Sleep and His Brother by Peter Dickinson Page A

trunk. Now he is taking the trunk to the left luggage office. Aha! Now I see his face. He is old, he is ugly, he has just been fired from the police force—”
    â€œOh, shut up, Rue,” said the girl. “Can you really? That’s marvellous.”
    â€œWhat are you trying to do?” said Pibble.
    â€œFind out what makes them stop ticking.”
    â€œWhen will this one wake up?”
    â€œNever.”
    Pibble felt a chill, like the touch of the children, run through his veins; he must have paled.
    â€œNasty thought, isn’t it?” said Kelly cheerfully. “And now I’ll answer your next question, seeing that you aren’t going to ask it as it’s not in very good taste. We don’t let ’em die, straight away, as soon as they fall into their everlasting doze, because it’s not ethical. I belong to a very ethical profession, mister, and it just so happens that this hands me a unique collection of research material. They beat rats and rabbits into a cocked hat. They’ve got no feelings, no future, no individuality, so I can use ’em as I think fit—with the utmost respect, of course, the utmost respect.”
    The last phrases were spoken in parody of some medical spokesman mouthing his obscene euphemisms.
    â€œAs a matter of fact,” said Pibble, “I was going to ask if you knew what they were dreaming about.”
    Kelly snorted with amusement, then stilled. His eyes flickered and remained angry, though he laughed again.
    â€œRam’s been getting at you,” he said. “You mustn’t believe any of that cock.”
    â€œOh, Rue,” said the girl. “You know there’s something in it. All the staff think so.”
    â€œDarlint,” said Kelly, “if you’d be listening to me ould friend Father O’Freud, there’s some knowledge of wish fulfilment you’d be having.”
    â€œBegorra,” said the girl.
    â€œBegorra indade!” cried Kelly, doing a short wild jig in the aisle between the silent beds. “The raisin, I mean reason, why my admirable colleagues think the kids are telepathic is that without some asset like that they’d be spending their lives trying to cultivate an allotment of moving vegetables. They want the little bastards to be extraordinary, and therefore worthwhile.”
    â€œBut then we’d all choose different extraordinary things about them,” said the girl.
    â€œWould you hell? You’ve got one ready-made myth, so any further superstitions accrete to that. Belief in the unreasonable is always collective—look at medical history.”
    â€œWhen I arrived,” said Pibble, “two of the children opened the door. Before they saw me one of them said, ‘Copper come. Lost his hat.’”
    â€œYou never wear a hat,” said Kelly.
    â€œI was thinking about the psychological effects of being sacked—or I just had been.”
    â€œVery sophisticated metaphors you think in, by cathypnic standards.”
    â€œIt’s very close, isn’t it?” said the girl.
    â€œWhat is?”
    â€œThe copper and the hat.”
    Kelly snorted again.
    â€œMy cousin from County Clare,” he said, “dealt himself all thirteen spades once. They threw him in the Liffey for cheating, but we in the family knew he hadn’t the wits.”
    Pibble laughed and Kelly joined him, but the girl remained serious.
    â€œDoctor Silver did bring two of the dormice in here,” she said. “He wanted to find out if they were all dreaming one communal dream.”
    â€œWhat happened?” said Pibble.
    â€œThe kids said ‘Lovely’ and tried to go to sleep too. I hustled them out.”
    â€œHow beautiful is sleep,” said the girl. “Sleep and his brother death.”
    Kelly snarled at her like a wildcat.
    â€œHaven’t I told you that if you quoted once more from bloody English literature I’d never buy