Deep in one of its seas a city slept, and he shared the dreams of its sleepers: of an infancy spent in a vast almost lightless cave, tended by a thin rustling shape so tall its head was lost to sight; of flight to this minute but fecund planet; of dancing hugely and clumsily beneath the light of a fragment they’d torn free of this world and flung into space; of dormancy in the submarine basalt tombs. Dormant, they waited and shared the lives of other similar beings active on the surface; for a moment he was the inhabitant of a black city deserted by its builders, coming alert and groping lazily forth as a pale grub fled along a path between the buildings.
Later, as the active ones on the surface had to hide from the multiplying grubs, those in the submarine city stilled, waiting. Ingels felt their thoughts searching sleepily, ranging the surface, touching and sampling the minds of the grubs, vastly patient and purposeful. He felt the womb of the sea lapping his cell. His huge flesh quivered, anticipating rebirth.
Without warning he was in a room, gazing through a telescope at the sky. He seemed to have been gazing for hours; his eyes burned. He was referring to a chart, adjusting the mounting of the telescope. A pool of light from an oil lamp roved, snatching at books in cases against the walls, spilling over the charts at his feet. Then he was outside the room, hurrying through a darkened theatre; cowls of darkness peered down from the boxes. Outside the theatre he glanced up towards the speckled sky, towards the roof, where he knew one slate hid the upturned telescope. He hurried away through the gas-lit streets, out of Ingels’ dream.
He awoke and knew at once where the theatre was: at the edge of Brichester, where his mind had been tugging him all day.
III
He rose at dawn, feeling purged and refreshed. He washed, shaved, dressed, made himself breakfast. In his lightened state the preamble of his dream seemed not to matter: he’d had his inclination towards the edge of Brichester explained; the rest seemed external to him, perhaps elaborately symbolic. He knew Hilary regarded his dreams as symptoms of disturbance, and perhaps she was right. Maybe, he thought, they all meant the theatre was trying to get up through my mind. A lot of fuss, but that’s what dreams are like. Especially when they’re having to fight their way, no doubt. Can’t wait to see what the theatre means to me.
When he went out the dawn clutched him as if he hadn’t shaken off his dreams. The dull laden light settled about him, ambiguous shapes hurried by. The air felt suffocated by imminence, not keen as the cold should make it. That’ll teach me to get up at cock-crow, he thought. Feels like insomnia. Can’t imagine what they find to crow about. The queues of commuters moved forward like the tickings of doom.
Someone had left a sheet from the telex on his desk. Photographs from the space probe were expected any hour. He wrote his reviews hurriedly, glancing up to dispel a sense that the floor was alive with pale grubs, teeming through the aisles. Must have needed more sleep than I thought. Maybe catch a nap later.
Although his dream had reverted the streets, replacing the electric lamps with gas, he knew exactly where the theatre should be. He hurried along the edge of Lower Brichester, past champing steam-shovels, roaring skeletons of burning houses. He strode straight to the street of his dream.
One side was razed, a jagged strip of brown earth extending cracks into the pavement and into the fields beyond. But the theatre was on the other side. Ingels hurried past the red-brick houses, past the wind-whipped gardens and broken flowers, towards the patched gouge in the road where he knew a gas lamp used to guard the theatre. He stood arrested on it, cars sweeping past, and stared at the houses before him, safe from his glare in their sameness. The theatre was not there.
Only the shout of an overtaking car roused him. He wandered along, feeling sheepish and absurd. He remembered vaguely having walked this way with his parents once, on the way to a picnic. The gas lamp had been standing then; he’d gazed at it and at the theatre, which by then was possessed by a cinema, until they’d coaxed him away. Which explained the dream, the insomnia, everything. And I never used to be convinced by Citizen Kane. Rosebud to me too, with knobs on. In fact he’d even mistaken the location of the lamp; there it was, a hundred yards ahead of him. Suddenly he began to run. Already he could see the theatre, now renamed as a furniture warehouse.
He was almost through the double doors and into the first aisle of suites when he realised that he didn’t know what he was going to say. Excuse me, I’d like to look under your rafters. Sorry to bother you, but I believe you have a secret room here. For God’s sake, he said, blushing, hurrying down the steps as a salesman came forward to open the doors for him. I know what the dream was now. I’ve made sure I won’t have it again. Forget the rest.
He threw himself down at his desk. Now sit there and behave. What a piddling reason for falling out with Hilary. At least I can admit that to her. Call her now. He was reaching for the telephone when Bert tramped up, waving Ingels’ review of the astronomical television programme. “I know you’d like to rewrite this,” he said.
“Sorry about that.”
“We’ll call off the men in white this time. Thought you’d gone the same way as this fellow,” Bert said, throwing a cutting on the desk.
“Just lack of sleep,” Ingels said, not looking. “As our Methuselah, tell me something. When the warehouse on Fieldview was a theatre, what was it called?”
“The Variety, you mean?” Bert said, dashing for his phone. “Remind me to tell you about the time I saw Beaumont and Fletcher performing there. Great double act.”
Ingels turned the cutting over, smiling half at Bert, half at himself for the way he had still not let go of his dream. Go on, look through the files in your lunch-hour, he told himself satirically. Bet the Variety never made a headline in its life.
LSD CAUSES ATTEMPTED SUICIDE, said the cutting. American student claims that in LSD “vision” he was told that the planet now passing through our solar system heralded the rising of Atlantis. Threw himself from second-storey window. Insists that the rising of Atlantis means the end of humanity. Says the Atlanteans are ready to awaken. Ingels gazed at the cutting; the sounds of the newspaper surged against his ears like blood. Suddenly he thrust back his chair and ran upstairs, to the morgue of the Herald.
Beneath the ceiling pressed low by the roof, a fluorescent tube fluttered and buzzed. Ingels hugged the bound newspapers to his chest, each volume an armful, and hefted them to a table, where they puffed out dust. 1900 was the first that came to hand. The streets would have been gas-lit then. Dust trickled into his nostrils and frowned over him, the phone next to Hilary was mute, his television review plucked at his mind, anxious to be rewritten. Scanning and blinking, he tried to shake them off with his doubts.
But it didn’t take him long, though his gaze was tired of ranging up and down, up and down, by the time he saw the headline:
ATTEMPTED THEFT AT “THE VARIETY.”
TRADESMEN IN THE DOCK.
Francis Wareing, a draper pursuing his trade in Brichester, Donald Norden, a butcher [and so on, Ingels snarled, sweeping past impatiently] were charged before the Brichester stipendiary magistrates with forcibly entering “The Variety” theatre, on Fieldview, in attempted commission of robbery. Mr. Radcliffe, the owner and manager of this establishment
It looked good, Ingels thought wearily, abandoning the report, tearing onward. But two issues later the sequel’s headline stopped him short:
ACCUSATION AND COUNTER-ACCUSATION IN COURT.
A BLASPHEMOUS CULT REVEALED.
And there it was, halfway down the column:
Examined by Mr. Kirby for the prosecution, Mr. Radcliffe affirmed that he had been busily engaged in preparing his accounts when, overhearing sounds of stealth outside his office, he summoned his courage and ventured forth. In the auditorium he beheld several men