ce.

The sound of his regular breathing.

Then a sighing came into his mind, and a green haze. The sighing became
a soft breeze; the green, tree-covered hills rolling off to the horizon.
He relaxed, aware in a fading, sinking part of his consciousness that
the machine worked as usual. He would dream and wait and hope....

And so the wind was breathing across the land from off a vast stretch of
blue water, which broke along a sandy beach in foamy white breakers. The
surf thundered all through his body. The wind brushed against him like a
great, purring cat. He looked up at the blue sky and seemed to feel
himself rising and sinking, both at the same time, up into its depths.
As his sight touched the sun there was an explosion of brightness which
blinded him. He turned away then to the rolling green sea of hills, saw
the trees bending from the surge of wind and heard the rustling of
leaves.

And then a deep voice moved through his mind.

"Outside the city," it said, "all this exists. During the terrible
burning of the Earth back in the wars of its antiquity, the city was
built as a place of life for those who yet lived. But those people were
not aware that the Earth would come alive again and they made the city
so that no death could enter it from without and no life could escape
from within. And they turned away from the Earth and lived only with the
city so that it became their universe--to all but a very few of us. We
still held a faint awareness of what the Earth had been--this passed
down to us for many generations, in whisperings, by the wise ones of our
people, back in the beginning of the city. And in those times, we had
been in the city too long, for thousands of years. We knew that there
must be freedom beyond the walls, if we could get through. But the walls
were thick and high and without a flaw, making a sky over us. We worked
for five hundred years on a machine to get us through the wall. Now a
few of us have succeeded and more will follow us to the freedom out here
in the good land. There is room for everyone here, there are no
boundaries and no ceilings and no walls anywhere. And you may join us
some time in the near future, if you wish."

Twenty-three sighed in his sleep.

Now a great city faded into his mind. There were long, tree lined
streets and buildings, some built in rising spirals, some in spreading
squares, others in ovals, domes and curved half circles. The wind
wandered among the buildin