The Carnelian Cube

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."

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."