"Aren't you interested any more, Mary?" Captain Thiel
was looking at her strangely.
The agitation in her voice was a surprise. "I have to get
home. I have a lot of things to do."
Outside, when Mrs. Harris seemed suddenly to realize that
something was wrong, and delicately probed to find out
whether her angry voice had been overheard, Mary said calm-
ly and as if it didn't matter, "Was my father home when
you called him before?"
"Whyyes, Mary. But you mustn't pay any attention to
conversations like that, darling."
You can't force him to like me, she thought to herself, and
she was angry with Mrs. Harris because now her father would
only dislike her more.
Neither her father nor her mother was home when Mary
walked into the evening-darkened apartment. It was the first
day of the family shift, and on that day, for many periods
now, they had not been home until late.
Mary walked through the empty rooms, turning on lights.
She passed up the electrically heated dinner her father had
set out for her. Presently she found herself at the storage-
room door. She opened it slowly.
After hesitating a while she went in and began an ex-
hausting search for the old storybook with the picture in it.
Finally she knew she could not find it. She stood in the
middle of the junk-filled room and begqn to cry.
The day which ended for Mary Walden in lonely weeping
should have been, for Conrad Manz, a pleasant rest day with
an hour of rocket racing in the middle of it. Instead, he awak-
ened with a shock to hear his wife actually talking while she
was asleep.
He stood over her bed and made certain that she was
asleep. It was as though her mind thought it was somewhere
else, doing something else. Vaguely he remembered that the
ancients did something called dreaming while they slept and
the thought made him shiver.
Clara Manz was saying, "Oh, Bill, they'll catch us. We
can't pretend any more unless we have drugs. Haven't we
any drugs. Bill?"
Then she was silent and lay still. Her breathing was shal-
low and even in the dawn light her cheeks were deeply
flushed against the blonde hair.
Having just awakened, Conrad was on a very low drug
level and the incident was unpleasantly disturbing. He picked
up his pharmacase from beside his bed and made his way
to the bathroom. He took his hypothalamic block and the
integration enzymes and returned to the bedroom. Clara was
still sleeping.
She had been behaving oddly for some time, but there had
never been anything as disturbing as this. He felt that he
should call a medicop, but, of course, he didn't want to do
anything that extreme. It was probably something with a sim-
ple explanation. Clara was a little scatterbrained at times.
Maybe she had forgotten to take her sleeping compound and
that was what caused dreaming. The very word made his
powerful body chill. But if she was neglecting to take any of
her drugs and he called in a medicop, it would be serious.
Conrad went into the library and found the Family Phar-
macy. He switched on a light in the dawn-shrunken room
and let his heavy frame into a chair. A Guide to Better Un-
derstanding of Your Family Prescriptions. Official Edition,
2831. The book was mostly Medicorps propaganda and al-
most never gave a practical suggestion. If something went
wrong, you called a medicop.
Conrad hunted through the book for the section on sleep-
ing compound. It was funny, too, about that name Bill. Con-
rad went over all the men of their acquaintance with whom
Clara had occasional affairs or with whom she was friendly
and he couldn't remember a single Bill. In fact, the only
man with that name whom he could think of was his own hy-
peralter, Bill Walden. But that was naturally impossible.
Maybe dreaming was always about imaginary people.
SLEEPING COMPOUND: An official mixture of soporific and
hypnotic alkaloids and synthetics. A critical drug; an essen-
tial feature in every prescription. Slight deviations in fol-
lowing prescription are unallowable because of the subtle
manner in which behaviour may be altered over months or
years. The first sleeping compound was announced by
Thomas Marshall in 1986. The formula has been modified
only twice since then.
There followed a tightly packed description of the chemis-
try and pharmacology of the various ingredients. Conrad
skipped through this.
The importance. of Sleeping Compound in the life of
every individual and to society is best appreciated when we
recall Marshall's words announcing its initial development:
"It is during so-called normal sleep that the vicious un-
conscious mind responsible for wars and other symptoms
of unhappiness develops its resources and its hold on our
conscious lives.
"In this normal sleep the critical faculties of the cortex
are paralysed. Meanwhile, the infantile unconscious mind
expands misinterpreted experience into the toxic patterns
of neurosis and psychosis. The conscious mind takes over
at morning, unaware that these infantile motivations have
been cleverly woven into its very structure.
"Sleeping Compound will stop this. There is no uncon-
scious activity after taking this harmless drug. We believe
the Medicorps should at once initiate measures to acclima-
tize every child to its use. In these children, as the
years go by, infantile patterns unable to work during sleep
will fight a losing battle during waking hours with con-
scious patterns accumulating in the direction of adulthood."
That was all there wasmostly the Medicorps patting its
own back for saving humanity. But if you were in trouble
and called a medicop, you'd risk getting into real trouble.
Conrad became aware of Clara standing in the doorway.
The flush of her disturbed emotions and the pallor of her
fatigue mixed in ragged banners on her cheeks.
Conrad waved the Family Pharmacy with a foolish gesture
of embarrassment.
"Young lady, have you been neglecting to take your sleep-
ing compound?"
Clara turned utterly pale. "I1 don't understand."
"You were talking in your sleep."
"Iwas?"
She came forward so unsteadily that he helped her to a
seat. She stared at him. He asked jovially, "Who is this 'Bill'
you were so desperately involved with? Have you been having
an affair I don't know about? Aren't my friends good enough
for you?"
The result of this banter was that she alarmingly began to
cry, clutching her robe about her and dropping her blonde
head on her knees and sobbing.
Children cried before they were acclimatized to the drugs,
but Conrad Manz had never in his life seen an adult cry.
Though he had taken his morning drugs and certain disrupt-
ing emotions were already impossible, nevertheless this sight
was completely unnerving.
In gasps between her sobs, Clara was saying, "Oh, I can't