Free Dream Thief by Stephen Lawhead Page B

rested. He felt as though he had run several miles or climbed a sheer rock cliff. His muscles were tense and knotty and he could smell that he had sweated through his underclothes.
    He thought to sanitize and change, but then had a better idea: the exerdome. Why not? He could use the exercise. Maybe he would find a threesome who needed a fourth for a game of pidg.
    As he donned his silvered mylar exersuit it occurred to him that perhaps his problems stemmed from stress and overwork. He had exercised little since coming to Gotham; except for his occasional rambles through the garden and a swim now and then, he had indulged in no physically strenuous activity. A fast game of pidg or a few laps around the dome would loosen him up and relax him.
    He took a main axial to the low-grav central tower of the city. Nearly weightless, he sprang four meters from the corridor to the lift and stepped onto a disc, pulling up the handgrips as it engaged the belt. Up he rose to the dome. He could hear laughter and shouts pinging down the metal tube from above. It reminded him of going swimming as a boy and hearing the sounds of happy frolic ringing from the pool a long way off.
    When the lift gate opened he stepped off onto the spongy surface of the dome—or rather bounced off with the first step, for he was now completely weightless. He spun awkwardly for a moment before remembering to pull in his arms and legs to regain control. He brought his knees up to his chest and, when he floated near enough to the curved surface once again, thrust his legs down. He arrowed off the side of the dome and flew straightway toward the center. High above him a net stretched across the observation portion of the dome to keep errant human missiles from colliding with the tempered glass.
    Beyond the netting he could see a bright mist of stars hanging in their inky void. Lower, he could see the upside-down crescent of the moon and the smaller blue thumbnail slice of the Earth. Spence flew into the netting, tucked his head down, and landed on his back. He pulled himself across the net to a near wall.
    Above him a group of cadets performed an intricate display of aerial acrobatics—doing flips and somersaults across the center of the dome. Around the perimeter several joggers sped along the track; another group ran perpendicular to the first. A couple of fluffy pidg birds floated down near the lift platform. No one seemed interested in getting up a game, so Spence swam to the edge of the net and walked up the great bulging sphere of the dome to the red strip designated as the track.
    The track's surface bore a slightly irregular, bumpy grain which gave a runner that little extra bit of traction needed to get moving in zero gravity. Spence carefully set his feet on the track and then started walking smoothly, with exaggerated care; one false step and he would go spinning off toward the center of the dome. But he maintained his concentration and increased the pace, feeling the illusion of weight return to him. Actually it was only momentum he felt, and which held him to the track. Soon he was running easily around the inner wall of the dome.
    He caught the other joggers on the track and fell into pace with them. In the rhythm of running his muscles relaxed and the tension flowed from him. Automatically his body took over and his mind turned once again to the enigma of his dreams.
    That he dreamed was certain. His REM line on the scan showed plainly what he knew instinctively, and if he required further proof the emotional residue—that silt left behind when the angry waters had raced on—was real enough. Not to remember a dream was normal enough; one remembered only the tiniest fraction of one's dreams over a lifetime. They simply flitted by in the night—spun out of the stuff of the subconscious and reabsorbed into the fabric of the psyche upon waking.
    But blackouts were
not
normal. Spence felt as if whole chunks of his life were missing. There were gaps in