Finch sniffed; there was no slightest doubt, the air was already becoming foul.
"Hey, Arthur?"
It was a mere whisper, but it sent Finch crawling into a corner of the closet.
"It's just me," said Roddy. Finch could not see him, which was perhaps a good idea. "I got your tiling. Did you get my book?"
"Here you are," said Finch, reaching out the book and feeling the cold glassy pressure of the carnelian cube in his hand.
"Gee, thanks," said Roddy's voice. "You don't know how I'll treasure this. They'll say, 'Where did you get this?' and I can say, 'I know the author, he's a real friend of mine.' Is it all right? Am I through with the assignment, or do you want me to do something else?"
"Not unless you can put me through a solid wall, the way you go."
"Oh, you'll be able to do that soon, Arthur. It isn't hard. Only I do hope you get a good rapport."
The smell slowly gave place to that of Sonia's closet. Finch had the cube and now faced only the problem of going to sleep—in a crowded clothes-closet while awaiting the exhaustion of the air, with Sonia, now thoroughly enchanted with the role she was playing, sobbing like Niobe outside.
He called: "Sonia?"
"Yes, Arthur. My belofed."
"Could you sing to me? One last song."
"But yes! How beautiful; you have the artist-soul. Now I know how much I lose. I will sing to you the final aria from Aida, so beautiful and appropriate. Can you take the tenor part?"
"I'm afraid not. I'm not even a fiver when it comes to singing."
He turned and took a double armful of dresses off the hooks, disposing them to make as neat a bed as possible. Removing his own coat gave both freedom and a pillow. He stuffed the carnelian cube into the latter and lay down, obsessed with a sense of pattern for which there was no justification—a sense that there was somewhere a central threat running through this series of dream-experiences, the clue of which he could not find. But if his determined wish had any influence he would gratefully return to historical research in his ordered scientific world; and he would be glad of it. The bed of dresses was not too uncomfortable, now that he had curled up on it.
Beyond the door, softly enough to be a lullaby, Sonia burst into song:
Seventeen:
Finch was awake.
At least conscious, he amended fuzzily, trying to place himself. Blue lake—kalpak—Lloyd Owens—Push-man, these belonged to the world of conscious-but-not-awake, like Eulalie—Armstrong Terry—status ... No! "
He had dreamed a long while, so long it was hard to remember details of the experiment, so long it was hard to remember that Chase was having difficulty ... or that Thera wanted ... No!
That was part of the dream, there was some psychological block there that forbade him to think closely about it or to remember clearly. He would he and delicately contemplate his world before he opened it, in the spirit of one who turns over and over an unexpected package, drawing the utmost drop of the pleasure of anticipation.
"Watch the sonometer," said a voice. "Here he comes."
"Pad ready?"
The second voice was feminine.
There Was no woman who spoke English at the dig ... no, wait, that was the dream, he knew that voice, it was ... and he sat up suddenly.
The people on opposite sides of the bed spoke together. "All right, let's have it."
Finch's jaws were distended by a coming-awake yawn. "Le's have what?" he asked sleepily. The man had tight curls of grey hair, Finch remembered his name was Hitchcock, or Heacock, or some other variety of Scotch moorland fowl, he remembered now; and there was some reason why the girl would stir in him emotions of mingled pleasure and peril. She was dark and pretty; full lips, big eyes, dark hair.
"Your dream, of course," she said. Certainly he knew her; one half his brain said she was Thera, of course, while the other half demanded destructively who Thera might be.
"Dream?" said Finch slowly, and then grinned. "It might be a trifle easier if I weren't at this moment dreaming of being interrogated."
"Excellent example," said the man happily and casting a glance of pure malice across the bed at his companion, added, "You perceive how admirably our doctrine of endopsychic censorship covers this case? ... What's the matter, Arthur?"
Finch had given vent to a choking noise. As he lifted his hand in the characteristic gesture of tugging at an ear-lobe, it had struck something. He pushed the something forward and up till by rolling his eyes downward he could make it out as a huge beard of grey-flecked black, curled and oiled in windrows like that of a Babylonian grandee. He tugged; it was really attached to his own chin. "How—what—" he began before the answer popped into his head—the reconstruction, of course.
Scotch moor bird and dark girl nodded at each other across the bed in happy agreement. "Vivid image," said she. "Tell us quickly before it fades."
"Why I was—I am—conducting the dig at Lake Van, and—"
"Yes?" said the dark girl, leaning forward, pencil poised, as Finch gaped at the V of her dress with a surge of fully remembered desire. The block; there was some reason he could not now recall why he must not mention, must not think of Lake Van or a woman named Mari-belle ...
"—and the dictator of Memphis, that magniloquent desperado, Colonel Lee, had challenged the St. Louis Rotarians to a boat race. I was prevailed upon to be the coxswain ..." (Her name was Thera; he had described it to himself once as "having the sound of spears shaken," and dared not tell her. She thought romanticism as bad as kissing in public.)
The greyhaired man leaned back, slapping his hands on his knees. "You are having your troubles with Chase and the poo-bahs of the Psychological Board, aren't you? Dictator of Memphis, ha, ha! Wait till he hears how he looks to your subconscious; he'll have you up for—"
Thera stamped her foot. "That isn't scientific, George Babcock," she said, "even if yours does happen to be the senior method of oneiromancy. You're inducing the inclusion of waking thoughts among the pictures of the visioned world, and even your wonderful Dr. Freud wouldn't—"
"All right, all right. Apologies. Where were you in this, Arthur?"
"Why in the boat, of course. It was a particularly clear, brilliant day, all blue and gold, like the one when Aphrodite must have risen from the sea, and everyone in Memphis out on the bridge. 'Beauty and chivalry,' my backer, the boss, called them, and—"
"The race was where?" asked Babcock. "On this Lake Van or the Mississippi?"
"The Mississippi, right around President Island. And in its normal semi-viscous state, filled with all the mud between Pittsburg and Pierre, South Dakota."
"Oh, dear," said Thera, and Finch thought how desirable her narrow eyebrows arched away from the tiny frown at the center of her forehead, as she fluttered the pages of a book beneath her pad. "Here it is; 'To dream of a boat on muddy water portends of disgrace.'"
Finch laughed. "Not bad, though it didn't portend of any disgrace for the St. Louis Rotarians. They ran aground and had a fight, but not before we swamped, I think because of Hennessey's cat."
"Arthur!" The girl's hand briefly and thrillingly gripped his. "The boat capsizing, I know that, it's a sign of real peril, and I think the cat is a bad portent, too. Wait—" she glanced at the index of the book, sought a page "—yes, listen; 'To dream of a cat signifies treachery of friends and disappointment in affairs of the heart.' We must do something—something radical to change our lives."