Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/16

, 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—

HAL 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