Falling Awake

me—” He stopped suddenly, flushing.
    “An even better dreamer than me?” Ellis drank some tea and lowered the mug. “The only thing that’s going to make you as good as me is experience.”
    “Yeah, well, it sounded like a great idea at the time,” Vincent muttered.
    “Don’t worry, Vincent,” Isabel said bracingly. “Ellis told me you are very, very good. Someday you are going to be a legend back at Frey-Salter, too.”
    Vincent appeared somewhat cheered by that prospect. Ellis looked amused.
    Isabel tossed a handful of fresh chopped parsley into the huge mound of creamy scrambled eggs she was preparing. “Sounds like Amelia-Maureen craved what every serious researcher craves, namely unlimited funding and the freedom to conduct her work without interference. And she was prepared to go to any lengths to reach her goals.”
    “Her notes in the dream log imply that she was, in part, inspired by her work at Brackleton,” Ellis said. “She did a lot of her early experiments on the inmates with a primitive version of CZ-149. She discovered that she could control her subjects to a certain extent if she gave them hypnotic suggestions while they were under the influence of the drug. She also found out that the stuff worked best on people who were inclined toward luciddreaming. She never got any Level Five subjects at the prison, but she got a couple of Threes and a Four. Those experiences made her aware of the potential of the drug.”
    “How did she learn about Lawson’s agency?” Isabel asked.
    “She didn’t, not at first. But she was well connected in the world of dream research and she certainly knew about Frey-Salter. She applied for a job after the Brackleton project was shut down, and Lawson grabbed her. After she got her security clearance and found out just what went on at the agency, she was ecstatic.”
    “Must have looked like a dream job for a while,” Isabel said dryly.
    “Yeah, but it all came apart after the affair with Lawson ended,” Ellis said. “When he transferred her out of the agency, she set out to gain control of the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research. That’s when she realized just how useful her old Brackleton subjects would be.”
    “Those poor men.” Isabel sighed. “None of them were very stable. They never stood a chance against her.”
    “Why was she so determined to keep her identity hidden while she was at the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research?” Dave asked softly.
    “Two reasons,” Isabel said. “The first was Ellis. She realized that he was going to persist in his investigation of Vincent. She knew that if he turned over enough rocks, he might figure out the connection to one Maureen Sage.”
    “So she made Maureen disappear and created a new identity for herself.” Vincent grimaced. “She was really good with computers.”

    “Certainly good enough to get past the rather shallow employment background checks that were the norm at the Belvedere Center for Sleep Research.” Isabel poured more tea. “The only people who had to go through serious background checks there were the ones who worked on Lawson’s secret projects. Namely me and Dr. B.”
    Dave wrapped both hands around his mug of tea and studied her. “You said there were two reasons why Amelia took a new identity. What was the second?”
    “The second reason she wanted to keep a low profile, at least at the beginning, was because she knew the center depended on Lawson’s funding,” Isabel explained. “She was afraid that if he discovered she intended to go into competition with him, he would cut off the money.”
    “Which is exactly what he would have done,” Ellis said knowingly. “Lawson doesn’t take kindly to rivals and competitors, inside or outside the government bureaucracy.”
    Isabel nodded. “Yes, well, just imagine Amelia-Maureen’s surprise when, after she went to all the trouble to seduce Randolph and get rid of his father, one of Randolph’s first official acts was to fire me. She knew that without me, Lawson would quickly lose interest in funding the institute.”
    “But she had to be careful about how much she told Randolph,” Ellis said. “She didn’t want him to understand the real connection between the institute and Lawson’s operation any more than Lawson did. She wanted to stay in the shadows. She certainly did not want Lawson to discover that his ex-lover hadchanged her name and was about to become the person who would be manipulating one of his