Again, Dangerous Visions Part 35

"Mr. Rengs, well-rested people don't hit each other, asleep or awake. If we can get the insomniacs dozing off again, and improve the repose of the t.o.s.s.e.rs and turners, you see how that ushers in a new epoch. The next great slogan may be, Sleepers of the world, unite! Conceivably that's the only way men can ever forge the true communitas, in sleep. If we can just get them to sleeping soundly again, and that's not a reference to snoring"

This loonily Utopian dissertation on the politics of sleep was interrupted by the arrival of a bouncy, bubbly, extravagantly larded girl, the lab's runner-up sleeper, the one contender to Ivar's t.i.tle. Victoria Paylow, of course. Carrying her guitar. She stretched outsize blue eyes at me in the very act of winking broadly. I was disturbed by this capacity of hers to enlarge her optic diameters in the process of a signifying contraction. How she managed to convey openness, readiness, a l.u.s.ty receptivity, with a very literal narrowness of outlook, I don't know. It seemed a trick, in a totally unexpected area, for blending fluids and bones.

She was, in fact, wearing a miniskirt that had the proportions of an iota, even a soupcon. It did, in fact, invite thoughts of scissoring. Ivar was, in fact, studying it in a scissory silence.

"Hi, Mr. Rengs," she said, her two-way-stretch voice as elastic as her eyes. I considered the emotional gamut of a female who could make dock-walloper threats to rip out tongues one minute, utter a chirpy Future Farmers hi the next. "You come down here to see some world-champ sleeping?"

"I like to observe people who are outstanding in any field," I said.

"We don't do it standing," she said. "Doing it on your feet is for amateurs."

"If you keep on standing around, Mr. Rengs will question your professional standing," Wolands said. "Hop to it, kids."

Quentin and Victoria waved to me and slipped out a door. Very soon they reappeared in two of the vacant cubicles, adjoining ones, now dressed in pajamas. In a businesslike, practiced way they arranged themselves in their respective beds and lay still while lab a.s.sistants attached wires to all parts of their bodies, including their heads. They seemed unaware of each other and us. Wolands explained that they were in audio-visual isolation: blank wall between them, the windows we looked through were one-way gla.s.s. Soon they were alone, eyes closed. Soon after, they were asleep, as Wolands thought he proved by calling my attention to the movements of dials, gauges, meters, and recording styluses.

"You're going to see some very special sleeping here today," Wolands said. "Ivar and Vicki have real gifts for this. More than they know. Interlocking gifts."

I recalled that Quentin had a good deal of Irish blood in him. Vicki had a colleen sauciness about her. I refrained from saying that this might be the lock of the Irish.

"Do you appreciate the full significance of what's going on here, Mr. Rengs?"

"Something that'll wreck the music world? Ivar writes lyrics, you know. I can't believe he writes what he does in a waking state. I a.s.sume he creates them when he's asleep."

"It goes far beyond lyrics. Have you heard talk about our recent discovery, REM sleep?"

"You've discovered a new kind of sleep?"

"No, brought to light a very, very old type. REM means Rapid Eye Movement, Mr. Rengs. Every 90 minutes or so our subjects show signs of intense neural-cortical activity. Their alpha brainwaves energize and their eyes begin to move fast, as though watching something. They are watching something. A dream, which accounts for the sudden jump in cerebral energies. The typical sleep pattern is to dream every 90 minutes, Mr. Rengs, in other words, to show high alpha-wave and REM activity every 90 minutes. Part of our job here is to wake certain subjects after each REM episode and get them to write down as much of their dream as they remember. We're learning revolutionary things about dreams. That they take place several times a night. That they release clamoring unused energies in the brain which, unless drained off during the alpha-REM phases, would in short order make us psychotic."

"I don't follow this. If Ivar's a champion sleeper, that means he has a lot of REM episodes a night. If these are supposed to drain off potentially psychotic energies, why does he go on writing psychotic lyrics?"

"He may write fewer of them than you think, than he thinks. Can you keep a secret, Mr. Rengs?"

"As well as I can keep a distance, I'm a champion distance keeper. My one failure is with Ivar."

"It's absolutely essential that Ivar and Vicki have no inkling of this. You mustn't breathe a word of it, it could destroy the stupendous thing that goes on between them. Stupendous in the sense that it comes out of their torpid states, stupendous also in that it leaves us scientists stupefied. Mouths hanging open. Come with me, please."

He led me to an office off the main room, whose door he unlocked with three different keys. He proceeded to some filing cabinets which had to be opened with multiple keys, too. He brought out two thick dossiers, one with Ivar's name on it, the other with Vicki's. He showed me the contents of both dossiers, stacks of papers on which the dreams of both subjects were typed, each item dated. Each dream record had stapled to it the related alpha-wave, pulse, respiratory, skin-electricity, and other readings.

"I can best make my point by asking you to match a few of these records, Mr. Rengs. Take Ivar's dream sheet for any given day and compare it with Vicki's for the same day. Compare, first of all, the times recorded for the REM episodes."

I took the top sheet from each collection, dated two days before. Vicki's first dream was timed as beginning at 3:47. Quentin's first one got under way at 3:49. Vickie's second one started at 5:31, Quentin's at 5:32,. I glanced at some other sheets from both piles. The correspondences seemed to be of the same order.

"They dream together?" I said.

"Not quite," Wolands said, eyes in a high glint. "You will note that there's always a gap of two, three, or four minutes between the starting times. They're close, but not neck and neck, especially at the beginning."

"Vicki always starts before Ivar?"

"Now we're getting somewhere, Mr. Rengs! Yes, the sequence is invariable, Vicki takes the lead, Ivar very soon falls in! The sensational point is that, each and every time, day in and day out, Vicki's alpha-REM burst triggers triggers Ivar's! Isn't it enough to make your head swim!" Ivar's! Isn't it enough to make your head swim!"

The swimming in that portion of my anatomy was more localized than that. Each of my own eyes was trying to do the Australian crawl away from the other.

"Then their alpha-REM patterns are related as to chronological form. Is there any indication that there's a give-and-take in content, too?"

"Spoken like a true scientist, Mr. Rengs! I'm proud of you! Yes, indeed, that's the hammerblow question! And as for the answer, it's a piledriver! I mean, yes, absolutely, quite so, staggeringly so, in each and every case Vicki's dream sets off Ivar's, then colors and seeps through all its content! The psychic traffic so far has been all one-way, from Vicki to Ivar, never the reverse! It's her unconscious dictating to his all the way, much as he tries to fight it off! In this give-and-take Vicki gives and Ivar takes, takes, takes! Just read a few of the dreams for the same time slots and see for yourself!"

I picked a page from Vicki's pile at random. It was dated sometime in March:

Mound of human bones, melting, making puddles. Some rock musicians on it, rehearsing. Sitar player resembles Ivar, hair like overcooked linguini. I say fingers too stiff, you need more liquid sound. He says, show me how. I pull sounding board off sitar. Sit, put hollow sitar between legs. Open 13th Century illuminated book, manual on witches' concoctions. Read recipe for brew to dissolve bones: to contents of whale's small intestine add 7 owls' beaks, 5 hyenas' tear ducts, 13 bats' eyes, pinch of pulverized tarantula legs, sprinkle of finely ground rhino spleen, etc. Mix in ingredients, stirring slowly. Drone proper incantation : if h.e.l.l's a boil, a boil, a boil, what's the temperature of the s.h.i.+ny One's Rotunda, I wunda, zero or unda? Brew begins to steam. Sitarist says, I make hard-rock sound for the people, you're putting me on. I say, no, I'm going to put you in. To show him how it works, I take human s.h.i.+nbone from pile, drop it in brew, bone dissolves with a hiss. I say, that's the sound you should make, very soft rock. He hides his hands, screaming, get out, you don't make soup out of my knuckles, b.i.t.c.h of the Styxian kennels. I say, if you know where I live, why're you always trying to get my address and phone number? I add, what could you do if you came calling anyway, you with your already mostly soft bones? He says, never mind the insults, sticks and stones may break, but. I say, drop around to my place, buddy, I dare you, the Styx that runs through my house'll break all your bones, soften them up, anyway. I grab his arm and shove it into the brew, up to the armpit. It dissolves with a hiss. He stands there with one arm gone, socket still steaming, says, now how do you expect me to play that sitar? I say, try your toes, if they're still hard enough, but why make hard sounds when soft becomes you more...

I located Quentin's corresponding dream. It had started to register less than two minutes after Vicki's got under way:

House of Gnocchi. Having dinner with Vicki. Steaming bowl of stracciatella (spinach and egg drops) in front of her. She asks if I wouldn't like her to dip my knuckles in her soup to make them soft like the rest of my bones. I tell her to stop talking crazy. She says if I don't want her to fix my knuckles up why take her to a place like House of Gnocchi, which means knuckles, gnocchi as a matter of fact are soft farinaceous knuckles. She stirs her steaming soup with a spoon. This makes me hide my hands behind my back. She says my bones are brittle from trying to be so hard and would feel better with some lubrication, get soft, their natural state. I ask why when subject of bones comes up she always puts in something about fluids. She says my bones have tendency to go watery by themselves, don't need her help. She says she'll ill.u.s.trate. She drops a breadstick in her steaming stracciatella, it goes soggy and begins to shred. I yell at her, bread-sticks and breadstones can't break my bones, and she can keep her G.o.dd.a.m.ned address and phone number. As I'm about to rap her with my knuckles, idea for a lyric jumps into my head. Along these lines: If h.e.l.l's hot, what's the temperature of heaven, seven? She says, how long you think you'd last at my house, anyway? I say, there's nothing so threatening in a kennel but fleas. She says, how about in a House of Nyooki, Nyooki, Nyooki? I quick shove my hands behind my back again...

I put my own hands behind my back. Their palms were sweating in the manner certain novelists call profuse. My thoughts spiraled down to a crucial date, April 22. I was not sure I wanted to, but I began to search through the records for the dreams of that day. I found them:

Vicki:

Cauldron between legs. I'm enormous, cauldron's enormous. Mixing a black, viscous brew, enormous bones swimming in it. Fumes smell like tar. Singing usual incantation in ba.s.so profundo: Fire roll down from the mountaing, the mountaing, the mountaing, cook up my good brew, b.u.m up his house, burn up his goods, soften up his bones, cook up my melting brew. Ivar appears. He's tiny. Looks up, says, why you sing about mountaings? I say, because I'm a Kentucky hillwoman, cooking up my home remedies. He says, don't you know any other songs, I don't like that song. I sing something else from my repertoire: If on Deliverance Day, when comes the Saver, to bring us Up There where They got the High Flavor, his name's Ho Chi Minh, will we dig in? He says, what you cooking there? I say, stuff to keep your knuckles from cracking. He says, does this remedy have a name? I say, sure, we call it La Brea Arm Pits. He says, that stuff won't melt any bones, look at all those bones in there. I pull some out, mastodon thighs, saber-tooth tiger fangs. I say, you a mastodon or saber-tooth, that your bones won't melt down? He says, I got your address and phone number from another source, you witch. I say, don't you call or come around, with your easy melted bones. He says, that won't work, keeping that big mess of black threatening remedy between your legs, it won't remedy me. I begin to sing another song: one'll con off all your money, another'll meddle away any wife you got, cause where you should be ossicle you are or will be all lappy treacle. To show him his problem, I crack my knuckles, they sound like pistol shots, frighten me. He begs me to stop. I crack harder. He gives a terrible cry and dives head first into the steaming tar...

Day and date with this, Quentin:

Going up steps to Vicki's place. Not invited, she's refused me the address, but I wheedled it out of our sitar player who sells her pots and pans and is operative for CIA. Pick the lock, go in. She's cooking in the kitchen. I ask what she's making. She says, Shrimps Remedie, old Alsatian delicacy. I ask why so many bones in this stew if it's a shrimp dish. She says those are just Master Don's knuckles for flavor, because she likes high flavor, that's the saver, only she p.r.o.nounces it saber, and says it's toothsome. I say, Don who? She says, Don Juan, that's spelled, W, A, N, Don Wan. She says maybe you haven't heard but Don Wan always sucked his knuckles. Rest is very vague. Recall just bits and pieces. She sings a lot. One song has the line, Ho, G-Men. Another is some kind of folk number with the repeated stanza, Mah Own Tang. She beats out time on her knuckles and asks if I wouldn't like to have my shrimp remedied. I say, sure, and to get away from that terrible drumming from her knuckles I jump into the big bowl of delicious-smelling steamy chocolate between her legs with the crisped nuts floating in it. Going down for third time I hear her singing, Ah-men, Ah-men, I try to yell to her that we're known as Omen, but it's too late, only make bubbles in this chocolate that smells and tastes like tar. I feel my right arm coming off. I tell myself, I'm drowning in Mah Own Armpit and tar is Mah Own Tang...

I put the typewritten sheets down. I had to, they were getting soaked through in my hand. I said, "I see. It's some kind of devilish ESP."

"We're not prepared to give it a name," Dr. Wolands said, "but we give it our fullest attention."

"Her unconscious seeps, you said? Steamrollers. Rips to shreds."

"All we know is, when they're lying in adjoining rooms, fast asleep, there's some terrifying traffic through that wall."

"Missile launchers and 105's. You were saying they don't provoke when they're asleep?"

"Not in a way that breaks bones, Mr. Rengs."

"Bones don't get broken, no. But melted, all over the place."

"They harden again, by the time they're needed. As they don't in, say, Vietnam-"

Wild sounds from the central room. Quentin's voice bellowing something. Vicki screeching a counterpoint. A crash, a splintering, more yells. Someone shouting for Dr. Wolands, Dr. Wolands.

Wolands looked disoriented. Loud noises were not the order of the day in this citadel of sleep. Again, the bellows, the shrillings. Wolands hurried out, with me close behind.

The commotion was coming from Vicki's sleep chamber. It had an amplified, metallic quality because it was reaching us in the main room through the lab's sound system.

Quentin had gone amok. He had apparently broken out of his own cubicle and into Vicki's. He had smashed Vicki's guitar over Vicki's head, it was resting now on her shoulders with her head poking up from the ruins of the soundbox. He had two clumps of her long reddish hair in his hands and was pulling demonically at them, twisting her head from side to side. His eyes were bugged out in a mammoth raging. His gaped mouth appeared to be on the verge of producing foam.

He thundered, "Liar, am I! A liar, huh! I'll show you, you b.i.t.c.h!"

She was trying to push him away, yelling back, "Cut that out! Quit it, now, you ultimate maniac!"

There were several lab a.s.sistants in the cubicle, trying to take hold of Quentin. He kept kicking and shouldering them away, with the strength of ten, of demons.

"Show who writes my words, you scabby she-hound!" Quentin boomed terribly, in day-of-reckoning tones. "Going to write the whole oration for your funeral, right now, on your sc.u.mmy skull, in my own handwriting, every word, you refugee from the verminest kennels! Had just about all I'm going to take from you, understand! Insults and more insults till I'm up to here! They're gonna break your bones, not mine, reject of the garbage hounds!"

She screeched, clawed at his hands. He kicked more attendants away.

"What is it, what's this insanity?" Wolands spat at the nurse hovering over the electroencephalograph drums.

"I don't know! It was like an explosion!" the nurse sputtered, palms tight to her cheeks. "They both had REM episodes, close together as usual! We woke them when the energy levels went down, as usual! They went to their desks, as they always do, they began to type, then Ivar began making faces, he seemed to be getting angrier and angrier as he got more awake, then all of a sudden he jumped up shouting vile words, and rushed into the corridor, and broke into Vicki's room carrying her guitar, he must have picked it up in the dressing room, and before anybody could stop him-terrible, horrible!"

Wolands looked grim. "I half saw it coming," he said. "I sensed it, to a degree. I just didn't know it would be this soon, and preferred to believe-"

"Make wisecracks about knuckles crack!" Quentin roared. "Go ahead! Here's more crack for you, you apprentice b.i.t.c.h!" He whacked his hand, knuckles leading, across her left cheek, then her right, at the same time scattering more attendants.

"You're a great big s.h.i.+pment of stenchy suet and that's why you've got to go hitting your betters!" Vicki ground out at him, shutting her eyes tight against the slaps, struggling to pull free.

"Here's some suet'll knock your teeth out!" Quentin blasted, cracking her in the mouth. "Want to see how your teeth crack? Listen!" Crack, he went. 'Want some teeth melted down? How's this for melt!" Crack, again.

"We can't just stand here, it's not right!" the nurse groaned.

"No, you prepare a hypo, strongest tranquilizer, strongest dose," Wolands said. "Get it ready and stand by. We'll stop this one way or another."

He rushed into the corridor, me close behind. We eased our way into Vicki's crowded cubicle. Quentin was practically pulling poor Vicki off; the floor by those ropes of hair, those two red asps, trumpeting, "Where're ; your s.h.i.+tty magic brews now, huh! Put some on your scalp that'll keep it from peeling off, that's an invitation, you great boiler of bones!"

"All your stiff's in your fingers, that's why the knuckles crack, let's see you do something with a girl with something besides the big noise fingers!" Vicki splatted back at him.

Wolands signaled to the a.s.sistants to close in on Quentin again, with us reinforcing their flanks. They made a concerted grab for him, as Wolands ; and I tore his hands away from Vicki and pinned them to his sides. He writhed, he did the exercises of the serpent. We had to stay well behind him to avoid his snapping teeth.

"Now, Ivar, you're getting worked up over nothing," Wolands said at his most syrupy. "You've simply misinterpreted, lad."

"Easy, friend," I said into Quentin's ear. "You said the hourly rates are good here, keep them happy."

"You don't know the extent of their diabolism, Gordon," Quentin panted. "They're giving me the worst kind of injections, in the head, while I sleep."

"We'll give you the best injection, lad, you'll sleep the sleep of the righteous," Wolands said, helping to steer Quentin out to the corridor and back into his own cubicle.

We got the squirmy boy down on the bed and held him down. The nurse was immediately there, giving him the hypo while we all cooperated in keeping his arm still.

"Now I know what's going on here," Quentin puffed into my face. "They're trying to see how many pieces they can break me into, that's the project. Somnial suggestion, Gordon, I've read about it. The minute I'm asleep they start piping that she-devil's voice into my ear, with all kinds of cackling witch suggestions, to make me dream their programmed dreams, and study how far they can go programming my dreams before I break down into a howling maniac entirely, somnial input, I had inklings of it before but I closed it out of my head but today it exploded in my head and I got their number, I already had her number, didn't have to wait for her to give it, got it elsewhere, would of gone there and showed how much stiff but pa.s.sed out, today got theirs, whole scheming bunch..."

His voice was trailing off. Whatever the nurse had pumped into him, it was powerful.

"They couldn't pipe her voice or anybody's in your ear," I said into his ear. "Feel around, there's just no apparatus for it under the pillow or anywhere. Besides, I was watching when you went to sleep, I didn't see any signs of any such piping."

"No sense looking for apparatus," Quentin said sleepily. "Got it hidden well. Inside tubes of bedstead behind walls somewhere. Pipe her h.e.l.lcat's poisons up through pillow into my head so I dream against myself and they wait to see how long before I fall apart start raving. Put stop to this once for all. Gordon. Enough's enough."

His voice faded altogether and he was asleep. He began to snore immediately in soundest sleep.

"What's got into him?" I said to Wolands. "Too much Vicki? He got too big a dose of her infiltrations and began to sense a plot?"

Wolands' face was serious. He pulled the sheet of paper from Quentin's typewriter and studied it, frowning.

"I've got an idea what happened, got to go to Vicki's room and check it out," he said. "Would you mind waiting for me in the file office, Mr. Rengs? I left the door open. Wait there, I'll bring along the evidence in a moment."

In a matter of minutes Wolands joined me, carrying the dream records typed by the tandem sleepers. He placed them on the desk, side by side, for me to examine.