The Edmond Hamilton MEGAPACK ®. Edmond Hamilton
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was Henry Stevens the dream?
All his life, Henry Stevens had been beset by that riddle. It was one that had begun with his earliest childish memories.
As far back as he could remember, Henry had had the dream. As a child, he had every night dreamed that he was a child in a different world far removed from Midland City.
Each night, when little Henry Stevens had lain down to sleep, he had at once slipped into the dream. In that dream, he was a boy in the city Jotan, on the shore of the Zambrian Sea, on the world of Thar. He was Khal Kan, prince of Jotan, son of the king, Kan Abul.
All through his years of youth and manhood, the dream had persisted. Every night, as soon as he slept, he dreamed that he was awaking. And then, in the dream, he seemed to be Khal Kan again. As Khal Kan, he lived through the day on Thar. And when Khal Kan lay down to sleep, he dreamed that he awoke as Henry Stevens, of Earth!
The dream was continuous. There was nothing incoherent or jerky about it. Day followed day consecutively in the life of Khal Kan, as logically as in the life of Henry Stevens.
Henry Stevens grew up through boyhood and youth, attending his school and playing his games and going off to college, and finally getting a job with the insurance company, and marrying.
And each night, in Henry’s dream Khal Kan was similarly pursuing his life—was learning to ride and wield a sword, and explore the mountains west of Jotanland, and go forth in patrol expeditions against the hated Bunts of the south who were the great enemies of Jotan.
When he was awake and living the life of Henry Stevens, it always seemed to him that Khal Kan and his colorful, dangerous world of Thar were nothing but an extraordinarily vivid dream. All that world, with its strange cities and enormous mountains and forests and alien races, its turquoise seas and crimson sun, were surely nothing but dream.
That was how it seemed to Henry Stevens. But when he was Khal Kan, in the nightly dream, it was exactly the opposite. Then it seemed to Khal Kan that Henry Stevens and his strange world of Earth were the dream.
Khal Kan seldom doubted that. The hardy young prince of Jotan knew there could be no such world as this Earth he dreamed about each night. A world where he was a timid little man who worked with papers at a desk all day long, a world where men dressed and acted differently, where even the sun was not red but yellow. Surely, Khal Kan thought, that could be nothing but a dream that somehow had oppressed him all his life.
Henry Stevens was, not so sure about which was real. There were many times when it seemed to Henry that maybe Thar was the real world, and that Earth and Henry Stevens were die dream.
They couldn’t both be real! One of these existences of his must be the real one, and the other a strange continued dream. But which?
“If I only knew that,” Henry muttered to his reflection in the mirror. “Then, whichever one is the dream, wouldn’t bother me much—I’d know that it wasn’t real, whatever happened.”
He looked ruefully at himself. “As it is, I’ve got two lives to worry about. Not that Khal Kan does much worrying!”
His puzzled reverie was broken by the sleepy voice of his wife, calling a mechanical warning from the bedroom.
“Henry, you’d better hurry or you’ll be late at the office.”
“Yes, Emma,” he replied dutifully, and hastened his toilet.
He loved his wife. At least, Henry Stevens loved her—whether or not Henry was real.
* * * *
But Golden Wings! There was a girl! His pulse still raced as he remembered her beauty, when he had seen her through Khal Kan’s eyes.
How the devil was Khal Kan going to get out of the trap into which the girl’s beauty had led him?
He couldn’t guess what the reckless young prince would do—for Khal Kan and Henry Stevens had nothing in common in their personalities.
“Oh, forget it!” Henry advised himself irritably. “Thar must be a dream. Let Khal Kan worry about it, when the dream comes back tonight.”
But he couldn’t forget so easily. As he drove to town in his sedate black coupe, he kept turning the problem over in his mind. And he found himself brooding about it that afternoon over his statements, at his desk in the big insurance office.
If Khal Kan didn’t get away, his father might send an expedition out of Jotan to search for him. And that would weaken Jotan at a time when the Bunts were menacing it. He must—
“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 dream-life of Khal Kan, the rest of Earth remained real—that would solve the problem.
The other people of Earth were sure they