Case and the Dreamer by Theodore Sturgeon Page B

of himself, see himself shining in the light with the water splashing into pearls and his teeth shining too as he laughs … why can’t he ever laugh with me? What makes him so grave and careful? How could he know so little about a woman?”
    Some of it was scientific data and observation, but again that hushed, hungry voice,
“I’ll never give in, never, never, I’ll never let him know; but why can’t he see it, why can’t he say it just once?”
    Say what? thought Case.
    He kept on listening to the voicewriter until he found out.
    “Case.”
    “Yea, Buzzbox.”
    “He beat me, and I love him.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “The Dreamer. He loves me too. Hey thanks, Case.”
    “Repeat, from your call.”
    “Case.”
    “Yeah, Buzzbox.”
    “He beat me, and I love him.”
    “Hold it right there. Who beat you?”
    “The Dreamer. At chess.”
    “Somebody beat
you
at chess?”
    “Twenty-three moves. A queen’s bishop’s pawn opening, and then—”
    “Never mind the blow-by-blow, Buzzbox. Where is this who-did-you-say?”
    “Dreamer. In my house.”
    Case slammed out of his quarters and down to the door marked “computer.” There before the twinkling wall which was the heart of Buzzbox sat a small table. On the table was a chessboard. On the chessboard was the sparse remnant of a very bloody chess game, with the black king turned down in defeat. Before the table was a stool, and on the stool squatted the clown-creature, looking up at him with its brilliant eyes, and laughing.
    “How the hell did you get there?”
    “You brought him up in the boat. I guess I love you too, Case,” said Buzzbox.
    “If I did I wasn’t aware of it.”
    “I know you weren’t, but you brought him anyway, And he loves me. And he’s going to stay with us.”
    The clown-thing nodded vigorously.
    “The hell he is. He goes right back to that crazy planetoid.”
    “He can’t go back to it,” said Buzzbox. “He
is
the planetoid. He lives next to another space. You don’t understand that. Well, I do, he explained it to me. He can be anything he wants. He can be big as a pin or a molecule or a whole planet. He can squirt any part of himself from one space to another, like a half-filled balloon through a hole in a board. And he dreams things up; that’s why I call him the Dreamer.”
    The Dreamer laughed and suddenly was a cut-crystal vase, andwas a pale lavender centipede, and was a clown-creature again, laughing.
    “He gets off this ship.”
    “Then so do I. Case, he
loves
me, can’t you understand that?”
    The clown-creature nodded vigorously. Case glared at it. “What the hell do you know about love, Buzzbox?”
    “The Dreamer explained it to me. He learned it from a voicewriter. This girl was loving
you
. What the hell do you know about love, Case?”
    Case felt a moment of disorientation, utter disbelief. Computers do not take this tone with the master. “What’s gotten into you, Buzzbox?”
    “I’m in love, I’m in love, and he loves me!”
    And that’s what love does, thought Case. Frees the slaves. Damns the consequences.
    “And what happens if I kick this—this batwinged ape off my ship?”
    “Then you’re on your own, Master. You’ll never get another buzz from me.”
    “Do you know what this goggle-eyed monstrosity has put me through?”
    “He saved you.”
    Case glowered at the Dreamer, who smiled back at him cheerfully. And then he thought about the lifeboat, and the strange planet that swam up out of nowhere, and the way those nines appeared on his Terra Normal readout—not instantaneously, as it would in any normal demand, but bit by bit, as the planetoid … the Dreamer … sensed what was needed and supplied it. And their year there, while the Dreamer watched … (How lonely must a creature like that be?) … and learned. Then—the voicewriter; something new; the day-by-day account of a proud woman’s falling in love and loving … loving a grim, serious,