The Stranger

“Well, I’ll be! It looks like we’ll have to sleep in each other’s embrace, my darling!”

“That may be rather inconvenient,” Sir Shurf said. “Besides, since it has come to this, I can offer you the possibility of using my sleep. When people sleep side by side, it’s fairly easy to do so.”

“How do you mean?” I asked, puzzled. “I’ll have your dreams instead of my own? And anyway, it won’t work—Lady Marilyn slept until sundown.”

“When one person shares his sleep with another, they fall asleep simultaneously,” Shurf explained. “I’ll put you to sleep, and then I’ll wake you up. But I don’t know in advance whose dreams we’ll have: yours, mine, or both at the same time. It’s up to us to decide. Anyway, I think this solution to the dilemma is a reasonable one. Tomorrow after lunch we’ll be in Kettari, and you’ll have to be awake and alert the whole day. If I’ve understood correctly, Sir Juffin wanted us to pay close attention to the road leading into the city.”

“That’s true,” I agreed. “Do you have good dreams, Glamma? After the story about some of Sir Lonli-Lokli’s dreams—”

“I would never propose that you share my nightmares. Luckily, I have been free of them for a long time.”

“Well, I can’t vouch for my dreams,” I said, and sighed. “Sometimes I see such terrible things in my dreams that it’s enough to make you despair. Do you like taking risks, Glamma?”

“There’s no risk involved, since I’m always able to wake up at will. Lie down, Marilyn. We mustn’t waste any more valuable time.”

I quickly undressed, surprised again that my body had remained the same beneath the illusion of Lady Marilyn, so very plausible and genuine.

It’s time to sleep in your pajamas, kid, I thought. You’re not going to walk around naked in your friend Shurf’s dreamworld, are you? It’s wouldn’t be polite.

“It’s best if our heads are touching,” Lonli-Lokli said. “I’m not an expert in these matters by a long shot.”

“Okay,” I said, and obediently shifted my head. “All the more since putting to sleep such a live-wire as myself . . .” I yawned without finishing my thought, ready to peek into my companion’s dreams.

It turned out that the “projectionist” in this small dream-cinema for two was me. My favorite dreams of all visited us that night—the city in the mountains, where the only kind of municipal transport was a cable car; the marvelous English park that was always empty; the line of sandy beaches on the shore of a dark, gloomy sea.

I wandered through these extraordinary dreamscapes, now and then exclaiming, “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” “Wonderful!” my partner agreed, an astonishing fellow who didn’t look at all like my good friend Sir Shurf Lonli- Lokli, nor like the Mad Fishmonger who once terrorized all of Echo, nor like Sir Glamma Eralga.

I awoke at dawn, happy and full of peaceful well-being.

“Thank you for that wonderful excursion,” I said, smiling at Lonli-Lokli, who was already pulling on Glamma’s blue skaba.

“I’m the one who should be thanking you, since our dreams belonged to Sir Max. I’ve never had the opportunity to be in places like that before. Without the slightest doubt, they’re marvelous. I never expected anything like that from you, Sir Max.”

“The name’s Marilyn,” I said, and burst out laughing. “Gosh, Shurf, can you really make mistakes?”

“Sometimes one must make mistakes to be understood correctly,” Lonli-Lokli remarked cryptically, and went off to bathe.

“All the same, it wouldn’t have happened without your help! I don’t know how to find those places whenever I feel like it!” I called after him. Then I sent a call to the kitchen; Lonli-Lokli shouldn’t have to be the only one to bother with the trays.

A grand, dusky spring morning, a drive through endless green glades, a languorously long lunch of five identically tasteless courses in a remote tavern, the monotonous chatter of the other travelers . . . I don’t think I said more than ten words all day. I felt too pleasantly contented to break the tranquility with any sound at all.

“When do we arrive in Kettari?” Lonli-Lonli asked our Master Caravan Leader after we had finished our midday meal.

“It’s difficult to say exactly,” said Mr. Abora Vala. “I would guess in about two hours. But you see, in this part of the County Shimara, the roads are pretty rough. We might have to take a detour. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“A very competent answer,” I grumbled under my breath, getting behind the levers of the amobiler. “‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’ That’s just dandy. I’ve never received such exhaustive information in my life. It makes a guy happy to be so well-informed.”

“A girl,” Lonli-Lokli corrected me. “Are you nervous?”

“Me? Where did you get that idea? Actually, I’m always nervous. It’s my normal state. But today I happen to be feeling as calm as I’ve felt in eons.”

“Well, I’m nervous,” Shurf admitted unexpectedly.

“Whoa! I didn’t think I’d ever be hearing that.”

“I didn’t think so either.”

“We people are strange creatures,” I mused. “You never know beforehand what we’re going to do.”

“Indeed, Marilyn,” Sir Shurf said solemnly.

We continued on our way. Lonli-Lokli drove the amobiler, so I had an excellent opportunity to gaze about, savoring the foretaste of mystery.

The road was as predictable as a road can be when you’re seeing it for the first time. After an hour and a half I grew bored, and my vigilance tried to go into early retirement. Just then, the caravan turned off the main road onto a narrow path whose usefulness as a thoroughfare looked extremely doubtful.

Several minutes of merciless rattling and rolling and we turned again. The new road was fairly tolerable, looping a bit through the foothills. Then it suddenly soared upward at a dizzying angle.

To the right of the road loomed a cliff, overgrown with dusty bluish grass. On the left yawned the emptiness of an abyss. At that moment I wouldn’t have agreed to relieve Lonli-Lokli at the levers of the amobiler for all the wonders of the World I had a mortal fear of heights.

Struggling to reign in my panic, I recalled the breathing exercises and started in on them with a vengeance. Sir Shurf glanced over at me in concern, but didn’t speak. In a half hour my torments were over. Now the road was winding between two identically towering cliffs, which seemed to me to offer some guarantee of safety.

“I just sent a call to Mr. Vala. He claims that Kettari is still about two hours away,” said Lonli-Lokli.

“He said the same thing after lunch,” I grumbled.

“Well, nothing to get too alarmed about. But it does seem a bit strange, doesn’t it?”

“A bit? I’d say it’s very strange. As far as I understand it, the fellow makes this journey several times a year. This must have given him enough time to get to know the road.”

“That’s what I would have thought.”

“‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’” I said with a wry smile. “Maybe that motto is emblazoned on the Kettarian coat-of-arms. Looking at Juffin you’d never think so, but—actually, let me send him a call. There’s nothing much to praise, so we might as well grouse to a dyed-in-the-wool Kettarian.”

And I sent Sir Juffin Hully a call. To my great surprise, I didn’t get the slightest response. It was just like the days when I was a bumbling novice in the World and about as competent in Silent Speech as a lazy first-grader at his multiplication tables. I shook my head vigorously and tried again. After the sixth attempt I finally became alarmed and sent a call to Lonli-Lokli, simply to convince myself that I was capable of doing it at all.

Do you hear me, Shurf? Glamma? Whatever your name is?

“Are you enjoying yourself, Marilyn? It would be better if you—”

“I can’t contact Juffin!” I exclaimed out loud. “Can you imagine?”

“No, I certainly can’t. I hope this isn’t another joke.”

“As though I don’t have anything better to do than joke around! Try it yourself. It just isn’t working for me.”

“Fine. Take the levers. I have to sort this out—things like this can’t happen for no reason.”