Chapter 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...."