Ursula Le Guin: The Lathe Of Heaven

That geniality was not faked, but it was exaggerated. There was a warmth to the man, an outgoingness, which was real; but it had got plasticoated with professional mannerisms, distorted by the doctor’s unspontaneous use of himself. Orr felt in him a wish to be liked and a desire to be helpful; the doctor was not, he thought, really sure that anyone else existed, and wanted to prove they did by helping them. He boomed “Good afternoon!” so loud because he was never sure he would get an answer. Orr wanted to say something friendly, but nothing personal seemed suitable; he said, “It looks as if Afghanistan might get into the war.”

“Mhm, that’s been in the cards since last August.” He should have known that the doctor would be better informed on world affairs than himself; he was generally semi-informed and three weeks out of date. “I don’t think that’ll shake the Allies,” Haber went on, “unless it pulls Pakistan in on the Iranian side. Then India may have to send in more than token support to the Isragypts.” That was teleglot for the New Arab Republic/Israel alliance. “I think Gupta’s speech in Delhi shows that he’s preparing for that eventuality.”

“It keeps spreading,” Orr said, feeling inadequate and despondent. “The war, I mean.”

“Does it worry you?”

“Doesn’t it worry you?”

“Irrelevant,” said the doctor, smiling his broad, hairy, bear’s smile, like a big bear-god; but he was still wary, since yesterday.

“Yes, it worries me.” But Haber had not earned that answer; the questioner cannot withdraw himself from the question, assuming objectivity—as if the answers were an object. Orr did not speak these thoughts, however; he was in a doctor’s hands, and surely the doctor knew what he was doing.

Orr had a tendency to assume that people knew what they were doing, perhaps because he generally assumed that he did not.

“Sleep well?” Haber inquired, sitting down under the left rear hoof of Tammany Hall.

“Fine, thanks.”

“How do you feel about another go in the Palace of Dreams?” He was watching keenly.

“Sure, that’s what I’m here for, I guess.”

He saw Haber rise and come around the desk, he saw the large hand come out toward his neck, and then nothing happened.

“. . . George...”

His name. Who called? No voice he know. Dry land, dry air, the crash of a strange voice in his ear. Daylight, and no direction. No way back. He woke.

The half-familiar room; the half-familiar, big man, in his voluminous russet gernreich, with his red-brown beard, and white smile, and opaque dark eyes. “It looked like a short dream but a lively one, on the EEG,” said the deep voice. “Let’s have it. Sooner the recall, the completer it is.”

Orr sat up, feeling rather dizzy. He was on the couch, how had he got there? “Let’s see. It wasn’t much. The horse again. Did you tell me to dream of the horse again, when I was hypnotized?”

Haber shook his head, meaning neither yes nor no, and listened.

“Well, this was a stable. This room. Straw and a manger and a pitchfork in the corner, and so on. The horse was in it. He...”

Haber’s expectant silence permitted no evasion.

“He did this tremendous pile of shit. Brown, steaming. Horseshit. It looked kind of like Mount Hood, with that little hump on the north side and everything. It was all over the rug, and sort of encroaching on me, so I said, ‘It’s only the picture of the mountain.’ Then I guess I started to wake up.”

Orr raised his face, looking past Dr. Haber at the mural behind him, the wall-sized photograph of Mount Hood.

It was a serene picture in rather muted, arty tones: the sky gray, the mountain a soft brown or reddish-brown, with speckles of white near the summit, and the foreground all dusky, formless treetops.

The doctor was not looking at the mural. He was watching Orr with those keen, opaque eyes. He laughed when Orr was done, not long or loudly, but perhaps a little excitedly.

“We’re getting somewhere, George!”

“Where?”

Orr felt rumpled and foolish, sitting on the couch still giddy from sleep, having lain asleep there, probably with his mouth open and snoring, helpless, while Haber watched the secret jigs and prancings of his brain, and told him what to dream. He felt exposed, used. And to what end?

Evidently the doctor had no memory at all of the horse-mural, nor of the conversation they had had concerning it; he was altogether in this new present, and all his memories led to it. So he could not do any good at all. But be was striding up and down the office now, talking even louder than usual. “Well! (a) you can and do dream to order, you follow the hypnosuggestions; (b) you respond splendidly to the Augmentor. Therefore we can work together, fast and efficiently, without narcosis. I’d rather work without drugs. What the brain does by itself is infinitely more fascinating and complex than any response it can make to chemical stimulation; that’s why I developed the Augmentor, to provide the brain a means of self -stimulation. The creative and therapeutic resources of the brain—whether waking or sleeping or dreaming—are practically infinite. If we can just find the keys to all the locks. The power of dreaming alone is quite undreamt of!” He laughed his big laugh, he had made that little joke many times. Orr smiled uncomfortably, it struck a bit close to home. “I am sure now that your therapy lies in this direction, to use your dreams, not to evade and avoid them. To face your fear and, with my help, see it through. You’re afraid of your own mind, George, That’s a fear no man can live with. But you don’t have to. You haven’t seen the help your own mind can give you, the ways you can use it, employ it creatively. All you need to do is not to hide from your own mental powers, not to suppress them, but to release them. This we can do together. Now, doesn’t that strike you as right, as the right thing to do?”

“I don’t know,” Orr said.

When Haber spoke of using, employing his mental powers, he had thought for a moment that the doctor must mean his power of changing reality by dreaming; but surely if he’d meant that he would have said it clearly? Knowing that Orr desperately needed confirmation, he would not causelessly withhold it if he could give it.

Orr’s heart sank. The use of narcotics and pep pills had left him emotionally off-balance; he knew that, and therefore kept trying to combat and control his feelings. But this disappointment was beyond his control. He had, he now realized, allowed himself a little hope. He had been sure, yesterday, that the doctor was aware of the change from mountain to horse. It hadn’t surprised or alarmed him that Haber tried to hide his awareness, in the first shock; no doubt he had been unable to admit it even to himself, to encompass it. It had taken Orr himself a long time to bring himself to face the fact that he was doing something impossible. Yet he had let himself hope that Haber, knowing the dream, and being there as it was dreamed, at the center, might see the change, might remember and confirm.

No good. No way out. Orr was where he had been for months—alone: knowing he was insane and knowing he was not insane, simultaneously and intensely. It was enough to drive him insane.

“Would it be possible,” he said diffidently, “for you to give me a posthypnotic suggestion not to dream effectively? Since you can suggest that I do.... That way I could get off drugs, at least for a while.”

Haber settled down behind his desk, hunched like a bear. “I very much doubt it would work, even through one night,” he said quite simply. And then suddenly booming again, “Isn’t that the same fruitless direction you’ve been trying to go, George? Drugs or hypnosis, it’s still suppression. You can’t run away from your own mind. You see that, but you’re not quite willing yet to face it. That’s all right. Look at it this way: twice now you’ve dreamed, right here, on that couch. Was it so bad? Did it do any harm?”