The Best of Robert Bloch (22 page)

"At ten thousand dollars a session!" Dr. Prager exploded.

"Now, now," Professor Laroc chided. "That sounds like professional jealousy, sir! And I may as well remind you that a permanent crossover requires a fee of fifty thousand. Not that I need the money, you understand. It's merely that such a fee helps to establish me as an authority. It brings about the necessary transference relationship between my clients and myself, to borrow from your own terminology. The effect is purely psychological."

Dr. Prager had heard enough. This, he decided, was definitely the time to call a halt. Even Eve Eden in her present disturbed state should be able to comprehend the utter idiocy of this man's preposterous claims.

He faced the elderly charlatan with a disarming smile. "Let me get this straight," he began quietly. "Am I to understand that you are actually selling dreams?"

"Let us say, rather, that I sell experiences. And the experiences are every bit as real as anything you know."

"Don't quibble over words." Dr. Prager was annoyed. "You come in and hypnotize patients. During their sleep you suggest they enter a dream world. And then—"

"If you don't mind, let us quibble a bit over words, please," Professor Laroc said. "You're a psychiatrist. Very well, as a psychiatrist, please tell me one thing. Just what
is
a dream?"

"Why, that's very simple," Dr. Prager answered. "According to Freud, the dream phenomenon can be described as—"

"I didn't ask for a description, Doctor. Nor for Freud's opinion. I asked for an exact definition of the dream state, as you call it. I want to know the etiology and epistemology of dreams. And while you're at it, how about a definition of 'the hypnotic state' and of 'sleep'? And what is 'suggestion'? After you've given me precise scientific definitions of these phenomena, as you love to call them, perhaps you can go on and explain to me the nature of 'reality' and the exact meaning of the term 'imagination.' "

"But these are only figures of speech," Dr. Prager objected. "I'll be honest with you. Perhaps we can't accurately describe a dream. But we can observe it. It's like electricity: nobody knows what it
is
, but it's a measurable force which can be directed and controlled, subject to certain natural laws."

"Exactly," Professor Laroc said. "That's just what I would have said myself. And dreams are indeed like electrical force. Indeed, the human brain gives off electrical charges, and all life—matter—energy—enters into an electrical relationship. But this relationship has never been studied. Only the physical manifestations of electricity have been studied and harnessed, not the psychic. At least, not until Dodgson stumbled on certain basic mathematical principles, which he imparted to me. I developed them, found a practical use. The dream, my dear doctor, is merely an electrically charged dimension given a reality of its own beyond our own space-time continuum. The individual dream is weak. Set it down on paper, as some dreams have been set down, share it with others, and watch the charge build up. The combined electrical properties tend to create a
permanent
plane—a dream dimension, if you please."

"I don't please," answered Dr. Prager.

"That's because you're not receptive," Professor Laroc observed smugly. "Yours is a negative charge rather than a positive one. Dodgson—Lewis Carroll—was positive. So was Lovecraft and Poe and Edward Lucas White and a handful of others. Their dreams live. Other positive charges can live in them, granted the proper method of entry. It's not magic. There's nothing supernatural about it at all, unless you consider mathematics as magic. Dodgson did. He was a professor of mathematics, remember. And so was I. I took his principles and extended them, created a practical methodology. Now I can enter dream worlds at will, cause others to enter. It's not hypnosis as you understand it. A few words of non-Euclidean formula will be sufficient—"

"I've heard enough," Dr. Prager broke in. "Much as I hate to employ the phrase, this is sheer lunacy."

The professor shrugged. "Call it what you wish," he said. "You psychiatrists are good at pinning labels on things. But Miss Eden here has had sufficient proof through her own experience. Isn't that so?"

Eve Eden nodded, then broke her silence. "I believe you," she said. "Even if Doc here thinks we're both batty. And I'm willing to give you the fifty grand for a permanent trip."

Dr. Prager grabbed for his goatee. He was clutching at straws now. "But you can't," he cried. "This doesn't make sense."

"Maybe not your kind of sense," Eve answered. "But that's just the trouble. You don't seem to understand there's more than
one
kind. That crazy dream I had, the one you say Lewis Carroll had first and wrote up into a book—it makes sense to you if you really
live
it. More sense than Hollywood, than this. More sense than a little kid named Wilma Kozmowski growing up to live in a half-million-dollar palace and trying to kill herself because she can't be a little kid anymore and never had a chance to be one when she was small. The professor here, he understands. He knows everybody has a right to dream. For the first time in my life I know what it is to be happy."

"That's right," Professor Laroc added. "I recognized her as a kindred spirit. I saw the child beneath, the child of the pure unclouded brow, as Lewis Carroll put it. She deserved this dream."

"Don't try and stop me," Eve cut in. "You can't, you know. You'll never drag me back to your world, and you've got no reason to try—except that you like the idea of making a steady living off me. And so does Dennis, with his lousy ten per cent, and so does the studio with its big profits. I never met anyone who really liked me as a person except Professor Laroc here. He's the only one who ever gave me anything worth having. The dream. So quit trying to argue me into it, Doc. I'm not going to be Eve anymore or Wilma either. I'm going to be Alice."

Dr. Prager scowled, then smiled. What was the matter with him? Why was he bothering to argue like this? After all, it was so unnecessary. Let the poor child write out a check for fifty thousand dollars—payment could always be stopped. Just as this charlatan could be stopped if he actually attempted hypnosis. There were laws and regulations. Really, Dr. Prager reminded himself, he was behaving like a child himself: taking part in this silly argument just as if there actually was something to it besides nonsense words.

What was really at stake, he realized, was professional pride. To think that this old mountebank could actually carry more authority with Eve Eden than he did himself!

And what was the imposter saying now, with that sickening, condescending smile on his face?

"I'm sorry you cannot subscribe to my theories, Doctor. But at least I am grateful for one thing, and that is that you didn't see fit to put them to the test."

"Test? What do you mean?"

Professor Laroc pointed his finger at the little bottle labeled "Drink Me" which now rested on the table before him. "I'm happy you merely analyzed the contents of that vial without attempting to drink them."

"But it's nothing but water."

"Perhaps. What you forget is that water may have very different properties in other worlds. And this water came from the world of Alice."

"You planted that," Dr. Prager snapped. "Don't deny it."

"I do deny it. Miss Eden knows the truth."

"Oh, does she?" Dr. Prager suddenly found his solution. He raised the bottle, turning to Eve with a commanding gesture. "Listen to me now. Professor Laroc claims, and you believe, that this liquid was somehow transported from the dream world of
Alice in Wonderland
. If that is the case, then a drink out of this bottle would cause me either to grow or to shrink. Correct?"

"Yes," Eve murmured.

"Now wait—" the professor began, but Dr. Prager shook his head impatiently.

"Let me finish," he insisted. "All right. By the same token, if I took a drink from this bottle and nothing happened, wouldn't it prove that the dream-world story is a fake?"

"Yes, but—"

"No 'buts.' I'm asking you a direct question. Would it or wouldn't it?"

"Y-yes. I guess so. Yes."

"Very well, then." Dramatically, Dr. Prager uncorked the little bottle and raised it to his lips. "Watch me," he said.

Professor Laroc stepped forward. "Please!" he shouted. "I implore you—don't—"

He made a grab for the bottle, but he was too late.

Dr. Prager downed the half ounce of colorless fluid.

Mickey Dennis waited and waited until he couldn't stand it any longer. There hadn't been any loud sounds from upstairs at all, and this only made it worse.

Finally he got the old urge so bad he just had to go on up there and see for himself what was going on.

As he walked down the hall he could hear them talking inside the bedroom. At least he recognized Professor Laroc's voice. He was saying something about, "There, there, I know it's quite a shock. Perhaps you'd feel better if you didn't wait—do you want to go now?"

That didn't make too much sense to Mickey, and neither did Eve's reply. She said, "Yes, but don't I have to go to sleep first?"

And then the professor answered, "No, as I explained to him, it's just a question of the proper formulae. If I recite them we can go together. Er—you might bring your checkbook along."

Eve seemed to be giggling. "You too?" she asked.

"Yes. I've always loved this dream, my dear. It's a sequel to the first one, as you'll discover. Now if you'll just face the mirror with me—"

And then the professor mumbled something in a very low voice, and Mickey bent down with his head close to the door but he couldn't quite catch it. Instead his shoulder pushed the door open.

The bedroom was empty.

That's right, empty.

But he could swear he heard voices just a second ago. What had the professor said? Something about facing the mirror?

Mickey looked in the mirror, the big mirror above the mantelpiece.

For a moment he got a screwy idea he could see the professor and Eve Eden reflected in the glass, with the light shining every which way and Eve somehow looking like a little kid with long golden curls. But that was crazy, of course.

Then the dressed-up white rabbit came hopping out from behind the bed and began to scamper around the floor.

Mickey didn't know how to explain that one either. There was going to be a lot he couldn't explain. He'd never find out where Eve and the professor had gone, because he'd never read
Through the Looking-Glass
. And he'd never understand where Doc went, for that matter.

The rabbit began to scamper around the pile of clothing on the floor. Mickey recognized Doc's coat and trousers and shirt and necktie, but this didn't tell him anything either.

Then he stooped and picked up the little bottle lying next to the empty clothes. He stared at the label reading "Drink Me."

Right now he could use a drink, Mickey decided, but this bottle was empty.

Maybe it was just as well. . . .

I
T WAS CLOSE
to midnight when they gathered at the crater. Night raised its head across the pitted plains, and the twin moons opened their green eyes to stare down into the crater's depths.

The pit was deep and dark. Forbes crouched on the rim with his companions, and his mind was full of
d
's.
Deep, dark, dank, dismal, dolorous.
Yes, he thesaurized, and also
dreary, deathly, damned
, and
doomed
. To say nothing of
diabolical
.

Right now, crouching at the crater's edge, he mentally reviewed the work of Shakespeare, William.
Macbeth
was what he had in mind.
Macbeth
on the blasted heath. If this wasn't a blasted heath, then all his concepts were awry. A blasted heath at midnight, with two moons instead of one.

Just behind him in the darkness, the three technicians checked the controls of the recorder units. Visio and audio extended full range to cover a 360° scan on a half-mile sweep, with a 20-20000 frequency. Fourteen lenses played upon the heath, the crater rim, and the crater depths.

"Picking up anything yet?" Forbes whispered.

"Not yet. But if anything happens—" The technician's tone implied, for himself and his two companions, that nothing was expected to happen. They couldn't quite understand what they were doing on a blasted heath at midnight, setting up their sensitive equipment to record emptiness and silence.

Forbes couldn't blame them. This was supposed to be just a routine field trip.

"You'll check Pyris," the director had told him. "Cartography did a run on it, and Doyle will give you the details. The atmosphere, I understand, is positively Earth-like, and it's a Class I planet—one of the anthropomorphic cultures. Doyle places it at about 900 spans behind us, and there are even language similarities. We'll want audio and visio records, of course, and an element analysis. Just a preliminary survey, in case we find mineralogical possibilities worth exploiting. Strictly a routine checkup."

And Doyle hadn't added much more. "Outside of the craters and vegetation you'd think you were on Earth—a thousand spans ago, of course. The natives wear clothes, they have a primitive government, a religious pattern complete with totem and taboo—everything. Better get a hypnolearn on the language."

Forbes took the hypnolearn, and that started him wondering. The language wasn't English, but there were odd similarities. And odd references—some of them so odd that Forbes spent the last week before departure checking Central Data files. He had covered all the available filmscannings from 1500 to 1700 Oldstyle.

The comparison between life on Pyris and life on Earth in post-feudal times proved surprisingly apt after Forbes landed. He had paid a formal call upon the Kal, or ruler, and sued for permission to "visit" the planet. Gifts and courtesies had been exchanged, and then Forbes had taken his technical crew into the desert to study life in the villages. A small force remained aboard the ship, which had landed close to the Kal's fortress.