It was early evening at the Lake Loreen Institute on Iryala. Early evening but dark, for it was autumn there. A brisk wind blew, rattling the purple-bronze autumn leaves on the peiocks, throwing an occasional handful of them against her windows.
Lotta Alsnor didn't notice. She sat in trance, on a mat in her room. She'd spent the day coaching five selected students in advanced meditation. All were in their mid-teens, had been students at the institute since age six, give or take a few months. They'd grown up in the T'sel, and done the Ostrak Procedures through Level 8. They'd learned early to meditate, but only to the level of stilling the mind. The goal had not been to produce seers or psychics, simply highly stable, highly rational, highly ethical people for the Movement. And gradually to transform the Confederation. Psychic incidents occurred, but except for a very few persons, they were not regular events.
Lotta had been one of the exceptions, and among exceptions she'd been the exception. That, with her strong interest and intention, had gotten her sent to Tyss to study under Ka-Shok Masters there, and eventually under Grand Master Ku.
She'd become a recognized Master herself, but her progress had slowed, perhaps ceased. Ku had said she might or might not continue to expand, but if she did, it would be on her own; guidance could help her no further. She was welcome to continue at Dys-Hualuun, but she might do as well somewhere else.
The trance she was in was not meditative. She was checking on people for whom she felt interest and concern. It was in her power to help them, at times, even at a distance. But at a distance, such help was limited; mostly it amounted to "scripting" therapeutic dreams or opening exploratory dreams, and helping the dreamer through them. This evening she'd looked in on Tain Faronya, three hyperspace years away but getting nearer. Now she reached elsewhere.
Since undergoing the Ostrak Procedures, Artus Romlar didn't move around a lot in his sleep. Just now, however, he slept restlessly, his hard 234 pounds forcing an occasional squeak from the wooden joints of his Smoleni army cot.
He dreamed, a dream more coherent than most. In it he commanded a spaceship, an enormous warship accompanied by a fleet of lesser, subordinated vessels. They seemed not to be in hyperspace, because he could look around him and see the other ships, not as symbols generated by his ship's computer, but as if he were looking through the ship-metal sides of his flagship in a spherical 360 degrees.
He was not the giant ship's commander. He was admiral. The ships all were his, and somehow that admiralcy inspired a despair that enclosed and saturated him. The reason wasn't part of the dream.
It was a slow dream, almost like suspended animation. Things happened slowly, with long dark pauses, as if he were trying to hold something off, prevent or delay it. Men came to him with questions and reports, and to dream-Romlar they seemed unreal, insubstantial. Then another man entered the bridge, and with his entry, the dream accelerated to an apparent rate of something like normal. The man rode a wheelchair, and sat wrapped in an old-fashioned blanket as if the ship were cold. Attendants accompanied him. The hands folded on his lap were thin, showing sharp tendons and blue-gray, wormlike veins. Only his face was blurred, as if too terrible to see, but dream-Romlar knew it well, and knew he knew it.
"Are you prepared, Admiral?"
It seemed to Romlar he couldn't breathe, yet from somewhere he found the breath to speak. "I am ready, Your Imperial Majesty." He could see the eyes now, kind, loving. Implacable. Mad.
"Excellent. Give the command."
The dream slowed again. Dream-Romlar felt his lips part, his tongue poise. His vocal cords vibrated with the beginning of a word—
Romlar jerked bolt upright on his cot, sweat cold on his face, staring into the semidarkness of a moonlit night. There was no ship's bridge, no bridge watch intent on their monitors. Only a squad tent, shared with his aide and his executive officer. For a moment he sat breathing heavily, feeling enormous relief. The dream was fading, mere impressions, then they too were gone. But the feeling remained that it had been terrible, the sort of dream no one should have after the Ostrak Procedures, and certainly not after the spiritual training of the Masters of Ka-Shok.
He untucked the mosquito bar from beneath the edge of his narrow mattress, swung his feet out, got up and dressed. He needed activity, to walk, perhaps to think.
For awakening, he felt a concern that hadn't been there when he'd laid down. A concern that this war would waste his regiment, eat it up, that he would need it somewhere else but only a remnant would remain, too few to do what was necessary. True they were occupied largely with training Smoleni rangers just now, but that was temporary. It was also true that the Komarsi units they'd fought so far were neither well trained nor well led; casualties had been light.
But bold new actions were necessary. The status quo—even the new, adjusted status quo—seemed to lead ultimately to defeat for Smolen. And if the Komarsi brought in T'swa . . . The thought took Romlar by surprise, but once looked at, it seemed to him very possible.
Lotta had monitored the entire dream without impinging. Three hyperdrive years away, the kalif's invasion fleet had left Varatos, and at a very deep level, Romlar had become aware of it. It had touched, had stirred, a very powerful sequence of incidents in his remote past—many, many lifetimes past. In a vague and general way, Lotta had known it existed—Wellem Bosler did too—and what it was about. Both of them, in processing Romlar, had glimpsed it. Now she knew more, knew certain specifics.
She thought of communicating to him, then didn't. Troubled as he was just now, and introverted, he might not receive her anyway—not consciously. And at Artus's Ostrak level, to dream script for him might do more harm than good.
Besides, it would settle out by itself, for the most part, unless it was further restimulated.
She decided to look in on him from time to time though.