Free Dreamside by Graham Joyce Page A

my line,
mate."
    "Ether is a very old-fashioned method . . ."
said Burns.
    "But
we share the sentiment," said Ella. "What about carefully placed
electrodes?"
    "Mind-expanding
drugs?" suggested another, warming to the subject.
    "Too ambitious," said Ella.
    Brad snorted derisively.
    "If we're finally ready to start," said
Burns, "let's have Honora."
    "Let's have Honora!" shouted
Brad.
    "That's enough vulgarity,"
Burns retorted sharply.
    "Rear-entry!” countered Brad.
    "I
think all of the assembled company would deeply appreciate it, Mr.
Cousins," said the old professor in his most formal voice, "if you
would be so kind as to shut your consummately tedious gob."
    The session
continued in peace.
    Sleeping
alone that night, dreaming his bauble-juggling tricks, Lee got a whiff of some
of the possibilities of this dreamshaping, as it had been dubbed. He began
to feel the potency of his control and was ready to try something new, a major
progression, like conjuring another person to his dream. But suddenly, his grip
on the dream loosened, not by loss of concentration as usual, but by a sound
like hail on a tin roof. The sound woke him and he realized that someone was
rapping frantically on the window of his cell-sized room.
    "What
does it take to wake you up? Let me in, I'm soaked."
    "It's
four in the morning Ella, what are you doing?"
    "I'm
standing in the rain trying to bloody well get in!" Ella's hair was
plastered to her head, raindrops bubbled on a face red from running, blue from
cold. She wore a long raincoat, collar turned up and
clutched at her throat. "Jesus! Let me in!"
    "Yes
right. I'll come round and open the door."
    "Just
push the bloody window up."
    Ella
half-climbed half-fell through the opened window, bringing with her fresh
grass cuttings pasted to her boots and the smell of spring rain. As she kicked
off the boots Lee could see that she was wearing nothing beneath her coat but
her knickers, which she threw off before leaping, shivering and complaining,
into his single bed. Lee climbed in with her.
    “You're as
cold as the grave, Ella."
    "Never
mind that," teeth chattering, pressing herself to
him, "it happened and I ran over to tell you."
    "What
happened? Ella, you ran two miles practically naked in the pouring rain in the
middle of the night, what for?"
    "Can't
you guess?"
    "No."
    " Guess! "
    "You're
not—?"
    Ella
thought. "Christ no, I'm not pregnant; I wouldn't tell you if I
was!" Lee felt a thin shadow of disappointment. "I came to tell you
about the dream I had. I mean the lucid dream, it happened, I made it
happen."
    "I
don't understand."
    "I made
it happen. By myself. I did just what you described,
with the hands, I made objects appear in my hands in the dream, and then I made
them go away again."
    "What?"
    "What, what?" Ella mimicked heavily.
    "But what about all the other times." Lee sat up. "All your other
lucid dreams. All that stuff in your dreamwork diary. All those lurid
accounts you gave in the seminars."
    "No,"
pinching his nipple between her teeth, "this was the real thing!"
    "The real thing? What was the other stuff then?"
    "It was . . . not the real
thing."
    "Wait a second. You mean you made it up?"
    "Sort of."
    "What
do you mean sort of? You don't sort of make up things like that! You mean it
was all lies. Jesus! All your stories of lucid dreams were all a pack of
lies."
    "Not exactly lies. More kind of half-lucid dreams."
    "Day dreams more like! It was all bullshit!"
    "Don't get so
fucking superior—you've only just started lucid dreaming yourself, remember!
You strung people along at the beginning."
    "But not with
Technicolor big-budget cast-of-thousands pornographic epics like yours! Christ
I believed every word; so did all the others. I'm going to enjoy telling them.
I'll enjoy telling Brad!"
    "You
won't say anything. The important thing is that it really happened. I made it
happen."
    "I'm
going to tell them all! Miss Lucid Dreamer of the Year! I can't wait to see
their faces!"
    "You