standing by the entrance, who opened the portal and admitted three men trundling a large, flat box on wheels, from which depended flexible tubes of varying descriptions. The guard, who was wearing one of those hypnotic hats, accompanied them up to us, ordering us to do as they said.
We submitted perforce to having a tube wrapped around the wrist of each of us, various other gadgets clamped to other parts of our anatomy, and our eyes bandaged so we could see nothing. As soon as all the equipment was adjusted to their satisfaction, one of them commenced to question us.
But what questions! Nothing we could have expected—at least, not in our right minds. Apparently they had no desire to learn facts, to discover what we wanted to do here, or anything about our backgrounds. To the accompaniment of ominous buzzings and clickings from the machine, we were asked such questions as, "If you were to be imprisoned in a dark room for twenty-four hours, what would you do?" and, "Would you prefer to witness a pageant or take part in it?" and others even less rational. I could hear a stylus scratching the answers on a pad, and wondered what type of persons these might be.
Then I heard a cry of alarm from Braid and tensed my muscles to rip off my blindfold and see what was happening. I couldn't, of course; the hypnosis of that helmet forbade any resistance. But I felt a gentle pressure in my arm, and then a stinging jolt of mild electricity. I leaped, and I think I cried out too. A squeal from Clory and a grunt from Check showed that they had received the same treatment.
Our blindfolds were removed, but the tests continued. They detached all the gadgets from Clory and sent her away to sit in the comer, while Braid, Check and I were quizzed in a new fashion, A string of such words as "read," "learn," "sleep," "eat," and other verbs of varying meaning were spoken to us, and one of the men noted the readings of a leaping dial needle attached to the bands on our wrists.
But that was all. We were released from the apparatus and conducted out of the room by the same man who had brought us. As we left, the head man of the Council called to us, "You will return tomorrow, and everything will be clear. Have patience till then."
We were returned to our room, where we found ourselves unaccountably sleepy. Though we had been awakened not more than four hours before, we could not stay awake. We sought couches and lay down. Just as I was dropping off, I thought I saw the door open, and a man enter and fasten something to Glory's head. It appeared to be a helmet, but I could not force myself to awaken and make it out. As he approached me, I dropped off into deep slumber.
6
The Dream
My sleep was full of dreams—odd ones. I saw myself in a thousand impossible situations.
Quite naturally, I dreamed of the scene in the Council Chamber. But in the dream I was not the object of the Council's attention—I was a member of it. In fact, I was chief of the Council. Before me, in one fantasy of sleep after another, were brought dozens of persons to be asked the questions I had been asked that day; thousands of other persons with other problems to be settled. I could not understand the tenth part of those problems, but in my dream I knew all about them; I solved them all, to the complete satisfaction of everyone. I was not supreme among the Council, but I was its coordinator, the one finally to resolve each knotty problem according to the suggestions of the others.
As the dreams grew in clarity, an immense amount of background material began to fill it. I saw a teeming, populous world, many times the size of my own. Almost completely underground, it was, but it filled millions of square miles on a hundred different subterranean levels. In this new world—which I came to identify with the underground city my sleeping body was in—was a complete civilization, vaster by far than all the Tribes put together, of a culture and depth of
We submitted perforce to having a tube wrapped around the wrist of each of us, various other gadgets clamped to other parts of our anatomy, and our eyes bandaged so we could see nothing. As soon as all the equipment was adjusted to their satisfaction, one of them commenced to question us.
But what questions! Nothing we could have expected—at least, not in our right minds. Apparently they had no desire to learn facts, to discover what we wanted to do here, or anything about our backgrounds. To the accompaniment of ominous buzzings and clickings from the machine, we were asked such questions as, "If you were to be imprisoned in a dark room for twenty-four hours, what would you do?" and, "Would you prefer to witness a pageant or take part in it?" and others even less rational. I could hear a stylus scratching the answers on a pad, and wondered what type of persons these might be.
Then I heard a cry of alarm from Braid and tensed my muscles to rip off my blindfold and see what was happening. I couldn't, of course; the hypnosis of that helmet forbade any resistance. But I felt a gentle pressure in my arm, and then a stinging jolt of mild electricity. I leaped, and I think I cried out too. A squeal from Clory and a grunt from Check showed that they had received the same treatment.
Our blindfolds were removed, but the tests continued. They detached all the gadgets from Clory and sent her away to sit in the comer, while Braid, Check and I were quizzed in a new fashion, A string of such words as "read," "learn," "sleep," "eat," and other verbs of varying meaning were spoken to us, and one of the men noted the readings of a leaping dial needle attached to the bands on our wrists.
But that was all. We were released from the apparatus and conducted out of the room by the same man who had brought us. As we left, the head man of the Council called to us, "You will return tomorrow, and everything will be clear. Have patience till then."
We were returned to our room, where we found ourselves unaccountably sleepy. Though we had been awakened not more than four hours before, we could not stay awake. We sought couches and lay down. Just as I was dropping off, I thought I saw the door open, and a man enter and fasten something to Glory's head. It appeared to be a helmet, but I could not force myself to awaken and make it out. As he approached me, I dropped off into deep slumber.
6
The Dream
My sleep was full of dreams—odd ones. I saw myself in a thousand impossible situations.
Quite naturally, I dreamed of the scene in the Council Chamber. But in the dream I was not the object of the Council's attention—I was a member of it. In fact, I was chief of the Council. Before me, in one fantasy of sleep after another, were brought dozens of persons to be asked the questions I had been asked that day; thousands of other persons with other problems to be settled. I could not understand the tenth part of those problems, but in my dream I knew all about them; I solved them all, to the complete satisfaction of everyone. I was not supreme among the Council, but I was its coordinator, the one finally to resolve each knotty problem according to the suggestions of the others.
As the dreams grew in clarity, an immense amount of background material began to fill it. I saw a teeming, populous world, many times the size of my own. Almost completely underground, it was, but it filled millions of square miles on a hundred different subterranean levels. In this new world—which I came to identify with the underground city my sleeping body was in—was a complete civilization, vaster by far than all the Tribes put together, of a culture and depth of
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