Beyond Bedlam

flushed against the blonde hair.

Having just awakened, Conrad was on a very low drug

level and the incident was unpleasantly disturbing. He picked

up his pharmacase from beside his bed and made his way

to the bathroom. He took his hypothalamic block and the

integration enzymes and returned to the bedroom. Clara was

still sleeping.

She had been behaving oddly for some time, but there had

never been anything as disturbing as this. He felt that he

should call a medicop, but, of course, he didn't want to do

anything that extreme. It was probably something with a sim-

ple explanation. Clara was a little scatterbrained at times.

Maybe she had forgotten to take her sleeping compound and

that was what caused dreaming. The very word made his

powerful body chill. But if she was neglecting to take any of

her drugs and he called in a medicop, it would be serious.

Conrad went into the library and found the Family Phar-

macy. He switched on a light in the dawn-shrunken room

and let his heavy frame into a chair. A Guide to Better Un-

derstanding of Your Family Prescriptions. Official Edition,

2831. The book was mostly Medicorps propaganda and al-

most never gave a practical suggestion. If something went

wrong, you called a medicop.

Conrad hunted through the book for the section on sleep-

ing compound. It was funny, too, about that name Bill. Con-

rad went over all the men of their acquaintance with whom

Clara had occasional affairs or with whom she was friendly

and he couldn't remember a single Bill. In fact, the only

man with that name whom he could think of was his own hy-

peralter, Bill Walden. But that was naturally impossible.

Maybe dreaming was always about imaginary people.

SLEEPING COMPOUND: An official mixture of soporific and

hypnotic alkaloids and synthetics. A critical drug; an essen-

tial feature in every prescription. Slight deviations in fol-

lowing prescription are unallowable because of the subtle

manner in which behaviour may be altered over months or

years. The first sleeping compound was announced by

Thomas Marshall in 1986. The formula has been modified

only twice since then.

There followed a tightly packed description of the chemis-

try and pharmacology of the various ingredients. Conrad

skipped through this.

The importance. of Sleeping Compound in the life of

every individual and to society is best appreciated when we

recall Marshall's words announcing its initial development:

'It is during so-called normal sleep that the vicious un-

conscious mind responsible for wars and other symptoms

of unhappiness develops its resources and its hold on our