“Nearly every night he was here, right from the beginning,” Salsbury said. “The first few times there really wasn’t any reason for it. But by the time it was necessary for me to keep a close watch on him, he was accustomed to the machines and had learned to sleep tangled up with all those wires.”
Indicating the print-out, the general said, “I’m not quite sure what I’m reading here.”
“Likewise,” Dawson said.
Salsbury suppressed a smile. Months ago he had decided that his best defense against these two sharks was his highly specialized education. He never missed an opportunity to display it for them-and to impress them with the fact that, if they should dispose of him, neither of them could carry on his research and development or deal with an unexpected scientific crisis after the research and development was finished.
Pointing to the first several lines of the print-out, he said, “The fourth stage of sleep is the deepest. It tends to occur early in the night. Kingman went to bed at midnight and fell asleep at twenty minutes of one. As you can see here, he achieved the fourth level twenty-two minutes later.”
“What’s the importance of that?” Dawson asked.
“The fourth level is more like a coma than any other stage of sleep,” Salsbury said. “The electroencephalogram shows irregular large waves of just a few cycles per second. There is no bodily movement on the part of the sleeper. It’s in stage four, with the outer mind virtually comatose and with all sensory input shut down tight, that the inner mind becomes the only truly operative part of the mind. Remember, unlike the conscious mind, it never sleeps. But because there isn’t any sensory input, the subconscious can’t do anything during stage four sleep except play with itself. Now, Kingman’s subconscious had something unique to play with.”
The general said, “The key-lock program you implanted in him yesterday and the day before.”
“That’s right,” Salsbury said. “And look here, farther down the print-out.”
0100 08 00 EEG–STAGE 4 SLEEP
0100 09 00 EEG–STAGE 4 SLEEP
0100 10 00 EEG–STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM
0100 11 00 EEG–STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM
“All night long,” Salsbury said, “we rise and fall and rise and fall through the stages of sleep. Almost without exception, we descend into deep sleep in Steps and ascend from it in steps as well, spending some time at each level along the way. In this case, however, Kingman soared straight up from deep sleep to light sleep-as if a noise in the bedroom had startled him.”
“Was there a noise?” Dawson asked.
“What’s this REM?” Klinger asked.
Salsbury said, “That means rapid eye movement is taking place under the eyelids-which is a highly reliable indication that Kingman was dreaming in stage one.”
“Dreaming?” Dawson asked. “About what?”
“There’s no way of telling.”
The general scratched the shadow of a beard that shaded his blunt chin even when he was freshly shaved. “But you think that the dream was caused by his subconscious playing around with the key-lock implant.”
“Yes.”
“And that the dream might have been about the subliminals.”
“Yes. I can’t come up with an explanation that makes more sense. Something about the key-lock program so shocked his subconscious that he was propelled straight up into a dream.”
“A nightmare?”
“At this point, just a dream. But over the next two hours his sleep patterns became increasingly unusual, erratic.”
0100 12 00 EEG–STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM
0100 13 00 EEG–ALPHA WAVES
0100 14 00 EEG–ALPHA WAVES
“The alpha waves mean Kingman was awake here for two minutes,” Salsbury said. “Not wide awake. His eyes were probably still closed. He was hovering on the edge of the first level of sleep.”
“The dream woke him,” Klinger said.
“Probably.”
0100 15 00 EEG–STAGE 1 SLEEP/REM
0100 16 00 EEG–STAGE 1 SLEEP
0100 17 00 EEC–STAGE 1 SLEEP
0100 18 00 EEG–STAGE 2 SLEEP
0100 19 00 EEG–STAGE 2 SLEEP
0100 20 00 EEG–STAGE 3 SLEEP
0100 21 00 EEG–STAGE 3 SLEEP
0100 22 00 EEG–STAGE 3 SLEEP
0100 23 00 EEC–STAGE 3 SLEEP
0100 24 00 EEC–STAGE 4 SLEEP
0100 25 00 EEC–STAGE 4 SLEEP
0100 26 00 EEC–STAGE 4 SLEEP