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There were trees inside the house as well as out, trees and hanging plants under a great square of roof moved away to let in sunlight and air. Chairs and a couch soft-covered in lemon-vanilla cloth. Shelves of books at easy reach, Bartok's glorious Concerto for Orchestra in the air. The place felt like home to us for the music and the plants, for the airplane outside and the far view, like flying. It was exactly what we wanted for ourselves, some day.
"Welcome the both of you! You made it!"
The two who met us were familiar. They laughed and hugged us joyfully.
We forget in the daytimes, but asleep we can remember dreams from years gone. The man was the same one who first flew me in the Pterodactyl; he was myself in ten years or twenty, but grown younger. The woman was Leslie-by-the-airplane, more beautiful with knowing.
"Sit down, please," she said. "We don't have much time."
The man set hot cider for us, on a driftwood table.
"So this is our future," said Leslie. "You've done a good job!"
"This is one of your futures," said the other Leslie, "and it's you who did the good job."
"You showed the way," said the man. "Gave us chances we wouldn't have had, without you."
"It was nothing, was it, wook?" I smiled at my wife.
"It wasn't nothing," she answered, "it was a lot!"
"The only way we could thank you was to invite you to the house," said Richard-to-be. "Your design, Leslie. Works perfectly."
"Almost perfectly," his wife corrected. "The photovoltaics, they're better than you thought. But I've got some suggestions about the thermal mass. ..."
The two Leslies were about to fall into a deep technical talk of hybrid solar engineering and superinsulation when I realized . . .
"Excuse me," I said, "We're dreaming! Every one of us, isn't that right? Isn't this a dream?"
"Correct," said the future Richard. "This is the first time we've reached you both. We've been practicing this, on and off, for years-we're getting better!"
I blinked. "You've been practicing for years, and this is the first time you've reached us?"
"You'll understand when you do it. For a long time, you'll only meet people'that you haven't seen--future you's, alternate you's, friends who've died. For a long time you'll be learning, before you get into teaching. It will take you twenty years. Twenty years' practice, you can pretty well give direction to your dream-state, when you want. Then you get around to saying thanks to ancestors."
"Ancestors?" Leslie said. "Are we ancient?"
"I'm sorry," he said. "Poor choice of words. Your future is our past. But our future is your past, too. Soon as you get yourself free of this time-belief and on with your dream-practice, you'll understand. As long as we believe in sequential time, we see becoming, instead of being. Beyond time, we're all one."
367
"Glad it's not complicated," said Leslie.
I had to interrupt. "Excuse me. The new book. You know me and book-titles. Did I ever find a title? Did the book ever get written and printed and I can't for the life ofme. . . did I ever find a title?"
The future Richard had not a lot of patience for my doubts. "This dream is not to tell you that. Yes, you found a title; yes, the book got printed."
"That's all I wanted to know," I said. And then, meekly: "What's the title?"
"This dream is to tell you something else," he said. "We got a . . . let's call it a letter . . . from us way out ahead in our future. Your ideas about getting through to young Dick and Leslie, they started something. Now quite a few of us have turned into sort of psychic pen-pals.
"Everything you thought to your younger selves, it got through. Tiny changes, subconscious, but they are alternate people, they may not have to go through the hard times we did. Some hard times, of course, but there's a remote chance that learning how to love won't be one of them."
"The letter we got," said Leslie-to-be, "it said, everything you know, is true!" She was fading; the scene flickered. "There's more, but listen: Never doubt what you know. That wasn't just a pretty book-title, we are bridges. ..."
Then the dream shattered, broke to suitcases stuffed with muffins, a car-chase, a steamboat on wheels. I didn't wake Leslie, but I wrote pages on the pad by my
pillow, remembering in the dark what had happened before the muffins.
