“Of my book? My book? Certainly not, it’s not for patients.” She looked wildly around the room. “This is crazy! What kind of game is she playing?”

Miriam lay reading, her bottom lip caught prettily between her teeth, her eyes avid with concentration. Sarah put her head down on the desk and let out a long, racking sigh, almost a sob. Tom leaned close to her. “I’m too tired for games,” she said. “A stupid woman and her stupid games.”

“Honey, why don’t you just knock off. Go home or go back to the lab. Let me deal with Mrs. Blaylock alone.”

“I ought to be here. I’m the expert.”

“This place is loaded with good doctors. Me, for example.”

Sarah sat up, shook her head. “I accepted the case,” she said, “I can’t think of one valid reason to abandon it.”

Miriam closed her copy of Sleep and Age and lay back. The bed was tolerable, but best of all was this wonderful feeling of safety. Her own house was a superbly designed refuge, but a hospital with its large staff and twenty-four-hour operation was almost as good. No night clerks drowsing while fire spread up the stairwells as in a hotel. No robbers prowling the halls or defective wiring electrocuting the unwary bather. Hospitals were safe enough for a Sleeper. Even after burying John in the tunnel, she did not feel completely comfortable at home. He must yet die more completely, he knew the house’s security system too well. She relaxed into welcome peace. Maybe this time she would dream as she once had, of the sylvan blessings of long ago, or of the endless promise of the future. The unquiet dreams were most frequent during bad times. Her Sleep was more persistent when she was tense. She might need it as often as every twelve hours at the height of a crisis instead of every twenty-four. The harder things got, the more it interrupted.

She snuggled down into the bed, smelling the starched sheets, quivering with delight at the safety and thinking of Sarah, poor girl, who was about to walk through the fire.

The patient interrupted their conversation; professionalism demanded that personal matters now be put aside. The electroencephalograph, monitoring brain waves, was showing a pattern characteristic of drowsiness.

“There goes a roll,” Sarah said as the electro-oculograph jiggled. Mrs. Blaylock’s eyes were rolling into her head, an indication of stage one sleep. Sarah cleared her throat and swigged some coffee. Tom had to admire her. She was bursting apart inside and he damn well knew it. But you couldn’t tell it now. That was a pro. The alpha-wave arrhythmias that indicated dozing sleep appeared. Then the skin galvanometer jumped and the heart rate increased.

“Oops. Must have gotten stuck with a pin. She wearing any pins?”

“The electrodes must be bothering her.”

After a moment the electro-oculograph indicated left-to-right motion. “She’s reading again.”