Dr. Hall made no note, but he did look at Dale almost reproachfully. “Your friend Duane was an atheist, I take it?”

Dale shrugged. “More or less. No, wait. . . I remember Duane telling me one of the first times we hung out together. . . we were building a three-stage rocket in fourth grade. . . he told me that he’d decided that all the churches and temples to the currently fashionable gods. . . that’s what he called them, ‘the currently fashionable gods’. . . were too crowded, so he’d chosen some minor Egyptian deity as his god. Learned the old prayers, studied the rituals, the whole nine yards. I remember him telling me that he’d considered worshiping Terminus, the Roman god of lawn boundaries, but had decided on this Egyptian god instead. He thought the Egyptian god had been ignored for many centuries and might be lonely.”

“That is unusual,” allowed Dr. Hall, making a final brief note.

Now Dale did have to grin. “If I remember correctly, Duane taught himself how to read Egyptian hieroglyphics just for that purpose—to pray to his forgotten little god. Of course, Duane spoke eight or nine languages by the time he died at age eleven and probably read a dozen more.”

Dr. Hall set aside his yellow legal pad, a sure sign that he was becoming bored with the topic being discussed. “Have you had any more dreams?” he asked.

Dale agreed that it was time to change the subject. “I had that dream about the hands again last night.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It was no different than the previous ones.”

“Yes, Dale, that’s more or less the definition of ‘recurring dreams,’ but it’s interesting how one can find slight but important differences when the dreams are actually discussed.”

“We haven’t discussed dreams much.”

“That’s true. I’m a psychiatrist but not—as you know—a psychoanalyst. But tell me about the hands dream anyway.”