The Edmond Hamilton Megapack: 16 Classic Science Fiction Tales (18 page)

“Stevens, haven’t you finished that Blaine statement yet?” demanded a loud voice beside his desk.

Henry started guiltily. It was Carson, the wasp-like little office manager, who stood glowering down at him.

“I—I was just starting it,” Henry said hastily, grabbing the neglected papers.

“Just starting it?” Carson’s thin lips tightened. “Stevens, you’ve got to pull yourself up. You’re getting entirely too dreamy and inefficient lately. I see you sitting here and staring at the wall for hours. What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

“Nothing, Mr. Carson,” Henry said panically. Then he amended, “I’ve had a few troubles on my mind lately. But I won’t let them interfere with my work again.”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” advised the waspish little man ominously, and departed.

Henry felt a cold chill. There had been a significant glitter in Carson’s spectacled eyes. He sensed himself on the verge of a terrifying precipice—of losing his job.

“If I don’t forget about Thar, I will be in trouble,” he muttered to himself. “I can’t go on this way.”

As he mechanically added figures, he was alarmedly trying to figure out a way to rid himself of this obsession.

If he only knew which was reality and which was dream! That was what his mind always came back to, that was the key of his troubles.

If, for instance, he could learn for a certainty that Khal Kan and his life in Thar were merely a dream, as they seemed, then he wouldn’t brood about them. There wouldn’t be any point in worrying about what happened in a dream.

On the other hand, if he should learn that his life as Khal Kan was real, and that Henry Stevens and his world were the dream, then that too would relieve his worries. It wouldn’t matter much if Henry Stevens lost his job—if Henry were only a dream.

Henry was fascinated, as always, by that thought. He looked around the sunlit office, the neat desks and busy men and girls, with a flash of derisive superiority.

You may none of you be real at all,” he thought. “You may all just be part of Khal Kan’s nightly dream.”

That was always a queer thought, that idea that Earth and all its people, including himself, were just a dream of the prince of Jotan.

“I wish to heaven I knew,” Henry muttered baffledly for the thousandth time. “There must be some way to find out which is real.”

Yet he could see no test that would give proof. He had thought of and had tried many things during his life, to test the matter.

Several times, he had stayed up all night without sleep. He had thought that if he did not sleep and hence did not dream, it would break the continuity of the dreamlife of Khal Kan.

But it had had no effect. For when he finally did sleep, and dreamed that he awoke as Khal Kan, it merely seemed to Khal Kan that he had dreamed he was Henry Stevens, staying up a night without sleep—that he had dreamed two days and a night of the unreal life of Henry Stevens.

No, that had failed as a test. Nor was there any other way. If he could be sure that while he was sleeping and living the dreamlife of Khal Kan, the rest of Earth remained real—that would solve the problem.

The other people of Earth were sure they had remained in existence during his sleep. But, if they were all just figments of dream, their certainty of existence was merely part of the dream.

It was maddening, this uncertainty! He felt that it would drive him to insanity if the puzzle persisted much longer. Yet how was he to solve the riddle?

“Maybe a good psychoanalyst,” Henry thought doubtfully. “A fellow like that might be able to help.”

He shrank from his own idea. It would mean telling the psychoanalyst all about his dreamlife. And that was something he had not done for years, not since he was a small boy.

When he was a boy, Henry Stevens had confidendy told his family and chums all about his strange dreams—how each night when he slept he was another boy, the boy Khal Kan in Jotan, on the world Thar. He had told them in detail of his life as Khal Kan, of the wonderful black city Jotan, of the red sun and the two pink moons.

His parents had at first laughed at his stories, then had become worried, and finally had forbidden him to tell any more such falsehoods. They had put it all down to a too-vivid imagination.

And his boyhood chums had jeered at his tales, admiring his ability as a liar but rudely expressing their opinions when he had earnestly maintained that he did dream it all, every night.

So Henry had learned not to tell of his dreamlife. He had kept that part of his life locked away, and even Emma had never heard of it.

“But still, if a psychoanalyst could help me find out which is real,” he thought desperately, “it’d be worth trying—”

That afternoon when his work was finished, Henry found himself entering the offices of a Doctor Willis Thorn whom he had heard of as the best psychoalanlyst in the city. He had made an appointment by telephone.

Doctor Thorn wis a solidly built man of forty, with the body of a football player, and calm, friendly eyes. He listened with quiet attention as Henry Stevens, slowly at first and then more eagerly, poured out his story.

“And you say the dream continues logically, from night to night?” Doctor Thorn asked. “That’s strange. I’ve never heard of a psychosis quite like that.”

“What I want to know is—which is real?” Henry blurted. “Is there any way in which you could tell me whether it’s Thar or Earth that’s real?”

Doctor Thorn smiled quietly. “I’m not a figment of a dream, I assure you. You see me sitting here, quite real and solid. Too solid, I’m afraid—I’ve been putting on weight lately.”

Henry, puzzledly thoughtful, missed the pleasantry. “You seem real and solid,” he admitted, “and so does’ this office and everything else, to me. But then I, Henry Stevens, may only be a part of the dream myself—Khal Kan’s dream.”

Doctor Thorn’s brow wrinkled. “I see your point. It’s logical enough, from a certain standpoint. But it’s also logical that you and I and Earth are real, and that Khal Kan and his world are only an extraordinarily vivid dream your mind has developed as compensation for a monotonous life.”

“I don’t know,” Henry muttered. “When I’m Khai Kan, I’m pretty sure that Henry Stevens is just a dream. But I, Henry Stevens, am not so sure. Of course, Khal Kan isn’t the kind of man to brood or doubt much about anything—he’s a fighter and reckless adventurer.”

Doctor Thorn was definitely interested. “Look here, Mr. Stevens, suppose you write out a complete history of this dreamlife of yours—this life as Khal Kan—and bring it with you the next time. It may help me.”

Henry left the office, with his new hope on the wane. He didn’t think the psychoanalyst could do much to solve his problem.

After all, he thought depressedly as he drove homeward, there was hardly any way in which you could prove that you really existed. You felt you did exist, everyone around you was sure they did too, but there was no real proof that that whole existence was not just a dream.

His mind came back to Khal Kan’s present predicament. How was he going to escape from the drylanders? He brooded on that, through dinner.

“Henry Stevens, you haven’t been listening to one word!” his wife’s voice aroused him.

Emma’s plump, good-natured face was a little exasperated as she peered across the table at him.

“I declare, you’re getting more dopey every day!” she told him snappily.

“I’m just sleepy, I guess,” Henry apologized. “I think I’ll turn in.”

She shook her head. “You go to bed earlier every night. It’s not eight o’clock yet.”

Henry finally was permitted to retire. He felt an apprehensive eagerness as he undressed. What was going to happen to Khal Kan?

He stretched out and lay in the dark room, half dreading and half anticipating the coming of sleep. Finally the dark tide of drowsiness began to roll across his mind.

He knew vaguely that he was falling asleep. He slipped into darkness. And, as always, the dream came at once. As always, he dreamed that he was awaking—

Khal Kan awoke, in the dark, cold tent. His whole back was a throbbing pain, and his bound arms and legs were numb.

He lay thinking a moment of his dream. How real it always seemed, the nightly dream in which he was a timid little man named Henry Stevens, on a queer, drab world called Earth! When he was dreaming—when he was the man Henry Stevens—he even thought that he, Khal Kan, was a dream!

Dreams within dreams—but they meant nothing. Khal Kan had long ago quit worrying about his strange dreamlife, The wise men of Jotan whom he had consulted had spoken doubtfully of witchcraft Their explanations had explained nothing. And life was too short, there were too many enemies to slay and girls to kiss and flagons to drink, to worry much about dreams.

“But this
is
no dream, worse luck!” thought Khal Kan, testing his bonds. “The prince of Jotan, trussed up like a damned hyrk—”

He stiffened. A shadow was moving toward him in the dark tent. It bent over him and there was a muffled flash of steel. Amazedly, Khal Kan felt the bonds of his wrists and ankles relax. They had been cut.

The shadow sniggered. “What would you do without little Zoor to take care of you, Prince?”

“Zoor?” Khal Kan’s whisper was astonished. “How in the name of—”

“Easily, Prince,” sniggered Zoor. “I always carry a flat blade in the sole of my sandal. But it took me all night to get it out and cut myself free. It’s almost dawn.”

The cold in the tent was piercing. Through a crack in the flap, Khal Kan could see the eastern sky beginning to pale a little. He could also hear the drylanders on guard out there, shuffling to keep warm.

Khal Kan got to his feet while Zoor was freeing Brusul. Then the little man used his sliver of steel to slice a rip through the back wall of the tent. They three slipped out into the starry darkness.

Khal Kan chuckled a little to himself as he remembered how his dream-self—the man Henry Stevens in that dream-world—had worried about his plight. As though there was anything worth worrying about in that.

They did not stop for a whispered consultation until they were well away from the tent in which they had been kept. The whole camp of the drylanders was still, except for an occasional drunken warrior staggering between the dark tents, and the stamping of tethered horses not far away.

“The horses are this way,” muttered Brusul. “We can be over the Dragals before these swart-skinned devils know we’re gone.”

“Wait!” commanded Khal Kan’s whisper. “I’m not going without that girl. Golden Wings.”

“Hell take your obstinacy!” snarled Brusul. “Do you think you can steal the drylanders’ princess right out of their camp? They’d chase us to the end of the world. Beside, what would you want with that little desert-cat who had you flogged raw?”

Khal Kan uttered a low laugh. “She’s the only wench I’ve ever seen who was more than a sweet armful for an idle hour. She’s flame and steel and beauty—and by the sun, I’m taking her. You two get horses and wait by the edge of the camp yonder. I’ll be along.”

He hastened away before they could voice the torrent of objections on their lips. He had taken Zoor’s hiltless knife.

Khal Kan made his way through the dark tents to the big pavilion of the dryland chief. He silently skirted its rear wall, stopping here and there to slash the wall and peer inside.

Thus he discovered the compartment of the pavilion in which the girl slept. It had a guttering copper night-lamp whose flickering radiance fell on silken hangings and on a low mass of cushions on which she lay.

Golden Wings’ dark head was pillowed on her arm, her long black lashes slumbering on her cheek. Coolly, Khal Kan made an entrance. He delayed to cut strips from the silken hangings, and then approached her.

His big hand whipped the silken gag around Golden Wings’ mouth and tied it before she was half-awake. Her eyes raging as she recognized him, and her slim silken figure struggled in his grasp with wildcat fury.

Khal Kan was rough and fast. He got the silken bonds around her hands and feet, and then drew a breath of relief.

“Now we ride for Jotan, my sweet,” he whispered mockingly to her as he picked up her helpless figure.

Golden Wings’ black eyes blazed into his own, and he laughed.

He kissed her eyelids. “This will have to serve as proof of my affections until we can take this damned gag off, my dear,” he mocked.

Her firm body writhed furiously in his grasp as he went out into the starry night. Silently, bearing the girl easily, he made his way through the sleeping camp.

Stamping shadows loomed up at the camp edge, awaiting him. Brusul and Zoor had horses, and the little spy handed Khal Kan a stolen sword.

“You have the girl!” Zoor sniggered. “Even I could not make a theft so daring—to steal the drylanders’ princess out of their own camp!”

“We haven’t got her out yet, and it’s far to Jotan,” snarled Brusul. “Let’s get out of here.”

Khal Kan vaulted into the saddle and drew Golden Wings’ struggling silken figure across the saddle-bow. They walked their horses softly eastward till they were out of earshot of the camp, and then they spurred into a gallop.