"Are you into dream interpretations, Doctor?"

"I leave that to the Freudians," Lugovoy replied. "I am one of the few who believe dreams are meaningless. It's merely a situation where the brain, freed from the discipline of daytime thinking, goes on holinay. Like a city dog who lives in an apartment and is unleashed in the country, running in no particular direction, enjoying the new and different smells."

"There are many who would disagree."

"Dreams are not my specialty, so I cannot argue from a purely scientific base. However, I put it to you that if they do have a message, why are most of the senses usually missing?"

"You're referring to the absence of smell and taste?"

Lugovoy nodded. "Sounds are also seldom recorded. The same with touch and pain. Dreams are primarily visual sensations. So my own opinion, backed up by little personal research, is that a dream about a one-eyed goat who spits fire is simply that: a dream about a one-eyed goat who spits fire."

"Dream theory is the cornerstone of all psychoanalytic behavior.

With your esteemed reputation, you'd shatter quite a few established icons with your goat opinion. Think how many of our psychiatrist comrades would be out of a job if it became known that dreams are meaningless."

"Uncontrolled dreams are quickly forgotten," Lugovoy continued.

"But the demands and instructions we transmit to the President's brain cells while he is asleep will not be received as dreams. They are injected thoughts that can be recalled and acted upon by outside stimuli."

"When should I begin programming his implant unit?"

"Transmit the instructions shortly before he wakes up, and repeat them when he sits down at his desk." Lugovoy yawned again.

"I'm going to bed. Ring my room if there is a sudden change."

The neurologist nodded. "Rest well."

Lugovoy stared briefly at the monitoring system before he left the room. "I wonder what his mind is envisioning?"

The neurologist waved casually at the data printer. "It should be there."

"No matter," said Lugovoy. "It can wait till morning." Then he turned and walked to his room.

His curiosity needled, the neurologist picked up the top printout sheet containing the President's interpreted brainwaves and glanced at the wording.

"Green hills of summer,' he muttered to himself as he read. "A city between two rivers with nwny Byzantine-style churches topped by hundreds of cupolas. One called St. Sophia. A river barge filled with sugar beets. The Catacombs of St. Anthony. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was dreaming about the city of Kiev."

He stood beside a pathway on a hill overlooking a wine river, gazing at the ship traffic and holding an artist's brush. On the treecovered slope below him he could see a large stone pedestal beneath a figure draped in robes and holding a tall cross as though it were a staff. An easel with a canvas stood slightly off to his right.