Author`s Note: I hope the prologue speaks for itself. My last story took almost nine months to complete, we`ll see where this one goes. Enjoy!

To Dream of Stars

Prologue

The tall one was old and scarred but tough like leather. The other one was young and strong but had the heavy look in his eyes like something had scarred him deeply. They both fingered their guns absently, staring out the window of the elevator as it rose over the city.

"What`d you say your name was again?" the man in the middle said.

The tall one looked over, "Jacob. And that's Charlie but he don`t say much."

"A pleasure," said the man in the middle.

"Didn`t catch yers," said Jacob.

"Sam. How bout these handcuffs? Bit tight," the man in the middle said, shifting his hands around.

"Can`t do it. Orders. You`ll get em off at the top."

There was a stretch of silence while Sam looked out the glass. The dusty, orange disk of a sun was just rising over the horizon as the elevator rose higher, bringing the city, in all its glory, into view. Soot smoke from camp fires drifted up over shattered remains of skyscrapers and the white marble pillars from destroyed municipal buildings stuck up like the bleached bones of the desert dead. Down towards the docks the ocean cut a crisp, clear line against the harsh gray of the city. To the east of the downtown area was a great hump of earth, its ridge adorned with a few solitary structures.

"Them are the foothills to the Cascades," said Jacob, noticing Sam`s gaze. "Them buildings that still stand, they be Mack`s Eyes. They tell us who be coming or who be going. Like you." A bit of curiosity in his voice.

"Like me," Sam agreed.

Jacob swung his gun to his shoulder and turned to face Sam. "We here ya came from across the water."

"I did."

"From the Peninsula."

"I did."

"Are you one of them?"

"One of who?"

"Hey! We ain`t stupid. We still got the juice flowing here. We talk to other cities and here stuff. Besides," and his voice grew a little quieter, "I`ve been to the Wall. Even went in a half-day`s walk past it."

Most had never been to the Wall much less entered the forest. Sam looked up at James in a new light. "One of them?" he finally said. "No. That is a privilege I did not have. I only lived with one of the tribes for a short while."

Charlie spoke up for the first time, "Is it beautiful? As they say?" His voice was a whisper, at odds with his physical presence.

To some questions there are no answers only short lies to cover up immense feelings. "It is, more than I can say," said Sam simply.

James spoke up. "We don`t like it here you know. Most don`t. I`m from a small farming town back East. A town that's probably gone by now."

"What was the name, maybe I know it," asked Sam.

Jacob told him but he didn`t know it. But he knew it`s like, had passed through many towns that sat a stone`s throw from the cracked asphalt of roads, where small fields of wheat struggled to grow. There was a dying feeling in those towns as he walked through them and saw one or two lamps in houses surrounded by dark windows in buildings abandoned. Yes, he well knew it`s like.

Jacob continued, "Charlie`s from an island t`the North-west, but ahh, that`s his story. But ya know, we couldn`t make it alone any more, had t`come here. I bet most`d tell ya the same sob story." It`s more words than he has spoken all week, but James feels, what, some strange familiarity with this stranger?

To Sam it is no surprise to hear those thoughts. The world has changed much during his time with the tribes. Even in the smaller towns closer to the coast, where they fish from polluted waters in wooden dinghies- there is a feeling of unease in the air. Here, in the city he has seen the firm and infirm alike scowl silently at the black and gray clouds on the horizon. They look over their shoulders at empty streets and empty alleys and wonder why they still feel pursued.

They were nearing the top when James broke the silence, "Did`ja see it when the buildings fell?"

"No," said Sam, "But I saw the dust cloud from the Peninsula. We thought there was a battle being fought."

"No," laughed James in a laugh that was not a laugh but a sad wish. "That`d been easier. The government? Yeah, at least we`d have order. But no, the earthquake came and left, leaving us with Mack.

"Charlie," said James, "show him your hands. If you`re wondering why this here lone scraper still stands, Charlie can tell ya."

Charlie holds his hands out. Each palm has a large, ugly scar running across it. His voice was again a low, halting whisper, each word a single tower of breath. "This scraper is tall but strong. Was up top watching the place when the quake hit. It bends, it leans, but doesn`t fall. Juice all gone, can`t call out. Fires up all over City. No moon, but in the dark light, many, many fires. Stuck up here, no food, no water. Open elevator doors, see cables running down into dark. Shaft is silent, dark. Use gloves and slide down cables. Takes whole day. Whole day of dark. Can`t use hands for a month."

"Yeah," said James as if summing up the whole experience. "He was a lucky one. Most of us had to digout from rubble. Not too pretty of a time. Anyway, we`re here. Nice to meet ya. Sorry bout the cuffs."

"You too," said Sam. Charlie said nothing.

The sun winked out as they slid up into the top floor. The doors opened into a single, large circular room of marble. There were no walls, merely windows that let in the harsh light of morning. There was a terrace on one side, a platform that jutted out into the air. As Sam stood there he noticed that the whole room was slowly turning, that the whole top of the building was pivoting to reveal a complete panorama of the city. A giant of man, bald and wearing a pin-striped suit greeted the three of them.

"Lo, gents. That`s fine boys, I`ll take that pack. Let him out of the cuffs." The bald man spoke with a dangerous lilt like a shark that learned to speak .James took off the cuffs and gave the man the pack he had been carrying.

"James! I see you`ve brought me a fine guest.

The two guards turned towards the terrace where the smooth, silky voice had come from. The man that walked into the room was wearing a purple suit with black, slicked-back hair; a consummate business man were it not for the glint of his reptilian eyes that spoke of blood in the dark. But he had a sharp nose and a gold watch and that put most people at ease. "What have you been telling him, my most trusted James?"

"Nothing, Mack, Sir! Only this and that, you know?" stammered James, "But we found him down by the docks, right where you said."

The man who was Mack smiled from ear to ear. "Ahh, this and that, this and that. I understand. Thank you James. You two may go." He took the pack from the bald man. "Oh, and Von, do take care of that matter we talked about."

Von, the bald man, smiled. "Certainly," and he put his arms around the two guards as they entered the elevator. The door closed on them.

"So you`re Mack?" said Sam.

The man threw his arms wide. "Hah! Mack the Eye, Mack the Head, Mack of the Strong Arm. All of them. And Mack the Knife." A sharp thing of metal appeared in his hand and he hurled it at Sam. It was a blur and Sam just managed to snag its hilt as it flew past. It nicked his hand as he gripped it.

Mack laughed and said "Impressive! Now if you were here to kill me, well, now you have the means." He let the assumption hang in the air with a shrug of his hands.

"I am no assassin," said Sam.

"So you say, my son, so you say. But come, a drink?"

"Water."

"Water? Kill yourself drinking the city`s water. Have some Aleutian Brandy. Puts the beer of your Olympics to shame."

"Does it?"

"Come now Sam, we have enough traders from the Zone that I know what they dress like. You`re from the Peninsula. It`s a fact. Come with me outside." Mack picked up the pack and together they walked outside to stand at the metal railing.

"My city," said Mack, spreading his hand over the sprawling landscape. "I know, I know. Not much eh? But it once was so much more."

Sam spoke darkly, "Was is it so much better when you poured your garbage into the oceans and polluted the skies with your factories?"

Mack chuckled. "Progress, my boy, it comes at a price. We don`t have the machines of the past, we can`t simply make it disappear."

"There are always simpler options," added Sam. But he felt like he was wasting his breath, arguing with naught but empty air.

Mack raised a glass with blue liquid in a toast to the crumbling scenery of the city. "I`ve heard that particular sermon from others. You think his name hasn`t reached my ears? Sal the Just, Sal the Monk, Sal and his big plan? The tribes send their people to my city to recruit, it is quite the annoyance."

"Enough to kill them?"

"Hah! My boy, what do you know of zealots? They have brainwashed you with their religious might."

Sam kept his tongue, knowing it would do no good to explain all he had seen.

"Look at us, already drawing swords. It has been too long since I had a good conversation. Do you speak the Scholar tongue, my boy?" Mack asked.

Sam nodded. Mack began again in that tongue, a strange, sweeping dialect filled with lost words from a lost age.

"Dost thou know of the ancient tale called Hamlet?"

"Yes, it has ever been a favorite of mine."

"Thyne own words are brim with secrets, of dire threats from primitive sects and yet thou perceive nothing?"

"Then enlighten me."

"Thou speakest of Sal the Just, the noble chief of your tribes who truly has designs on this land that mine two feet do stand upon."

"I sayest truly, they are not mine tribe, though I do be counted as a friend to him.

"But thou would say he be noble?"

"I do. I did. A most noble man of moral standing."

"Then thou knowest nothing of the man nor his history!"

"I claim not, Mack of the Tall Tower. I claim his actions which speak with more force than a paltry sum of lies."

"Come my friend, hast thou forgotten the old tongue so readily? Those that speak it do hold to a higher code. I would not let, even in jest, my words to hang in the muck of lies."

"Thou speakest true. But what is the truth but a lie believed to be true?"

"This debate goes far from mine point and achieves no honor for both our hearts."

"Pray tell me, my good Mack, if truth be the soul of thyne words, did you send that man to kill the two guards?"

"Useless things they were, not wholly dedicated to the purity of my mission. But let it not be a cloud upon your brow. They are nothing. Hearken to this though. Thyne most noblest chief? I did mention it."

"Aye, and a tale of most unheartening woe, being Hamlet. Your foe?"

"Yes and no. A great foe was this tale, for in it reflected mine own struggle."

"Surely you cannot mean that most famous utterance? To be or not to be?"

"The very same, my cultured fellow. In these words are mine divergence; mine doom, my destiny, my fate. You see, I chose to be."

"Ahh, clearly do I perceive that mine own much maligned chief is not to be. Though if being is not being then I am truly lost."

"You are correct. Thyne chief chose not to be."

"Mine chief?"

"Mine brother."

"Clearly this line of blood was not made so clear to me. But I see."

"Dost thou? Hearken closely then: It is plain as the sound of jingling coins that thou comest as an assassin at the behest of my brother. And if not in deed then as a soothsayer of ominous portents. But be warned, my smooth friend, I offer no sublime sanctuary, that you could raise a dagger in show, in name and escape. So hear my tale and judge."

Here Mack spoke again in the common tongue. His memories were deep, and though the old language offered formality and a play of wit, it could not handle the blunt description of emotion.

"To be or not to be. Uhg, it sounds so trivial in this tongue, you know? We were 13, my brother and I, when we read the bard. At 14 our father was killed. He was a merchant trader on the south side, a good man and fair in prices. But his competitor was shrewd and offered lower prices. For inferior goods, you see? At every turn our father was undercut. He lost his business because he refused to lower prices, refused lower quality and lower reputation. I say he was killed but in fact his own hand squeezed the trigger. Now I ask you, Sam who hails from the land of pure intentions, who is to blame?"

Sam sighed, already sure how this was going to play out. But he answered anyway, "You live by the rules you make. You`re father should`ve adapted to changing conditions."

Mack shook his head. "Then you would bear the slings and arrows of an outrageous fortune, am I right? Yes, that is what my brother said and he fled across the ocean to hide in the wilderness. "Capitalism," he said, "is the way of the world. You reap what you sow." But those words come to me: to be- to take up arms against a sea of troubles. So I did- with guns and a gang of loyal thugs. I killed my father`s competitor, took over the business and climbed up from there. You see me now; King of a broken city, but oh the heyday, oh the time when the City ran red with blood and green with money."

His face was that of an old warrior who remembers stepping on the skulls of enemies as arrows whip past; a certain feeling of being truly alive only when others are dying.

"I think you`ve judged your brother wrong," said Sam.

Mack turned away in disgust. "He was coward. And now he hides in a forest men can never go."

"If you can walk you can go."

"Ahh, tis true but a city will never be built there and what are we but animals without machines to build. But enough. Give me your message, for I know you have one."

Sam looked out past the balcony, at the crippled city that fought to survive. What would the people do, he wondered, if they could lift their heads without fearing a bullet? He looked towards the ocean, over the strait at the white, gleaming mountains that rose from the Peninsula. Godspeed, he thought to Sal, godspeed. Then he turned away.

Sam spoke slowly and with grave emotion. "Leave this city. Be gone by dawn tomorrow and never return."

Mack was not surprised. "Who stands behind this? My brother?"

"Your brother, yes, but there is a bigger hand than his on you now Mack."

"Who? The government? They are a joke and even they can`t reach me here on the coast."

Sam rolled up the sleeve of his shirt to expose the bicep of his arm. There was a small tattoo there, a black circle with a small dot in the middle. "The Star-Treaders," he said, the words flat and without emotion.

"What!" blurted Mack. "They are a ghost of a ghost. Better to say the Federation was parked in space over our planet. I might have believed you."

"It does not matter if you believe me. That is the message."

"Cmon kid, have you ever seen a space-ship in your lifetime? It's a dead tech, no one remembers how. Look, a lot of people want to kill me. Don`t be a casualty for a cause that's pointless. For keeping me entertained for an hour I`ll let you go. What`d ya say?"

Sam turned and put both hands on the rail. He spoke to the air, to the morning sun that streaked across glass and steel canyons, to the huddled mass of people that woke and went out on a day that promised no new glories.

"On the beach near where I lived, Sal once pointed out the stars overhead. "Look Sam," he said to me, "look at those stars, so scattered, so separate. That is our people." And I remember he touched his chest. Our people. Humanity, he meant. I thought he was lost in some old memory but he spoke up over the crash of waves, "So fragmented. But we don`t have to be. People fight for us out there, Sam, on those stars. They fight as we must do." I looked at him and I remember the expression on his face. It was almost….fury, like he was a million miles away fighting among the stars. And I asked him how he could be so certain? "Because I have been there," he answered. And I believed him."

Mack shook his head, "Listen, my brother may be a coward but he was always a great speaker. I would doubt anything he says."

"Sal told me you would not believe the message. Nonetheless, I understand."

"Look, Sam, all kidding aside. Last chance, walk away. Go down to the boats and run back to the woods and tell my brother his time is coming."

When Sam did not reply Mack grabbed the pack and walked inside. "Stupid kid," he muttered, "Let`s see what he was carrying." He rummaged around in the dirty pack, pulling out bits of food and clothing. At the bottom was a solid, gray box. He took it out and laid it on the table. While he was looking at it he took out a radio and pushed a button. "Von, come up. I got another job for you. Von? Damn, must be interference."

Sam took one last look over the city and sighed. He walked inside and sat down on a sofa. The room was still revolving and he figured he had about a minute before the sun came around again.

"What is this? If it`s valuable maybe I`ll lock you up someplace nice." Mack said this off hand, already thinking about other things, his mind on the vicious necessities of running an empire.

Sam spoke softly, once again in the Scholar`s Tongue. "I was ever more partial to a different verse than thyne being and not being. It always struck me as but two sides of the same coin."

"Oh?" said Mack fiddling with the box. "What be so profane to replace mine own stately pronouncement?"

Sam read off the small parchment in his memory, "To die, to sleep- to sleep- perchance to dream: ay, there`s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come?"

And he stood, pulling a small black object from the small of his back. "That box? Hydrogen fuel cells coupled with a primed injection of charged neutrinos. It is incalculably valuable."

"A bomb!" And Mack jumped back, starting to run for the elevator.

The top of tower at last revolved into the light and the still dusty rays of the morning sun coated both of them in its orange glow. "No," said Sam, "redemption."

James and Charlie were stepping into a small boat at the very end of the docks, where the piers were rotten and nobody asked questions. James had a streak of red on his sleeve and was just pushing off into calm waters when he heard the explosion. He looked up at the towering needle of a skyscraper. All the windows had blown out and a single tongue of flame escaped the open door of the terrace. So slowly, by inches, the great round saucer tipped off its base. It pivoted towards the ground before it was caught by the steel elevator cables.

"Very strong," pointed out Charlie.

But they were not and they snapped and the office of the tyrant, his casket and funeral pyre, plummeted down to smash into the streets below. It raised such a plume of dust that half the city was obscured from the water and shafts of sunlight mingled in the cloud.

"I never did like it here," muttered James. Neither noticed, as they rowed farther into the cold, dark ocean that not a single light showed across the water and all sounds of machinery had ceased to echo out of the city