Finch had the impossible sensation of floating between two worlds, like Mahomet's coffin. This utterly lovely and now sincerely distressed creature by his bedside— Thera, Theraclia Bow, he was bound to her by old bonds, and neither the angels in heaven above, nor life, nor death, nor any other creature should separate them ... but with the other half of his mind awake or asleep, he criticized the angle of her chin as uneven, wondered whether he had picked up her name, and levelled at himself the destructive literary criticism that he had managed to muddle into a single idea references to "Annabel Lee," St. Paul and the more goofy feminine novelists. The rational half won.
"Good God, woman," he said. "What book is that?"
"Why the guide, of course." She held it up. For a moment Finch thought the characters across the spine were Greek or Armenian; then realized the language English expressed in the phonetic alphabet, and puzzled out: ROBERT NOXON'S GYPSY DREAM BOOK. He half opened his mouth to whoop with laughter, remembered that love has to be pretty forgiving about such matters, and changed the laugh to a kind of sneezing gulp. It was not a success; the black eyes seemed to emit sparks.
"All right, laugh! I suppose you're going to tell me again that free oneirology is better than recorded, where we have all the symbols translated, and use a really scientific method that has proved out again and again, and that your dream just means that you're going to take a ride on the Mississippi with a cat who'll upset everything. Or else that cat is a Freudian symbol. I suppose I'm the cat, too! If you—"
George Babcock cleared his throat and in a voice of heavy irony remarked: "Will you two psittacae kindly leave your amorous debate long enough to allow a mere Freudian to remark that you are not only achieving a hopeless confusion between the dream and the waking images, but also badly misinterpreting the dream, even according to the dictates of your Egyptian school?"
Both of them turned toward him. "How—"
"I noted that he said very definitely that the boat upset because of Hennessey's cat. Now to me, as a Freudian oneirologist, this would suggest nothing more than a suppressed desire to violate the social taboos by indulging in the brandy of the same name at the early meal. But I have seen you J. W. Dunneities, with your theory that dreams embody portions of the future, often enough to know that Hennessey's cat probably represents no more than a woman addicted to strange waters, with whom Arthur is destined to take a river voyage. I'd keep my future husband under lock and key, Theraclia."
She stamped again, so hard that both book and pad went flying. "That's not so, and you know it!" she cried. "You know very well that we hold that to dream of liquor portends separation, and besides you're being unscientific, forming a judgment on part of the dream before hearing the rest."
"That's so." Babcock turned toward Finch a face that was almost too blandly willing to escape argument by any route that presented itself. "What happened after you got into the river, Arthur—you and Hennessey's cat? Drown?"
"Her name was Magnolia. The referees' boat came along and pulled me out, and I think the cat, too. They gave me a blanket and we went back to the dock, where Colonel Lee was waiting with some of his gangsters and the purple car with—with—"
George Babcock stood up and felt for a hat behind him, "No, no, Arthur, it won't do. Too much conversation in between; you're not relating a dream now, but a perfectly good wideawake fantasy, fiction in other words. The dictator of Memphis might have been made to fit the first time, but we know enough about the structure of dreams, don't we Thera? to be pretty sure he wouldn't show up a second time in the same form."
The dark girl smiled a trifle ruefully. "I hate to agree with a Freudian about anything, but I'm afraid George is right. You're subconsciously rearranging the details and covering the bald spots as you go along now, and it spoils the interpretation." She glanced at the watch on her wrist; Finch noticed; and then the other half of his mind noted how he had noted without surprise, that the face had double the normal number of figures.
"Look, since I've been working on this dream-project of yours, I'm supposed to have dudeeceophagy at 1325, and you're due for eophagy at 1225. What do you say we split the difference—and justify George by having a cocktail beforehand?" She touched his fingers lightly. "Oh, Arthur, we must work this out—not let anything happen to us now."
"It won't. And the cocktail idea sounds wonderful. Meet you down there—and order a stinger for me will you? With Hennessey brandy."
Eighteen:
The wardrobe to which Finch addressed himself was scanty but there was an air of worn familiar comfort about the baggy trousers and the coat in pin-stripe serge that had scraps of tobacco in one side pocket and a well-smoked pipe in the other. He decided this one would be more comfortable than either of the slightly dirty interne-like cotton jackets, and putting it on, followed his impulse to the elevator, where two or three other people in similarly comfortable informal garb nodded to him.
Thera was waiting at the bottom of the shaft; tucked her hand under his arm and steered him through the side door of a cheerful-looking combined restaurant and bar. Cigarettes were burning; there was a buzz of amiable, energetic conversation, out of which phrases floated: "... simply can't do that in vector analysis ..." "... trying to relate the proprioceptors to the pattern ..." Something at the back of Finch's memory rose and shouted with delight. If he were not back at the dig this was at least the atmosphere he had always wanted, academic but uninfested with undergraduates and the piddling details of classes, a meeting place where mind and mind disagreed happily over the details of matters whose fundamental importance was unquestioned.
"... better order our cocktails at the bar and take them to the table if we don't want to have a lot of arguments about drinking at eophagy with the dietetics department," Thera was saying. "There's Viola Renault, now."
She twiddled her fingers and steered him toward a bar that looked more like a chemist's laboratory table than a genuine fountain of joy—no mirror, square reagent bottles with labels of standard size and plain block lettering instead of polychrome pictures of flowers, fruit or Kentucky colonels, and a modest brass plate announcing that Jonathan Bohm, B. M., was the "Methymiscologist on duty."
"Two stingers," said Finch. The methymiscologist looked at them absently, measured quantities in a c.c. graduate, dumped them into a shiny metallic machine, and squeezed the starting button of a wrist stop-watch. The procedure was unusual, but the cocktail flowed pleasantly enough around the tongue as Thera, finishing her first sip, set the glass down and began:
"Listen, dear. I'm really worried. I know you're so terribly absorbed in this Shalmanesar project that you don't want to be bothered and our Egyptian branch of oneiromancy is so junior that we can't begin to have your accuracy, but we really are right quite often, like the time Peg Hewitt dreamed of a penguin and the next day met that man she married."
Finch took another sip, the cockles of his heart warming no little to the fluid. "But what do you want me to do?" he asked.
"I don't know. It's so complicated." The line of frown had set again between her brows. "I can't help but feel that whatever is threatening us has something to do with the project. If we only could have got the rest of your dream before you got too far awake to give it in the original form!"
"I could go to sleep again for you."
She patted his hand. "No. Even for me I won't have you getting in trouble by breaking the repeated experiment rule. Besides, I don't think it would help. It isn't really so much a question of more information as deciding what to do on the basis of things we know. The data are always adequate if one knows how to interpret them.