Dreamside - By Graham Joyce Page 0,26

academic cushion."

"Pardon?" Burns's eyebrows were twin Norman arches.

"He means some of us have to spend the summer working," said Lee.

"I thought of that. And not wanting any of you to suffer the indignity of having to work for a living, I thought of a way of keeping you on as temporary research assistants. At least until the new term begins. Of course I'd want some results out of you; but from what I've observed of your academic activities, Brother Cousins, it won't squeeze out your studies."

"You mean we'd get paid?"

"A grant?"

"For dreaming?"

"And for writing up your results with a little more rigor than we've seen hitherto."

"What do you get out of it, apart from seeing your name under an article in The Spoonbender's Gazette}"

"Let's say, Brad, that I'm easily satisfied."

"Done," said Lee.

"Done," said the others.

"Good," said Burns, getting out of his chair, "next week we'll see if we can't start a program of real dreaming."

Ella was the last to file out through the hall. The door stood open to admit a wedge of cool night air, and a glimpse of a new moon hanging low over the graveyard opposite. The light played without sympathy on the old academic's cable-veined forehead as he helped Ella on with her coat.

"By the way," shaking her hair free of her collar, "how did you know when we, that is Lee and I, started lucid dreaming for real?"

"Oh," Burns smiled slyly, closing the door to behind her, "I'm a sharp old cookie."

S E V E N

All would be well

Could we but give us wholly to the dreams

—W. B. Yeats

"How do you mean, 'meet up' with each other?"

Term was over, the students had all gone home, summer was delivering its promise. Lee and Ella had abandoned their plans for combing the Mediterranean beaches of the Aegean islands; the plump faces of German and American tourists went unflattered by Honora's quick pencil sketches; and Brad's medical tomes lay unstudied on the shelf.

The sash windows of Burns's lounge were pushed up to admit the sweet summer air. Lee held out a hand for one of Ella's hand-rolled liquorice-paper cigarettes which he had taken to smoking, and Ella grudgingly passed him the one she had just been about to light for herself. Honora reclined in a heavy armchair, her cotton dress sticking to her moist skin as she fanned herself with an Erich Fromm paperback she had plucked from the professor's shelves. Brad looked on glumly with his eyebrows raised in the expression of barely tolerant boredom that he had cultivated of late.

"I mean exactly that: arrange a meeting, a rendezvous between the four of you at some pre-arranged location, just as you would in normal waking life."

"Can it be done?" Ella, not looking up from her tobacco.

"It's already been done," Burns said impatiently, "many times, under laboratory conditions."

"If it's such a well-trodden path," said Brad, "why are we bothering to do it?"

Burns, looking tired, rested his head against the wings of his armchair. "I don't care to continually justify my interests; if you want my rationalizations then you'll have to earn them. If you do manage to rendezvous in dreamtime"—Burns used the new language, the conspiratorial argot of this small cell of lucid dreamers, dreamside dreamtime dreamwork dreamthought dreamspeak, to reaffirm his membership of the group—"then exchange a phrase, a song or a proverb. Something you can bring back as an objective correlative. Confirmation. Words that will become real things in waking time. That's all for tonight. Thank you."

He rose and escorted them to the door.

"Tetchy." Brad spoke against the background of a pulsating pub jukebox. "Very tetchy."

"You have that effect on people," said Ella. "In any case, it's time to move this thing into a different gear. Let's agree a rendezvous point, a meeting location which we could head for during dreaming. L. P. says others have done it, so why don't we give it a serious shot? We all manage to shift locations in dreamtime; let's agree on a place to meet."

"There's a difference," Brad muttered, "between shifting locations inside our own dreams and in bringing four different dreams together."

"It can work; I know it. I just know it." Honora surprised them with her enthusiasm. "Have faith. Just choose a place."

They all stared back at her, and for the first time Ella recognized the attraction which the Irish girl held for the two men. She saw them watching as Honora shyly averted her eyes and lifted her glass to her mouth. Honora was the one who