the sane men of satan

By Jacques Jean Ferrat

Does the past still live and not
in dreams alone? Justin thought
not till a strange decision took
him back to days he knew as dead.

Until recent times the Devil, to give him his due, was a figure of fear rather than of Hallowe'en fun. Nowadays, to most of our enlightened citizenry, Satan is a device used by the clergy to keep folk in line, or by a Goethe to create Faust. Consider then the plight of a thoroughly sophisticated man of today who discovers Old Nick to be not only real but deadlier by far than the horned brimstone-breather of legend.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic Universe October-November 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Charles Justin paused briefly in the encroaching darkness to look at the north front of the Old State House in Boston. He was engaged in the process of walking home from his office on State Street to his house in Louisburg Square.

The ancient building, he thought, with its palladian windows and gilded lion and unicorn, still looked much as it must have when Paul Revere engraved his crude but effective print of the Boston Massacre, back in 1773.

One of the things Justin loved most about Boston was the fact that so much of the old town still breathed. Faneuil Hall, a few blocks behind him, where James Otis and Sam Adams had roused the Commonwealth against the crown, still did duty as a major market. Worshippers still paraded on Sunday mornings to King's Chapel, Christ Church, the Old North Church. Scores, perhaps hundreds, of twentieth-century Bostonians still lived and worked upon the same broad planks of old T-Wharf that had felt the measured tread of Gage's grenadiers.

Justin, born and bred in rawer if no more bustling Midwestern surroundings, had felt a powerful tie with the old thus standing alongside the new, a strong déjà vu, from his first glimpse, more than twenty years before as a Harvard freshman. This, he had known instinctively, was home for him. He had made it his home ever since.

The sense of the past was strong upon him this evening—perhaps, he thought wryly, more strong than was proper for an executive vice-president of the Ninth National Bank. As he scaled the slope of Park Street on Beacon Hill he felt like a man born out of his proper time.

Life and color and revolt had been strong in the little city of two centuries ago. Men had thought and dreamed—and then had talked and acted. Unlike their descendants, who seemed to have relapsed into an everlasting featherbed of trustfundism.

Passing the gold-domed balustraded beauty of Bullfinch's classic New State House, he wondered how the crest of the hill had looked when John Hancock had lived there, in his magnificent Georgian mansion, with its landscaped gardens and carriage house containing the merchant-governor's gilded English coach.

Old Boston held Justin tightly in its grip even after he turned the key in his own lock and entered his house on Louisburg Square. For the house, if not quite Federalist, dated back to the early era of Clipper Ship affluence. Fine white paneling, graceful mahogany banisters, blue-and-gold silk wall covering of heavy Chinese silk, Sheraton furniture, Revere silverware—all combined to retain illusion of a past still alive.

Not until he walked upstairs was the illusion shattered. And again it was not the room that shattered it—for graceful mantel above gently roaring fire, fine old furniture and a pair of glowing Copley portraits on the west wall maintained the dream.

It was the two persons awaiting him there that spoiled Justin's vision of time past relived. Jack Fellowes joggled cubed ice in a broad-beamed highball glass in front of the fire—as modern in his midnight-blue dinner jacket and soft white shirt as the post-Freudian psychiatry he practiced.

He said, "Ah, there, Charley, have a drink on you." Then, with a rueful half-smile at Justin's wife, Marie, "You seem to have married the only banker in history who works overtime."

In an ice-blue satin dinner gown Marie Chandler Justin was as brilliant as a candle's white flame—and even less warm. She stirred faintly in greeting to her husband, said, "You're late, Charles—you'll barely have time to dress."

Justin reached for a drink that stood ready atop the red-lacquer Chinese cabinet some ancestor of his wife's had brought from Canton. He said, "Sorry, I forgot about the Iveson party. I don't think I'm up to it tonight. You two will have more fun without me."

Marie pouted prettily, said, "But, darling, I'll have to explain to everybody—and they'll all think the most horrible things."

"Let 'em," said Justin bluntly. He turned to Fellowes, added, "By the way, how are you coming along with Marie's psychoanalysis?"

"These things take time," said Fellowes.

"So I understand," said Justin. Some devil prompted him to add, "I've heard that some women wear out two or three psychoanalysts in a single lifetime."

"Charles!" Marie looked warningly up from the pleats in her skirt.

"Really, Charles." Fellowes sounded hurt.

"Sorry," said Justin. He decided to jump the conversational track before there was a wreck. "Henri Dubois visited me this afternoon."

"You mean the Golden Rule fellow?" the psychiatrist inquired. "Interesting phenomenon of our times. What sort of chap is he?"

Justin thought back to the soft-spoken man who had sat in the white leather armchair on the far side of his desk, the man who had asked him for two million dollars to support his Missionist movement. He thought back to the meeting in the Garden he had attended the night before—a meeting attended by twenty thousand quiet intent hopeful people, by many thousands more who had listened via loud-speakers outside in the streets.

Henri Dubois did preach the Golden Rule, the ideals of cooperation and humanity toward one's fellows, as the world's only salvation. It wasn't quite that simple, of course—but the Golden Rule was its essence, a Golden Rule to be practiced not merely in church on Sundays but seven days a week.

And Missionism, as preached by Henri Dubois, was sweeping the country. Dubois had received more than fifty thousand dollars in spontaneous gifts from the lecture the night before—and before noon that day. Yet he felt unable to spend it in support of his movement lest such spending should lend aid to possible smears of fraud and graft later. And Dubois needed two millions. He wanted the bank to use his huge backlog of contributions as collateral on a loan.

"It will save you many times that sum," he had said, leaning forward and resting a forearm on Justin's desk. "Consider—Missionism's widespread adoption will mean cooperation rather than competition. It will mean that, instead of wasteful conflict between selfishly warring groups—say of contractors versus unions—you'll have voluntary union. It will mean, to take a specific instance...."

Justin had been, was still, of more than half a mind to grant the evangelist what he asked. For Missionism was catching on, would soon be sweeping not the country but the world. Yet Corinne Forrester, Dubois' woman, had come back later to ask Justin to refuse the loan.

Dark, slimly flamboyant, a smoker of dark Cuban cigarettes, Mrs. Forrester was a factor to be reckoned with. She had left her gloves—deliberately, he suspected—had returned for them and said, "Mr. Justin, I have loved Henri Dubois for more years than I intend to admit. Until recently he has loved me as well.

"Now, thanks to Missionism, I am losing him. I gave up a perfectly good family and home and husband for Henri—but I cannot compete with millions of rivals. I'm not an ingenue any longer and I am not the sort of woman who can exist for long without a man."

"This hardly seems to concern—" he had begun.

And, dark eyes disturbingly fixed on his, she had said, "Mr. Justin—you're not the sort of man who should live long without a woman. There are a hundred little signs—restlessness, too-rigid control, vast energy uncompensated." Then, rising, "I shall call you tomorrow at five. And perhaps...."

Justin had been in a foul mood since. He came out of abstraction to realise that Jack Fellowes had repeated his question about the evangelist, said, "What sort of fellow is he? I'd say the oddest thing about him is his very lack of oddities."

"Hmmm." Fellowes was definitely interested. "Did you get much impression of repressive influences, Charley?"

"I'm no psychiatrist, Jack," said Justin, "but I'd say no. He was quiet—yes. But he didn't have any trouble expressing himself. More intellect than emotion-dominated."

"And you say you're no psychiatrist," said Fellowes. "Charley, if you weren't a damned good one you'd never be able to hold down the job you do at the bank."

"Can't you two talk anything but shop?" Marie asked irritably. She stood up, added, "This dreadful Dubois man—I don't see why we have to have reformers anyway. The world would be all right if some people weren't always trying to change it."

"Change is the natural order," Justin said mildly.

"Only because men like this Dubois make it so," said Marie sharply. And, to Jack Fellowes, "I'll be ready in five minutes."

Justin waited till she had left, then said, "You know, Jack, this is charmingly old-fashioned. You and I having a drink together while the woman who has us both in her clutches prepares for the evening."

The psychiatrist winced. "You know, Charley, you can be alarmingly frank at times," he said. "That wasn't funny."

"I know it wasn't," Justin told him. "Nothing about Marie is ever funny. She considers a sense of humor practically subversive. How are you getting along with her—professionally?"

Fellowes shrugged, said, "Nowhere, professionally or personally. What's more I suspect you know it, Charley."

"Let's just say I guessed." Justin reached for the bottle to refill his glass, added, "I know Marie. Since she has no intention of facing facts you'll never get out of the batter's box professionally. Personally? Well, she has no intention of giving me any grounds for divorce. Not that I wouldn't appreciate some, Jack."

The psychiatrist said, "Charley, there's just one sort of human that absolutely baffles a man in my profession—that's an absolutely sane man."

"Oh, come, Jack," said Justin. "All sanity is relative."

"That's why it's so damned baffling when we find it." Fellowes lifted his glass. "Here's to the one and only sane man I ever met."

Marie, coldly magnificent in ermine, with bits of silver-leaf glittering in her blond hair, appeared in the doorway. She said, "Jack, I'm ready." She didn't seem to mind at all that Justin wasn't going.

II

Charles dined alone on a pickup meal and went to bed early. Undressed, in his third-floor bedroom, he scratched a naked stomach that, at forty-one, was beginning to show a faint bulge, noted a more marked bulge in a side pocket of the jacket he had just removed and hung up.

He dug out its source—an odd little gadget, nicknamed the "spider," which he had shown to Henri Dubois and Corinne Forrester that afternoon when they were in his office. It had happened to be on his desk. Supposed to spray a transparent waterproof film over any surface, its backers were seeking money to promote it as a substitute for raincoats and umbrellas.

There was a hitch, of course—it clung abominably to human hair and for this reason, since it was chiefly intended for women, its financing was still highly problematical. But it had certain other uses, according to the testing laboratories, which its inventor seemed to have missed. Justin must, he decided, have stuck it into his pocket instead of back on his desk. He wondered what it would be like to plaster himself with a form-fitting suit of invisible pajamas.

Then, regretfully, he laid it on the bedside table and got into orthodox nightwear. After settling himself with twin pillows, he reached for a well-worn copy of Esther Forbes' Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, began to browse through its vivid pages.

Again Old Boston came to life. Church bells pealed, small colored sweeps carried their brooms through the cobbled streets, fish vendors shouted the merits of their wares.

Contrary to the bowdlerizations of nineteenth century historians, there was little of the Puritan in Boston life two centuries ago. Chaperons were unheard of north of Spanish territory and the powerful rum of Medford and Newburyport was the staple festive drink of a generation which would have considered cola depraved.

According to a young rhymester of the period, describing a party "where kisses and drams set the virgins aflame"—

The chairs in wild order flew quite round the room,

Some threatened with fire brands, some with a broom,

While others, resolved to increase the uproar,

Lay tussling the girls in wide heaps on the floor.

Eighteenth century Boston, Justin decided, would hardly have been a happy home for inhibitions. He tried to conjure up a vision of one of the merry maids of the period, a girl as warm and charmingly devilish as his Marie was chill and repressed.

She would not, he decided, have been beautiful according to Hollywood standards. But her features would be the more intriguing for their very irregularity. Her simple grey or blue dress, no matter how modestly cut, would have failed utterly to hide the vibrant young figure beneath. Her lips and eyes and complexion....

The telephone rang on his bedside table. Justin came out of a wild dream in which Corinne Forrester, wearing a Navajo Indian blanket adorned with Puritan cap, collar and cuffs, was seated firmly on his lap and refusing to get up. It was odd, he thought fragmentarily, how Dubois' woman seemed to have moved into his subconscious. And with her vibrant, almost tangible allure....

Devereux Chandler's urbane tones greeted him. "Hope I didn't wake you up, Charles."

"Not at all," Justin croaked. By the banjo clock on the wall opposite the wardrobe he saw that it was still twenty minutes short of midnight.

"I hoped I'd run into you here at the Ivesons'," Chandler explained. "Marie tells me you were too tired to come."

"That's one word for it," Justin told him. Despite the fact that Chandler, as his wife's uncle and a member of the board of the Ninth National Corporation, held complete power not only over his job but, at least indirectly, over his domestic life, Justin had always been frank, even blunt with him. He had long nursed an idea that this outspokenness with a man used to subservience was one of the reasons he had been able to hold his favor.

But the Bostonian merely grunted and said, "I understand Henri Dubois has been after you for backing."

"That's right," Justin replied.

"Hmmm." Chandler sounded thoughtful. "I suppose a decision now might make or break the man. How do you feel about it, Charles?"

"I'm going to sleep on it," Justin told him.

"That's sound," said Chandler. "I must say I'm beginning to be interested myself. Marie's been talking to me."

"She's dead against him. Oddly enough, for quite different reasons, so is Dubois' own woman, the Forrester female."

"A point to consider, perhaps. I hope I haven't disturbed you, Charles, but I wanted some inkling of how you felt about this matter."

Justin put the phone back on its cradle, picked up the spider half unconsciously. Devereux Chandler, cheerfully sardonic, polite, urbane, was the most difficult human being to interpret correctly the younger man had encountered in his not inconsiderable experience. Why was Chandler seeking preliminary knowledge of the decision?

Until then Justin had thought of it as no more than another job to be handled to the best of his ability, one of a long series of decisions that had brought him to his present position.

Now other considerations began to crowd this basis for judgment. It occurred to him that quite literally the fate of a goodly portion of the world might well depend upon his answer. There seemed little question but that Henri Dubois could not get the money he wanted elsewhere.

Or, if the evangelist should obtain such financing, it might not come in time—or in sufficient quantity. And if Dubois were forced to use the contributions sent by his followers to promote his own cause he might be laying himself open to sordid subsequent court actions that, however unjustified, would inevitably soil his character and reputation in the public mind.

Justin became aware of an ominous physical sensitivity that caused him to feel every thread of the nylon pajamas which encompassed his body, every bit of linen in the fine sheet that covered his bare feet.

Twice before he had felt such heightened awareness—once on the eve of his marriage to Marie, again on the night before he had made his first important decision at the bank. On each occasion it had been the prelude to an event that had shaped inexorably the life that followed.

Now it was sharper than ever before—and he wondered if perhaps it meant that the decision he would have to make on the morrow might shape not only his own life but that of the world. He discovered that he was sweating lightly and that the sweat was cold.

This, he told himself, was nonsense. No matter how far-reaching its results a decision was a decision, to be decided one way or the other, according to the best available facts, thereafter to be abided by whatever happened.

He tossed the whole mess out of his mind, turned off the light, pushed one of the two pillows from beneath his head and rolled over on his right side. He had just remembered how to lick it.

The device dated back to his childhood and adolescence in the Midwest, to his years at college, to the early years of his job. It involved a mixture of all three elements—the small town within commuting distance of a medium-sized city, Harvard and Boston—connected by an odd Toonerville-ish single-track railroad on which ran just two passenger trains a day.

The railroad had been real enough during his childhood—it was, he had recently learned, long extinct, its rusted rails torn up for sorely-needed scrap metal during World War Two. Yet, fifteen years and almost fifteen hundred miles away, Justin could still hear distinctly the asthmatic beep of its steam whistle as it pounded along behind its stubby black engine across the cornfield.

Even in his boyhood the railroad had been dying, its three cars never more than half-full. It had run miraculously through a deep cut in the one hill the countryside boasted, then through woodland clumps and across the river on a wooden trestle, into the larger woods.

Thereafter it had run straight and true to the city—but it no longer ran there in his visualization. Instead, by some strange twist of Justin's geography, it deviated from its straight path to become briefly a part of the subway running beneath Harvard Square.

Thereafter it crossed under the Charles to plunge beneath Boston's Back Bay, never quite becoming a part of the city's subway system. Finally it wound up in a maze of circles between Washington and Devonshire Streets, whence it turned easily for the return journey.

Now, faced with the most important decision of his career, Justin summoned the odd little train to his rescue. To his relief he was easily able to take it through the cornfield to the cut.

But thereafter, it traveled a different path. Midway through the cut Justin realised two things. One, he was the only passenger on the entire train. Two, he was able to see over the sides of the cut, down the fallaway of the hill to the flat countryside beyond.

His range of vision grew and, as he peered through the soot-grimed panes of the windows, he felt a sudden jolt of fear. The train was no longer following the familiar track of his barbiturant fantasy. It was, instead, flying through the air.

Fear became panic as clouds became woolly lambs, far below, then mere streaks and patches of white. He had sudden memory of a movie, taken from a V-2 rocket above White Sands, in which the world twisted and grew small and curved in a matter of seconds.

Then, with a rush of sound never heard on that one-track spur, the train rumbled into a tunnel of darkness, its wheels clacking a samba-beat on rails that could not possibly exist. Coal smoke from the funnel invaded the car and Justin found himself blinking his eyes and coughing. He had to breathe now and the gas was invading his lungs.

His last thought was that it had not been such a happy way to go to sleep after all....

III

Justin awoke with a slight headache. He seemed to be resting on some sort of hospital cot. Even as he sat up he could feel it move slightly beneath him. It was obviously portable. And, while the mattress was comfortable enough, it lacked pad, pillow or covering of any kind. He was, he noted flickeringly, still wearing the blue-piped grey nylon pajamas in which he had gone to bed.

Nor was he in the old house on Louisburg Square. Walls, floor and ceiling of the windowless cubicle around him were all of a neutral composition. Such light as there was was indirect. Evidently, he decided, some sudden sickness had landed him in a hospital room.

At first glance the man who stepped forward from a corner added to the hospital illusion. In knee-length Prince Albert and with grave bewhiskered countenance he looked the picture of a conservative man of medicine. In accents only a little too British to be Bostonian he said, "I was beginning to fear you weren't going to awaken at all."

But as he moved forward it became quickly apparent that this was no twentieth century Boston physician. His hair and whiskers were of much too full and luxurious a cut, the octagonal steel-rimmed spectacles upon his nose much too archaic—as was the upright stiff collar that held his black ascot tie, and his Prince Albert itself.

Justin's eyes ranged downward and froze. For his dignified companion wore neither trousers nor shoes. Below the skirts of his long coat thin shanks protruded, clad only in tight-fitting long drawers, to end in blue morocco slippers with up-pointed Turkish toes. Justin said, not wanting to be too obvious, "How long have I been asleep?"

"It is difficult to tell," said the bewhiskered one. He fumbled beneath his Prince Albert, produced a parsnip of a silver stem-winder, looked at it and shook his head sadly. "My timepiece seems to have stopped utterly since my arrival here."

"All right then," said Justin, running a hand through his close-cut hair, "Where in hell am I anyway?"

"That too is difficult. I believe it is called Belvoir. By the way, I am Dr. Ian Phillips, at your service."

"Then you are a doctor!" Justin exclaimed. "Would you mind explaining what's happened to me?"

"A doctor of philosophy," was the gentle reply. "I was rather hoping that you, sir, were a physician."

"Charles Justin, alleged banker, at your service." Justin swung his legs over the side of his cot, tested the floor, stood up. He discovered he was holding the spider clutched in his right hand, dropped it unobtrusively into his pocket. He must have taken it while falling asleep.

"You must be an American, Mr. Justin," said Dr. Phillips.

Justin, slightly bemused, said, "What? Oh—yes, Boston."

"Remarkable," Dr. Phillips said unexpectedly, "that we should have two Bostonians with us."

"Let's count ten and start over again," Justin told him. "Isn't this Boston?"

"Hardly!" Dr. Phillips' laugh was dry and sharp. "This is Belvoir. As to myself, I was in my diggings in London, taking a doze after tea before marking some tests, when I made the trip here."

Justin made his way to a chair in the corner and sat down heavily. Dr. Phillips said, "Perhaps I'd better get your fellow Bostonian. I don't seem to be doing you much good."

"Perhaps you'd better, doctor—thanks," murmured Justin. He put his head in his hands and tried not to think of what was happening.

A minute or two passed. Then quick soft footsteps sounded and a pleasant voice said in utterly indefinable accents, "Ye mustn't feel so upset, Master Justin—we're all in the same boat."

The girl had heavy brown hair that fell in neat slow ripples well below her shoulders. Like himself she was barefoot and her figure looked enormous in a tentlike white nightgown that covered her from shoulder to ankle. She had fine healthy pink-and-white skin, made intriguing rather than marred by an occasional pockmark, and her eyes were as blue as the waters of Cohasset Bay.

Instinctively, despite a growing conviction that he was utterly mad, Justin scrambled to his feet. He said, "It does take a bit of getting used to—but perhaps you can help."

"That's why I'm here, Master Justin," she said. "Poor Dr. Phillips tells me ye too are from Boston. I must say I do not find ye'r countenance familiar."

Her accent, her phraseology—both were alien. As, come to think of it, was the nightgown she was wearing. Yet it was of a piece with his own pajamas and the dignified Dr. Phillips' lack of trousers. And those pockmarks—Justin studied them, then felt a surge of excitement. He said, "Pardon me for not knowing your name but—"

"Deborah Wilkins, spinster, of Prince Street," she cut in.

"—but," he went on, "would you mind telling me, Miss Wilkins, just when it was that you were brought here?"

"To Belvoir? Why, I retired to my bed on a February evening in seventeen sixty-one, to dream of the great white ship that would carry me far from prosaic Boston to some fine city overseas, instead of which the ship brought me here to Belvoir."

"I'll be damned!" said Justin, stunned not only by the date of Deborah's transfer to Belvoir but by the similarity of her experience to his own.

"Methinks we are all damned," said Deborah Wilkins. "Certes we are not in heaven unless our good pastors have been led sorely astray. And if they have been led astray they must indeed be tools of the devil, which leaves us small chance of salvation."

There was a neat syllogistic logic to her reasoning that brought Justin up short. This girl, who or whatever she might be, possessed both fearlessness and intellect. He said, "You don't seem to be afraid of hell, Deborah."

An unexpected dimple appeared in one smooth cheek. She said, "Thus far there seems little to be afeard of, Master Charles." Then, eying him with frank curiosity, "What sort of attire are ye clad in? I have seen nought like it."

"I might say the same of yours," he replied as frankly.

She blushed. "And ye'r accent—surely 'tis not Boston."

"It has a Midwestern base," he told her. Then, "But yours too is strange, Deborah. You see, I come from a time almost two centuries after yours. And as for my 'attire'—like you I was snatched from sleep to come here. These are what is known as pajamas."

She came forward, fingered the material, said, "They are as fine as silk—yet they are not silk."

"If I told you what they were made of you wouldn't believe me," he said. "It is called nylon, Deborah."

"A strange term," she said thoughtfully. Then with a sudden flash of blue eyes, "Methinks ye make free of my name for a man so young and so recently acquainted."

"I'm not so young," he told her, "I'm forty-one. As for calling you by your first name, if you object...."

"Nay, to what avail?" she countered, blushed again, added, "Surely ye must be an agent of the devil himself, Master Charles—ye look no older than twenty-five or six."

"In two hundred years we have learned to take rather better care of ourselves," he added gently. "We don't age quite so fast."

"And ye'r women?" The question was blunt.

Justin said, "And our women too. Few of them show much age until they are in their forties—some not even then."

"Methinks I would appreciate ye'r time—if indeed it is ye'r time," she told him. "But come—ye must be hungry."

Her remark made Justin conscious of the headache that was plucking at his temples. He said, "Come to think of it I'm starved."

"Then follow me, Master Charles," she said, moving toward the doorway. There she paused, turned to study him again, added, "But surely ye cannot be forty-one. Ye look such a young man."

"I'll see what I can do," he replied. "Lead on, MacDuff."

He followed her down a long corridor, off which other cubicles opened, similar to that in which he had so recently awakened. And he noted that her walk was light and graceful, that her ridiculous tent of a nightgown swayed as she moved to suggest her figure filled only a fraction of it.

He said, "Why did you starch that ghastly gown, Deborah?"

Without turning she replied, "Mother made me do it—she is much afeard of my worldiness."

A couple strolled out of one of the cubicles ahead of them. The man wore the brief belted tunic of an Ancient Roman. His hair was short, his broken-nosed Latin features bordered by what looked like gigantic spit-curls.

With him was a dark-skinned woman, veiled to her liquid black eyes, her figure hidden more effectively than Deborah's by a voluminous bright silk sarong. Both of them waited while Deborah and Justin walked past them, regarding Justin with curious dark eyes. The Roman said, "Ave."

Culling a forgotten scrap of Latin from his schoolday memories, Justin replied, "Pax vobiscum," saw the Roman start with surprise. "Who are they?" he asked in an undertone of the strangers who had let them go ahead.

"Belvoir is full of their like—and even odder," was the girl's reply. "But ye will soon see for ye'rself."

"Have you been here long, Deborah?" Justin asked her.

"'Tis hard to say," was her reply. "Longer than Dr. Phillips or yourself—not as long as most of the others. Dr. Phillips says we have been waiting for ye, Master Charles—that soon we shall go home."

Curious, thought Justin, when she frowned slightly at mention of returning home. It seemed unlikely that any girl could be happy in this strange place.

They came to a large chamber filled with long tables. Running down the center of each was a sort of wall. Seated at perhaps half of the hundreds of modernistic comfortable-looking chairs was the oddest collection of humans Justin had ever seen.

He noted one hirsute low-browed male, clad in a mangy looking hide, who seemed scarcely more than a giant ape. This specimen, with fierce concentration, was gnawing greedily on the scarcely-charred thighbone of a medium-sized animal without benefit of tableware. Beside him sat a squat mocha-skinned female whose skinny pendulous-breasted body was entirely innocent of clothing.

He saw a gentleman in ruffled shirt and magnificently brocaded waistcoat of the period of Louis XIV, who was methodically eviscerating a small roasted bird. Beside him, clad in what Justin could only conceive of as a shift, a lady in a towering headdress sipped champagne from a crystal goblet.

There were others, including an apparent Egyptian, clad in the briefest of loin-cloths with a marcelled spade-beard that recalled the statues of the Pharoahs—a cluster of Orientals of various shapes and skin colors and degrees of disarray, busy with chopsticks—a Hindu temple dancer whose modest demeanor denied her professional carnality.

Justin said, "It must be quite a job supplying each of these people with the food they want."

"'Tis truly remarkable, Master Charles," the girl told him. "Faith, never in my wildest dreams have I conceived of such a miracle."

"I wish you wouldn't call me 'Master Charles'," Justin said.

"And how else should I call thee?" she inquired.

"It's that 'Master' business," he explained. "In my time it means a boy, not a man. Just as 'Mistress', in my era, implies a kept woman rather than a wife."

"Mast—Charles, ye abash me!" she murmured demurely although twin blue devils danced in her eyes. "Here we are."

She had led him to the far end of one of the long tables, at which a small cluster of oddly assorted folk were seated. One of them, a rough-looking little specimen, who seemed to be wearing nothing but a shirt of slightly rusted chain mail, was slashing a large chunk of half-raw meat.

A plump motherly-looking grey-haired lady, clad in a petticoat from the waist down and nothing at all above, smiled at Deborah over her suet pudding and said in English even odder and quainter than Deborah's own, "Good day, Mistress Wilkins, be this the other guest?" And, when the girl nodded, "Truly a comely cod!"—to which Justin, quite aware of the phallic meaning of the word, felt himself blush.

"Ye must not mind her," Deborah whispered, directing him to a chair. Then, mischievously, "'Tis no more than truth—and she means it well."

"It's okay," said Justin. "Just a bit unexpected. Hello!"

At the base of the barrier, opposite his chair, his name was printed in gilt letters. He glanced to his left, saw that in front of Deborah's chair, in slightly more antique-looking script, her name was inscribed. She caught his glance, nodded toward the barrier, told him in a whisper, "'Tis but a trick. Ye speak ye'r wish into the hole and then lift it from the wall. Like this, see...?"

She leaned forward, said softly, "Prithee, fetch me a plate of turkey with brown sauce and wild chestnuts—white meat only. And a large tankard of ale."

Justin blinked, saw Dr. Phillips waving a friendly fork at him from a half-dozen places further along, decided to do things up right. He said, "One double Gibson, extra dry."

As he spoke a light went on in front of Deborah, disclosing the apparently solid barrier to be transparent. A window, reminiscent of similar windows in a New York City automat, opened and from a compartment behind it the girl took out her food and put it on the table in front of her. She had been given a savory-smelling well-heaped plate of turkey, gravy and chestnuts, a fine pewter tankard of ale, along with antique-appearing knife, fork, spoon and ringed napkin.

She picked up her fork, gestured toward his own section of the barrier. He followed her motion, saw an enticingly pale dry Gibson awaiting his disposal. Taking it out he toasted Deborah, who lifted her tankard, then asked, "Prithee, what is that?"

"A cocktail," he told her. He pushed it toward her, ordered another for himself. Deborah sipped it, made a face, then sipped again.

"Why!" she exclaimed. "'Tis like strong rum! I must tread warily or my poor head will spin like a windmill."

"Right," he told her. Finishing his drink he ordered himself a small steak, medium rare, with mushrooms, soufflé potatoes and a tossed green chef's salad. They arrived in seconds, perfectly done and equipped with the finest sort of silverware, bearing his initials.

He had just about decided that Belvoir, real or otherwise, was a promisingly pleasant if bizarre place, when a rasping voice filled the hall, saying, to Justin's ears at any rate, "Now hear this—now hear this. Your final briefing will follow immediately. Please return to your chambers and await further orders!"

IV

Alone in his cubicle Justin longed for a cigarette. Fortunately he did not have long to wait. The man who entered with brisk graceful steps wore soft grey flannels, a comfortable blue shirt and gay but not loud figured silk tie. He glanced quizzically at Justin, drew a silver cigarette case from a jacket pocket, offered one to Justin, took one himself, lit both with a silver lighter.

He sat down on the chair in the corner, said, "I'm Ortine—I run Belvoir. I suppose you're wondering what this is all about, Mr. Justin."

"That," said Justin, "is understatement, Mr. Ortine. I suppose I must have lost my mind."

"On the contrary," said Ortine with the trace of a smile, "you have been brought here because you are absolutely sane."

"That's a relief—or is it?" Justin countered. There was, he thought, something epicene, almost effeminate, in his host's gestures, in his voice. Furthermore, there was something familiar in his handsome, rather delicate cast of feature—a familiarity that played elusive hide and seek with Justin's memory.

"I shall try to make my explanation brief as possible," said Ortine. "However, Mr. Justin, you are sane—and you are not dreaming. You have been brought to Belvoir in thoroughly material fashion."

"Just what and where is this Belvoir of yours?" Justin asked bluntly.

"This is not going to be easy to explain to you, Mr. Justin. To most of the others I merely call it heaven or fairyland—and that suffices. But you and your era are a little too informed for such credulity.

"Belvoir, of course, it not its real name—and actually it isn't a place at all—at least not in your terrestrial meaning of the word. I suppose you'd call it a ship."

"A ship!" Justin exploded. Then, to humor his host, "I suppose you mean some sort of space-ship."

"After a fashion it's a space-ship—but my vessel doesn't actually inhabit your concept of space." Ortine still looked troubled. "Some of your science fiction authors have come closest to it with something they call sub-space."

"I'm afraid I can't follow you there," said Justin.

"Try to think of the vast areas of so-called empty void between the galaxies," Ortine went on patiently. "Try to consider that these areas are no more empty than the areas between the stars visible to you in your telescopes. My universe might be called the other side of the universe—if you can think of the universe as a coin."

"I understand—a little," Justin told him. "Now tell me—why are you here? And why do you want me?"

Ortine flicked ashes on the floor, which immediately absorbed them. He said, "I have been sent here to prevent your planet from destroying itself and probably forcing your sun into nova.

"For while your sun is not a great star it lies in an area correspondent to one of the most congested and thickly settled areas of my universe. It is not supposed to go into the nova stage for some billions of your years. Should it happen in the near future—as it will if my mission is unsuccessful—something like catastrophe will result on the opposite side of the coin."

"How can you be sure it will happen?" Justin asked quietly.

"Because, thanks to certain differences of structure between our universe and yours, we can follow the whole stream of your time," Ortine replied matter-of-factly. "Your past, of course, is not dead—you have already seen proof of that here on Belvoir—nor is your future yet unborn. In short, the past still exists, the future does exist."

"In that case," said Justin, "Why don't you give up and go home?"

"Because"—Ortine's sincerity was self evident—"neither your past nor your future is immutable. Needless to say, we do not believe in altering history on any world unless it must be done to avert needless disaster. It is my mission to alter both Earth's past and its future by effecting the course of the key events of your history."

"It sounds like rather a large order," said Justin.

"It is," Ortine replied simply. "While our time-span is far different from yours—I suppose I have existed for several thousand of your years—it is the first such assignment in my memory or that of my mentors."

"Then you cannot follow your own past and future," said Justin.

"Unfortunately not." Ortine looked unhappy. "No species has ever been able to do that reliably. We are all trapped within the span of our own time. But yours is so infinitesimal to us that we are able to read it easily—just as your scientists can read and to some extent predict the lives of fruit-flies."

"Not a very happy simile," Justin put in.

"My apologies," said Ortine. "In the matter of size between us there are no such discrepancies. It is wholly a matter of temporal maladjustment. And it is my theory that the shortness of your life-span is responsible for the self-inflicted doom that threatens not only your world and your sun but a number of ours."

"You might have something there," said Justin. "But what in hell do you want us to do about it? Live forever?"

"It is precisely because you cannot," Ortine told him, "that I have been sent to rescue you from your predicament—with the help of each of you summoned here, of course."

"And just how do I figure in this mission of yours, Mr. Ortine?" Justin inquired.

"You have been brought here because a fanatic named Dubois appealed to you for financial backing during what seems to you to be yesterday afternoon," Ortine informed him.

"So ..." said Justin thoughtfully. "He's that important?"

"He will be," replied the other, "if you give him the money he is seeking—and I have received information that you intend definitely to come to some sort of arrangement with him."

Justin said, "I must say, everyone seems to know more about my intentions than I do myself. But let's say I do arrange to let him have some money—just how is that going to drive the sun into nova?"

"Henri Dubois," Ortine stated, "is perhaps the most dangerous type of madman that exists. His madness takes the form of a fanatical oversimplification of the virtues through which mankind can hope to attain happiness."

"I have already considered that angle," said Justin.

"I feel certain you have," said Ortine. "However, it is not Dubois' oversimplification that represents peril to your world and mine—it is his persuasive ability to bring others to act as he would have them act, without thought of the consequences."

"Then you think," Justin said curiously, "that if mankind follows the Golden Rule it will destroy the world—how?"

"Because," Ortine replied patiently, "neither Dubois nor any other man will be able to get enough people to do as he wishes. Yet if he obtains backing from you he will be able to spread his doctrine to enough people so that the natural enemies of the Golden Rule will be forced to take action against them.

"Consider then the results of a Missionist success, Mr. Justin. It would mean that your world would be torn asunder by a hot war—a war in which biological techniques and fission weapons must inevitably, within a five-year period, send a blasted planet spinning into the sun. Result—nova and catastrophe in my own universe."

"You seem to have it all figured out," said Justin.

"That is what will happen if you give Henri Dubois the backing he asks," Ortine continued. "Now consider what will happen if you do not. Take my word for it, other banks will be slow to give him credit once the Ninth of Boston has turned him down. He will be forced to use the contributions sent in by his followers to maintain himself. Consequently, before he has become too dangerous to the Marxist leaders, they will be able to whittle down his prestige through a carefully planned series of smears and exposés."

"And this will be good for the world?" Justin asked.

"It will prevent its destruction," Ortine told him. "It will give sane men, men of reason rather than emotion, men like yourself, Mr. Justin, opportunity to get the reins of power more firmly into their hands."

"Has it occurred to you, Mr. Ortine," said Justin, "that without an occasional 'madman' like Dubois humanity might still be picking its teeth with pieces of flint in a cave?"

"My dear Justin," came the urbane reply, "your question is perfectly logical—however, to one who has viewed the entire panorama of human history, the answer is all too simple. The history of humanity has always been a bloody and stupid one. Men are always struggling because of some shibboleth, killing others who disagree with their pathetic beliefs."

"Not a pretty picture," mused Justin. Then, rallying, "But it is only part of the story. Men have done great things as well."

"True," replied Ortine easily, "and they would have been free for greater accomplishments if they hadn't been oppressed down the ages by a series of influential madmen. Some of them, of course, were foiled by the sane men around them. Consider Napoleon, Charles the Twelfth, Julius Caesar, Aaron Burt, Bolivar, Joan of Arc, Adolph Hitler.

"Each was mad, each came close to altering the world to his own pattern of lunacy at tremendous cost—yet each, at some critical point in his career, was checked by a man of sanity."

"All of them were insane?" Justin asked, surprised.

"Certainly—by what you would term modern psychiatric standards," said Ortine. "Napoleon, Caesar, Bolivar, Joan of Arc and Hitler were all epileptics with paranoiac complications, Burr and Charles straight megalomaniacs.

"Save for the sanity of Talleyrand Napoleon must have united Europe under his imperial sway. Peter the Great wrecked Charles the Twelfth when he apparently had the western world at his feet. A sane Cassius brought about Caesar's death, Jefferson smashed Burr, businessmen of Peru foiled Bolivar, an English bishop saw through Joan, Winston Churchill foiled Hitler. In each instance it was a close thing."

"I'll go along with that," said Justin. "But if the madmen have been foiled, why try to foil them again?"

"I," said Ortine, "am concerned with the madmen who were not foiled—or not foiled in time. Such maniacs include, among alas too many others, Alexander, Mohammed, Peter the Hermit, Pizarro, Martin Luther, your friend Dubois as well...."

"Alexander was killed by peritonitis in his thirties," said Justin doubtfully.

"He did not die in time," replied Ortine firmly. "Not before the terror of his name was so implanted in the Near and Middle East that for centuries it caused Asiatics to be over-whelmed by a shadow of fear they could not hope to overcome with reason."

"You've certainly been taking a dive into our history," said Justin uneasily. "I don't suppose you'd tell me how that is done."

Ortine said, "Gladly—but I fear my explanation would do you little good. The process involves an alteration of atomic structure that can be achieved only in the sub-space that is my native universe."

Then, abruptly, "I hope, however, that the explanation I have given you, along with the fact that I consider your current problem sufficiently important to bring you to Belvoir, has revealed to you how vital it is that you refuse Henri Dubois any important funds."

"It has raised another factor worth consideration," said Justin equivocally. "I have noticed that you bring people to Belvoir only in their sleep. Would you object to telling me why?"

"Hardly." There was a rueful twist to Ortine's half-smile. "I am not, in any real way, possessed of what you would term supernatural equipment. What may look like magic to you is nothing more than a demonstration of the realities of my own universe."

"But...?" said Justin.

"But"—Ortine grimaced—"I have no actual control over the minds or bodies of human beings. Not on their own world at any rate. Incidentally I have no control over your mind here on Belvoir, though actually, while here, you are in my type of space rather than your own.

"However I can attain control over you when you are in the process of drifting into sleep—and then only when the distraction of some impending judgment has lowered your normal psychological defenses. In your instance, as in all others, I was forced to enter your mind through a dream—but surely you remember...."

"It scared hell out of me."

Ortine looked regretful. "Unfortunately, there is a slight narcosis necessary to effect a transfer from your atmosphere to that of Belvoir," he said. "It usually takes the form of unconsciousness, as far as the subject is concerned, most easily connected with the dream involved. A number of more primitive folk seem to have imagined themselves drowned or consumed by wild beasts or fire, poor devils."

"And you say all of this—of this odd assortment you have brought here—is made up of sane men and women?" Justin asked.

"My dear Justin"—Ortine looked pained—"you must be more tolerant. Mind you, these people have been culled from all of human history. You must have seen quite a variety at mealtime."

"Quite," replied Justin. "Incidentally, your feeding arrangement is ingenious to put it mildly. How do you know I shan't take advantage of it to get drunk and foul up the assignment."

Ortine laughed openly. "My dear Justin," he repeated, "you are a sane man."

"Mr. Ortine," said Justin, "from what one or two of the others have said since I got here I am the last one they are waiting for."

"That," said Ortine, rising from the chair, "is entirely true."

Justin gulped as the implication sank home. If he were the last it meant, as his host had already implied, that the sands of Earth, or at least of human existence on Earth, had about run out. It implied that his was the ultimate decision upon which the final fate of the planet hung.

"Naturally," said Ortine pleasantly, "I shall give you time to become used to following the course you must take. You are perfectly free to roam Belvoir for the next few hours...."

V

With Ortine gone Justin paced his cubicle, trying to digest what he had been told and wishing he had asked his host to provide him with a supply of smokes.

His dream was getting seriously out of hand. Or was it a dream? It occurred to him that if not a dream it must be madness. And then, for the first time, he began to wonder if the journey by train through space, if Belvoir and its inhabitants, especially Ortine and the assignment he had outlined, might not be real after all.

Even before the gates of fantasy closed behind him, Justin had recognized that his decision to back Henri Dubois could well be the key to the entire future of Missionism. As such it was entirely possible that upon that decision might depend the immediate future of humanity—if humanity still had a future.

Perhaps some of these others had played similar roles in their otherwise inconspicuous lifetimes. He made up his mind to find out, walked toward the door of his cubicle, almost bumped into the trouserless Dr. Phillips, who chose that moment to enter.

"I was about to go looking for you," Justin told him. "Come in."

Phillips entered. He said, "I take it you have been visited by our host—like the rest of us."

"You mean he visited you at the same time he was talking to me?" Justin asked, surprised.

"He is a gentleman of remarkable abilities," Dr. Phillips told Justin, sitting down as he spoke on the chair. "Of course it is some form of mass-mesmerism."

"Possibly," Justin replied cautiously.

"It can scarcely be anything else," Dr. Phillips informed him. "Until my enforced visit to Belvoir I have been inclined to regard all such marginal devices as fraudulent. Now...."

"It could have been something in the food," Justin suggested. "But that's a technicality, doctor. What interests me is the nature of your assignment—if you don't mind telling me about it."

Dr. Phillips laughed—a shrill bark of embarrassment. He said, "Not at all, Justin, not at all. I'm a university don, you know." He sighed. "Fusty sort of work but it maintains me. At the moment I've been serving as temporary dean of admissions. When I retired for my nap"—he looked with more puzzlement than abashment at his trouserless shanks—"I was on the eve of tackling a batch of applications for the new semester. Beastly repetitious sort of work." He sighed again.

"And Ortine has asked you to grade some student's paper in a certain way for the good of the world?" Justin asked eagerly.

Dr. Phillips blinked behind his spectacles. "My word!" he exclaimed. "How'd you know that?"

"I didn't," Justin told him drily. "I merely surmised it from the nature of my own assignment. Could you give the details?"

"Certainly, Justin, certainly." Dr. Phillips paused to check his memory. Then, "It was a black chap—a Hindustani, a most repulsive little fop. His record and paper were excellent of course—but there's more than marks to a university, what?"

"Oh quite," said Justin. "Would you care to tell me his name?"

"Not quite proper, is it?" Dr. Phillips looked distressed. "But I suppose there's small point in discretion. Chap's name was an odd one." He looked distressed, added a trifle uncertainly, "Believe it was Mohammed or something like that. Last name was like that river in India where the Hindus all take their annual bath."

Justin said, "Mohammed Ganges? It would be Mohandas K. Ghandi, wouldn't it?"

Dr. Phillips regarded him with admiration, said, "Bless my soul—that was it! Though how on earth you ever knew it...."

"He made quite a mark for himself in the world during the first half of my century," Justin told him. Then, "One more question, doctor—what does Ortine want you to do about him—flunk him?"

"My dear fellow, how can I flunk a chap who isn't even a student?" Dr. Phillips' tone was mildly reproachful. "No, all he wants me to do is refuse him admission to the university. I was already of half a mind to do so anyway. Can't think why Ortine should go to all this trouble."

"Probably he just likes to be sure," said Justin. Within him a glow of fresh exultation was forming. Each of them had been brought here because, at some time or other, he had made a decision favorable to one of the so-called madmen.

But Phillips was asking him about his own mission. Justin told him as briefly as politeness allowed, was pleased when Dr. Phillips seemed to consider it unimportant compared to his own task. His visitor rose, evidently prepared to leave, and Justin said, "Doctor, where can I find our mutual friend Miss Wilkins? I'd like to know what her problem is?"

"A very sad case indeed, poor young woman," replied Dr. Phillips, shaking his head mournfully. "Perhaps the company of a young man like yourself will cheer her. Three doors down to your left. You can hardly miss it."

Justin found Deborah lying on the movable cot in her cubicle. Her head was resting on her hands, her blue eyes staring frankly at the ceiling. Her bare feet were crossed and, starch or no, her absurd nightgown had hiked up sufficiently to reveal a pair of lower legs both shapely and attractive.

He stood in the doorway, staring at her, and wondering at the nature of an assignment that could reduce her native gaiety to what was evidently a mood of deep misery. Some small sound made her aware of his presence. She turned her head to look at him, gasped, sat up quickly and pulled her gown down over her ankles with an automatic gesture.

"Nice legs," he told her with a smile. "It's a shame to hide them."

For a moment he thought she was going to be angry. Then humor danced in her eyes and the dimple reappeared in her cheek. But she said quite gravely, "I've often thought so myself. But mother would birch me for the very thought." Then, regarding him with interest, "Now I know ye lied when ye told me your age."

"Since when has age been any stop to a man's admiring a pretty leg—or a pretty girl?" Justin countered.

She giggled at that, then without warning became intensely serious once more. Somberly she said, "To my misfortune age in a man is no such barrier. Would that it were!"

"I gather your assignment has to do with an older man then," said Justin, unexpectedly seized with a pang of jealousy.

She said, "I have no wish to discuss it."

"My apologies," he told her. Then, "I've been granted permission to see a few sights. I wish you'd appoint yourself my guide."

"Gladly," she replied, shedding her gravity once more as she stepped down to the floor. "Strange though it be, Belvoir is a place of surpassing marvels."

"That I'll believe," Justin told her.

They emerged at the foot of a gently sloping ramp upon an immense mall that reminded Justin of one of the carefully tended semi-tropical gardens outside of Charleston, South Carolina.

Resisting the tug of Deborah's hand, Justin paused to study the colorful vista carefully. At first the soundlessness troubled him—till he noted that no bird sang upon any of the branches or floated upon the lagoons. He looked upward, saw that fluffy clouds crossed endlessly a pale blue sky—as against a theatrical backdrop.

His sophisticated gaze found little trouble in discovering them to be mere aspects of a moving picture sky—and now and again, behind the illusion of space they created, he was able to discern the shadow of immense mechanical installations, whose hugeness and intricateness quite took his breath away. Evidently Ortine had spoken no less than the truth when he said that Belvoir was in truth a ship.