Free The World and Other Places by Jeanette Winterson Page B

fine code when he toppled forward, face down into the grass. I turned him over and felt his pulse. Now I would be charged with murder.
    He was not dead. He was snoring.
    Carefully, I put his hat over his eyes and made a little palisade around him out of the plastic spokes and fluttery tape the keepers carry to cordon off areas of maximum security, like the rubber duck pond.
    As I went down the knoll I looked back. There was a faint blue gas settling at his head. I’d heard of this but I’d never seen it. It’s what happens when the dreams return.
    Which is what I am. A dreamer. I should write that with a capital, it has a title, it exists. Someone has to do it. I don’t know how many of us there are. My ID card says Civil Servant and I try to dream as politely as possible.
    I dream because you don’t. Dreaming is my job and my dreams are tele-electronically recorded and transmitted at Dream-points around the City.
    When the no-sleep lifestyle was pioneered, it was soon discovered that people functioned better if they had a dream-boost. A pad on the heart and the wrist can electronically lull the body into a sleep state in seconds, but it can’t dream. I can, and if you’d like to try me, last night’s will be on the headset in about an hour.
    ‘You’re working as a Dreamer?’
    ‘Yes, and you’re ringing me in the middle of the night.’
    ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I had no idea you were official.’
    ‘Shall I send you a free disc?’
    ‘Oh I’d love that. Mark it private will you?’
    She put down the phone. Tough girls don’t dream.
    Mark it private. The same could be said of the Sleep Bar I go to at the weekends. It’s called Morpheus’s Cave. It’s dark, silent, racked with beds and open arms. I was hoping to find a girlfriend there, groping round with a torch, looking for a nice face. The trouble is, it’s difficult to know how we’d get on when she is awake.
    Tonight I’m trying the Sleeping Beauty. It caters for a younger crowd who just want to drop off for an hour if they’re passing. Maybe I’ll find someone to talk to. Talking and dreaming. Dreaming and talking. All these clocks and no time.
    In my city of dreams the roads lead nowhere; that is, they lead off the edge of the world into infinite space. Under my feet the road quickens, like a moving track at the airport. It is the road itself that carries me forward, until there is nothing under my feet but air. Where to now, without tarmac and map? What direction do I take now that all directions can be taken?
    I dream I am in a square with tall houses on three sides. On the fourth side, the house fronts are a facade, and behind them are the pipes and vents and chambers of the underground railway.
    I want to get down to the railway. I can hear the noises of the trains and the voices of the stokers. The only way down is by a shaft-ladder covered by a glass manhole. I can’t prise the manhole up. I could smash it but I know that I mustn’t. A woman comes out from one of the tall houses and asks me to go away. I tell her about the railway and she says it’s disused. The builders will be coming in tomorrow.
    When she has gone I am in utter despair. How will I ever get down the ladder if the chamber is built over? I findmyself scurrying over disused ground, on all fours like an animal, looking for an animal hole to take me away from the topmost world.
    These dreams of mine are carefully screened for disruptive elements. Only here, only now, what is between us is true. You and I, this honesty we make.
    Sleep with me.
    At the Sleeping Beauty I ordered a shot of brandy with a jug of hot milk in it and went to lie down in the Pillow Room. The Pillow Room is where most of the girls go. It’s dark, soft, and there’s a Dream Screen on the wall. When I walked in they were playing one of my dreams.
    ‘That isn’t how it ends,’ I said, before I could stop myself. ‘It was a nightmare. I wasn’t running happily over the just planted earth. I