Case and the Dreamer Read Online Free PDF Page B

that a man’s clock and a man’s soul might give him true measurements, but thetruth need not be the same. If you are to understand Case, you must understand this.
    So it was that he knew time had passed when he awoke the second time; he knew he had been asleep. He knew he felt well and rested, and that he was hungry and thirsty. He did not know where he was, and when he tried to sit up he could not.
    “Lie still,” said the blue man. “Don’t try to move while I get those needles out of you.”
    Case’s first disobedient reflex was to move, fast and hard. When he again found he couldn’t, he saw the sense of it and relaxed. The blue man made quick, sure passes at the console, and a piece of equipment glided out of the bulkhead somewhere beyond his head, came to him, extended glittering gentle arms and tools and drew the tubes, applied cool creams, released, untied, removed the various devices which had given him back his life (and all trace that they had ever been there) while he lay wondering what language the blue man had spoken—and how it was that he could understand it.
    The equipment slid away from him and traveled to its gate in the forward bulkhead, which swallowed it. Case lay still, looking up at the blue man, whose hooded, concealed face could tell him nothing, but whose relaxed, hands-behind-back pose was one of watchful waiting. Mysterious, yes. Menacing, no.
    Case moved tentatively, found no restraints, sat up. He sat on nothing visible and, looking down, found himself apparently afloat a meter above the deck. He had a second of vertigo, which passed as the blue man, with instant understanding, waved at a control. Case was immediately supported and surrounded by the soft, firm chair which faded in around him. He sat up straight, looked at the arms, around at the back, and then at the blue man, whose calming gesture was commanding enough, to cause him to lean back—watchful of course, but no longer alarmed.
    “Lieutenant Hardin …”
    Case blinked. It was so long, even as he knew time, since he had heard that name that he had all but forgotten it was his. It was a little like being called by one’s middle name, never having used it publicly before. “I’m usually called Case,” he said. “And who are you?”
    A pause, then the blue man (faceless, but with a smile in his voice) said, “There really is no simple answer to that question. For the time being; just call me the Doctor.”
    “Doctor.” The word meant the right thing as he said it, but felt unfamiliar to his tongue and throat. “Doctor,” he said again in his own (old) language. That felt better but he could sense it meant nothing to the blue man.
    “That’s right,” said the Doctor, “you’ve learned a new language—new to you, very ancient to me.”
    The idea of hypnogogia—sleep-learning—was not unfamiliar to Case, though he had never experienced anything as—well,
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as this. Learning and using information by hypnogogia had always been an instant translation (or rapid analog) process to him: think “cat” and come out with “gleep,” or whatever the appropriate word was in the learned system. In this case, he was thinking in the new language. Yet if he wished to use his old one, he could merely by decision, and without special effort. All gain, no loss.
    Case closed his eyes. Did his new language have words for grief and anger and self-detestation? Yes, it had. Gratitude?
Saved my life …
There is this about dying anguished: that the anguish dies with you, and the pain. What then if you are revived, and with you, the anguish? This is what mattered at the moment, not a stupid “Where am I?” He was on a ship, which had picked him up. Whose ship, bound for where? That mattered too, but—not yet. Gratitude …?
    There were a million questions to ask, and nine hundred thousand of them conflicted with his conditioning: to give no information unless he must, and on certain matters, no information at