He hoped not, but he would have to wait to find out.
They would have to get back to Earth first. Neither he nor Tappy wanted to stay here, no matter how pleasant it might be. Despite all the madnesses and hideousnesses that stalked Earth, it was their home. And, now that the Imago was flooding the souls of its people, Earth would become far better. Perhaps the Earth that all sane people wanted it to be.
How to get back? That should be no problem. The honkers would know of a gate to it. If they did not, the Gaol would.
He laughed. Whoever would have thought that he could ask the Gaol to help him? Or that they would do so willingly, even gladly?
There was still one question unanswered. What had Tappy meant in her sleep-talk when she had said, "Reality is a dream"?
Later, much later, when they were living on an Earth the societies of which were greatly changing for the better, he asked her about the phrase.
She had to probe her mind for some time before she remembered where she had heard it. So much was buried there, and so much was still difficult to find.
"My father," she said. "He told me that several times. I was so young, I did not ask him what it meant. Or, if I did, I've forgotten his explanation. Anyway, I did puzzle over it, then I forgot about it. So many bad things were happening then. But my unconscious evidently did not forget it. I really don't know what he meant by it."
"He must have meant that dreams shape reality," Jack said. "The Makers had a dream of the means whereby they could conquer the Gaol even after they, the Makers, were gone. Hence, the Imago. The honkers and the humans allied with them continued to dream the Makers' dream. They made the Imaget, and they dreamed of how they could use it to let the Imago come to full bloom.
"Dreams shape reality. Thus, dreams are reality."
"That must have been what he meant."
Authors' Notes
This really started in 1963. Back then I was a hopeful writer, with one sale to my credit. I was taking one year to stay home and write, while my wife went out to earn our living, and the year had started in September 1962. If I didn't prove myself by September 1963, I would have to return to the mundane grind and give up my foolish dream of being a writer. As it happened, I did sell two stories in that year, for a total of $160, so was technically a success. But realism intruded when it came to paying the bills. I did return to mundane labor, but in 1966 tried writing full-time again, this time doing novels instead of stories, and that was the one that took. It was after all possible to earn a living doing novels. I have been writing ever since. The details of my life and career are too tedious to go into here; they are in my autobiography, Bio of an Ogre. What concerns me now is just one story written in that first year, and the story of that story.
The story was "Tappuah." I wrote it for God rather than Caesar; that is, for love instead of money. The name derived from the Bible; I am hardly a Bible scholar, but in a concordance or some such I had seen the name, and learned that it meant apple, and it intrigued me. The setting was the Green Mountains of Vermont, where I was raised. The character turned out to be the first of a type I have explored considerably since: a young and tortured girl. Critics accuse me of having nothing but luscious and sexy women; Tappy is the evidence that I tried other kinds, but without success on the market.
In February I completed the monster story "Quinquepedalian," and in March I would complete my farcical fantasy story "E van S." Between them I fitted in "Tappuah." It moved better than anything else I had done up to that time. I wrote just over 2,000 words a day for three days, and had it complete at 7,000 words in February, my favorite. It had a fantasy theme: Tappy, lame and blind, nevertheless had an affinity for extinct creatures, and they tended to show up.
I was then in touch with several other hopeful writers, such as Robert E. Margroff, H. James Hotaling, and Frances T. Hall, with all of whom I subsequently published collaborations. I sent "Tappuah" to them for comment. They liked it; they felt it was the best I had done. That was my own sentiment.
I tried it on the market. It bounced at Playboy (as I said: about non-luscious girls and the market...) and at Cosmopolitan, Ladies' Home Journal, Redbook (probably they didn't like the fantasy element), The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Fantastic. Evidently the genre magazines didn't want it either; one of them sent a scribbled note suggesting that I try it on the "straight" market. So I tried it on a mainstream literary magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and it bounced there too. So much for that; seven markets had rejected it, and I had to retire it. For a while. But I did not forget it.
Meanwhile I went back to college to get my certificate to teach English, and I became an English teacher. It was a poor substitute for the real thing, creative writing. But I took advantage of the interim to show the story to my literature professor there, Wesley Ford Davis, himself a published novelist. Intrigued, he read it to one of his classes, and relayed the students' comments to me. They liked it, but felt that the human element of Tappy's situation warred with the fantasy of the extinct animals; it might be better as one type or the other.
When I taught English at the Admiral Farragut Academy in St. Petersburg, Florida, I read the story to my tenth graders. They liked it, and offered thoughtful comments. I hope that they profited from this examination of an actual piece in the throes of revision; I was trying to teach them meaningful things, as well as the required material. (If you suspect that I am implying a disparagement of the standard material, you are on target; I feel that much of American education is wasted on irrelevancies.)
So I rewrote it, eliminating the fantasy element, and put it in for comment when I attended the 1966 Milford Writer's Conference. There were a number of comments there; I remember Harlan Ellison advising me that women didn't talk the way Tappy's mother did, condemning her crippled child. Damon Knight criticized Tappy's leg brace, thinking it was inconsistent to mention it once as being on her foot and another time as on her leg. Was it on her foot or her leg? he asked. It was on both, of course; apparently he had not seen such a brace. Gordon Dickson had no problem with his critique, but took time out to walk by himself in order to figure out how to present it in such a way that I would not freak out. That sort of thing makes me wonder just how I come across to others, but I appreciated his sensitivity. I don't remember the critique itself, except that it seemed reasonable. So I eliminated Tappy's mother and tightened the story up in various other suggested ways and clarified references. Then I tried it on the market again.
No luck. Knight rejected it in late 1966, and in 1967 so did Good Housekeeping, Playboy (after four years, changed editors might make a difference), Cosmopolitan, Redbook, McCall's, Atlantic, and Mademoiselle. Tappy had now been rejected fifteen times. But I didn't give up; I included the story along with all my other rejected stories in a volume titled Anthonology and tried that on the market in 1970. You guessed it: that, too, was solidly rejected. Later I used the title for a collection of previously published stories, and that was published in 1986, but it's not the same volume unless you count two unsold stories I slipped in. But "Tappuah" was not one of them. She still languished.
Then in late 1986, I believe, I received a proposal from Hank Stein for a round-robin novel titled Lightyears. It was to have ten or twelve established genre writers, each doing one chapter. A number of noted genre figures were interested, such as Poul Anderson, Robert Silverberg, and Philip José Farmer. In fact, this had the potential of being one of the most star-studded genre novels ever. Naturally I agreed to participate. Then, early in 1987, the word came that I was to do the lead-off entry. This surprised me; I had expected to be buried somewhere in the middle. I was of course jammed for time— this is a chronic condition with me, perhaps typical of workaholics. How could I start a novel which others would finish, and do it rapidly and well?