The Reincarnation of Peter Proud by Max Ehrlich Read Free Book Online Page B

doesn’t dream at all. You had practically no rapid eye movements. Your REMs barely recorded. Same with the EEG. Your brain waves were very small, gave only very weak signals.”
    “But I did dream, Sam. I had the same ones I told you about.”
    “Maybe. But they didn’t register as dreams.”
    “Then what the hell
are
they?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve been in sleep research for years, and they’re unique in my experience. Staub called them hallucinations, didn’t he?”
    “Yes.”
    “All right. Then that’s what they must be. Or they could be memory plants, visions, revelations. Hell, I don’t know. Pete, you’re going through some kind of wild psychic experience. That’s all
I
can tell you.”
    “No,” said Peter. “You know more than you’re telling me. Look, give it to me straight. I’ve got something to worry about here—is that it?”
    Goodman avoided his eyes.
    “I wish you hadn’t asked me that.”
    “But I
am
asking you.”
    Sam Goodman’s pipe went out. He picked up a book of matches to relight it. Then he threw the matches back onto the desk.
    “Pete, first you’ve got to understand—I’m not very good at playing young Doctor Jones, the way they do on television. All I can give you are certain facts as I know them. A certain amount of normal dreaming is a requirement of any human being. Both physically and mentally. It seems to give immunity against psychosis.”
    “Go on.”
    “Nobody seems to really know why. Oh, there are theories. When people are dream-deprived, they’re unable to discharge certain tensions, infantile or otherwise. The nightly dream cycle provides release for these pressures. If the cycle is suppressed, then the pressures may be dammed up and at some point could break through. When this happens, the mind is swamped by distorted images. The senses are confused. Ordinary perceptions become blunted. Put it another way. When we dream, it allows us to go quietly and safely insane each night of our lives, instead of each day.”
    “In other words, I’m on my way. Sooner or later, I’ve got to crack up. Go crazy. Psycho.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “But that’s what you mean.”
    “Look,” said Goodman carefully. “I agree, you have a problem. And it’s serious. But all this is premature. We just don’t have any precedent …”
    “Damn it, Sam,” Pete said furiously, “will you level with me? If I don’t start to dream normally pretty soon, I’ve got a brilliant future as a gibbering idiot. Is that it? Or
isn’t
it?”
    “Take it easy, Pete. We’ve still got some time. There has to be some way to pull you out of this. Somebody will come up with something.”
    He sat there, shaken. Sam continued talking, but Pete hardly heard what he was saying.

Chapter 6
    All that night he was unable to sleep.
    The next morning, bleary-eyed and haggard, he flew north to a town in Mono County called Bridgeport. He had been retained by the California Indian Legal Services and the Native American Rights Fund to testify on behalf of a small colony of Paiute Indians who were trying to keep twenty acres of ancestral land. The government wanted it for a federal reclamation project.
    It was his job as an expert to testify that the members of the colony were legitimate descendants of the original Paiutes; further, that their ancestors had occupied this land long before the first white man had come to their valley in the high Sierra, and that the occupation of the land was entirely valid, by treaty. If the Paiutes lost this land, and therefore a settled status, they could not qualify for federal housing aid and other programs designed to improve their jobless, welfare-dependent lives.
    When he was called upon to testify, he blew it.
    It wasn’t just that he was tired. Somehow, he couldn’t coordinate his testimony. He had lapses of memory. He had to refer repeatedly to files from his briefcase. He shuffled documents interminably, trying to find what he needed. He could