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I dreamed of flying, only I was not the flier, I was being carried, borne by a great fantasy creature, an
ifrit. He brought me to a castle, and into a high tower of that castle, and laid me on a bed beside a truly
lovely young woman. She was garbed in the robe of a princess, and a circlet of precious stones bound
down her flowing hair. Then the ifrit changed into a bedbug and bit me on the rear, and I woke, startled,
for the first time becoming aware of the damsel. In my dream this made sense, as it would not have in
life; I had more than one level of awareness.
I gazed upon the damsel, and lo, she was the fairest creature I had ever seen, the image of my first love
Helse, and I said to myself "Oh, if this be the princess my father wishes me to marry, I have been a fool
to resist his wish!" Then I put my hand on the girl's shoulder and tried to awaken her, but she slumbered
on soundly. I stroked her body, moved to desire by the perfect rondure of her breast and the firmness of
her thigh, but she would not wake and I would not rape her. So I lay back down beside, resolved to tell
my father in the morning that I agreed after all to marry the one he had selected.
When I slept, the ifrit spoke to the ifritah, the female of his species. "Now do you wake your charge, and
we shall see how she reacts to him." And she became another bedbug and bit the princess on her plush
behind, and she woke, slapping at the place, then spied me sleeping beside her. "Oh, what a charming
prince!" she murmured, and it was true; I was as young and attractive for a male as she was for a female,
and set onto my head was a thin crown of gold, and my robe too was encrusted with gems. But I
remained asleep.
She put her hand on me, and shook me by the shoulder, as I had with her. "Oh, wake, Prince!" she
whispered, but I did not.
"If this be the man my father wishes to betroth me to, surely I have been willful to deny him!" she
exclaimed. Then she stroked my handsome face, and when I still did not wake, my arms and chest. She
opened my robe and ran her hands down inside, and caressed my belly and my thighs and my member,
but I slept on. She lay across me and kissed me, and finally returned to sleep, embracing me.
Then I woke but the princess was gone, and I was myself again, old and frail and unhandsome. Ever
has it been thus, in reality! I pondered the dream, and recognized it: It was from the depths of my
childhood memory, a tale of sorcery, in which ifrits had had a beauty contest, each believing that the
person he or she had discovered was the most beautiful in all the world. So they had brought the two
together, and awakened them by turns, letting the young folk judge by their reactions which of them was
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the most attractive. The ifrit favoring the man had because the woman reacted more to the man than the
man had to the woman. Then the ifrits had returned the two human folk, sleeping, to their own
residences and thought no more of the matter, leaving each longing with futility for the unknown other.
A good, and frustrating, story.
Why had I remembered it now? Why had I dreamed it, as if I were a figure in it? I did not know.
"Forta," I said.
She was there immediately. "Yes, Hope?"
And what did I want of her? That she be young and beautiful, like a princess, and I like a prince?
Ludicrous! She would do it, I knew, if I asked her but why should I put her to this trouble, just because
of a foolish dream?
"Tell me, Hope," she said.
So I told her. She nodded. "Be right back."
But by the time she returned, I had fallen asleep again, and her emulation was wasted. Well, perhaps not
entirely, for in the morning I found her sleeping beside me, garbed as a princess and resembling Helse. I
kissed her on the mask, appreciating her effort; she tried so hard to please me, and I hardly felt worthy of
it.
In the day we talked with the officials of the project, and ascertained that they could ship the first colony
vessel at any time; it was not necessary to have facilities for the entire System before starting, as the
complete process would take years or decades. The logistics of handling five billion living human
beings guaranteed that.
But almost a third of the living people of the System were not yet committed to the project. That was
because South Saturn the Middle Kingdom had not joined. I had invited that huge nation to
participate, but a mistake I had made before haunted me. I had allowed my old enemy Tocsin to be
exiled there, and, true to his nature, he had poisoned the people against my works. Short of conquest,
which would have been ruinously expensive and risky, there had been no way to obtain their
commitment, so I had let it go. Now I realized that I had to do something; we could not leave the Middle
Kingdom behind. Those many hundreds of millions of people would overrun the remainder of the
System unless they had their own quadrant of the galaxy to colonize.
So it was we traveled next to South Saturn. We were treated cordially there; it seemed that the officers
had been watching the development of the Triton Project, and had increasingly desired to participate in
the conquest of the galaxy, because the need of their nation was greater than that of any other except
populous Earth. But it was difficult for them to reverse themselves; there was a matter of face.
Of course they did not state this directly; I read it in their reactions as they spoke, while Forta translated
their words for me. They were ready to cast off the malign influence of Tocsin, who it seemed was
wearing out his welcome, but they needed a suitable pretext to do so. Well, I was a statesman, which is a
polite term for an executive who is out of power; surely I could devise such a pretext. "How goes it with
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