Dream

In the dream, she is skiing, something she has never done. At first the dream is exhilarating. From the top of mount Fourestow there are no clouds and little light pollution. Lee can see billions of brilliantly lit stars in the jet-black night sky and the blue green miasma of the Tagart nebulae obscuring the westward zenith. Below, the mountain slopes gradually into a covering of grey cumulus cloud for as far as the eye can see.

She wears no EVA suit in the dream, although she knows in reality she would be dead due to the altitude, subzero temperatures, and undeterred radiation. Later she will reflect on whether this aspect of the vision has been conjured by dream logic, or a subconsciously reminder of something equally unfathomable, yet horribly real, running through her veins.

Whatever the reason, Lee's dream self begins her descent. Frigid winds lash her, so cold they burn exposed skin. Ice crystals pelt her face like a storm of micro meteors. The discomfort she feels is negligible in comparison to her exhilaration. Faster and faster she flies down the slope, zigzagging around hillocks and jumping moguls. Ahead, an endless expanse of cloud approaches with ever increasing speed. Through the veil of moisture, she sees marker beacons denoting the safe width of the trail.

Just before plunging into the clouds Lee hears someone coming up behind her.

'Yahoo, avalanche!' an excited youth hollers.

Lee glances back quickly to identify the caller. It is Bradley Johnson, of course, but he is not alone. Two others skiers trail the playboy. The figures rushing down the slope after Bradley are humanoid, but something about their stiff movements convince Lee that the pursuers are something else altogether. This reflection proves true as the skiers come close enough for her to see details. One of the figures has no head, while the other is missing its right arm. Johnson's companions are the animate corpses of Borlov and Hawthorne. This alone should be enough to wake Lee out of an ordinary nightmare, but what follows Johnson and his motley crew is infinitely more terrifying.

An avalanche, miles wide and a hundred feet in height, razes the mountain side. Through the tumble and clash of boulders and snow, she glimpses enormous translucent vines propelling the slide to greater fervor. Sleet mites the size of Shetland ponies leap along the crest of the avalanche like dolphins before a wave. The logical part of Lee's mind rebels against the sight. Besides being extinct, the Caspian arctic rose and the arthropods that had lived on them have never reached these monstrous proportions. But dreams have a logic all their own and Lee cannot shake the menace she feels barreling down on her.

She tears into the clouds. The only visual aide she has to prevent herself from skiing off the mountain and plummeting to her death are the guide beacons which pulse with the regularity of a heartbeat. She cannot see the tumultuous slide racing to catch her from behind, but can hear its wrathful roar as it devours everything in its path.

To her right the silhouette of a one-armed man materializes through the swirling mist. Lee shouts to catch the phantom skier's attention, but her voice is drowned by the growl of the inexorable avalanche. Another shadow man appears to her left. This one is the headless mockery of Andrew Borlov. The undead skiers begin closing in on Lee, their jerky movements somehow not affecting their ability to ski.

'Help us,' the one-armed apparition pleads. 'Help us,' the disconnected voice of Borlov says from the obscurity to her left.

By now the Tsunami of snow, stone, and flesh, is close enough Lee can feel the ground beneath her tremble. Before she can answer the spirits of her fallen comrades, glassy, semitransparent vines the width of a man's leg reach out from the chaotic slide to snatch the dead men into its grinding immensity.

A flash illuminates the cloud around Lee. She has strayed dangerously close to a marker beacon. Lee turns her attention back to the trail ahead of her, navigating more by feel than by sight. Focusing solely on staying between the markers, she crouches and leans forward to increase her speed. The sooner she is out of the veil, the better.

Something flies overhead, landing in a twirl of snow, thrashing chitinous legs, and clanking mandibles. It is one of the impossibly large sleet mites. The animal rises, its eight legs churning the snow as it angles the bulk of its carapace toward Lee. She leans forward even more to pick up speed. The creature is gone in a flash. Lee does not dare slow her suicidal velocity, however, for she can still hear the tumultuous passage of the avalanche. If anything, the deadly cascade sounds closer than ever.

For what seemed like hours, but can only have been minutes of dream time, Lee bores through the clouds, a contrail of displaced moisture in her wake. Just as she is beginning to believe there is no end to the vaporous shroud, Lee bursts through. Off to her right another skier exits the clouds like a torpedo fired from heaven's gate.

Before them stretches the rest of mount Fourestow, a vast sloping terrain punctuated by boulders, pitfalls, and geysers that spit ice crystals into the ionosphere and beyond.

'Help!' Johnson yells. There is no sign of the carefree, jovial Bradley Johnson she has come to know. Here is a frightened young man. A youth whom has finally come to the realization that he is not immortal after all.

'Over here' Lee shouts, although she knows that there is nothing she can do to comfort him. The best they can do is die together. Lee and Johnson plow toward one another. Before they can get within ten meters of one another, the toe of the avalanche rips from the cloud layer.

Barbed vines lash ahead of the snow slide, pelting the ground into plumes of powder. One of the malign vines strike the space separating Lee and Johnson, momentarily blinding the skiers. Lee feels the presence of something whisk overhead, glimpses its shadow through the haze of whirling snow, and then she is in the clear again. She turns her head to check on the status of Johnson, just in time to see a serpentine vine whip around the young man's torso.

'Help?' Johnson whimpers, a soulful wounded puppy look on his face. This is a big mistake, his expression says, wasn't I supposed to live forever? As if in answer, the vine yanks Bradley Johnson skyward and then pulls him into the all devouring avalanche.

Lee moans in grief and fear. The trail ahead appears endless and no matter how much she tries to outpace it, the snow slide and its improbable denizens are always just behind. While this nightmare scenario is horrifying enough, it is the cries of the damned, those swallowed by the slide, that truly unnerved her. The voices seeking succor speak in a language Lee hasn't heard spoken since leaving Old Earth lifetimes ago. Over the roar of the avalanche Lee hears their lamentations as if their ghostly lips are close enough to kiss her ears.

'Help,' their disembodied voices cry from the broiling cascade of debris. Don't they know they are beyond saving? That perhaps they are not even worthy of salvation? Old Earth, Caspian, Miaska, Cambria, and now Plethora Minor, all planets that have been invaded by the plague that is humanity. If Caspian's wildlife had defended their world in the fashion of the Plethorians, then there still might be arctic roses and sleet mites left in the galaxy.

'Help!' The voices demand. Lee feels that the voices are not only those of her companions, but of humanity itself. Theirs are the needy demands of mankind echoing through the millennium their desire to know everything, to conquer all. But what of the life forms whose voices humanity has been deaf to? Or those who have been silenced by the incursion of men.

'No,' says professor Janice Lee.

Whether her dream self means she cannot assist the phantom urgings, or that she will not, Lee is unsure. It certainly feels as if she is powerless to help herself, nonetheless anyone else. Even if she could, she questions whether she should. She closes her dreaming eyes awaiting the crush of Caspian's wrath.

'Help!' the voices command, even as the avalanche rises atop her, its presence a palpable weight threatening to bring her to her knees. The voices are louder still, their insistence neigh unbearable. Then the slide, its ghastly cargo, and the voices are upon her. Even as she wakes from the nightmare, the pleads assail her. 'Help!'