The Stranger - Max Frei [247]
“I’m a stranger myself, if you care to remember! And it’s very unlikely that anyone is observing us now.”
“Not now, no, but during the stops.”
“I’m not a complete dunce!” I retorted. “Do you really think I’d light up a cigarette in the company of other people, Shurf?”
“It’s always better to be forewarned. Besides, you probably haven’t considered that it would be better to burn the butts than to throw them away. You really must mind your manners, Marilyn,” my companion reprimanded me.
I burst out laughing. Our dialogue was becoming heated. When I had recovered, I carefully burned my cigarette butt. Lonli-Lokli was, after all, the wisest of mortals. And I was a frivolous ninny who knew nothing about the paramount demands of secrecy.
That night we had already reached the County Shimara. Our Master Caravan Leader sat down at the card table again, and we dined on something exotic—too spicy and oily for my tastes—then went to the night’s lodgings.
Only then did I realize that the huge residential hall was outside the territory of the Unified Kingdom. Our room was not much larger than an ordinary hotel room in my own world, and the bed was a regular double bed. I looked at Lonli-Lokli in dismay.
“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