“Four,” Elszabet said. “Nick Double Rainbow last night, too.”
Robinson said, “That’s not the full list. There’s an epidemic of overlapping space dreams. They’re being reported all over the Center. Except, I think, from Ed Ferguson. I believe he’s the only patient who hasn’t said a word about them to any therapist.”
“Isn’t he the man who got convicted for selling real estate on other planets?” Dante asked.
“Planets of other stars, no less,” Bill Waldstein said.
“Ironic that he’s the only one who doesn’t get to visit other worlds when he’s asleep, then,” Dante said.
“Unless he’s concealing the dreams,” Dan Robinson suggested. “That’s always a possibility with him. Ferguson monkeys around with his data something fierce.”
“I suspect he’s got a recorder of some kind, too,” Waldstein said. “Somehow he doesn’t seem to pick clean—there’s always a continuity that shouldn’t be there—”
“Please,” Elszabet said. “We’re getting a little off the track. Dan, you say there are other space dreams on your list?”
“A couple. At the moment the reports are just fragmentary on those, and I’d prefer to skip them for now. But I think I’ve made the basic point.”
“All right,” said Elszabet. “We have a mystery here. A phenomenon. How do we deal with it?”
“Obviously they’re telling each other their dreams,” Bill Waldstein said.
“You think so?” Dan Robinson asked, startled.
“Obviously that’s it. They’re trying to screw us over. They all see us in an adversary position, anyway. So they’re in cahoots, passing their dreams around, coaching each other—”
“We pick them,” Naresh Patel said. “Then the dreams are gone. Do they meet at dawn before pick time to rehearse?”
“Alleluia doesn’t always seem to lose her dreams to the pick,” Dan Robinson said.
Patel nodded. “We know that is a problem, the synthetic woman’s dream retention. But the others? We suspect Ferguson of making recordings, but he doesn’t report dreams. Surely Father Christie is not engaged in any sort of deception, and—”
“Naresh’s right about Father Christie,” Elszabet said. “His dreams are real. I’d stake anything on that.”
“Telepathy?” Dante said.
“Not a shred of evidence, ever,” said Bill Waldstein.
“Maybe we’re getting the evidence now,” Dan Robinson said. “Some kind of communion going on among them—maybe it’s even a pick phenomenon, an unsuspected artifact of the process—”
“Balls, Dan. What kind of wild speculation is that?” Waldstein asked.
“A speculative one,” Robinson replied mildly. “We’re just fishing around, aren’t we? Who knows what the hell’s going on here? But if we try all sorts of ideas—”
“I’m not yet convinced it is going on,” Waldstein retorted. “We need to run reliable crosschecks to eliminate the possibility of patient collusion. After that you can talk to me about overlapping dreams, okay?”
“Absolutely,” Robinson said. “No quarrel there.”
“We need more data,” said Patel. “We must find out all there is to know about this matter. Yes, Dr. Waldstein?”
Waldstein nodded uncertainly. “If it’s really happening, yes, we need to explain it. If it’s a fraud, we need to get control of it. Yes. More data. Yes.”
“Fine,” Elszabet said. “We’re starting to reach some understanding here. Does anyone else want to say anything about this space-dream business now?”
Apparently no one did. She looked around the table twice, and there was silence on all sides. The meeting moved on to more mundane Center business. But afterward, when everyone was beginning to leave, Naresh Patel remained in his seat. The dapper neurolinguistics expert, small and fine-boned, ordinarily serene to the point of impassivity, looked oddly troubled.
“You want to see me, Naresh?” Elszabet asked.
“Yes. Please. Just for a moment.”
“Go ahead.” She rubbed her jaw. It was definitely beginning to puff up where Nick Double Rainbow had belted her.
Patel said in the softest possible voice, “This is a thing I did not want to say during the general meeting, though perhaps it would have been useful. This is a thing I am not yet ready to share with all my colleagues, and especially not with Dr. Waldstein in his present frame of mind. But with your permission I would like to share it with you, and only with you.”
She had never seen him this disturbed. Gently she said, “You can count on my discretion, Naresh.”
The little man smiled faintly. “Very well. It is this only, Dr. Lewis. I too have had what Dr. Robinson calls the Green World dream. Two nights ago. A sky like a heavy green curtain. Crystalline beings of extreme grace and beauty.” He gave her a rueful look. “I am not part of the conspiracy that Dr. Waldstein insists is taking place. May we accept the truth of that declaration? I am not in league with the patients to upset the equilibrium of the Center. Please believe me, Dr. Lewis. Please. But nevertheless I tell you this, that I have had the Green World dream. Indeed. I have had the Green World dream.”
2
“It isn’t much,” Jaspin said. “Don’t expect much. It just isn’t much at all.”
“That’s all right,” the blonde girl told him. “You don’t expect much, do you, times like these?”
Her name was Jill. Her last name hadn’t stuck, one of those bland nice American names, Clark, Walters, Hancock, something like that. He’d find some way of getting her to say it again. Somehow she had stayed with him after the tumbondé ceremony, holding his head against her skinny chest while he was having those weird hysterics, helping him down from the hillside when he was so shaky in that scorching heat. And now somehow they were standing outside his little place in University Heights. Apparently they were going to spend the night together, or at least the evening. What the hell, it had been a long time. But part of him wished he had managed to shake her off back there in the countryside. That was the part that still was resonating to the drums of the tumbondé folk; that was the part that still saw the titanic form of Chungirá-He-Will-Come, absolutely and unquestionably real on his throne of alabaster on the planet of some far star. Having this girl around was only a distraction, a sort of a buzz, when there were things like that throbbing in his soul. Still, he had not done much by way of getting free of her after the ceremony. What the hell.
He put his thumb on the doorplate and the door asked him who he was, and he said, “It’s your lord and master. Open the hell up, fast!”
She laughed. “You’ve got a very individual style, Dr. Jaspin.”
“Barry. Please. Barry, okay? I don’t even have a doctorate, hard as it is for you to accept that fact.” The door, having scanned his vocal contour and found it acceptable, slid back. He gestured grandly. “Entrez-vous!” They stepped inside.
He hadn’t deceived her any. It wasn’t much. Two rooms, fold-out kitchenette, a little terrace facing south. The building was a decent one, Spanish style, whitewashed walls, red tile roof, lush California plants crawling all over everything—purple bougainvillea, red and white hibiscus, great spiky clumps of aloes, some agaves, sago palms, all that subtropical whatnot. Probably the place had been a nice luxury condo development before the war. But now it was divided into a million tiny apartments, and of course there was no maintenance being done any more, so the property was running down very seriously. What the helclass="underline" it was home. He had wandered into it at random his first day in San Diego after he had decided he ought to get out of Los Angeles, and he was starting to feel almost comfortable in it by now, fourteen months later.