Robert Sawyer - Foreigner

Toroca made a gesture toward the city, indicating, he hoped, that he wished to go there. The Other with the black armbands looked warily at Toroca, then stepped aside. Toroca began to walk down the pier, and this Other walked silently beside him. There was a hubbub among the spectators. Some had claws out; others had them sheathed. If these were Quintaglios, that would mean some were frightened and others were just curious—exactly the mix of emotions Toroca himself was feeling as he continued down the pier.

“Normally, I sit where the patient can’t see me,” said Mokleb. “Otherwise, they spend too much time watching for my reactions. Therapy is not a performance, and I am not an audience. Also, there may be times when the most effective response to something you say may not in fact be the truth. By sitting out of view, the patient cannot see my muzzle. In any event, since you are blind, it doesn’t matter where I sit. However, you should be as comfortable as possible. That rock you are straddling is your favorite, yes?”

“Yes,” said Afsan.

“You should relax as much as possible. Rather than sitting up, you may find it more comfortable to lie on your belly. Why don’t you try that?”

Afsan obliged, settling himself down on the top of the boulder, his arms and legs dangling a bit over the sides and his tail, semi-stiff, sticking up into the air.

“Good. Now, I’m going to sit on another boulder. I take copious notes; using a system of simplified glyphs, I can record both sides of our conversation verbatim. You’ll occasionally hear the sound of my fingerclaw dipping into a pot of ink or solvent, or the sound of me getting a new sheet of paper. Pay no attention, and don’t worry about whether I’m writing something down or not. I assure you, I will dutifully record everything—there’s no telling what is important. And I further assure you that my notes will be kept confidential. Do you understand all that?”

Afsan nodded.

Mokleb dipped her left middle fingerclaw into ink and started writing. “In our early sessions, I may do a lot of talking, but as the therapy progresses I may go for great lengths without saying anything. Fear not: I am listening intently, and if I have something to say, I will. You must adopt the same principle: if you have something to say, don’t worry about manners. Interrupt me freely. Let no thought, however fleeting, escape. Understood?”

Again, Afsan nodded.

“Good. Now, to your dreams. As you may know, dreams serve one fundamental purpose: they prolong sleep.”

“Mine certainly aren’t doing that,” said Afsan. “It’s the dreams that are waking me up.”

“It only seems that way. If it weren’t for dreams, we’d constantly be waking, perhaps thrashing over in our minds something that had been worrying us the previous day, or else we’d awaken because we feel vulnerable and want to look around and make sure we’re still safe. Dreams prevent this from happening, and, since sleep is necessary to life, in a very real sense dreams allow us to go on living.”

“But my dreams, Mokleb, are preventing me from getting a good night’s sleep.”

“Ah, yes. So it appears. I’ll come back to that. First, though, let me ask if you’ve ever had a dream that went something like this: you are trying to get somewhere or do something, but are frustrated in your attempts. Nonetheless, you keep trying, and keep being frustrated.”

“Oh, sure. I suppose everyone has dreams like that. One I recall is trying to find my way out of a corridor. The corridor was the standard kind, zigzagging to keep other users out of sight. I kept trying to open doors along that corridor, but they wouldn’t work. One would have rusted hinges, another had a broken opening bar, a third was obviously barricaded from the other side, and so on.”

“And yet, eventually, you woke up.”

“Obviously.”

“And what did you do immediately after awakening?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I’ll tell you exactly what you did; next time you have such a dream, observe for yourself and you’ll see that you’ll do the same thing then, too. You pushed up off the floor, left your sleeping chamber, found your household bucket, and urinated into it.”

“So? Nothing unusual about that.”

“No, of course not. But don’t you see the function the dream was performing? Your bladder was uncomfortably full. Part of you wanted to get up so you could relieve yourself. But your low mind constructed a dream that said, in its most basic form, ‘I’m aware there’s a problem, and I’m trying to deal with it.’ That keeps you from waking up, thereby prolonging sleep.”

“But at some point I did wake up.”

“Exactly. For a while, the attempts in the dream to solve the problem placate the real physical need, but eventually the urge to urinate overpowers the dream, and you find yourself no longer sleeping.”

“But what about the bad dreams I’m having? How can such horrible images be attempts to prolong sleep?”

“You know that stage actors wear face masks?”

“Of course. They have to; otherwise the audience would be distracted by the performers’ muzzles turning blue whenever they spoke an untrue line.”

“Precisely. Dreams are like those masks: they disguise the truth of things. Your dream of the corridor is an example. Your mind was fooling itself that you were dealing with the desire to urinate. It was masking the fact that you were just lying there, resting, with a story of you trying to find a working doorway. The bad dreams you are having likewise are masks. The dreams obliquely represent, in ways your mind finds easier to deal with, the underlying things that really distress you. The dreams may seem horrible, but I stand by what I said earlier—they are attempts to prolong your sleeping state. However unpleasant the dreams appear, the real thing that torments you, beneath the mask of those images, is something your mind finds even more unpleasant, and therefore refuses to face directly. We must remove the mask, Afsan, and see the true face of your dreams.”

The sky above Fra’toolar was a mix of sun and cloud. Novato was straddling a broken tree trunk on the beach, a piece of drawing leather on top of a board resting on her knees. She was sketching the cliff face and its metamorphosis from rock into the blue material. Garios approached to within about twenty paces. Ten would have been a normal territorial buffer, especially considering how long, and how well, they had known each other. Added distance often indicated hesitation about broaching a subject.

Novato saw him approaching; whenever possible, one always approached so as to be visible well before arrival.

“Hello, Novato,” he said. “I cast a shadow in your presence.”

“Greetings, Garios. But hahat dan, for goodness’ sake. Come a little closer.”

Garios took a few steps nearer, then said awkwardly, “I have a question to ask you.”

Novato put her charcoal drawing stick in a pouch on her sash. “Oh?”

“Yes,” said Garios, his long muzzle tipped down at her. “You are now thirty-six kilodays old.”

Novato clicked her teeth. “Aye, and these old bones are feeling every bit of it.”

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” said Garios. He paused. “Indeed, we’ve known each other well for eighteen kilodays.” He paused again. “A year.”

“Yes,” said Novato.

“And now you are two years old.”

“Yes,” she said again.

“Soon,” said Garios, “you will call for a mate.”

“I imagine so,” she said, “although I feel no stirrings yet.”

“Eighteen kilodays ago, when you were completing your first year of life, you called for a mate, as well.” He paused. “And I responded.”