“Why does Starprobe have to have anything to do with it, Dan? Suppose it’s unrelated. A spaceship, all right, coming in from God knows where, beaming us movies of other solar systems. Not in any way connected with the fact that we sent out an interstellar probe a generation or so ago.”
“Now you’re the one who’s multiplying hypotheses,” Robinson said. “Sure, that’s what it could be, but we’ve got no reason in the world to think that that’s actually what’s going on. Whereas we do have Tom right here at a time when the pattern of dreams is definitely changing.”
“Coincidence,” Elszabet suggested. “Why should proximity to Tom have the slightest relevance?”
“Are you just playing devil’s advocate, or do you have some reason for not wanting to accept the Tom hypothesis?”
“I don’t know. Part of me says yes, yes, it has to be Tom, isn’t that obvious? And the other part says that it makes no sense. Even assuming it’s at all possible for somebody to transmit images into someone else’s mind… and where’s the substantiation for that?… don’t forget that the dreams have been going on all across the West, Dan. He can’t be everywhere at once. San Diego, Denver, San Francisco—”
“Maybe there are several sources. Several Toms roaming around out here.”
“Dan, for God’s sake—”
“Or maybe not. I don’t know. What I think is that this man is in the grip of a psychosis so powerful that he’s somehow able to broadcast it to others. A kind of psychic Typhoid Mary capable of scattering hallucinations across thousands of kilometers. And the closer you get to him, Elszabet, the more intense and the more frequent the hallucinations are, although I’ll concede that proximity may be just one determining factor, more significant in the case of low-susceptibility types like me. But what about someone like April Cranshaw, who seems to have unusually high susceptibility? She’s been snarled up in dream after dream all week, awake or asleep.”
“How about Ed Ferguson?” Elszabet asked. “So far as I know, he’s the only one on the premises outside of you who’s never shown any susceptibility at all. I’ll be more willing to buy your idea if it turns out that Ferguson’s finally getting dreams too.”
“What do you want to do, wake him up right now and ask him?”
“Tomorrow morning’s early enough, Dan.”
“Sure. Sure, that makes sense. And we ought to interview April, too. Get her into the same room with Tom and watch what happens. Whether there are any hypersensitivity effects under direct proximity. That should be easy enough to arrange.” He leaned forward, peering intently at the bare wooden floor. After a time he said, “You know, Elszabet, I thought the dream I had was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. That weird landscape—those colors—the sky, lit up in four or five colors, like the greatest sunset that’s ever been—”
“Wait until you see the rest of them,” Elszabet said. “The Sphere of Light. The Nine Suns. The Green World. Especially the Green World.”
“More beautiful even than Double Star One?”
“Frighteningly beautiful,” she said in a very quiet voice.
“Frighteningly?”
“Yes,” she said. “The dream I was having when you came knocking on the door—I was annoyed with you, yes, for interrupting it. The way Coleridge must have been annoyed, when he was dreaming “Kubla Khan” and the person from Porlock came and bothered him. Do you know that story? But in a way I’m glad you broke in on it. Those dreams are like drugs. Half the time now I’m not sure whether I’m living here and dreaming about there, or the other way around. Do you understand me, Dan? It scares me that I’m so drawn in. Any kind of fantasy that draws you so deeply, that becomes so real for you—I hardly need to say it, do I, Dan? There are times I think, coming up from one of those dreams, that I’m gradually losing my own sanity, what little sanity I may have.” She shivered and folded her arms across her chest. “Chilly in here. Summer’s just about over, I guess. Do you know what else, Dan? Now the dreams are beginning to overlap for me. Tonight I saw figures out of Nine Suns and Blue Giant mixing in a party on Green World. As though it’s all flowing together in one big lunatic movie-show. That’s new. That’s really bewildering.”
“It’s all very bewildering, Elszabet.”
She nodded. “I wish I had even the faintest idea what the hell’s going on. An epidemic of identical dreams involving hundreds of thousands of people? How? How? Broadcasts from an alien spaceship? An itinerant psychotic scattering wild visions around at random? Maybe we’re all going psycho. The last gaudy convulsion of western industrial society: we all go nuts and disappear into our own dreams.”
“Elszabet—”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
“It’s late. We should try to get some sleep. In the morning we’ll start doing some further checking up on all this, okay?”
Robinson got up and walked toward the door. Elszabet felt a sudden rush of fear—of what, she wasn’t sure. In a hoarse voice that was little more than a whisper she said, suddenly, unexpectedly, “Don’t go, Dan. Please. Will you stay here with me?”
2
The woman, this Elszabet, hadn’t slept well last night. Tom could see that right away. She was all jangled up, the fist inside her heart closed even tighter than usual. And dark rings under her eyes, and her cheeks all drawn and hollow. Too bad, he thought. He didn’t like to see anyone unhappy, especially not Elszabet. She was so kind, good, wise: why should she have to be this troubled?
“You know,” he said to her, “you remind me a little of my mother. I just now realized that.”
“Did you like your mother, Tom?”
“You always ask stuff like that, don’t you?”
“Well, if you say I remind you of her, I want to know how you felt about her. So I know how you feel about me. That’s all.”
Tom said, “Is that it? Oh. How I feel about you is very good. That you listen to me, that you pay attention, that you like me. I don’t really remember very much about my mother. Her hair was fair, I think, like yours, maybe. What I mean is that you’re the sort of person I would have liked my mother to be, if I knew what my mother was like. You know what I mean?”
She seemed to know what he meant. She smiled; and the smile softened some of the tightness that was within her. She ought to smile more often, Tom thought.
“Where did you grow up?” she asked him.
“A whole lot of places. Nevada, I think. And Utah.”
“Deseret, you mean?”
“Deseret, yeah, that’s what they call it now. And Wyoming, though of course you can’t live in a lot of Wyoming, on account of the dust that blew in from Nebraska, right? And some other places. Why?”
“Just wondering. I didn’t think you were from California.”
“No. No. I been to California before, though. Three years ago, I think. In San Diego. Stayed there five, six months. Nice and warm, San Diego. All kinds of strange people there, though. They don’t even speak English, a lot of them. Foreigners. The Africans. The South Americans. I knew a few of them there.”
“What brought you to San Diego?” she asked.
“Traveling. I got caught in the hot wind one day. You know what I mean, the hot wind? Radiation. This was when I was back living in Nevada. I can feel it, you know, when there’s radiation blowing on the wind, hard dust, makes my head tingle inside, right over here, the left side. And I felt it coming, but where can you go? That mean east wind, picking the stuff up Kansas way, maybe, blowing it and blowing it and blowing it, clear out to Nevada. No place to hide, that happens. You don’t get that stuff here, do you? This far west. But I got a dose, and I was sick for a while, my hair fell out, you know? So I thought I’d rest me in San Diego until I was better. Then I moved on. Got tired of the foreigners. I never stay the same place long. You never know, someone’s going to hurt you.”