Chapter 21. Book I: The Dream. A Memoir of the Future

MYSELF My God! Here they come again. Those howls! It's eerie. I believe they are nearer. That! That! … That is a tiger. No: Tigers are only cats. That is no cat. Arf, arf, arfer's little history of England. You damned hyena! If the wine don't get you then the women. … He's just insolent, sir. In what way sergeant? He … smiles. What! Well it's just a dumb insolence. Nurse. Out damned … No, ridiculous. I've got it mixed up. Hullo, may Potter, I mean ‘mere pother’ about nothing. If the windows rattle – last night it was windy and he waked the whole ward with his nonsense. What, was he sleep-walking? Not exactly, sir. He sat up and shook the bed, he was trembling so violently. ‘They are coming!’ he said, ‘that's the firing party … they are coming for me’. Then, just as you'd think he was going to jump out of the window, he quietened down as if he was watching the lawn to see it open. He told me his dead wife used to come out and walk towards him to fetch him – till he screamed! Then she'd go away. Recently he's started crying, quietly, because she doesn't come. ‘She won't come now any more’, he says; like a baby, as if he wanted her to come. It's a terrible laugh sir. It upsets the whole ward. Better transfer him to the chronic ward. Chloral is it? Double the dose.

SHERLOCK Most affecting! Any damn fool could see his brain is damaged, has been since the war. He was blown up by a shell: they all are! Very respectable. And then there is some equal fool who wants to analyse him!

BION (waking up suddenly) The really intelligent – I mean real intelligence, not the intelligence which has a fictitious character – want to cut out the brain, so that he will be intelligent too – really like Tyrannosaurus himself and some sea birds. Aren't they beautiful? Don't

they fly high! They are so beautiful, so high – they don't need to be intelligent. They have to be blown up – not like this pathetic fool, but inflated so they can make use of the currents. Just