Chapter 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.