Don’t Bite the Sun, Tanith Lee [warren buffett book recommendations .txt] 📗

I took out my earrings and found one pair, four odd. Thinta ignored me. I threw them down the Jade Tower terrace and watched electricity wave-nets catch them at various junctures. My mind bounced between my demagnetized ears, from the retreating aural joy and delight that had ruined my stealing enterprise.

“Attlevey, Thinta,” I remembered to say. I suddenly realized I’d rather be solo, but here was Thinta and we were going to a Dream Room.

No, really, I liked the Dream Rooms. I’d never let on what dreams I programmed for myself, though Hergal always dreams of flying. I thought Hatta probably dreamed of being some sort of three-headed monster.

“What’s that?” Thinta asked, gazing up at my white, stolen pet, kicking and hooting in the clutches of my bee. Thinta’s bee moved in to help. Thinta’s bee always moves in to help. It gets you down. Thinta tried to stroke my pet, and my pet tried to bite Thinta.

“Stop it!” I shouted at all of them. I felt pretty tosky, actually.

We got to Four BEE’s Third Sector Dream Rooms more or less all right. Thinta flew safely, and I realized how much I preferred being with Hergal and feeling the blood drain out of my head with fright. Actually when I’m with Hergal I always realize how I prefer being with Thinta and not feeling the blood drain out of my head with fright.

“Here we are!” Thinta cried, and proudly guided us down to a superb landing in one of the nets. I mean, you don’t have to guide anything into a net. They’re there to catch you. Oh well.

We got out and on to a movi-rail. There were lots of people buzzing up and down, and crowds of Jang for once. The ones coming out were discussing what they had been dreaming—all symbols and astral projection and so on. I felt a bit small. I usually did. Honestly, I just couldn’t feel at home in that place if someone didn’t make me feel inferior about what I chose to dream. The average Jang dream ecstasy is to be a mote of pulsing light, sucked to and fro between fiery suns, novas and palely smoking moons, a kind of cosmic, all-over comprehension of having love. No, really, I read it on a flash. Anyhow; Hergal dreamed of flying. Good old Hergal.

The bottom of the shaft is lovely, masses of smoldering pink cloud architecture with rays of gold passing in between, and the whole thing shifting ever so gently. Cloudy robots guided us to little transparent cubicles and helped us drop clothing and anchor ourselves on comfortable air cushions that give you a stimulating tonic massage as you dream.

I waved to Thinta as the walls, ceilings and floor began to smoke up and turn opaque, then settled back and dictated my dream to my robot. The idea is just to give them the skeleton of what you want; they think up the relevant sets, costumes, special effects, and also lots of little twists and surprises to delight you. But I was a bit of a pest. I always have too much imagination to fit inside my head. I’ve been told, though of course I don’t remember consciously, that, during my twentieth of a rorl at hypno-school, that was the worst problem my tutors had with me. I could turn a seven-dimensional geometric exercise into an epic adventure, where all the planes and double planes were really the inhabitants of a besieged citadel, fighting off hordes of triple bisectors with paralyzer-beams.

The robot struggled valiantly with my detailed color descriptions, my quick but elaborate costume sketches on the thought-receptive wall-panel, my demands for background music, and the sweeping grandeur of ruined palaces I kept stressing whenever new thought flagged. I think Thinta had been long gone by the time the robot staggered out.

I lay back, closed my eyes, and waited. Suddenly you feel this stroking sensation all over, and then you’re there ….

Oh, well done!

A sweeping grandeur of ruined palaces, fallen marble blocks and pillars towering upward without roofs, crumbling stairways, and great window spaces through which burning arrows of light streamed and bubbled. Overhead an enormous planet hung low, like a pitted emerald in the pale green sky. Arid desert, faintly glittering, stretched away and away.

I’d just come in sight of this place, after traveling for units without sustenance across the Blazing Waste. It was twilight. The huge creamy-tawny beast I rode stood stock still, its pads planted in the sands, its shaggy-maned head lifted to stare at that baleful planet overhead. I dismounted and climbed one of the crumbling stairways. I was all gold: gold hair, gold skin and eyes, gold tunic and groin-high boots, ancient double-bladed dagger with a gold-plated hilt. I saw my reflection in cracked glass floors and shreds of mirror.

Darkness gathered. Things twittered high in the ruinous roof.

Two red candles up ahead. No, not candles. Eyes, watching me. I could sense, I could tell, there was something in this place that would hurt me if I wasn’t careful. Obviously, I was fairly weak from my ordeal in the Crystal Deserts, but mine was an old and noble line, forged like good steel (of course). I felt no fear (what’s that?) but drew my gold-hilt dagger and went forward through the dense viridian dusk.

The eyes went out.

There ahead was a terrible monster, breathing a poisonous fire that almost scorched me. I uttered ancient mystic words to protect myself from the flames, and closed with it. The fighting was long and awful. (Naturally.) But grace was in my every movement, my blade was swift and certain. (What else?) Eventually the thing collapsed and blew away like the desert dust, leaving only a bleached skeleton at my booted feet. I went on. Nets of bronze dropped down. Too proud to struggle, I was borne upward through the tall ranks of pillarheads, to a vast hollow rampart. I found a table of glass laid out with