Falling Awake

  “I wasn’t hired to do therapy,” she said carefully.

  “Just as well, since according to your personnel file, you don’t even have a degree in psychology.” He flipped open the folder on the desk. “It says here that you majored in history in college. It also appears that your previous job was at something called the Psychic Dreamer Hotline.”

  “You’d be amazed how much practical psychology you can pick up answering phones for the Psychic Dreamer Hotline. It was very educational.” She was starting to get mad. “As I was about to say, Dr. Belvedere employed me to interpret the meaning of events and symbols that appeared in dream reports taken from a, uh, certain class of dreamers. You’re probably aware that your father had a particular interest in what he termed Level Five lucid dreaming.”

  “I knew it.” Randolph’s voice was very tight. A dark flush rose in his cheeks. “He was still fiddling around with that psychic nonsense, wasn’t he?”

  She could feel the cold dampness of a trickle of perspiration under her arms. “I consider that an extremely narrow point of view, sir. In the last few years, your father devoted a great deal of his energy and expertise to the study of high-level lucid dreaming. He hired me to assist him in his research.”

  Probably best not to explain exactly why Dr. Belvedere had selected her to help him, she decided. The situation was bad enough as it was.

  “The old fool never gave up, did he,” Randolph said bitterly. “He was obsessed with his personal dream scale and that psychic dreaming crap.”

  “He did not consider it, uh, crap.” She gripped the strap of her shoulder bag. “Dr. Belvedere was convinced that some people experience the phenomenon of lucid dreaming with a great deal more intensity and clarity than others. Most people have lucid dreams occasionally. On his scale they rank as Ones and Twos. A few have lucid dreams more frequently and with greater clarity—the Threes and Fours.”

  “And then we have the Belvedere Level Five lucid dreamer.” Randolph’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “The so-called psychic dreamer.”

  “Your father felt that it was a phenomenon that was worth serious study.”

  “Dreaming is dreaming, Ms. Wright,” Randolph said flatly. “The consensus of most reputable modern research is that there is no scientific evidence to indicate that being aware of a dream or feeling in control of it is somehow a different or more special kind of dreaming. If anything, it merely indicates that the dreamer is probably not in a deep sleep at the time and is, therefore, more cognizant of what is going on in his own head.”

  “I’m sure you’re aware that Dr. Belvedere believed there was more to the phenomenon, at least in some individuals,” she said earnestly.

  Randolph sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I was afraid of this.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “My father really did go completely wacko toward the end.” He shook his head. “I suppose I can only be grateful that he died before he could completely tarnish his professional reputation by publishing any more of his crazy investigations into psychic dreaming.”

  A rush of anger momentarily blotted out her common sense and caution.

  “That is an outrageous thing to say. It is obvious that the two of you did not have a good relationship. I’m sorry about that, but—”

  “How d–dare you presume to analyze my relationship with my father?” Randolph was stuttering with rage now. “You have no credentials in the field of psychology, neuroscience or any other field that is even remotely connected to serious dream research. You have no business working at a respectable research facility of any kind.”

  “Sir, if you knew anything at all about your father, you must realize that, although he could be difficult, he was a brilliant man whose investigations into extreme dreaming will someday be validated by others.”

  She knew at once she had gone too far.

  Randolph vibrated with so much tension that his hands shook. “My father was most certainly a capable researcher at one time. But he allowed his eccentricities to overwhelm his scientific training. I suspect that toward the end, he suffered from some sort of undiagnosed dementia.”

  “He was not demented.” The only thing that kept her in her seat was the knowledge that losing her temper completely would provide Randolph with all the ammunition he needed to fire her on the spot.

  To her surprise, Randolph smiled. It was not a nice smile, however. It was a thin, mean-spirited little grin of anticipation.

  “Let’s return to the subject of your position here at the center,” he said. “Specifically, your lack of professional credentials and degrees.”

  “Dr. Belvedere felt that I had other qualities that made me useful.”

  “Yes, I know, Ms. Wright. But in case it has escaped your notice, I am now the director of the center, and, frankly, I don’t have any use for you at all.”

  She thought about the large outstanding balances on her credit card statements and went ice cold.

  “Currently the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research is considered to be a small, backwater lab in the world of sleep studies,” Randolph continued. “Until now it has certainly not been a major player in the field. But I intend to change that. As of today, it will focus entirely on sleep research. There will be no more work done on my father’s absurd dream theories. Do you understand, Ms. Wright?”

  She thought about her beautiful new furniture sitting in the rented storage locker.

  “You’ve made yourself very clear,” she said quietly.

  “We are going to ditch the woo-woo factor, Ms. Wright.” Randolph was looking increasingly cheerful. “The Department of Dream Analysis no longer exists. I am terminating your employment immediately.”

  She had nothing left to lose, she decided. “You’re letting me go because closing the Department of Dream Analysis is the only way you can come up with to punish your father. Don’t you think that’s a little childish?”

  “How dare you!” He straightened in his chair, righteous indignation blazing in his eyes. “I am p–p–protecting what is left of his reputation.”

  “Wonderful.” She spread her hands. “Now you’re rationalizing your actions by telling yourself you’re doing this out of respect for your father. Give me a break. You’re the one with the doctorate in psychology. You know as well as I do that’s not going to work.”

  Randolph reddened. “I don’t want to hear another word out of you, do you understand?”

  She should stop talking right now, she thought, but she couldn’t help herself. “You really ought to look into getting some counseling to help you deal with your father issues. They’re not going to go away now that he’s dead and you’ve got control of his company, you know. If anything, your obsession with proving yourself may get worse. That can lead to—”

  “Shut up, Ms. Wright.” He punched the intercom on his desk. “Mrs. Johnson, send someone from security to escort Ms. Wright out of the building.”

  There was a short, appalled silence from Mrs. Johnson’s end.

  “Yes, sir,” she finally managed, sounding horrified.

  Isabel got to her feet. “I’ll go back to my office to collect my things.”

  “You will not move an inch,” Randolph said flatly. “Your office is being cleared out as we speak. Your personal effects will be brought downstairs to the parking lot and handed over to you.”

  “What?”

  Randolph gave her a triumphant smile. “By the way, I was informed that you intercepted the janitors who were ordered to destroy my father’s research this morning. I have remedied the situation.”

  She stopped at the door and whirled around. “What are you talking about?”

  “All of the papers and computer files in your office are being destroyed as we speak,”

  “You can’t do that.” Another thought struck her as she yanked open the door. “Sphinx.”

  “Come back here, Ms. Wright.” Randolph leaped to his feet. “You are not to return to your office. You will be escort
ed from here directly to your car.”

  She ignored him to rush past Mrs. Johnson’s desk. The secretary lowered the phone, her expression distraught.

  Randolph thundered after Isabel. “I order you to return to this office and wait for security.”

  “You just fired me. I don’t take orders from you anymore.”

  She flew along the corridor. Office doors opened as she went past. People came to stand in doorways, faces alight with curiosity and astonishment.

  By the time she reached the wing where her office was located, she was breathless. At the end of the hall she saw a small knot of people in the hall outside her door. Ken barred the entrance, both arms extended to grasp the door frame on either side.

  “Nobody comes in here until Isabel gets back,” he roared.

  Isabel recognized the three people confronting him. One of them, Gavin Hardy, was from the center’s IT department. Gavin was the guy you called when the computers went down or the lab equipment malfunctioned. He was in his mid-thirties, thin, twitchy and very hyper. The only time he was ever still was when he was engrossed in a software problem. He was dressed in a pair of voluminous cargo pants and a tee shirt emblazoned with the logo of one of the mega casino-resorts in Las Vegas. Gavin’s big goal in life was to devise the perfect system for beating the house at blackjack.

  The second man at her door was Bruce Hopton, the head of the center’s small security team. He was accompanied by one of his staff. Bruce was nearing retirement. The white shirt he wore was stretched to the breaking point across his ever-expanding belly. Security was not a major problem at the center. Most of the time Bruce and his people devoted themselves to making sure employees parked in their assigned slots, escorting the female nightshift workers out to their cars and performing the perfunctory employee background checks.

  None of the three men looked happy to be where he was.

  “Sorry about this, Isabel,” Bruce muttered. “Belvedere himself gave us our orders.”

  Ken looked at Isabel.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded. “These guys say they’ve been told to destroy all the files in your office and on your computer.”

  “It’s true. Belvedere just fired me.”

  “That sonofabitch.” Ken glared at Gavin and Bruce.

  Gavin held up both hands in a defensive gesture. “Hey, don’t blame us.”

  “Yeah,” Bruce mumbled. “We feel just as bad about this as you do, Ms. Wright.”

  “I doubt it,” she said. “I’m out of a job.”

  “I’m real sorry about that,” Bruce said. “We’re sure gonna miss you around here.”

  The regret in his face was sincere. She could not take her anger and frustration out on him. “Thanks, Bruce. If you don’t mind, I have to get Sphinx.”

  Bruce nervously checked the hallway behind her. “I’m not supposed to let you back inside, Isabel.”

  “I’m here for the cat,” she said evenly.

  He hesitated briefly and then squared his shoulders. “Go ahead and get the carrier. I’ll take the heat if Belvedere objects.”

  “Thanks, Bruce.”

  “Forget it. Least I can do after what you did for my grandson a few months ago.”

  Isabel moved into the office.

  Ken stood aside. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Sphinx is a little upset.”

  “I can tell.”

  Sphinx was crouched in his cage, ears plastered against his skull, eyes narrowed, fangs bared.

  “It’s okay, Sphinx. Calm down, sweetie.” She hoisted the carrier. “We’re going home.”

  “Belvedere can’t fire you like this,” Ken growled.

  “Yes, he can, actually.” She glanced at her cluttered desk and then determinedly turned away from the sight of all the work that was about to be destroyed. She had done her best to salvage Martin Belvedere’s research, but she had failed. There was nothing more she could do. She had her own problems and they were big ones.

  “Where is she?” Randolph called heatedly outside in the hall. “My instructions were clear, Hopton. Ms. Wright was not supposed to be allowed back into her office.”

  “She’s picking up the cat,” Bruce said quietly. “Figured you’d want him out of here.”

  “Cat? What cat?” Randolph appeared in the doorway, his anchorman features as tight and drawn as if he’d just been told that the network had decided not to renew his contract. “Damnit, that’s my father’s cat, isn’t it? What’s it doing here? I told Mrs. Johnson this morning that the creature was to be sent to the pound.”

  “Don’t worry, Dr. Belvedere.” Isabel walked toward the door, holding the carrier in both arms. “We’re leaving. The best thing you can do is get out of my way. You’re going to look awfully foolish if you decide to fight me over this cat. If I get really annoyed, I might open the door of this carrier.”

  Sphinx hissed at Randolph.

  Belvedere got out of the way.

  hours later she sat at the table in the kitchen of her small apartment glumly regarding the array of bank and credit card statements. The windows were open, allowing the warm air of the early summer afternoon to circulate through the small space. She couldn’t see the smog when she looked out across the pool and gardens toward the other apartments, but she could taste it in the back of her throat.

  She had considered turning on the air conditioner but thought better of it after a short review of the state of her finances. A dollar saved on the electricity bill was a dollar that could go toward the payments on her precious furniture.

  “We’ve got a big problem, Sphinx. I’ve made all the cuts I can. I’ll cancel the gym membership and drop the insurance on the furniture first thing in the morning, but that’s not going to be enough to bail us out. There’s only one answer.”

  The cat ignored her. He was on the floor in the corner, hunched over a saucer of cat food. He tended to be extremely focused at mealtime.

  “Given your expensive tastes in cat food and my outstanding credit card debt, we have no choice,” she informed him. “The folks at the Psychic Dreamer Hotline are very nice and I could probably get my old job back, but, to be honest, it doesn’t pay well enough to keep us in the style to which we have become accustomed. Got to think of the furniture. If I don’t make the payments we’ll find a repo man at our door one of these days.”

  Sphinx finished the last of his meal and padded across the floor to where she sat. When he reached her he heaved his bulk up onto her lap, hunkered down and closed his eyes. The sound of his rusty, rumbling purr hummed in the quiet kitchen.

  She stroked him, taking a curious comfort in his weight and warmth. She liked animals in general but had never considered herself a cat person. When she thought about getting a pet for company, she usually thought in terms of a dog.

  Sphinx was not what anyone would call cute or cuddly. But there was no getting around the fact that during the past year, the two of them had become colleagues of a sort. It had been Sphinx who alerted her to the fact that Martin Belvedere was dead.

  She had spent that fateful night in her office, as she often did when working on a rushed dream analysis for one of the anonymous clients. Belvedere, an insomniac who usually spent his nights at the center, had wandered down the hall sometime around midnight to chat with her about the case before she went into her dream state. Everything had seemed so normal, she thought, or at least as normal as things got in her new career. Belvedere brought a container of lemon yogurt with him when he came to her office, just as he always did when he visited at that hour. He ate a portion of the yogurt while they discussed her latest project. Then he left with his unfinished snack to return to his office.

  Shortly before two in the morning some small sound awakened her. It brought her out of a disturbing dream full of symbols of blood and death, typical of the sort she interpreted for Clients One and Two.

  She was still somewhat disoriented when she opened the door and fou
nd Sphinx pacing back and forth in the hallway. His agitated behavior was so unusual she knew at once that something was wrong. She picked him up and carried him back to Belvedere’s office, where she discovered the director slumped over his desk.

  That kind of experience invoked a bond, she told herself. She wasn’t sure how Sphinx felt about her but she knew there was no way she could have let him go to the pound.

  “Looks like I’m going to have to do what I swore I’d never do.”

  Sphinx gave no indication that he was in any way concerned with their financial future.

  “It must be nice to be so Zen,” she muttered.

  Sphinx’s purr got louder.

  She reached for the phone and slowly, reluctantly, punched out the familiar number. While she waited for an answer, she thought about the two anonymous clients of the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research. Their consulting requests were erratic and unpredictable. Sometimes weeks passed between assignments. She wondered how long it would be before either of them learned that her services were no longer available.

  Most of all she wondered if Client Number Two, otherwise known as Dream Man, would miss her when he discovered that she was gone.

  3

  FREY-SALTER, INC., RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NORTH CAROLINA

  you’re still worrying about Ellis, aren’t you?” Beth asked.

  “Yeah. He’s not getting any better. Worse, in fact.” Jack Lawson absently registered the familiar squeak in the government-issue desk chair when he leaned back to plant his heels on the aged government-issue desk.

  The squeak had come with the chair. Both had been new some thirty-odd years ago, when he was assigned to establish Frey-Salter, Inc., the corporate front that concealed his small, very secret government agency and its highly classified dream research program.

  Frey-Salter was located in the Research Triangle Park of North Carolina, an area conveniently situated in the heart of a triangle formed by Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. The park was home to a heavy concentration of cutting-edge pharmaceutical and high-tech enterprises. Frey-Salter went unnoticed among the large assortment of companies and businesses that operated there.