The Magazine of fantasy and science fiction : a 30-year retrospective

by Edward L Ferman

  Then he said, "Now would you think for us?"

  "About what?" Only the boy's nose and mouth showed.

  "About anything you want. What's the best thing you would like to do when school is out?"

  The boy thought a moment and said, with rising inflection, "Go on a stratojet?"

  "Why not? Sure thing. You go on a jet. It's taking off right now." He gestured lightly to Dooley, who threw the freezer into circuit.

  Weill kept the boy only five minutes and then let him and his mother be escorted from the office by Dooley. Tommy looked bewildered but undamaged by the ordeal.

  Weill said to the father, "Now, Mr. Slutsky, if your boy does well on this test, we'll be glad to pay you five hundred dollars each year until he finishes high school. In that time, all we'll ask is that he spend an hour a week some afternoon at our special school."

  "Do I have to sign a paper?" Slutsky's voice was a bit hoarse.

  "Certainly. This is business, Mr. Slutsky."

  "Well, I don't know. Dreamers are hard to come by, I hear."

  "They are. They are. But your son, Mr. Slutsky, is not a dreamer yet. He might never be. Five hundred dollars a year is a gamble for us. It's not a gamble for you. When he's finished high school, it may turn out he's not a dreamer, yet you've lost nothing. You've gained maybe four

  thousand dollars altogether. If he is a dreamer, he'll make a nice living and you certainly haven't lost then."

  "He'll need special training, won't he?"

  "Oh, yes, most intensive. But we don't have to worry about that till after he's finished high school. Then, after two years with us, he'll be developed. Rely on me, Mr. Slutsky."

  "Will you guarantee that special training?"

  Weill, who had been shoving a paper across the desk at Slutsky, and punching a pen wrong-side-to at him, put the pen down and chuckled, "Guarantee? No. How can we when we don't know for sure yet if he's a real talent? Still, the five hundred a year will stay yours."

  Slutsky pondered and shook his head. "I tell you straight out, Mr. Weill—After your man arranged to have us come here, I called Luster-Think. They said they'll guarantee training."

  Weill sighed. "Mr. Slutsky, I don't like to talk against a competitor. If they say they'll guarantee training, they'll do as they say, but they can't make a boy a dreamer if he hasn't got it in him, training or not. If they take a plain boy without the proper talent and put him through a development course, they'll ruin him. A dreamer he won't be, that I guarantee you. And a normal human being he won't be, either. Don't take the chance of doing it to your son.

  "Now Dreams, Inc. will be perfectly honest with you. If he can be a dreamer, we'll make him one. If not, we'll give him back to you without having tampered with him and say, 'Let him learn a trade.' He'll be better and healthier that way. I tell you, Mr. Slutsky—I have sons and daughters and grandchildren so I know what I say—I would not allow a child of mine to be pushed into dreaming if he's not ready for it. Not for a million dollars."

  Slutsky wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and reached for the pen. "What does this say?"

  "This is just an option. We pay you a hundred dollars in cash right now. No strings attached. We'll study the boy's reverie. If we feel it's worth following up, we'll call you in again and make the five hundred dollar a year deal. Leave yourself in my hands, Mr. Slutsky, and don't worry. You won't be sorry."

  Slutsky signed.

  Weill passed the document through the file slot and handed an envelope to Slutsky.

  Five minutes later, alone in the office, he placed the unfreezer over his own head and absorbed the boy's reverie intently. It was a typically childish daydream. First Person was at the controls of the plane, which looked like a compound of illustrations out of the filmed thrillers that still circulated among those who lacked the time, desire or money for dream-cylinders.

  When he removed the unfreezer, he found Dooley looking at him.

  "Well, Mr. Weill, what do you think?" said Dooley, with an eager and proprietary air.

  "Could be, Joe. Could be. He has the overtones and for a ten-year-old boy without a scrap of training it's hopeful. When the plane went through a cloud, there was a distinct sensation of pillows. Also the smell of clean sheets, which was an amusing touch. We can go with him a ways, Joe."

  "Good." Joe beamed happily at Weill's approval.

  "But I tell you, Joe, what we really need is to catch them still sooner. And why not? Some day, Joe, every child will be tested at birth. A difference in the brain there positively must be and it should be found. Then we could separate the dreamers at the very beginning."

  "Hell, Mr. Weill," said Dooley, looking hurt. "What would happen to my job then?"

  Weill laughed. "No cause to worry yet, Joe. It won't happen in our lifetimes. In mine, certainly not. We'll be depending on good talent scouts like you for many years. You just watch the playgrounds and the streets"—Weill's gnarled hand dropped to Dooley's shoulder with a gentle, approving pressure—"and find us a few more Hillarys and Janows and Luster-Think won't ever catch us.—Now get out. I want lunch and then I'll be ready for my 2 o'clock appointment. The government, Joe, the government." And he winked portentously.

  Jesse Weill's 2 o'clock appointment was with a young man, apple-cheeked, spectacled, sandy-haired and glowing with the intensity of a man with a mission. He presented his credentials across Weill's desk and revealed himself to be John J. Byrne, an agent of the Department of Arts and Sciences.

  "Good afternoon, Mr. Byrne," said Weill. "In what way can I be of service?"

  "Are we private here?" asked the agent. He had an unexpected baritone.

  "Quite private."

  "Then, if you don't mind, I'll ask you to absorb this." Byrne produced a small and battered cylinder and held it out between thumb and forefinger.

  Weill took it, hefted it, turned it this way and that and said with a denture-revealing smile, "Not the product of Dreams, Inc., Mr. Byrne."

  "I didn't think it was," said the agent. "I'd still like you to absorb it. I'd set the automatic cutoff for about a minute, though."

  "That's all that can be endured?" Weill pulled the receiver to his desk and placed the cylinder into the unfreeze compartment. He removed it, polished either end of the cylinder with his handkerchief and tried again. "It doesn't make good contact," he said. "An amateurish job."

  He placed the cushioned unfreeze helmet over his skull and adjusted the temple contacts, then set the automatic cutoff. He leaned back and clasped his hands over his chest and began absorbing.

  His fingers grew rigid and clutched at his jacket. After the cutoff had brought absorption to an end, he removed the unfreezer and looked faintly angry. "A raw piece," he said. "It's lucky I'm an old man so that such things no longer bother me."

  Byrne said stiffly, "It's not the worst we've found. And the fad is increasing."

  Weill shrugged. "Pornographic dreamies. It's a logical development, I suppose."

  The government man said, "Logical or not, it represents a deadly danger for the moral fiber of the nation."

  "The moral fiber," said Weill, "can take a lot of beating. Erotica of one form or another has been circulated all through history."

  "Not like this, sir. A direct mind-to-mind stimulation is much more effective than smoking-room stories or filthy pictures. Those must be filtered through the senses and lose some of their effect in that way."

  Weill could scarcely argue that point. He said, "What would you have me do?"

  "Can you suggest a possible source for this cylinder?"

  "Mr. Byrne, I'm not a policeman."

  "No, no, I'm not asking you to do our work for us. The Department is quite capable of conducting its own investigations. Can you help us, I mean, from your own specialized knowledge? You say your company did not put out that filth. Who did?"

  "No reputable dream-distributor. I'm sure of that. It's too cheaply made."

  "That could have been done on purpose."

>   "And no professional dreamer originated it."

  "Are you sure, Mr. Weill? Couldn't dreamers do this sort of thing for some small illegitimate concern for money—or for fun?"

  "They could, but not this particular one. No overtones. It's two-dimensional. Of course, a thing like this doesn't need overtones."

  "What do you mean, overtones?"

  Weill laughed gently, "You are not a dreamie fan?"

  Byrne tried not to look virtuous and did not entirely succeed. "I prefer music."

  "Well, that's all right, too," said Weill, tolerantly, "but it makes it a little harder to explain overtones. Even people who absorb dreamies might not be able to explain if you asked them. Still they'd know a dreamie was no good if the overtones were missing, even if they couldn't tell you why. Look, when an experienced dreamer goes into reverie, he doesn't think a story like in the old-fashioned television or book-films. It's a series of little visions. Each one has several meanings. If you studied them carefully, you'd find maybe five or six. While absorbing them in the ordinary way, you would never notice, but careful study shows it. Believe me, my psychological staff puts in long hours on just that point. All the overtones, the different meanings, blend together into a mass of guided emotion. Without them, everything would be flat, tasteless.

  "Now this morning, I tested a young boy. A ten-year-old with possibilities. A cloud to him isn't just a cloud, it's a pillow too. Having the sensations of both, it was more than either. Of course, the boy's very primitive. But when he's through with his schooling, he'll be trained and disciplined. He'll be subjected to all sorts of sensations. He'll store up experience. He'll study and analyze classic dreamies of the past. He'll learn how to control and direct his thoughts, though, mind you, I have always said that when a good dreamer improvises—"

  Weill halted abruptly, then proceeded in less impassionated tones, "I shouldn't get excited. All I'm trying to bring out now is that every professional dreamer has his own type of overtones which he can't mask. To an expert it's like signing his name on the dreamie. And I, Mr. Byrne, know all the signatures. Now that piece of dirt you brought me has no overtones at all. It was done by an ordinary person. A little talent, maybe, but like you and me, he can't think."

  Byrne reddened a trifle. "Not everyone can't think, Mr. Weill, even if they don't make dreamies."

  "Oh, tush," and Weill wagged his hand in the air. "Don't be angry with what an old man says. I don't mean think as in reason. I mean think as in dream. We all can dream after a fashion, just like we all can run. But can you and I run a mile in under four minutes? You and I can talk but are we Daniel Websters? Now when I think of a steak, I think of the word. Maybe I have a quick picture of a brown steak on a platter. Maybe you have a better pictorialization of it and you can see the crisp fat and the onions and the baked potato. I don't know. But a dreamer ... He sees it and smells it and tastes it and everything about it, with the charcoal and the satisfied feeling in the stomach and the way the knife cuts through it and a hundred other things all at once. Very sensual. Very sensual. You and I can't do it."

  "Well then," said Byrne, "no professional dreamer has done this. That's something anyway." He put the cylinder in his inner jacket pocket. "I hope we'll have your full cooperation in squelching this sort of thing."

  "Positively, Mr. Byrne. With a whole heart."

  "I hope so." Byrne spoke with a consciousness of power. "It's not up to me, Mr. Weill, to say what will be done and what won't be done, but this sort of thing"—he tapped the cylinder he had brought—"will make it awfully tempting to impose a really strict censorship on dreamies."

  He rose. "Good day, Mr. Weill."

  "Good day, Mr. Byrne. I'll hope always for the best."

  Francis Belanger burst into Jesse Weill's office in his usual steaming tizzy, his reddish hair disordered and his face aglow with worry and a mild perspiration. He was brought up sharply by the sight of Weill's head cradled in the crook of his elbow and bent on the desk until only the glimmer of white hair was visible.

  Belanger swallowed. "Boss?"

  Weill's head lifted. "It's you, Frank?"

  "What's the matter, boss? Are you sick?"

  "I'm old enough to be sick, but I'm on my feet. Staggering, but on my feet. A government man was here."

  "What did he want?"

  "He threatens censorship. He brought a sample of what's going round. Cheap dreamies for bottle parties."

  "God damn!" said Belanger, feelingly.

  "The only trouble is that morality makes for good campaign fodder. They'll be hitting out everywhere. And to tell the truth, we're vulnerable, Frank."

  "We are? Our stuff is clean. We play up adventure and romance."

  Weill thrust out his lower lip and wrinkled his forehead. "Between us, Frank, we don't have to make believe. Clean? It depends on how you look at it. It's not for publication, maybe, but you know and I know that every dreamie has its Freudian connotations. You can't deny it."

  "Sure, if you look for it. If you're a psychiatrist—"

  "If you're an ordinary person, too. The ordinary observer doesn't know it's there and maybe he couldn't tell a phallic symbol from a mother image even if you pointed them out. Still, his subconscious knows. And it's the connotations that make many a dreamie click."

  "All right, what's the government going to do? Clean up the subconscious?"

  "It's a problem. I don't know what they're going to do. What we have on our side, and what I'm mainly depending on, is the fact that the public loves its dreamies and won't give them up.—Meanwhile, what did you come in for? You want to see me about something, I suppose?"

  Belanger tossed an object onto Weill's desk and shoved his shirt-tail deeper into his trousers.

  Weill broke open the glistening plastic cover and took out the enclosed cylinder. At one end was engraved in a too-fancy script in pastel blue: Along the Himalayan Trail. It bore the mark of Luster-Think.

  "The Competitor's Product." Weill said it with capitals and his lips twitched. "It hasn't been published yet. Where did you get it, Frank?"

  "Never mind. I just want you to absorb it."

  Weill sighed. "Today, everyone wants me to absorb dreams. Frank, it's not dirty?"

  Belanger said testily, "It has your Freudian symbols. Narrow crevasses between the mountain peaks. I hope that won't bother you."

  "I'm an old man. It stopped bothering me ten years ago, but that other thing was so poorly done, it hurt.—All right, let's see what you've got here."

  Again the recorder. Again the unfreezer over his skull and at the temples. This time, Weill rested back in his chair for fifteen minutes or more, while Francis Belanger went hurriedly through two cigarettes.

  When Weill removed the headpiece and blinked dream out of his eyes, Belanger said, "Well, what's your reaction, boss?"

  Weill corrugated his forehead. "It's not for me. It was repetitious. With competition like this, Dreams, Inc. doesn't have to worry yet."

  "That's your mistake, boss. Luster-Think's going to win with stuff like this. We've got to do something."

  "Now, Frank—"

  "No, you listen. This is the coming thing."

  "This?" Weill stared with half-humorous dubiety at the cylinder. "It's amateurish. It's repetitious. Its overtones are very unsubtle. The snow had a distinct lemon sherbet taste. Who tastes lemon sherbet in snow these days, Frank? In the old days, yes. Twenty years ago, maybe. When Lyman Harrison first made his Snow Symphonies for sale down south, it was a big thing. Sherbet and candy-striped mountain tops and sliding down chocolate-covered cliffs. It's slapstick, Frank. These days it doesn't go."

  "Because," said Belanger, "you're not up with the times, boss, I've got to talk to you straight. When you started the dreamie business, when you bought up the basic patents and began putting them out, dreamies were luxury stuff. The market was small and individual. You could afford to turn out specialized dreamies and sell them to people at high prices."

  "I know," said W
eill, "and we've kept that up. But also we've opened a rental business for the masses."

  "Yes, we have and it's not enough. Our dreamies have subtiety, yes. They can be used over and over again. The tenth time you're still finding new things, still getting new enjoyment. But how many people are connoisseurs? And another thing. Our stuff is strongly individualized. They're First Person."

  "Well?"

  "Well, Luster-Think is opening dream-palaces. They've opened one with three hundred booths in Nashville. You walk in, take your seat, put on your unfreezer and get your dream. Everyone in the audience gets the same one."

  "I've heard of it, Frank, and it's been done before. It didn't work the first time and it won't work now. You want to know why it won't work? Because in the first place, dreaming is a private thing. Do you like your neighbor to know what you're dreaming? In the second place, in a dream-palace the dreams have to start on schedule, don't they? So the dreamer has to dream not when he wants to but when some palace manager says he should. Finally, a dream one person likes, another person doesn't like. In those three hundred booths, I guarantee you, a hundred and fifty people are dissatisfied. And if they're dissatisfied, they won't come back."

  Slowly, Belanger rolled up his sleeves and opened his collar. "Boss," he said, "you're talking through your hat. What's the use of proving they won't work? They are working. The word came through today that Luster-Think is breaking ground for a thousand-booth palace in St. Louis. People can get used to public dreaming, if everyone else in the same room is having the same dream. And they can adjust themselves to having it at a given time, as long as it's cheap and convenient.

  "Damn it, boss, it's a social affair. A boy and a girl go to a dream-palace and absorb some cheap romantic thing with stereotyped overtones and commonplace situations, but still they come out with stars sprinkling their hair. They've had the same dream together. They've gone through identical sloppy emotions. They're in tune, boss. You bet they go back to the dream-palace, and all their friends go, too."

  "And if they don't like the dream?"