Part 3

"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.

"Charles--_Charles_!" He realized abruptly that a worried Deborah was calling to him.

He told her, smiling reassurance, "I was just trying to figure something out. I'm sorry."

"Ye need not be," she replied. "Faith, I too was struck dumb when first I beheld the splendor of this garden. Come, let us explore its reaches."

They walked on soft warm turf that gave gently beneath their bare soles through what Justin decided must be a fair approximation of the average man's conception of paradise.

However, the inmates of this artificial Eden were, to Justin at any rate, more Rabellaisian than Godly. They watched a panting satyr chase a giggling nymph around and around the bole of a giant tree--but the satyr was a plump balding gentleman half-clad in red and yellow motley, while his quarry was a plumper if less bald damsel whose complex and tight-drawn corset and shift promised that while the chase would be brief, its consummation would prove to be appallingly difficult.

"'Twill offer poor Wilmot more woe than a chastity girdle," Deborah said, laughing. "Milady of Warwick is the only one of us he can catch."

"You mean that old goat has actually chased _you_?" Justin asked.

"And prithee, why not?" she countered coolly.

Justin grinned ruefully. He said, "Well, I hope you didn't let him _catch_ you."

"That I have ne'er allowed any man," she replied quietly and a shadow of sadness returned to haunt her fascinating face.

They saw other bizarre sights in the Belvoir garden and Justin was amazed, not to say appalled, by the casual sophistication with which Deborah either ignored or found amusement in what were to him appalling spectacles. He kept reminding himself, _other times--other customs_, but he was relieved when she drew him into a secluded arbor at the far end of the half-mile garden.

There, without warning, she turned to him, put her arms about his neck and lifted her soft full lips to his. As he kissed her and his arms and body discovered to the full what the starched deceptiveness of her ridiculous nightgown concealed, Justin felt a sudden surge of desire such as had not assailed him in years.

He recalled, unbidden, what Corinne Forrester had said about his need for a woman, thought briefly of the purgatory in which his wife's frigidity had held him, then stopped thinking about anything but the sweetness of this unexpected and utterly welcome moment.

Later, when some degree of sanity had returned to both of them, Deborah said softly, "Prithee do not think me a light maid, Darling Charles, but I fear we have little time and it was vital to me that I give myself to a man of my choice."

"Debby dear," he replied, ignoring for the moment the implications of her remark, "I think you're unbelievable. Being with you, holding you like this, is utterly fantastic--for in my own mind I have long been in love with a girl of your own time and city."

"Tell me her name," Deborah said fiercely, "and I'll scratch out her eyes when I get back."

He laughed gently, replied, "She had no name, Debby dear--I made her up myself. And now she is Deborah Wilkins."

For that she kissed him and said, "But why, Darling Charles, should ye dream of a girl of my time--and my Boston? In truth, 'tis a horrid dirty town."

"You may not realise it, dear," he told her, "but you live in one of the most fascinating towns, in one of the most fascinating times of history."

"Ye speak madness!" she cried.

"I speak truth--what in _my_ time is history," he replied. "Hasn't Dr. Phillips told you something of what happened?"

"In truth he sought to but I failed to credit him," she replied. "Ye mean, that in ye'r time, Darling Charles, our colonies will have their own king?"

"They'll have no king at all," he told her. He tried to explain something of the Revolution but so ingrained in her was the idea of monarchy that he finally gave it up and asked her to tell him what it was like to live in eighteenth-century Boston.

"'Tis mostly cold and heat and discomfort compared to life here in Belvoir," she said slowly. "Always is something lacking for our ease. When the river and harbors freeze so that we may glide over the ice, then never is there sufficient wood for our hearths.

"Come summer and we suffer the heat of hell--save for the governor, with his apartment on Castle Island, where he can enjoy the cool harbor breezes, and the rich with their estates in Milton and Dorchester and even beyond."

"But surely," he protested, "you have your good times. How about Guy Fawkes day, or Cambridge during Commencement Week? How about bundling parties and vaccination parties and all the rest?"

She turned her head away briefly and her eyes were full. "Aye," she replied, "there have been good times and I've had my share. But for me they are over upon my return."

"Is it this assignment Ortine has given you?" he asked her gently.

"Mayhap 'tis a part of my misery," she said.

Justin may have lived a life of enforced semi-celibacy for some years but he was neither a fool nor inexperienced where women were concerned. He thought--_Hello_--and suddenly a new and warm excitement flared up within him. Despite the suddenness of their passion, despite the fact that she had claimed an ulterior motive in flinging herself into his arms, this girl loved him.

Equally important, he was in love with her.

VI

At their places before the magical barrier on the long table they had two daiquiris apiece, followed with melon and prosciutto, chicken marengo with white wine and grapes, avocado salad and spumoni.

"Indeed," Deborah said dimpling, "if this be the food of thy age, Darling Charles, then Belvoir can be but a small miracle to thee."

He shook his head and replied, "We do have what must seem miracles of living to thee--to you, Debby--but Belvoir is years, perhaps centuries, and billions of miles beyond our reach. So marvelous is it, in fact, that I'm becoming once more persuaded this is all a dream.

"Certainly," he went on softly, "I've dreamed for years of having a girl like you, dear--and you're here and seem to show a certain fondness for me."

"Charles," she said simply, "don't jest about that." She regarded him gravely, then said, "Prithee, Charles, if I be thy dream, then how is it that thou art mine? For surely, never in my deepest sleep, have I e'er dreamed of a man like thyself."

He reached out and touched her and the softness of her flesh, beneath the now-limp nightgown, was as real as the touch of his own. Sudden terror struck him as he accepted emotionally for the first time the fact that Belvoir might not be a substance created by his own subconscious. If Belvoir were real, then he would never see her again.

"Charles darling, are you ill?"

He looked down, discovered that he was gripping the dessert spoon in his fingers as if it were a weapon. He unlocked clamped jaws and said, "Sorry, Debby, I'm okay. Now--I'd like to take a look at the arrangements Ortine has made for our return."

She rose quickly and he followed her out.

The gates to and from Belvoir, she showed him, were directly opposite the cubicles, one to each cubicle. Deborah entered the one opposite her own chamber, revealing a featureless room, just large enough to contain her portable bed. At its far end was an opaque wall.

She shivered, said softly, "I like not this place, Charles. Yet it is through these chambers that all of us were brought to Belvoir, through them that we must make our return journeys. Charles, I am afeard."

"You and me both," he told her. "Come on to my place and let's see if we cannot dope something out."

She looked puzzled by his twentieth-century phrases but went with him dutifully. Before entering he tested the portal opposite his own cubicle, found it exactly similar to hers.

Deborah had to pluck at his sleeve to remind him she was there. She said, "Verily thee are far from me much of the time."

"Not so far," he replied, leading her into his cubicle. At once her soft strong young arms went around him, her lips sought hungrily for his. He summoned the strength to thrust her from him, said, "Not now, honey--we've got a lot of thinking to do and we may not have much time to do it in."

She subsided meekly and sat down beside him on the portable cot. She said, "I too have the same feeling, Darling Charles."

"Listen, honey," he told her after a minute. "You say you have never dreamed of a man like me?"

"How could I?" she countered simply. "In my time no man such as thee exists. Perhaps the king in London Town, or the Crown Prince...."

"Listen, honey--the only chance we have to stay together is to go out of here together on the same bed." He gave the couch beneath them a slap.

"Durst we?" Her voice was tiny but there was a compensating blaze of sudden hope in her blue eyes.

"We'll dare anything," Justin retorted, "because the worst thing that could happen to either of us right now is to be separated. We durst--now the question is, who goes back into whose time?"

"I should love to visit thine era, Darling Charles."

"I'd love to have you," he replied. "But for ten years now I've been wanting to see yours. We're going back to your life together."

"But Charles!" Her eyes grew round with fright. "Ye can't! Think on it--we might awaken in bed together and--"

"Would that be bad?" he asked.

"Nay--but there is my mother. She well might--"

"And what about my wife?" he countered quietly.

* * * * *

She seemed to leap a full foot away from him, her eyes blazing. She whispered, "Charles--you never told me you were married!"

"I'd be a pretty poor man if some woman hadn't picked me out," he replied. "Furthermore, I have not been in love with my wife for a good many years--nor she in love with me."

"But this is horrible!" the girl moaned.

Justin scowled at her, utterly taken aback by her reaction. Other hints she had dropped came back to him, Dr. Phillips' pitying words about her problem. He said, "I take it then that you are involved with a married man in your time."

She flared at him, "Nay, I am _not_ involved--though all about me, even my father, aye, even my mother, seem to wish me on my backside with this horrid old man. They say 'tis for the good of this or the welfare of that that I should give myself to him--_me_, who cannot stand the stench of his very breath!"

Justin had slipped from the cot. Facing her he said softly, "All the more reason that I should go with you. _I_ can take care of this unwelcome suitor and at least I shall not have a wife in your time for almost two hundred years to come--unless of course I marry you."

"That would be highly improper, not to say felonious," she retorted but he could sense the softening in her voice.

He said, "No more improper than coming to my world and having my wife catch us in bed together. How would you explain that to your sweet New England conscience? Or perhaps we'd better call off the whole thing."

"Nay, Charles," she said simply and stood up and was briefly in his embrace. After a little, her face puckered with worry, "But Darling Charles, how _am_ I to explain thee? And how will ye survive? Ye'll arrive in midwinter in ye'r outlandish costume without a groat to ye'r name."

"Wait a minute." He thrust her from him again and pondered the problems that would face him should he and Deborah actually be successful in their effort to flee Belvoir together.

"Yes, Charles?" she asked him after awhile.

"It'll be all right," he told her, "if we can just get over the hurdle of your parents. I'll need a little money, some clothes."

"Those I can get ye," she replied promptly. "I have a small savings in my cupboard--'tis not much--just what I've saved from dress-making these two years past. And I can get ye some of father's cast-off garments. But what will ye do then, Darling Charles?"

"I'll have my problems, never fear," he told her. "But you seem to have forgotten one thing in my favor--I have lived two centuries in the future, Debby."

"And prithee, how will't avail thee in my time?" she asked him.

"Just this way," he stated confidently. "I know what the course of great events will be in thy--in your time, honey. Once I have obtained the ear and trust of someone with money to speculate I'll be able to take care of myself, never fear."

"And that is work for a man like yourself?" Deborah looked at him doubtfully. "Somehow it seems to me dishonest," she told him. "Ye'r taking unfair advantage."

"And what is fair in love and war?" he countered.

"'Tis a wicked and foolish saying--or so my mother has told me," the girl replied.

"But you'll do it--you darling!" He pulled her close to him and she made no resistance. They were still locked together when a throat was cleared in the doorway.

Dr. Phillips regarded them benignly. "I must say," he remarked, "that compared to some of the lewd sights I have witnessed here in Belvoir, it is refreshing to see a couple as well-favored as yourselves embracing. But that was not the purpose of my visit. I have come to say farewell."

"Then it's coming soon?" Justin asked him quickly.