Elszabet heard no more of that story. The Sapiil envoy had moved along. He stood with his broad back to her now, framed by throbbing green light in the faceted north window of the viewing-chamber. But no matter: there were other diversions. Visitors had come from all over the galaxy to see the Double Equinox. Some wore the bodies of their native worlds; others, not as compatible with local conditions, had donned crystalline. The room buzzed with the chatter of fifty empires. Three Blades of the Imperium and a Magister, someone was saying. Can you imagine? All in the same room. And someone else said, They were Ninth Zygerone, I’m sure of it. Have you ever seen Ninth before? And a soft whisper: She is of the Twelfth Polyarchy, under the great star Ellullimiilu. Years since one of them has been here. Well, of course, it is the Double Equinox, but even so—
From somewhere far away a knocking sound, insistent, annoying. Rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat
“Elszabet?”
She stirred. Looking about, turning to one of the Gaarinar to ask something about the princess of the Polyarchy, the being from Ellullimiilu.
Rat-tat-tat Rat-tat-tat
“It’s me, Elszabet. Dan. I have to talk to you.”
Dan? Dan? She sat up, blinking, muddled, still more than half-entangled in the delicate sarabandes and minuets of the Green World folk. Who was Dan? Why was he making that sound? Didn’t he know it was the night of the Double Equinox and—
More knocking. “Are you all right? Look, if you don’t answer me I’m going to come in there and see if you’re—”
“Dan?” she said, trying to shake free of her confusions. “Dan, what’s the matter? What time is it?”
“It’s almost midnight. I didn’t mean to intrude or anything, but—”
“Okay. Just a second.” She thumbed her eyes. Almost midnight. She was in the hammock, a book turned face down across her lap. Must have dozed off, then. Dreaming. The Green World—the Double Equinox, was it? An ambassador there from the Nine Suns, and someone else from Blue Giant, and a Ninth Zygerone, whatever that was—oh, God. God.
The ragged end of the interrupted vision scraped and screeched in her brain. She put her hands to the sides of her head. The pain was almost unbearable. To have been wrenched away from all that so suddenly, so roughly—
“Elszabet?”
“I’m coming,” she said. She swung her legs over the side of the hammock, paused for a moment with her feet just touching the floor, took three deep breaths, wondered whether she’d be able to keep her balance when she stood up. She was shaking. To get drawn in so deeply, to become so enmeshed, so dependent—like a drug, she thought. Like a narcotic. “Just a second, Dan. I’m—waking up slowly, I guess—”
“I’m sorry. Your light was on. I thought—”
“It’s all right. Just a second.” She steadied herself. The last strands of green radiance were fading from her mind. She went to the door.
He loomed in the doorway, a dark figure against the darkness, his eyes very white, very wide. When he stepped inside she saw that he was glistening with perspiration, that his face was actually flushed: a distinct undertone of light pink beneath the chocolate. She hadn’t known that it was possible. She had never seen him this agitated before. Relaxed, mellow Dan. She closed the door behind him and looked about for something to offer him, a drink, a popper, anything to calm him. He shook his head. “Mind if I?” she said, as the box of poppers wandered into her hand. Another shake. She pulled one out. The tranquilizing vapor traveled from her nostrils to her cerebral cortex in half a microsecond. Ah. Ah. That’s better.
“What happened, Dan?”
He was sitting on the edge of her bed, looking like a man who had just run ten kilometers and was having some trouble catching his breath. “I feel a little foolish now, getting so worked up,” he said. “It just seemed to me that I had to run in here right away and tell you, that’s all.”
He was being exasperating, though he probably didn’t intend to be. She said, a little irritably, “Dan, what happened? Are you going to let me in on it or not?”
Sheepishly he said, “I finally had one just now. A space dream. My first.”
“Now I see why you’re so keyed up.”
“After all these months trying to analyze other people’s imagery data without really having the foggiest idea what the hell they were actually experiencing—”
“Oh, Dan. Dan, I’m so glad that it happened at last—”
“It was Double Star One. I closed my eyes, and bang! There I was, red sun, blue sun, alabaster block. And the big thing with horns standing on top of it. Two or three more just like it a little distance away, doing something like drilling a well. But the clarity of it, Elszabet! The absolute conviction that this was reality. Hell, I don’t need to tell you. But I couldn’t help being overwhelmed—all this time, wondering whether I was ever going to experience it, wondering what was wrong, why I was blocking—” He grinned. “So I had to tell someone. You. Came running over, and your light was on, and—you’re annoyed, aren’t you? That I woke you up for something so trivial?”
Gently she said, “It’s only that I was right in the middle of a dream myself. You know how it is when someone pulls you out of a dream. Any dream?”
“And it was a space dream?”
“Green World. Richer and more complex than ever before.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “I’m glad for you. I’m glad you came to tell me. And don’t call it trivial. Whatever else these dreams are, they aren’t trivial.”
“Why do you think I finally had one tonight, Elszabet?”
“I guess it was finally your turn.”
“A random process, you mean? No, no, I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?”
He was silent a moment. “I’m always a fast man with a theory. But a lot of times my theories don’t stand up so well, do they?”
“I’m not the Board of Examiners. What are you thinking, Dan?”
“Tom.”
“Tom?”
“His being here. A proximity effect. Look, have you gone over the stats for the week? The frequency of space dreams has tripled since he’s been here. You’ve experienced that yourself, haven’t you?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“And you said just now that the dream you were having, the one I busted into, was the richest, the most complex you’ve had. Right? So what do we have? The frequency of dreams has increased among dream-susceptible subjects. The intensity of dreams has heightened too, apparently. And now someone who has demonstrated one hundred percent dream-nonsusceptibility since the whole thing began finally gets one too. Something’s going on. And what’s the variable factor that’s changed here this week? Tom. A very strange, probably schizophrenic individual wanders in, someone who we all agree gives off a distinct aura, a definite vibration of psychic force—am I right, weren’t you the first to remark on it, hasn’t every conversation you’ve had with him left you feeling that he has some kind of peculiar power?”
“Absolutely,” Elszabet said. “But what are you getting at? That Tom’s the source of the space dreams?”
“It makes more sense than my last idea, that they’re some kind of broadcast from an incoming extragalactic spaceship, doesn’t it?”
“You want my honest opinion?”
“Go on.”
“The same thing occurred to me, I have to admit. That there’s some link between Tom’s presence at the Center and the way the dreams have been coming more often. But all the same, I think I’d rather believe the spaceship theory.”
“Leo Kresh punctured that one. There hasn’t been time for our Starprobe to reach its destination and generate a response from the inhabitants of—”