Robert Smith inspected the big knuckles on his right hand. “You can see what we’re afraid of, Dr. Vrees. We’re afraid that... somehow... Ruth and I react on each other the wrong way. There must be some strain there, or we wouldn’t have these ridiculous dreams. We’re very deeply in love.”
“Neither of you has any physical ailment, Mr. Smith. I confess I’ve never examined a healthier pair. And your histories, too. Both from long-lived families who seem free of hereditary ailments. And both from very large families, too.”
Smith flushed. “We hope to have at least a dozen kids, Doctor.”
“I’m sure you will,” Vrees said hastily.
Smith went on, slowly. “We talked it over. Gosh, we’ve talked this dream stuff over a hundred times. I suppose you doctors are accustomed to dig down into people’s pasts and find out the root cause of... emotional trouble. Both Ruth and I had the happiest childhoods imaginable. And then, six months ago, these dreams started. I had them first. I told Ruth about them. Like a joke, you know. And then she started to have them.”
“That’s unusual, Robert, but not improbable. She began to worry about you. Out of sympathy, she duplicates your dreams.”
“There’s something pretty nasty about these dreams,” Robert said heavily.
Vrees made a few meaningless marks on his notebook. “Well, suppose you go out and send Ruth in and I’ll question her for a while.”
“Okay, doctor.” Smith got up, obviously glad that the interview was over. He held the door open for Ruth, closed it when she had entered the dimly lighted office.
Vrees was glad when she stopped towering over him and the desk and sat down. She seemed composed.
“Just tell me about these dreams in your own words, Miss Jones. I’ll interrupt with questions when any occur to me.”
She twisted her gloves, untwisted them. “There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to them, exactly. And they aren’t all really alike. Just the place is alike every time. So very hot, you know. And have you ever looked in one of those mirrors where you can duplicate yourself, so you see a whole line, and they’re all you?”
“Of course.”
“That’s the way it is. There are just hundreds and thousands of me, and of Robert too. And working so terribly hard. All naked and toiling. And crying, sometimes. There are corridors, and you have to walk down them all bent over. But the new corridors are better. You can stand up in those. We’re making them.”
“With what tools?”
“The tools are easy. Like gold pencils with two little clocks on one side. They cut the stone and the stone is all blue. Really blue. Cobalt, I guess. And the stones have to be put in baskets. Those baskets hang in the air and when you load them up they sink almost to the floor. When you pull the first one, all the others follow it like... animals. And we have to dump them down a dark place. You never hear them hit bottom.”
“You say you are duplicated almost endlessly. Do you always see things from the viewpoint of... any specific duplication of yourself?”
“No. It is always different, but still me, you understand. Sometimes it changes a lot of times in the same dream.”
“But you have to perform this labor?”
“Oh, yes. They won’t let you stop. If you stop, they have a flicking, stinging thing that you can’t even see them use. It hurts, terribly. I scream when they use it.”
“Can you describe these... overseers?”
“This... sounds so terribly silly. They’re... gnomes. You know. Little gnarly men with squatty legs and lumpy red faces and hats that come to peaks and they wear soft green. I used to love fairy tales, and the gnomes were my favorites. Now... I hate them. I hate them!”
“Please, Miss Jones. Don’t let it excite you. We’ll find a way out of this.”
“Oh, I hope so.”
“These little... ah... men, they speak to you?”
“They make a funny sound.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Sort of whoop, whoop.”
“I see,” Vrees said. “Whoop, whoop.” The girl gave him a sharp look, and flushed, then began glove-twisting again.
Vrees said, “We mustn’t overlook the possibility of some sort of... ah... sexual connotation here. I mean, if both of you are rigorously sublimating your normal instincts toward each other...”
“In the dreams they herd us into a sleeping place. There’s a feeding place, where we eat something wet and gray, and then there’s a sleeping place. And in the sleeping place all those thousands of Roberts and the thousands of me, we all...” She covered her eyes, sat with her head bowed.
Vrees swallowed hard. “I was discussing the question of sublimation.”
She lifted her head in a regal way. “No. We aren’t sublimating anything.”
“Now, to go on to another point. You didn’t start having these dreams until Robert began telling you about them, in detail.”
“That is correct. But you see, I dreamed details which he hadn’t dreamed yet. Then later, he’d dream those same details. Like a place where three new corridors branch off, not far from the feeding place.”
“Ah, but you told him the new details and then he would dream them!”
“You mean, I influenced him by telling him? We wondered about that, too. So we started writing down new things we saw in the dreams, and not telling each other. Then we compared notes quite a while later. They matched, almost perfectly.”
Vrees smiled. “Of course, my dear. You see, you two people are very close. Some day we will be able to pin down more closely this business of thought transference. There is a channel between your mind and Robert’s. I think that is quite evident.”
The girl nodded, dubiously.
Vrees went on. “There are many cases on record. I try to keep an open mind. Often you will find that identical twins have that faculty to a higher degree than the rest of us. There is the classic case of the twin sister who was on the Lusitania, and her sister in New York dreamed the entire disaster in precise detail and it was such a shock to her that she wrote it all down the moment she awakened. Later it was found to match the eye-witness reports with astounding accuracy. If I were you, Miss Jones, I should not worry too much about your both dreaming the same thing. Our purpose here is to find out why Robert started having these dreams in the first place. Once we find that reason, and eliminate it, I am positive that you will both stop having the dreams.”
“We’ve worried so much about it.”
“They do sound ominously realistic, I grant you. Frightening.”
She straightened out her gloves. “I don’t know if this means anything, Dr. Vrees, but you see, I’ve been having the dreams for five months. With Robert, it’s nearly six. And... lately... well, maybe it isn’t important.”
“Please go on, my dear.”
She lifted her chin and said, almost defiantly, “In the dreams, all of my... duplicates are quite obviously pregnant.”
Vrees closed his mouth after an unprofessional interval. He said, “A vague theory begins to present itself. Robert states that he had a happy childhood, that he enjoyed being a member of such a large family. Eleven children, weren’t there?”
“That’s correct.”
“Let us assume for a moment that, subconsciously, he did not like being a part of a large family at all, that he resented all the others for... diluting the love his parents could have given to him alone.”
“But Robert isn’t...”
“Just a moment. Let me follow through on this. He sees a horrid dream world where your love for him is diluted in a similar fashion. I do not yet understand the symbolism of all of the duplications of him, and of yourself, but I feel that our method of approach is through psychoanalysis. I can give him two afternoons a week, a two hour session each time. I shall try to uncover this childhood feeling of jealousy toward his brothers and sisters. You see how pregnancy comes in, don’t you? Each time he saw his mother heavy with child, he knew that there would be yet another dilution of the amount of love she had to give.”