"Hank, I'm telling you--it gives me the creeps. I swear it does."
"What did he tell you?"
Kaplan puffed on his cigarette nervously, kept his eyes on the clock.
"He was lying down when I went in, curled up tight. Trying to sleep."
"Go on."
"When he heard me, he came to. 'Mr. Kaplan,' he says, 'you've got to
make them believe me, you've got to make them understand--' His eyes
got real big then, and--Hank, I'm scared."
"Of what?"
"I don't know. Just him, maybe. I'm not sure."
"He carrying the same line?"
"Yeah. But worse this time, more intense somehow...."
Ritchie tried to keep the smile. He remembered, all right. Much too
well. The whole story was crazy, normally enough to get the kid off
with a life sentence in the criminally insane ward. But it was a little
_too_ crazy, so the psychiatrists wouldn't buy.
"Can't get his words out of my mind," Kaplan was saying. His eyes were
closed. "'Mister, tell them, tell them. If you kill me, then you'll all
die. This whole world of yours will die....'"
_Because_, Ritchie remembered, _you don't exist, any of you, except in
my mind. Don't you see? I'm asleep and dreaming all this. You, your
wives, your children, it's all part of my dream--and when you kill me
then I'll wake up and that will be the end of you...._
"Well," Ritchie said, "it's original."
Kaplan shook his head.
"Come on, Max, snap out of it. You act like you never listened to a
lunatic before. People have been predicting the end of the world ever
since Year 1."
"Sure, I know. You don't have to patronize me. It's just that--well,
who _is_ this particular lunatic anyway? We don't know any more about
him than the day he was caught. Even the name we had to make up. Who is
he, where'd he come from, what's his home?"
_My home ... a world of eternities, an eternity of worlds.... I must
destroy, hurt, kill before I wake always ... and then once more I must
sleep ... always, always...._
"Look, there's a hundred vagrants in every city. Just like our boy: no
name, no friends, no relatives."
"Then he doesn't seem in the least odd to you, is that it? Is that what
you're telling me?"
"So he's odd! I never met a murderer that wasn't!" Ritchie recalled the
lean hairless face, the expressionless eyes, the slender youthful body
that moved in strange hesitant jerks, the halting voice.
* * * * *
The clock bonged the quarter hour. Fifteen to twelve. Max Kaplan wiped
the perspiration from his forehead.
"And besides," Ritchie said, somewhat too loudly, "it's plain
ridiculous. He says--what? We're a dream he's having, right? Okay--then
what about our parents, and their parents, everybody who never heard of
the kid?"
"First thing I thought of. And you know his answer."
Ritchie snorted.
"Well, think it over, for God's sake. He says _every_ dream is a
complete unit in itself. You--haven't you ever had nightmares about
people you'd never seen before?"
"Yes, I suppose so, but--"
"All right, even though they were projections of your subconscious--or
whatever the hell it's called--they were complete, weren't they? Going
somewhere, doing something, all on their own?"
Ritchie was silent.
"Where were they going, what were they doing? See? The kid says every
dream, even ours, builds its own whole world--complete, with a past
and--as long as you stay asleep--a future."
"Nonsense! What about _us_, when _we_ sleep and dream? Or is the period
when we're unconscious the time _he's_ up and around? And keep in mind
that everybody doesn't sleep at the same time--"
"You're missing the point, Hank. I said it was complete, didn't I? And
isn't sleeping part of the pattern?"
"Have another drink, Max. You're slipping."
* * * * *
_"What will you wake up to?"_
"_My home. You would not understand._"
"_Then what?_"
"_Then I sleep again and dream another world._"
"_Why did you kill George Sanderson?_"
"_It is my eternal destiny to kill and suffer punishment._"
"_Why?_ Why?"
"_In my world I committed a crime; it is the punishment of my world,
this destiny...._"
"Then try this on for size," Ritchie said. "That kid's frozen stiff
with fear. Since he's going to have to wake up no matter what, then
why not sit back and enjoy it?"