Dreams Of A Legend by Loulou Harris

I'm not Blake! The words already reverberate endlessly in my conciousness; do they suppose their incessant repetition brings me any comfort? Which is not to say that I don't try to speak as a reasonable man, involving myself in discussions to the best of my abilities as far as I can cooperate with their investigations; nevertheless it must be clear by now that upon one fact I must (and am determined to) remain adamant. I'm a man who, in these middle years of my life, has come to understand himself all too well; there are undoubtedly events, phases of my own history which I might conceivably wish to renounce, rescind, rewrite. I acknowledge that they give me this opportunity; one which I am bound, however, to decline. Among all those facts which have evaded, embarrassed or terrified me, there is one beside which I will unflinchingly stand; my identity, my name.

They imagine me to be a famous leader in the resistance movement, missing now since the Andromedan war. It is true that there are certain and striking physical similarities (I have myself examined several photographs), but I have been assuring them that any resemblance ends there. Blake, before he went missing, is known to have led the crew of the Liberator on a number of anti-Federation strike missions. Meanwhile, as I have been attempting to explain for the four exasperating days ever since I was captured (an event which I will shortly recount), I myself have been occupied in a life spent light years away from that of Blake; both physically and ideologically. My captors are at present playing the roles of civilised men; they have set me down in my cell with a machine which records my words and have urged me thereupon to undertake the story of my life. Will this simple task convince them that I have a life distinct from that of Blake? Does so insignificant an action define a man in this world?

My name is Harper Griffin, I am a citizen of the planet Vandor, a world which I had always believed free of Federation influence and moreover, neutral. I am in possession of documentation which confirms these facts but for some rather unfortunate and complex reasons, my current documents are forged. It took my polite and patient captors about ten hours to determine this and since then they have held me in the most barbaric of circumstances, under suspicion of being their lost Blake.

A transporter arrived yesterday, which is scheduled to return to Space Command headquarters in forty eight hours. Upon arrival there, I am assured, I will rapidly revert to the truth, which is to say that I will admit to being Roj Blake, reknowned resistor and will then submit to interrogation, trial and execution. Last time, they have explained, Blake's punishment was to be life imprisonment on a penal colony; before that they merely altered his memory. No such luck this time for poor Blake though; torture and execution are all he can expect when he is captured; they will take no more risks with that one!

This must have a great deal to do with why they don't believe me; what incentive could I have to admit to such a charge? So they listen, quite tolerantly, to all my claims to be someone other than Blake. And they ask me very detailed questions about my life; my mother's birthplace, the university system on Vandor, the history of the Teal-Vandor convention, when and where I was educated, my payroll and insurance numbers, all facts which they can attempt to confirm.

One of these men has been appointed as my defender, another as my prosecutor and yet conversely, it is my defender who urges me to concede defeat and to admit that I am their man Blake. He intends to construct a defense based on mental instability following and initiated by Blake's brain-washing. This makes talking to him somewhat trying; he has no interest except in cajoling me to accept the mantle of Blake's identity. The prosecutor has a more intriguing approach: apparently assured of his own ability to prove, independantly that I am Blake, he appears prepared to talk to me as though he allows for the possibility of my being genuinely mistaken, which is to say that he encourages discussion of my real life and experiences.

This, I suspect, stems from the fact that Blake was once brainwashed and much of his own memory blotted out by implanted scenes. My prosecutor has therefore hypothesized that I may indeed be telling the truth about my own life - as far as I am capable of doing such a thing. I asked him bluntly; if I no longer have any memories of being that man and instead have a complex network of distinct memories, not to say entire personality, then who is responsible for such a brain-wipe if not the Federation? Nothing deters him from the task and he insists that when I am examined by Federation doctors and psychologists it will be inevitably confirmed that I am Blake.

Except that I am not he. But in one sense they have me worried; my sense of identity, which has for some time now seemed a somewhat fragile factor in my life, may be slowly eroding. Away from my natural environment, life for me can aquire a certain fluidity of reality; I am capable of absorbing moods and ideas from those around me and blending, chameleon-like, into patterns of behaviour which I sense will bring approval, recognition, love.

My usual conduct, therefore, however seductive, would under the present circumstances be especially dangerous. Consequently, I hope that I am believed when I state that it is not fear of the process of their justice which impells me thus; I know myself to be deserving, several times over of the punishment which they plan to inflict on Blake. But I will insist on my right to be tried, punished and executed as Griffin, not Blake.

You now pause to flick through this novel, already filled with a sense of foreboding that you will be unable, for whatever reason, to finish it. Would it make sense, at this point to turn directly to the end? No; this seems to you to be the archetypal novel for which the ultimate page must remain unseen until the very last instant, when all that has gone before has been absorbed and duly pondered. For there are surely only three ways such a story can end. Either the man is telling the truth and it is a simple case of mistaken identity, which may or not be cleared up in time to save the man's life (perhaps somehow involving the crew of the Liberator or Scorpio; the time frame of this tale is not yet established.). Alternatively, the man is the Clonemaster's creation of Blake, which you have already seen to be a godsend for Blake's Seven fiction as a whole. Or, he is, in some unforeseen manner, the genuine article; a Blake who is unable or else unwilling, for whatever reason, to accept his own identity.

Your contemplation of these storylines allows you to begin to chart a path through the imagined novel. The three potential explanations, as you see them, become boldly drawn highways on this map: your thoughts travel along these lines and mentally, branchings are introduced; points at which complexity is added, opening up other, perhaps unforeseen futures in a network of ever-extending lines which enlace.

Flicking through the novel, carefully now so as not to prematurely confront the last few pages, you glimpse some of the future information to be divulged about Griffin/Blake.

There is the story of his capture at the border control of Space City. Later, it seems, he is interviewed by the counsel for his defence, a meticulous lawyer who appears to be under the impression that, not only is the Federation an instrinsically law-abiding institution but that Griffin is a mischievous scoundrel hoping to evade responsibility for his crimes by this rather bizarre defence.

This is followed by another long wallow on the discomforts of imprisonment. The prosecutor, when he appears, accords the prisoner his first real opportunity to discuss his own life and history; a long anecdote concerning his experience as a marine engineer on the planet Vandor follows. About twenty pages into the novel. a sentence catches your eye:

It has been two days since I wrote anything in my journal. Initially I thought myself rescued but I have come to realise that my prisoner's bonds are no looser now than they have been at any point of my custody with the Federation. Moreover, my life is still in danger; my new captors have made it abundantly clear that an unfavourable verdict could lead to my murder at their hands (although naturally, they refuse to acknowledge that such an act would be murder).

Frankly, I have been on the point of abandoning this journal, although there has been no indication that my new captors require such an action. I find, however, that the recording of my thoughts in this fashion serves both to distill my impressions of each day into what later reads as a curiously foreign tale (which I scarcely recognize as my own experience); in this capacity the undertaking serves also as amusement. I will therefore attempt to relate, as straightforwardly as possible, the events of the last two days.

To all intents and purposes, as I saw it, I was being taken to my doom. If I am honest, I confess to have all but given up hope of persuading the Federation that I wasn't the man they sought (they had refused to answer my questions concerning the nature of their contacts with the authorities on Vandor; it is my belief that no such communication was ever carried out, nor intended). And I felt that I had no hope of passing any of their psychometric tests, since I am unable these days to witness even the sins of another without displaying the physical betrayal that so often accompanies deeply rooted guilt. I would confess to any scandal, any crime; how could it ever be worse than my own? One might as well be executed for one crime as another.

It began with a tremendous shudder aboard the transport ship; it is my belief that the ship was actually fired upon although this was never confirmed. There was a long period of silence, maybe two hours. Finally, the mutoid who stood guard on me entered the room and took a firm and rather offensive grip of my arm, leading me away amidst my considerable protestation, because as much as I asked for an explanation, none was given (of course). Whereupon I was taken to meet my new captors, with whom, I later gathered, tense negotiations had been conducted for my custody.

In fact, their ship easily overpowered ours although it seems to me that they were reluctant to demonstrate this any more than by that initial blast (if it was a blast). During all of this conversation, I attempted to remain silent; I noticed that the Federation officials made no mention of the fact that I had contested their identification of me so any comment on the matter by my self seemed rather misplaced. Unfortunately I misread the situation and assumed that these people were in some way planning to deliver me.

But some delivery! It is almost worse now than before! There was some small sport in my dealings with the Federation; with the prosecutor at least, I sometimes had the impression that I was only to miscalculate and utter the right code-word to reveal myself as the genuine article, the real Blake. Careful avoidance of all words which I felt to resonate with that legend was therefore my principal strategy in our chess-like encounters.

This new crew have another device to lure me into admission of falsehoods. They want so badly for me to be Blake that I have begun to entertain a sort of gruesome fantasy in which I do indeed confess to such a lie, if only to satisfy them. All this in the face of every denial, every proof which I struggle to bring to their attention. It is not just that I resemble Blake in my appearance; one additional factor has conspired against me to convince the world around me that I am he.

I was tranferred to their ship (a process I understood about as well as I understand my present situation) whereupon their leader, Tarrant, took me directly to the bridge, with a firm yet not unkind assurance that the matter would soon be settled. They have a computer, Zen (as alien as anything on this ship) who is programmed to respond to Blake's voice. It was a straightforward affair; I was simply to utter the words "Zen, please confirm that I am Roj Blake".

To be honest, I barely batted an eyelid when the computer replied that it did indeed recognize me as such. That was enough for the crew, two of whom began immediately to smile, patting my arm and making jovial, comradely remarks. What could I say? Why should I trust a computer above my own insight, my own judgement? If all these people can take me for Blake then why not the damned computer too? Its evaluation is just as arbitrary, exactly as meaningless.

In the event, I was silent, a fact which after a minute or two prompted Avon to ask sardonically whether I was still bent upon denying Blake's identity. I answered truthfully that the computer's records held no interest for me and that since I was entirely unfamiliar with any of them or their computer and rather more familiar with myself, I could not take any of their words over mine. At this, one of them (I suppose he must be Vila) remarked, almost as an aside, that "they'd done him over properly this time". I asked them to let me lie down in my room; Avon immediately suggested that I be confined there until the question of my identity is resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

Avon is an intriguing man. If he would only be candid, he would admit that he does not believe me to be Blake. He knew his friend well; can he not see at a glance that I am not that man? Yet the confirmation by Zen, which in retrospect, I am not at all sure he expected, has served to enforce some public acceptance.

I see that he dearly wishes to restrict my movements around the ship, which is why he has asked me to tell Zen not to obey my commands as of now (at present it is still just that; a polite request). I told him equally politely that it was necessary only to ask me to refrain from talking to the computer. It is apparent that Avon has (predictably) adopted the view that I am Blake; a modified Blake whose mind has this past year been twisted and tormented until I no longer remember my name or past. He must also suspect that I am now a creature of that same Federation, primed for some dark and malevolent task amongst them, aboard their ship. Why does he think that the Federation themselves apprehended me? If he'd been next to me in some of those sessions with the Federation lawyers he'd soon see the laughable nature of his ideas.

It so much simpler than that. I'm not Blake. Everybody wants me to be but I just can't help them with their problems. I must be myself, the person whom I've struggled so long to create.

(Cally is a beautiful and fascinating creature. What is she doing amongst these fools?)

Although I am no longer a prisoner I do impose upon myself a form of courteous reserve which results in my staying, for the greater part of the day, in my quarters. Avon was unsuccessful in his attempt to persuade the crew to confine me to quarters under suspicion of being a Federation spy; apparently some of them don't believe that the Federation would imprison its own active agents either. (This is when he threatened me with murder if it transpires that I am under remote control). No; the quarantine is entirely of my own volition; it occurs to me that to wander around this place as though I belonged can only serve to boost my shipmates' impression of myself as their missing Blake. There is no lack of company, however; each member of the crew visits me with some regularity, presumably in an endeavour to convince me, or themselves, that I am Blake.

Today it was the turn of Vila, who is one of the three members of the crew who actually knew Blake. He wants to be honest with me; he has already told me that he is sure that I am Blake but simultaneously believes that I am myself unaware of this fact. With extraordinary cheerfulness, considering the topic under discussion, he tells me of his own experiences with the Federation psychiatrists and mind-wipers.

He is convinced that with each additional emergence from the conditioning, the ability to resist is increased. "It's an art like any other, it can be studied and practiced to perfection. I myself am a master! Blake's been though this before; you'll see, you'll get though this time too, soon enough. You just need us around you to talk to you, to remind you. It's a shame Jenna isn't here. She might have been the best therapy of all!" This last comment is accompanied by a snigger, which prompts me to ask him about Jenna.

It turns out that she is another missing member of the crew, a woman of stunning beauty according to Vila, with whom he has long suspected Blake had a more than platonic relationship. I am not remotely interested in accounts of Blake's involvement with her but talk of a woman such as this Jenna aboard the ship brings my mind inevitably to more thoughts of Cally.

I have met with Cally alone, only once. Actually, I have begun to think that I would be quite justified in a suspicion that she is avoiding me. It is true that our one and only private meeting may have lent itself to some ambiguous interpretation. She asked me why I don't want to be Blake. I explained carefully that it is not a question of choice, but rather that the only possible reason for me to agree that I could ever be Blake arises from the simple fact that so many people want me to be him.

"An individual," I told her gravely (gravity seeming to fit well with her own mood of disquiet), "becomes that which he is perceived to be: that is the nature of identity." She looked at me then with something like contempt, or perhaps, pity, asking, "You don't really believe that, do you?" More than belief; this has been part of my harsh and apparently interminable education. "Well," I asked her, leaning back on the bed, "what do you think?"
She thinks we are really free to create ourselves in our own image, that it is merely a matter of choice and strength.
I suggested; "Did you ever consider that perhaps Blake left you of his own accord? That he was eventually stifled by your expectations of him, by the image you created, by his own legend?"
"No," she replied coldly, "for that would be the act of a weak man, which Blake never was."
"Well, in his place, it's something I'd consider doing. But then," I responded slyly, " I'm not Blake."

I find it difficult to talk to Cally about Blake, a subject with which she herself seems somewhat drearily obsessed. I would rather look into her large, mournful eyes, or ask her about her fascinating home (Auron; a planet, a culture full of telepaths! What opportunity for true individuality could exist there, amongst a barrage of the most intimate thoughts of others?).

She has a lissome beauty; the slender figure of a gymnast, or a dancer. Sometimes she wears garments of thin, silky fabrics which hug her body closely; it's at times like this that I am almost overcome with tenderness towards her as I gaze upon her delicate wrists and upper arms, which I could encircle, easily, with my thumb and forefinger. Yet for all her apparent fragility, I sense tremendous resolve and purpose about her. She is a woman who has known pain, both physical and emotional and has learnt how to rise above it.

This sometimes makes her seem harsh and demanding, as demanding of the same high standards for others, to which she herself adheres. I've known women like her; the great temptation is seek out their vulnerabilty in order to offer protection. With Cally, though, I would hope to learn something about that hidden strength. Which of us needs salvation most, is not yet clear.

I wonder if she is that type of woman, who seeks in her lover, the anguished soul, the tortured genius which she attempts forever to assuage? If so then it seems likely that Avon could provide some stiff competition for me! For I cannot concieve that I could ever enlighten her about the true degree of my wretchedness, even if that would be the single act necessary to ignite in her some affection towards me.

After Cally, my most welcomed visitor is Tarrant. Never having met Blake, his mind is more open than that of the others; he even does me the courtesy of addressing me as "Griffin". But clearly, he has been briefed by the others to attempt to extract from me, clues which might be used to orient them on the trail which they imagine to be left by Blake. Today he seemed particularly excited when I told him that I once lived on Epheron. Perhaps Blake once lived there too, perhaps he has family there or someone he might otherwise have reason to visit. Frankly, there could surely be no other reason for that planet to have any particular distinction; I have enjoyed superior existences on Centero, Lindor or even Vandor!

"The most interesting thing that happened to me on Epheron," I told him, "happened the day I left the place!"

It is true; I had been working for an oil exploration company there, owned by the Hyannos, a family of considerable means, who seemed to own the entire sea upon which countless drilling rigs floated. I lived there for one miserable year, surrounded by nothing but the green water, the rust and earth tones of the machinery and the unforgiving sun.

We worked there like slaves, stripped to the waist, heads and torsos blackened and greasy with the oil, alcohol and soma our only recreation. (It goes without saying that women were a rare sight aboard those rigs and then, when the occasional female geologist or petroleum engineer happened to visit for a few days, they were so socially oversubscribed as to exclude all but the exceptionally successful, desperate or persistent). There was no hierarchy simply because we could not afford it; understaffed as we always were, all work had at times to be attempted by even such as the computer technicians. But the pay was good; we all knew that one year there would keep one going for at least four times that, back on the shore.

My twelve months were up and I had booked passage aboard the weekly helicopter which brought provisions and letters from the shore. Koque Hyannos himself was planning to make a visit to the rig upon the same helicopter and had arranged with me, to bring my payment in cash. In restrospect, I should have been suspicious from the moment he arrived, accompanied by a tall and sullenly beautiful young woman, more of a girl really; his daughter. Would he really have planned to fly her back to shore in the company of men coarsened by the company of their own sex, the grease of the machinery still in their hair, under their eyelids and fingernails, amongst whom a tantalizing eighteen-year-old girl could not fail to induce appetites of the basest kind? Instead, however, I greedily looked forward (as, I imagined, did the others), to the return trip in her presence, perhaps in her immediate proximity, inhaling the fragrant scents of her perfume, making polite but subtly flirtatious conversation.

Hyannos called me to a private meeting with him in the observatory. (This, by the way, was the single object of beauty on the rig; a room with a floor of thick, reinforced glass, from which one was able to stare, absractedly, for hours into the jade greens below, and glimpse the schools of fish, sharks and divers swimming under the rig. At certain times of the day, light would stream into the sea there from behind the rig and illuminate everything in its path; each tiniest bubble became a silver-plated bourble floating to the surface, each fish, liquid metal shimmering in an evanescent wave.) Hyannos was himself apparently absorbed in the contemplation of the depths below his feet and took several minutes before he looked up and finally, looked me in the eye.

He was not coy about it, because he was a Hyannos and ought to have had nothing to fear from me, on a planet on which his orders were routinely obeyed.
"The fact is, Griffin, that you've become too valuable to me for me to let you go just now. I can't find another man with your expertise who is willing to come out here, even for the money I am prepared to offer," he stated with an expansive gesture of his hands. "But the good news is that I'm going to give you an extra twenty percent as a bonus!" He clapped me on the back; "Come now, you needn't look so glum. You're used to it here and moreover, you get on with the men. They like you; it seems you are a born leader in the Alexandrian mould!"

I nodded, my mind turning slowly and coldly to the task I realised I must now perfom. "Might I even have a short break?" I asked in flat, reasonable tones. He put his arm around me then, as though I were an errant son he was having gently to chastise. "Griffin, I know you need it but I really haven't anyone to take your place. Look, please help me out here. I'd look upon it as a personal favour. Stay another three months and then come out for the weekend at our place in Guanni." He smiled broadly. "What do you say?"

I began to nod, saying, "If the money's good, Hyannos, then I'm good for it. But I'm going to have to hold you to that weekend in Guanni."
At which point he burst into laughter and slapped me hard on the back. "That's my man, Griffin! Its good to have someone here I can rely on!" I nodded once more, then turned around to check that his bodyguard was no longer in the vicinity. Then I took the metal briefcase I was holding and swung it around to catch Hyannos in the back of the neck. He collapsed to the ground, his big puffy eyes goggling at me as he went down.

Tarrant interrupted me then: "You killed him?"

I laughed. "No! Out cold, at the worst. Or, a coma. Well, I don't know. Maybe. But you see, I'd had it in that place. It wasn't just boredom. It was killing me to be there. The same people, every day. They began to change me...well, it's hard to explain." How could I begin to divulge to him, the effect it has on you to be seen as they saw me? On the way out of the observatory, I met his daughter. She took one glance beyond the opened door and then flicked her gaze back at me. But she didn't looked shocked. "Looks as though you'll have to see to me now," she said, with a hint of a smile. I grinned back. She was very close to me in that corridor and her hot, already slightly oil-spattered body smelt of wood smoke and autumn leaves. That smell went straight to my head. "Are you leaving now, then?" she asked, rather unnecessarily.

"I've enough in here to make it offworld," I told her with another smile, gesturing towards the case. "Your father won't be bothering me again." Then she pressed herself against me with such gratifying candour that I found myself wondering how that body would withstand the impact of her first lover.
She breathed; "Take me with you."
There was nothing I would have enjoyed more but I realised that without her, I might just get offworld without being followed whereas if I were to include a Hyannos female in my baggage, the chances would be dramatically diminished.
"Let's go to the 'copter," she said, taking my silence for aquiescence.
"I'm going to the 'copter alright," I told her sharply, "but without you."
"In that case, you'll have to deal with me as you did with my father."
Well, that was my last day.

Tarrant exclaimed; "So you killed her too?"

I hadn't even admitted to killing her father and after all I'd told him about how that girl had got to me, how could he think I would hurt her?
"Don't you understand? Girls like Riaan don't enjoy Daddy controlling their lives and they really will leave with the first roustabout in order to escape. She was just lucky it was someone like me."
"So, you took her with you then?" he asked.
I did; she turned out to be a fine accomplice, telling all the bodyguards that Daddy had told me to walk her to the 'copter and to stay with her there until he caught up. As soon as we were in the 'copter I closed that door and then flew that machine out of there as fast as I've ever seen it done! Tarrant breathed out slowly, his eyes wide, obviously appreciative of something; I don't know whether it was the adventurous or erotic nature of the following account.
"And what finally became of her?" he asked eventually.
"My lovely, smoky Riaan? I'm very sad to relate that I lost her."
"She was killed?" he puzzled, misunderstanding.

But she wasn't killed; woman like that cause death to those around them but seem rarely to invite that fate themselves.

"No, I lost her," I repeated, "lost her in a game."
I didn't gamble her away lightly, although I couldn't expect Tarrant to understand that. It was months later, on another world and she'd had enough of me.
"He wants to play for you," I had told her in a quiet aside, as she studied the spacer whose fleet was about to increase in size by one small shuttle craft; "are you up for it?"

She was; it was a fair play and although I became pretty lonely in the following months, I didn't for one minute regret our decision.
"She was wonderful," I told Tarrant, "as graceful and beautiful as a lioness and just as fierce! But she had some of my past clinging to her and finally, well," I said shaking my head, "well, it was like living a lie. Do you know what that is like?"

And to my surprise, Tarrant replied; "Actually, I do."