But which was stronger: the mind able to reject illusion, or the one able to embrace it while still recognizing it for what it was?
    Luke had a last glimpse of Shadow-of-a-Dream, lovely and wild and pagan and alien, before she vanished. The men who ran toward him through the shield saw only two shiverleaf bushes, among the many that grew just beyond the outpost. Luke saw only the stars above, not dimmed at all. He saw only the dark night, and the darker one approaching.
    And then he saw the Angel of Death,