Bennett strove to move his tongue and lips to ask questions, but they
refused, as though numbed by long inaction. He turned to his other
side and gazed questioningly at the replica of Tournay who stood
there.
Tournay's image spoke. "We had quite a time bringing you back, Sire.
But now it has been accomplished--for good."
Striving to move his throat muscles, Bennett finally forced a sound,
and then words, through his lips.
"Tell me," he pleaded. "Who are you? And, more important, who am I?"
He turned to Lima for an answer, realizing that now she would help him
if anyone would.
"Doctor Tournay will explain it to you," Lima replied, indicating the
dark man.
Imploringly, Bennett turned back to face Tournay.
"I see that very little of your memory has returned yet," Tournay
said. "In a short while, everything--all your past--will come back to
you. Until then, perhaps I had better explain to you who you are. My
words will help trigger your returning memory, and speed up the
process."
"Please do," Bennett begged.
"You are Benn Ett, _Le Roy_ of the city-state of Thone, in the year
4526 A. D. Six months ago, the strain of governing the city began to
undermine your health. Acting under my advice, you decided to take a
somno-rest cure.
"This rest cure," the doctor continued, "is quite standard practice in
our time. We had a little difficulty bringing you out of it at the end
of six months. Evidently your somno-existence must have been very
pleasant."
"Do you mean that the existence I remember was merely an induced
figment of my imagination?"
"Yes. You see, the best rest that can be given a mind is to give it
not sleep, but pleasant work. Therefore, under my manipulation, you
were given a pseudo-existence in a past era of history. You were led
to conceive yourself as occupying a position, which, after close
study, I deduced would be the most suitable and relaxing for you."
"But if that is true, why did my dream have to end so unpleasantly--I
might say, so nearly fatally?" Bennett demanded.
"The more successful I am in choosing a pleasant existence for a
patient in the somno, the more difficult it is to bring him out of
it," the doctor replied. "Your unconscious mind, realizing how happy
you were in your simulated existence, and how it would have to return
to the rigor and stress which unnerved it before, fought with all its
strength to remain where the somno had placed it.
"The usual practice in bringing a patient back to reality is for the
doctor to enter the dream and convince him, by whatever means may be
necessary, to return. Sometimes, however, the patient is so firmly
tied to his somno-existence that drastic measures must be used. This
is usually done by means of making the somno-existence so
anxiety-producing that the patient is glad to return.
"Your particular release was one of the most difficult that I have
ever encountered. In fact, I was unable to bring you back myself, and
asked your wife, Lima, to enter the somno with me and help force you
to return."
Bits of recollection, which had been edging into Bennett's memory,
burst through in full force, and he remembered. It was true. He _was_
Benn Ett, _Le Roy_ of the city-state of Thone.
He turned to Lima and, as he read the glad light in her eyes, he knew
that she had witnessed the return of his complete memory.
"Welcome home," she said.
--CHARLES V. DE VET
* * * * *