The Edmond Hamilton MEGAPACK ®. Edmond Hamilton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ who’s this?”

      Khal Kan grinned. “I found no Bunts over the Dragais, but I did find a princess for Jotan. They call her Golden Wings—Bladomir’s daughter.”

      Kan Abul grunted. “A dryland princess? Well, you’ve made a bad bargain, girl—this son of mine’s an empty-skulled rascal. And tomorrow he goes south with us to battle.”

      “And I go with him!” declared Golden Wings. “Do you think I’m one of your Jotan girls that cannot ride or fight?”

      Khal Kin laughed. “We’ll argue that the morrow.”

      Later that night, in his great chamber of seaward windows, with Golden Wings sleeping in his arms, Khal Kan also slept—

      * * * *

      Henry Stevens brooded as he sat waiting in the office of the psychoanalyst, the next afternoon. Things couldn’t go on this way! He’d been reprimanded twice this day by Carson for neglect of his work.

      Since he’d awakened this morning, the danger to Jotan had been obsessing his thoughts.

      It was queer, but he had had more time to reflect upon the peril than had Khal Kan himself in the dream.

      “You can go in now, Mr. Stevens,” smiled the receptionist.

      Doctor Thorn’s alert young eyes caught the haggardness of Henry’s face but he was casual as he pushed cigarettes across the desk.

      “You had the same dream last night?” he asked Henry.

      Henry Stevens nodded. “Yes, and things are getting worse—over there in Thar. The Bunts have taken Galoon in some way, and Egir must be planning to lead them on against Jotan.”

      “Egir?” questioned the psychoanalyst.

      Henry explained. “Egir was my—I mean Khal Kan’s—uncle, the younger brother of Kan Abul. He’s a renegade to Jotan. He fled from there about—let’s see, about four Thar years ago, after Kan Abul discovered his plot to usurp the throne. Since then, he’s been conspiring with the Bunts.”

      Henry took a pencil and drew a little map on a sheet of paper. It showed a curving, crescent-like coast.

      “This is the Zambrian Sea,” he explained. “On the north of this indented gulf is Jotan, my city—I mean, Khal Kan’s city. Away to the south here across the gulf is Buntland, where the barbarian green men live. On the coast between Buntland and Jotan are the independent city of Kaubos and the southernmost Jotanian city of Galoon.

      “When my uncle Egir fled to the Bunts,” Henry went on earnestly, “he stirred them up to attack Kaubos, which they captured. We’ve been planning an expedition to drive them out of there. Five days ago I rode over the Dragal Mountains with two comrades to reconnoiter a possible route by which we could make a surprise march south. But now the Bunts are moving north and have sacked Galoon. There’s a big battle coming—”

      Henry paused embarrassedly. He had suddenly awakened from his intense interest in exposition to become aware that Doctor Thorn was not looking at the map, but at his face.

      “I know it all sounds crazy, to talk about a dream this way,” Henry mumbled. “But I can’t help worrying about Jotan. You see, if it turned out that Thar was real and that this was the dream—”

      He broke off again, and then finished with an earnest plea. “That’s why I must know which is real—Thar or Earth, Khal Kan or myself!”

      Doctor Thorn considered gravely. The young psychiatrist did not ridicule Henry’s bafflement, as he had half expected.

      “Look at it from my point of view,” Thorn proposed. “You think it’s possible that I may be only a figment in a world dreamed by Khal Kan each night. But I know that I’m real, though I can’t very well prove it.”

      “That’s it,” Henry murmured discouragedly. “People always take for granted that this world is real—they never even imagine that it may be just a dream. But none of them could prove that it isn’t a dream.”

      “But suppose you could prove that Thar is a dream?” Thorn pursued. “Then you’d know that this must be the real existence.”

      Henry considered. “That’s true. But how can I do that?”

      “I want you to take this memory across into the dream-life with you tonight,” Doctor Thorn said earnestly. “I want you, when you awake as Khal Kan, to say over and over to yourself—‘This isn’t real. I’m not real. Henry Stevens and Earth are the reality’.”

      “You think that will have some effect?” Henry asked doubtfully.

      “I think that in time your dream-world will begin to fade, if you keep saying that,” the psychoanalyst declared.

      “Well, I’ll try it,” Henry promised thoughtfully. “If it has any effect, I’ll be sure then that Thar is the dream.”

      Doctor Thorn remarked, “Probably the best thing to happen would be if Khal Kan got himself killed in that dream-life. Then, the moment before he ‘died,’ the dream of Thar would vanish utterly as always in such dreams.”

      Henry was a little appalled. “You mean—Thar and Jotan and Golden Wings and all the rest would be gone forever?”

      “That’s right—you wouldn’t ever again be oppressed by the dream,” encouraged the psychoanalyst.

      Henry Stevens felt a chill as he drove homeward. That was something he hadn’t forseen, that the death of Khal Kan in that other life would destroy Thar forever if Thar was the dream.

      Henry didn’t want that. He had spent just as much of his life in Thar, as Khal Kan, as he had done here on Earth. No matter if that life should turn out to be merely a dream, it was real and vivid, and he didn’t want to see it utterly destroyed.

      He felt a little panic as he pictured himself cut off from Thar forever, never again riding with Brusul and Zoor on crazy adventure, never seeing again that brooding smile in Golden Wings’ eyes, nor the towers of Jotan brooding under the rosy moons.

      Life as Henry Stevens of Earth, without his nightly existence in Thar, would be tame and profitless. Yet he knew that he must once and for all settle the question of which of his lives was real, even though it risked destroying one of those lives.

      “I’ll do what Doctor Thorn said, when I’m Khal Kan tonight,” Henry muttered. “I’ll tell myself Thar isn’t real, and see if it has any effect.”

      He was so strung up by anticipation of the test he was about to make, that he paid even less attention than usual to Emma’s placid account of neighborhood gossip and small household happenings.

      That night as he lay, waiting for sleep, Henry repeated over and over to himself the formula that he must repeat as Khal Kan. His last waking thought, as he drifted into sleep, was of that.

      * * * *

      Khal Kan awoke with a vague sense of some duty oppressing his mind. There was something he must do, or say—

      He opened his eyes, to look with contentment upon СКАЧАТЬ