Dreamsongs, Volume I by George R. R. Martin

“Maximilian de Laurier is dead,” he said firmly to the silence.
    Then he shook his head. It still doesn’t work, he thought. I’ve got everything to live for. Money. Position. Influence. All that, and more. Everything.
    The answer rang ruthless and cold through his head. It doesn’t matter, it said. Nothing matters anymore, nothing except that cancer. You’re dead. A living dead man.
    In the dark, silent room, his hand trembled suddenly, and the pipe flew from his grasp and spilled ashes on the expensive carpet. His fists clenched, and his knuckles began to whiten.
    Maximilian de Laurier rose slowly from the chair and walked across the room, brushing a light switch as he passed it. He stopped before the full-length mirror on the door, and surveyed the tall, gray-haired reflection that stared back from the glass. There was a curious whiteness about the face, he noted, and the hands were still trembling slightly.
    “And my life?” he said to the reflection. “What have I done with my life? Read a few books. Driven a few sports cars. Made a few fortunes. A blast, one long, wild blast. Playboy of the Western World.”
    He laughed softly, but the reflection still looked grim and shaken. “But what have I accomplished? In a year, will there be anything to show that Maxim de Laurier has lived?”
    He turned from the mirror with a snarl, a bitter, dying man with eyes like the gray ash of a fire that has long since gone out. As he turned, those eyes drank in the gathered remains of a life, sweeping over the rich, heavy furniture, the polished wooden bookcases with their rows of heavy, leather-bound volumes, the cold, sooty fireplace, and the imported hunting rifles mounted in a rack above the mantelpiece.
    Suddenly the fire burned again. With quick strides, de Laurier crossed the room and yanked one of the rifles from its mounting. He stroked the stock softly with a trembling hand, but his voice when he spoke was cold and hard and determined.
    “Damn it,” he said. “I’m not dead yet.”
    He laughed a wild, snarling laugh as he sat down to oil the gun.

    T HROUGH THE F AR W EST THE P ROPHET STORMED, SPREADING THE Word from a private jet. Everywhere the crowds gathered to cheer him, and husky steelworkers lifted up their children on their shoulders so they could hear him speak. The long-haired hecklers who dared to mock his cause were put down, shouted down, and sometimes beaten down.
    “Ah’m for the little man,” he said in San Diego. “Ah’m for the good patriotic Americans who get forgotten today. This is a free country and I don’t mind dissent, but Ah’m not about to let the Commies and the anarchists take over. Let’s let’em know they can’t fly the Communist flag in this country if there are any red-blooded Americans left around. And if we have to bust a few heads to teach ’em, well, that’s okay too.”
    And they flocked to him, the patriots and the superpatriots, the vets and the GIs, the angry and the frightened. They flew their flags by day, and read their bibles by night, and pasted “Beauregard” stickers on the bumpers of their cars.
    “Any man has got a right to dissent,” the Prophet shouted from a platform in Los Angeles, “but when these long-haired anarchists try to impede the progress of the war, why, that’s not dissent, that’s treason.
    “And when these traitors try to block troop trains carrying vital war materials to our boys overseas, Ah say it’s time to give our policemen some good stout clubs, untie their hands, and let ’em spill a little Commie blood. That’ll teach those anarchists to respect the law!”
    And all the people cheered and cheered, and the noise all but drowned out the faint echo of jackboots in the distance.

    R ECLINING IN THE DECK CHAIR, THE TALL, GRAY-HAIRED MAN GLANCED at the copy of the
New York Times
lying across his lap. He was a nondescript sort of fellow, with a worn off-the-rack sports jacket and a pair of cheap plastic sunglasses. Few