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Trapped in his eternal sleep by his enemies, the evil Wizard of Hyperborea begins to dream... and in his dream, comes to know that he is dreaming, and why. Read the first chapter of this fantasy free before purchasing as a browser readable e-book on CD-ROM from Antelope Publishing. Price $12.95

Chapter One

Sebastien Cato had always dreamt of having a small but adequate private income so that he could live a life of leisure among his books and quiet intellectual pursuits. Unfortunately, like most people he had been born to something less than prosperity. As a result, he had been forced to spend his working career teaching English literature to students of varying degrees of enthusiasm, talent, and interest.

Fortunately he had survived it. He had lived long enough to be able to retire on Social Security, so that in the end he had the fulfillment of his dream, after all. A small but comfortable apartment, friends who shared at least some of his interests, and all the time he could ever want to indulge in a true intellectual's one great pleasure, the quiet examination of ideas.

After retirement, Sebastien had never been poor enough to become frantic. He had never been forced to skip a meal or a rent payment, but unexpected expenses kept nibbling at the corners of his little nestegg. As a result, he was always on the lookout for ways of earning a little extra money. Unfortunately Sebastien lived in a society of Philistines, where literature and culture were of little use or interest, so his skills weren't in great demand. What he had to sell few people wanted to buy.

But few isn't none. Sebastien seemed always to have just enough luck to be able to land on his feet in an emergency. When his resources were getting a bit low, a friend of a friend mentioned to him that one of his neighbors arranged for private tutoring and was always looking for qualified teachers. It didn't promise great wealth or prosperity but it was something to do, and even a little bit of something is more than a whole lot of nothing. So Sebastien signed up.

Over the next several months Sebastien found himself driving all over Columbine's gently rolling streets in his old but trusty brown Pinto, teaching adolescents the wonders of literature and (occasionally) Latin, for he was something an expert in that language which was becoming deader by the decade. It didn't pay well, but it was a chance to get out of the house, to meet new and sometimes interesting people. And one danger of retirement is boredom.

Columbine was a pleasant southern town of green hills and ancient trees, not large but not small, self-confident without the antebellum arrogance of the Old South or the aggressive modernism of the New. It had more than its share of old mansions on the general style of Tara, complete with carefully manicured lawns surrounded with lush, tropical landscaping. And of course it had its less prosperous districts as well, as any town of any size must accommodate its unfortunate lower classes somewhere.

But poor people can seldom afford tutors, and the rich, being able to buy good grades for their children virtually at will, seldom need them. So Sebastien spent much of his time in the neighborhoods somewhere in between the mansions and the slums, among slightly higher than middle-class families with ambitions for their children and just enough money to be able to do something about it.

It was, overall, a pleasant and interesting experience. Sebastien wouldn't have tutored for free. It wasn't that interesting. But it was worth the relatively small sums he was earning. Fortunately Sebastien was something of a philosopher and a student of human nature. Private instruction gave him an opportunity to indulge his curiosity about people and even get paid in the process.

Since the students were lined up through a third party, Sebastien didn't always know what he was getting into each time he set out to teach someone for the first time. That was part of the fun, really.

Being human, he couldn't help but prefer the homes with air conditioning, for it was the dead of summer in a truly oppressive, sweltering climate. But when he stepped into a turn-of-the-century, modest home in one of the less prosperous districts of the city, he couldn't help but shiver against the sudden blast of frigid air.

The lady of the house was a small, dark woman of indeterminate ethnicity. Sebastien would have guessed her to be Greek, though that was a mere stab in the dark. Her hair was thick and coarse but carefully braided and coiled around her small, round skull. Her complexion was dark but of an odd shade difficult to define, greenish or dark blue rather than brown or black. Though she was wearing a simple gray housedress and low shoes, she somehow gave the impression of florid exoticism. Looking down on her, Sebastien half-expected to see a fruitbasket hat and a South American skirt and tied-knot blouse.

But though she had a faint, indefinable accent as she introduced herself as "Mrs. Saason," the small lady gave no clues to whatever her background might have been. Sebastien was naturally curious (he was always curious, about everything) but he realized it would be indiscreet to ask. So he set the matter aside as one of the many mysteries with which the world liked to tantalize the compulsively nosy and set himself to being charming.

After enduring the woman's embarrassingly warm welcome, he allowed her to lead him through the immaculately clean, nearly frigid house to a small room looking out over a rear lawn through a sliding glass door. The room had clearly been set up as a study, or perhaps as a library, with high shelves stacked casually with books, magazines, and folders stuffed with papers jutting out from their edges at awkward angles. Against one wall rested a battered old desk that may have had some value as an antique if it hadn't been quite so dented and scratched.

Sebastien, who was carefully neutral about such things, saw that a computer sat on a table at ninety-degrees to the desk. A boy sat on an incongruously modern chair in front of the screen, engrossed in a game that seemed all bright flashes of color and loud noises.

Mrs. Saason gave Sebastien an apologetic smile. She stepped forward to lean over the desk and hiss something sharply into the boy's ear. He merely glanced at her with a grave expression and did something that immediately shut the computer screen down to vague butterfly shapes fluttering to nowhere in particular. He stood and held out his hand in a surprisingly adult gesture of polite welcome.

"This is our Dillon, Mr. Cato," the lady told him with the proud smile only a mother can bestow on a boy and get away with it. "He is very grateful to you for your time in helping him with his studies, aren't you Dillon?" The youngster merely nodded gravely.

As he shook hands with the boy, Sebastien studied him discreetly. He had been told that the boy was fourteen, but he would have guessed him to be no more than ten, probably even less. Small and slender, with an oversized head covered with tight black curls and truly enormous brown eyes, he looked much more exotic and foreign even than his mother. His features were fine and delicate against a skin that was a remarkable color. Looking at him, Sebastien decided the only thing to which he could compare him was paintings he had seen of blue Indian divinities, possibly Krishna the divine goatherd. For though he probably wouldn't have been conspicuous in a normal crowd of mixed, ethnically diverse Americans, there was no denying that his skin was definitely of a faintly bluish cast.

Sebastien wondered for a moment if the boy were ill, perhaps suffering from some sort of severe anemia or heart problem that affected his circulation. Living in the South, he had never seen it himself, but he had heard of people turning blue with the cold and the room was certainly chilly enough for it. But Dillon was dressed in a simple black T-shirt with a band logo Sebastien wouldn't have recognized no matter how famous they were, dark denim cut-offs and oversized white sneakers with no socks. If he was blue with the cold he certainly wasn't showing any signs of suffering from it.

But that was another mystery he wasn't being paid to solve. And the world was filled with so many different nationalities, who was to say there weren't bluish-skinned people somewhere among them? Sebastien put the matter out of his mind and knuckled down to the business of earning his modest wage.

He set his battered old briefcase on the desk and sat down across from the boy, who returned to his own seat and watched him with grave, blinking eyes that seemed strangely mature. Sebastien had to fight off a strange nervousness, as if he were in the presence of someone more important than himself; an employer, a lawyer, or even a bank president about to reject his application for a loan.

He shrugged off the discomfort and plunged right in. Dillon followed him dutifully as he led him through drills of Latin declinations, though he seemed little interested. He was either a very quick learner or he was having fewer problems with the language than Sebastien had been led to believe, however, for the scholar proceeded deeper and deeper into the complexities without finding any hesitation or gaps in the boy's understanding.

He began to feel uncomfortable, as if he were taking money under false pretenses. What was the use of tutoring someone who already knew every subject you brought up at least as well as yourself?

He had had some experience, previously, with over-anxious parents who had arranged private instruction for their children when they didn't need it, simply because they were so eager for their offspring to be brilliant that they refused to admit that they probably already were. But somehow this seemed different.

Dillon went through the drills with quiet patience, showing none of the insufferable smugness of many young intellectuals. But even while he was reciting incredibly complex and obscure sentence structures, he was observing Sebastien's face with a kind of grave intensity that made the older man decidedly uncomfortable. He had the feeling the boy was waiting for something, or perhaps expecting him to catch on to something he clearly wasn't grasping.

Sebastien began to fumble and stutter, making simple, clumsy mistakes. Dillon neither corrected him nor gave condescending smiles when he blundered. It became gradually more obvious that the boy really cared nothing at all about Latin. Sebastien could have endured that. He had taught more than his share of students who would have been happy if he had suddenly dropped dead at their feet. But the boy did seem interested, if not in the lessons themselves then in something. He was gazing at Sebastien so intently that his entire body was tense. He was leaning forward slightly on the chair, his small hands gripping the armrests with his elbows stuck out on both sides at sharp angles.

His arms... something about that seemed to ring a faint bell somewhere in the back of Sebastien's mind. Something about bluish boys with odd arms.... But before he could seize on it, it faded back into his unconscious, or wherever such things go, and vanished.

Sweating profusely, Sebastien glanced at his watch. To his dismay, he found that he still had ten minutes to go. He felt as if he had been undergoing an intense oral exam by one of his professors back in college. The boy seated across from him seemed as cool and collected as ever, but he himself felt wrung dry.

Despite his diligence in such matters, he wondered if he could somehow fudge a bit and cut the session short, and perhaps take a slightly smaller wage to make up for it. But at that moment the door behind him thudded gently open. Mrs. Saason pushed into the room, carrying a large tray laden with a sloshing pitcher and a plate filled with sandwiches.

"I thought you might be ready for some refreshments, after all that studying," she said with a grin that seemed to show more teeth than she actually possessed.

"Well, we really should wait until we've finished-" he began conscientiously, but the woman brushed aside his polite protestations. She gently nudged his briefcase to one side and set the tray on the desk. Sebastien hastily gathered up his papers, trying not to look as panicked as he felt at the thought of spillage and waterstains, as she poured out three glasses of what was apparently lemonade. Then she pulled up a small chair for herself and settled in at Sebastien's elbow.

"Well, did we learn a lot, today?" she asked briskly, reaching for a sandwich.

"Yes, Mother," Dillon replied politely. His hand looked like blue ink against the off-white of the lemonade through the clear glass.

Mrs. Saason nudged Sebastien with an elbow. "Eat! Eat!" she urged. "If you don't prefer tuna salad, I've made ham on rye, corned beef, and even watercress, if you like something exotic and English."

Sebastien's eyebrows rose slightly but he took a sandwich at random, glad that the uncomfortable session was apparently at an end. He told himself that he would make certain that he wasn't available if the Saasons ever wanted him again. He wasn't being paid enough to be made so uncomfortable.

"And did you learn what you hoped to learn, Dillon?" Mrs. Saason asked, tearing into a ham sandwich with sharp little teeth that reminded Sebastien uncomfortably of seals.

"I think so, Mother," Dillon said. He looked gravely to Sebastien. "I think he knows it too, though somehow he hasn't remembered, yet."

"So." Mrs. Saason looked suddenly grave and set her glass down on the desk. Sebastien flinched inwardly at the thought of making water rings on its fine, old varnish. But the woman seemed oblivious as she turned in her chair and rested her hand on the older man's forearm. "So you're saying you really don't remember, Mr. Cato?" she demanded.

"Remember what?" Sebastien asked blankly.

"Or perhaps I should say Catthallio?" the woman persisted.

"I don't-" Sebastien felt strangely uncomfortable. He felt his face flushing and suddenly his neck seemed to have swelled to several sizes too large for his collar. "What are you suggesting, Mrs. Saason?" he croaked.

The small woman sighed. "This is going to be more difficult than I had expected."

Antelope Publishing
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Centaurs in the Earth
Written by Gary Raab
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