“Anthony!” Gregory’s voice again; Benson saw the speaker; short, stocky, gray-haired, stubborn lines about the mouth. The face of a man chasing an illusive but not uncapturable dream.
“That means nothing.” A tall thin man, too lean for the tunic-like garment he wore, was shaking his head.
Deliberately, trying to remember his college courses in psychology, he forced himself to accept, and to assess, what he saw as reality. He was on a small table, like an operating table; the whole place looked like a medical lab or a clinic. He was still in uniform; his boots had soiled the white sheets with the dust of Armenia. He had all his equipment, including his pistol and combat-knife; his carbine was gone, however. He could feel the weight of his helmet on his head. The room still rocked and swayed a little, but the faces of the people were coming into focus.
He counted them, saying each number to himself: one, two, three, four, five men; one woman. He swung his feet over the edge of the table, being careful that it would be between him and the others when he rose, and began inching his right hand toward his right hip, using his left hand, on his brow, to misdirect attention.
“I would classify his actions as arising from conscious effort at cortico-thalamic integration,” the woman said, like an archaeologist who has just found a K-ration tin at the bottom of a neolithic kitchen-midden. She had the peculiarly young-old look of the spinster teachers with whom Benson had worked before going to the war.
“I want to believe it, but I’m afraid to,” another man for whom Benson had no name-association said. He was portly, gray-haired, arrogant-faced; he wore a short black jacket with a jewelled zipper-pull, and striped trousers.
Benson cleared his throat. “Just who are you people?” he inquired. “And just where am I?”
Anthony grabbed Gregory’s hand and pumped it frantically.
“I’ve dreamed of the day when I could say this!” he cried. “Congratulations, Gregory!”
That touched off another bedlam, of joy, this time, instead of despair. Benson hid his amusement at the facility with which all of them were discovering in one another the courage, vision and stamina of true patriots and pioneers. He let it go on for a few moments, hoping to glean some clue. Finally, he interrupted.
“I believe I asked a couple of questions,” he said, using the voice he reserved for sergeants and second lieutenants. “I hate to break up this mutual admiration session, but I would appreciate some answers. This isn’t anything like the situation I last remember. …”
“He remembers!” Gregory exclaimed. “That confirms your first derivation by symbolic logic, and it strengthens the validity of the second. …”
The schoolteacherish woman began jabbering excitedly; she ran through about a paragraph of what was pure gobbledegook to Benson, before the man with the arrogant face and the jewelled zipper-pull broke in on her.
“Save that for later, Paula,” he barked. “I’d be very much interested in your theories about why memories are unimpaired when you time-jump forward and lost when you reverse the process, but let’s stick to business. We have what we wanted; now let’s use what we have.”
“I never liked the way you made your money,” a dark-faced, cadaverous man said, “but when you talk, it makes sense. Let’s get on with it.”
Benson used the brief silence which followed to study the six. With the exception of the two who had just spoken, there was the indefinable mark of the fanatic upon all of them—people fanatical about different things, united for different reasons in a single purpose. It reminded him sharply of some teachers’ committee about to beard a school-board with an unpopular and expensive recommendation.
Anthony—the oldest of the lot, in a knee-length tunic—turned to Gregory.
“I believe you had better. …” he began.
“As to who we are, we’ll explain that, partially, later. As for your question, ‘Where am I?’ that will have to be rephrased. If you ask, ‘When and where am I?’ I can furnish a rational answer. In the temporal dimension, you are fifty years futureward of the day of your death; spatially, you are about eight thousand miles from the place of your death, in what is now the World Capitol, St. Louis.”
Nothing in the answer made sense but the name of the city. Benson chuckled.
“What happened; the Cardinals conquer the world? I knew they had a good team, but I didn’t think it was that good.”
“No, no,” Gregory told him earnestly. “The government isn’t a theocracy. At least not yet. But if The Guide keeps on insisting that only beautiful things are good and that he is uniquely qualified to define beauty, watch his rule change into just that.”
“I’ve been detecting symptoms of religious paranoia, messianic delusions, about his public statements. …” the woman began.
“Idolatry!” another member of the group, who wore a black coat fastened to the neck, and white neckbands, rasped. “Idolatry in deed, as well as in spirit!”
The sense of unreality, partially dispelled, began to return. Benson dropped to the floor and stood beside the table, getting a cigarette out of his pocket and lighting it.
“I made a joke,” he said, putting his lighter away. “The fact that none of you got it has done more to prove that I am fifty years in the future than anything any of you could say.” He went on to explain who the St. Louis Cardinals were.
“Yes; I remember! Baseball!” Anthony exclaimed. “There is no baseball, now. The Guide will not allow competitive sports; he says that they foster the spirit of violence. …”
The cadaverous man in the blue jacket turned to the man in the black garment of similar cut.
“You probably know more history than any of us,” he said, getting a cigar out of his pocket and lighting it. He lighted it by rubbing the end on the sole of his shoe. “Suppose you tell him what the score is.” He turned to Benson. “You can rely on his dates and
