Part 1

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?"