He was telling _me_, the superintendent of Dreamland, that my own
life here was only a Dream such as I fed to my own prisoners. It was
unbelievably absurd, a queasy little joke of some kind. But I didn't
deny it.
* * * * *
If it _were_ true, if I had forgotten that everything that happened was
only a Dream, and if I admitted it, the councilman would know I was
mad. _It couldn't be true._ Yet--
Hadn't I thought about it ever since I had been appointed warden and
transferred from my personnel job at the plant?
Whenever I had come upon two people talking, and it seemed as if I had
come upon those same two people talking the same talk before, hadn't I
wondered for an instant if it couldn't be a Dream, not reality at all?
Once I had experienced a Dream for five or ten minutes. I was driving
a ground car down a spidery road made into a dismal tunnel by weeping
trees, a dank, lavender maze. I had known at the time it was a Dream,
but still, as the moments passed, I became more intent on the
difficult road before me, my blocky hands on the steering wheel, thick
fingers typing out the pattern of motion on the drive buttons.
I could remember that. Maybe I couldn't remember being shoved into the
prison vault for so many years for such and such a crime.
I didn't really believe this, not then, but I couldn't afford to make
a mistake, even if it were only some sort of intemperate test--as I
was confident it was, with a sweet, throbbing fury against the man who
would employ such a jagged broadsword for prying in his bureaucratic
majesty.
"I've always thought," I said, "that it would be a good idea to show
a prisoner what the modern penal system was all about by giving him a
Dream in which he dreamed about Dreamland itself."
"Yes, indeed," Coleman concurred. Just that and no more.
I leaned intimately across my beautiful oak desk. "I've thought that
projecting officials into the Dream and letting them talk with the
prisoners might be a more effective form of investigation than mere
observation."
"I should say so," Coleman remarked, and got up.
I _had_ to get more out of him, some proof, some clue beyond the
preposterous announcement he had made.
"I'll see you tomorrow at this time then, Walker." The councilman
nodded curtly and turned to leave my office.
I held onto the sides of my desk to keep from diving over and teaching
him to change his concept of humor.
The day was starting. If I got through it, giving a good show, I would
be released from my Dream, he had said smugly.
But if this was a dream, did I want probation to reality?
* * * * *
Horbit was a twitchy little man whose business tunic was the same
rodent color as his hair. He had a pronounced tic in his left cheek. "I
have to get back," he told me with compelling earnestness.
"Mr. Horbit--Eddie--" I said, glancing at his file projected on my desk
pad, "I can't put you back into a Dream. You served your full time for
your crime. The maximum."
"But I haven't adjusted to society!"
"Eddie, I can shorten sentences, but I can't expand them beyond the
limit set by the courts."
A tear of frustration spilled out of his left eye with the next twitch.
"But Warden, sir, my psychiatrist said that I was unable to cope with
reality. Come on now, Warden, you don't want a guy who can't cope with
reality running around loose." He paused, puzzled. "Hell, I don't
know why I can't express myself like I used to."
He could express himself much better in his Dream. He had been Abraham
Lincoln in his Dream, I saw. He had lived the life right up to the
night when he was taking in _An American Cousin_ at the Ford Theater.
Horbit couldn't accept history that he had no more life to live. He
only knew that if in his delirium he could gain Dreamland once more, he
could get back to the hard realities of dealing with the problems of
Reconstruction.
"_Please_," he begged.