Part 2

"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.