“Please come in and talk to us about it,” I said.
“Well, I could do that, I guess. I really should . . . I had a dream about your record company.”
“Tell me.” I listened intently.
Sadassa said, “I dreamed I was watching a recording session through the soundproof glass. I was thinking how wonderful the singer was, and I was impressed by all the professional mixers and mikes. And then I saw the album jacket and it was me. Sadassa Silvia Sings, it was called. Honest.” She laughed.
There wasn’t much I could say.
“And I got the strong impression,” Sadassa continued, “when I woke up, that I’d be working for you. That the dream was a good omen.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Most likely so.”
“When should I come in?”
I told her at four o’clock today. That way, I figured, I could take her to dinner afterward.
“Have you had any other unusual dreams?” I asked, on impulse.
“That wasn’t really unusual. What do you mean by unusual?”
“We can talk about it when you get here,” I said.
Sadassa Silvia showed up at four o’clock wearing a light brown jumpsuit, a yellow sweater, hooped earrings to match her Afro-natural hair. She had a solemn expression on her face, as before.
Seated across from me in my office she said, “As I drove up here I asked myself why you might be interested in any unusual dreams I have had. I keep a notebook for my shrink in which every morning I’m supposed to write down my dreams before I forget them. I’ve been doing that as long as I’ve been seeing Ed, which is almost two years.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“Do you want to know? Do you really want to? All right; I’ve had the feeling for three weeks now—it began on a Thursday—that someone is talking to me in my sleep.”
“Man? Or woman?”
Sadassa said, “In between. It’s a very calm voice, modulated. I only retain an impression of it when I wake up . . . but it’s a favorable impression. The voice is very lulling. I always feel better after I’ve heard it.”
“You can’t remember anything it says.”
“Something about my cancer. That it won’t come back.”
“What time of night—”
“Exactly three thirty,” Sadassa said. “I know because my boyfriend says I try to talk back to it; I mean, converse with it. I wake him up by trying to talk, and he says it’s always the same time of night.”
I had forgotten about her boyfriend. Oh, well, I said to myself; I have a wife and family.
“It’s as if I’d left the radio on very low,” Sadassa continued. “To a faraway station. Like you get on shortwave late at night.”
“Amazing,” I said.
Sadassa said calmly, “I came to Progressive Records in the first place because of a dream, very much like the one I had last night. I was in a lovely green valley with very high grass, out in the country, fresh and nice, and there was a mountain. I floated along, not on the ground but weightlessly floating, and as I came toward the mountain it turned into a building. On the building they had put words, on a plaque over the entrance. Well, one word: PROGRESSIVE. But in the dream I could tell it was Progressive Records because I could hear the most incredibly dulcet music. Not like any music I have ever heard in actuality.”
“You did the right thing,” I said, “to act on that dream.”
“Did I come to the right place?” She studied my face intently.
“Yes,” I said. “You interpreted the dream right.”
“You seem sure.”
“What do I know?” I said jokingly. “I’m just glad you’re here. I was afraid you wouldn’t show up.”
“I go to school—I will be going—during the day. Can we audition performers at night? I would expect so. We have to fit the job in around my school schedule.”
“You don’t want much,” I said, a little nettled.
“I’ve got to go to school again; I lost so much time while I was sick.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling guilty now.
“Sometimes,” Sadassa said, “I get the feeling that the government gave me cancer. Gave me a carcinogen to deliberately make me sick. It’s only by a miracle that I survived.”
“Good God,” I said, jolted; I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe it was so, everything considered. With her background. With what she knew, what she was. “Why would they want to do that?”
“I don’t know; why would they? I’m paranoid, I realize that. But strange things happen these days. Two of my friends have disappeared. I think they’re sticking ’em in those camps.”
My phone rang. I picked it up and found myself talking to Rachel. Her voice shook with excitement. “Nick—”
“I’m with a client,” I said.
“Have you seen today’s LA Times?”
“No,” I said.
“Go get it. You have to read it. Page three, the right-hand column.”
“Tell me what it says,” I said.
“You’ve got to read it. It explains the experiences you’ve been having. Please, Nick; go look at it. It really does!”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.” I hung up. “Excuse me,” I said to Sadassa. “I have to go out front to the newspaper thing.” I left my office, went down the hall to the big outside glass doors.
A moment later I had a copy of the Times and was carrying it back, reading it as I walked.
On page three in the right-hand column I found this article:
SOVIET ASTROPHYSICIST REPORTS RADIO SIGNALS FROM INTELLIGENT LIFE
Not from outer space as expected but emanating close to Earth.
Standing there in the hall, I read the article. The foremost Soviet astrophysicist, Georgi Moyashka, using a collection of interlinked radio telescopes, had picked up what he believed to be deliberate signals from a sentient life form, these signals containing the characteristics that Moyashka had anticipated finding. The big surprise, however, was their point of origin: within our solar system, which no one, including Moyashka himself, had anticipated. The U.S. space people had already gone on record as saying that the signals undoubtedly emanated from old satellites put into space
