"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._"