Waving his hand in farewell to Bowdler, Helen and Grundy, he tried to look like one of the heroes he had been reading about. With that image in mind, he threw back his shoulders, took a deep breath, and slammed the door behind him. Then, head held high, he walked straight off the verandah and missed the top step completely.
Floundering, he landed in a heap at the bottom of the four steps.
It wasn't particularly heroic he feared, rising and brushing himself off.
Gulping, he walked out of sight of the enchanted house as quickly as he could. Ahead lay a world of danger, of familiar things that now were menacing, and terrible.
But beckoning him on his way was a picture of a lovely red-haired, green-eyed girl who would fall languishing into his arms when he rescued her from the hands of the enemy.
Thinking about just what ways she would reveal her gratitude carried him along on seven league boots. As a matter of fact before he quite knew how he had covered the distance between the house and Puritan Square, he was there.
The streets were crowded with people but of a lovely red-haired siren there was no sign, no sign at all.
CHAPTER 9
A wave of revulsion turned Comstock's stomach making him forget, for a moment, the girl for whom he was seeking. All around him in eddying mobs were elderly, grey and white-haired women, their long dresses dragging on the ground. The idea that he had ever found them exciting was hard for him to bear. And the way the young men held the women's arms, talked to them, guided and protected them, made Comstock feel even queazier.
It was a Grandfather's Meeting night and all the couples were on their way to the meeting house. Above them all, the crazily careening green moon sent down harsh high lights that made the old women seem even more decrepit than they really were.
But search as Comstock would, of the red-haired girl he found no sign.
It was getting later and he saw an R.A.'s carriage come down the street, its astrobats dancing as the R.A. driver lashed them. He called out, "Nine o'clock, time for meeting!"
Knowing that he would be arrested if he stayed out on the street while everyone else went into the meeting house, Comstock decided he had better try to look like a normal citizen. Even so, however, he was the recipient of an icy stare from the R.A. For he was the last person to enter the meeting place.
Comstock's flesh crawled when he found the last empty hard seat, and sat listening to the only too familiar smooth patter of the Elder who stood in the front of the hall, on a little podium and mouthed the old, only too familiar platitudes, about The Grandfather.
Closing his eyes, Comstock tried unavailingly to close his ears to the now meaningless words that flooded him and all the others in the crowded smelly meeting place.
The Elder was speaking, his seamed face hanging in lank folds, his jowls wobbling as they barked out the words, "And so, we know now that only in the lap of The Grandfather is there to be found the peace that passes all understanding...."
Comstock's eyes blinked open in shock when a clear, sweet voice interrupted the maunderings of the Elder by saying, "Poppycock!"
The Elder's face froze in ludicrous astonishment as he repeated after his heckler, "Poppycock?"
And then he saw her, Comstock did, and he was glad he hadn't murdered Grundy, and he was even gladder that his frozen tongue had not been able to utter words of love he had wanted to say to Helen. For he saw the girl for whom he had been searching and she was all his maddest dreams come true.
She stood up on her chair at one side of the hall and her eyes were as clear as Bowdler had said, and now they were flashing in anger. Her chest was heaving with indignation and Comstock found himself admiring the way her chest lent itself to this sort of treatment.
Waving one hand in the air for attention, she said, "You fools! How much longer are you going to be duped by the maunderings of these old fools? Don't you know that it's all a lie?"
The audience rose in its wrath and with one voice roared loudly enough to drown out all sounds that might have come from the girl.
The Elder, pointing a shaking arthritic forefinger at the girl, said in a feeble voice that didn't reach through the tumult. "She is insane. Call the R.A.'s."
But the crowd was too upset for any such normal proceedings. None of Comstock's reading had covered lynchings but that was the feeling that emanated from the furious people. This was a many-headed mob that wanted blood.
She was grabbed by so many hands that Comstock wondered if anything would be left of her. One man, bigger and stronger than the rest of the crowd roared out, "To the stocks with her!"
There was no way that Comstock could fight his way to her side, and even if he could have there was little he could have done but be attacked in his turn.
"The stocks," he kept thinking. They were outside in the square, just to one side of a statue of The Grandfather, where the graven image could look down in its infinite wisdom and be soothed and assuaged by the sight of its recalcitrant grandchildren being punished in the stocks.
If he waited, Comstock thought, till she was in them, there would be little he could do, for few ever lived through more than an hour of that treatment. The rocks and stones thrown by the good, lawful citizens of the community made sure of that.
No he could not wait, and yet what could he do as of that moment? What had possessed her to make her speak out in the meeting? The little fool. He'd shake some of the nonsense out of her, if he ever got her away from those menacing hands.
The crowd surged out of the meeting house, down the stairs and toward the statue. There was still no sign of any R.A. But then, why should there have been? Once everyone was at meeting, the R.A.'s could relax, having done their duty for the evening.
But how long could the rumble, the frightening mutter of an outraged mob continue before some R.A. heard it?
Comstock came to a sudden decision, as a ferocious and even more elderly woman than most reached forward and ripped the girl's dress from her neck to her navel, screeching, "The hussy! Put her in the stocks! I've got a stone for her! A big one ... perhaps one of you young sirs would help me throw it?" She looked about her coquettishly and her plea did not fall on empty air.
Running around the outer perimeter of the mob, Comstock made his way to the statue of the kindly-faced Grandfather. Skirting the stocks which were ugly and dull with the blood that had so many times defaced them, Comstock reached up and pulled himself into the lap of the stone Grandfather.
From that point of vantage he yelled, "Stop!"
His voice squeaked a little of course and did not come out with quite the roar that he had wanted it to, but it was enough, it served to halt the mob in its tracks.
Down below him, the girl, naked to the waist, her torn gown hanging from the belt that was all that retained the shreds of cloth that remained from the old woman's tearing hands, looked up at him.
The sight of her bare b.....s was almost too much for Comstock. It unmanned him momentarily, but raising his eyes to her face, and seeing the courage that shone from her eyes, he recovered his lost voice and this time it came out with a roar, as he yelled, "Sanctuary! I claim the right of sanctuary for this girl and myself!"
It had been over four hundred years since last a human voice had claimed that right. But in an ancestor-directed culture like his, Comstock was sure that since old things were automatically the best things, his plea wouldhaveto be honored. Once having claimed sanctuary and while in the lap of the Grandfather, no one, not even the R.A., would tear you from that sacred place.
The mob was not at all happy, but it surrendered as he had been sure it would. The girl was passed up to him. His hands reaching down for her, were gladdened by the soft silkiness of her skin as he pulled her to him. Once she too was seated next to him in that broad capacious lap, the first thing she did, and he was sorry to see it happen, was to pull the shreds of her garment close around her.
Down below them the crowd was not silent. It looked up, and after a while its many faces merged into one, a fearful, frightening visage with one big voice that chanted, "You have sanctuary. We cannot deny you that. But sooner or later you must leave for you must eat and drink ... and when you do...."
And when they did, Comstock knew, they'd be torn to shreds. For the anger which formerly had been noisy and quarrelsome, was now quiet and, if anything, even more menacing than the noise had been.
But it would be a long time before he and the girl were forced to leave their sanctuary, and looking at her face, he decided that if he had to die, there were worse ways to go.
Shyly he put his hand out and stroked her flaming hair. Then he asked, "What's your name?"
"Patience and Fortitude Mather." She was still busy trying to arrange her torn clothing.
He gulped.
Noticing his surprise, she said, "But just call me Pat. What's your name?" But before he could answer she said, "Don't tell me you're a friend of...."
Nodding, he said, "Yes, I'm one of Bowdler's rebels." Then he identified himself.
"I should have known."
"Why," he asked with some asperity, "didn't you join us at Bowdler's house?"
"I couldn't shake off the R.A. who was following me and I wouldn't jeopardize the sanctum."
"Of course. But what made you decide to get up and carry on the way you did at the meeting?"
"When I finally did get away from the R.A. it was too late. It was past the time that Bowdler said I would be able to get through the force field. I knew I was lost and I decided I might just as well go down to defeat saying the things I'd always wanted to say."
"In case," Comstock said, "just in case, there is any chance of an escape from our present situation, and we should become separated," and he told her about the two times of the day when it would be possible to get to Bowdler's house.
The temperature went down as they sat on the cold stone and became acquainted. S.x was the farthest thing from Comstock's mind when he moved closer to the girl and held her in his arms to try and preserve their mutual body heat. At least s.x was far from his mind in the beginning of the long night. But as the evening hours wore away and the insane moon moved higher and higher in the sky, he found that hunger and thirst, cold and fear were not enough to keep certain thoughts from his now over-heated brain. Just sitting so close to her was the most exciting experience he had ever had.
Below them the Hydra-head of the angry multitude began to murmur as he disregarded some of the conventions on which he had been raised. "Shameful," "Disgusting," "Perverted," "Horrible," were some of the milder epithets that were thrown through the air.
Her skin he found on investigation put any flower he had ever beheld to shame. Her breath was sweet on his nostrils. The feel of her was unlike any thing he had ever dreamt of.
He said, his voice as low as his intentions, "Pat, do you think what I feel for you is love?"
Snuggling closer to him, she answered, "If it isn't, it's as good an imitation as we're likely to find." Then her inquisitive lips met his.
It was, he thought, even as he was experiencing it, a highly unlikely place in which to enjoy a honeymoon.
The shamelessness of their conduct was not lost on the waiting throng. At one point even the R.A. who had joined the mob and whose hand had never left the butt of his stun-gun, found it necessary to walk away. None of the onlookers, as a matter of fact, could bear to watch.
So it was, that when Comstock accomplished his desire, and leaning back against The Grandfather's stony beard expressed some of his satisfaction by wishing he could fight the Board of Fathers, en masse, with one hand tied behind his back, he and Pat found that of the whole mob there was not a remnant.
Their conduct had shamed and frightened away the crowd.
Slipping down from the statue's lap, unable to believe their eyes, they skittered away in the now all-encompassing darkness, expecting at any moment to be halted by an R.A. or grabbed by some die-hards from the waiting crowd.
Jogging along at his beloved's side at a half-run, half-walk, Comstock wondered if even death could eradicate the exultation which he felt. But feeling as he did was not conducive, he found, to gloomy, dismal thoughts.
Not even when they ducked down a long alleyway, which he thought led in the general direction of Bowdler's house, did he really, deeply feel concerned about capture. Life could not be so unfair, he decided, as to raise him up to such heights as he had just surmounted, and then drop him into a gloomy pit.
But of course life could, and did, do just that.
CHAPTER 10
He could not help wonder as they ran through the alleyway towards a lighted area that might or might not lead to Bowdler's house, just how long the shock of what he had just done would keep the irate citizens off his trail. Pat ran at his side, her long legs easily keeping stride with him. If she was concerned about her own safety it did not show in her expression which was calm, and almost contemplative, if you disregarded the little quirk of a smile that turned up the ends of her full lips.
Despite the anxiety of his position, Comstock could not help but compare the feeling of ebullience and general physical well-being that surged through him, with the sadness and the feeling of despondency that he had always experienced after his monthly visits to the b.....l.
If he had not been so busy running and praying that they could avoid the R.A.'s, he would like to have sat down and tried to reason out just what was the underlying reason for this change in his attitude towards sex, and its aftermath.
The pounding of their feet was the only sound in the silent night. Beside them the grey brick walls that lined the alley through which they ran were completely featureless. No windows or doors broke the long straight lines that reared up around them.
Pat paused and said, "Why are we running? It's quite clear that we ..." she giggled, "scared everyone away with our outrageous conduct."
The fact that she was able to muster up a smile under these dire circumstances made a warm feeling well up in Comstock's chest. He feebly returned the smile, and then putting out his arms took her in them. He kissed her chastely on the lips and found that even this modest gesture made his temples pound.
Enfolding her and drawing her closer to him, he leaned his back against the nearest wall and whispered into her ear some of the phrases he had stored up from his reading which he had meant to say to Grundy's girl, Helen.
Their bodies were glued so tightly together that when the sound came, their start of surprise was completely mutual. "Ssssst." It sibilated. And then again, "Sssst!"
Thunderstruck, their arms still pressing around each other, Pat and Comstock looked around them. There was nothing to see. Nothing at all.
Then the sound became words, "Sssst, the R.A.'s after you?"
"Uh huh." Comstock managed to answer.
"Count three and then press against the fifth block from the ground."
Feeling that they had absolutely nothing to lose, Comstock obeyed the whispered command.
The fifth block up looked exactly like all the others. But when Comstock pushed at it, an irregular segment suddenly swung inwards. Low light was visible for a moment through the opening. Then it vanished and Comstock, holding Pat by the hand as though to give her reassurance, but really so that he could draw strength from her nearness, stepped through the dark aperture.
At that particular moment, back at Bowdler's house, Grundy, Helen and the owner of the robot house were seated in the library. Bowdler had his hand outstretched to a lever that projected from behind some books. His eyes were glued to a clock. He said, "Five seconds ... four ... three ..." then he shook his heavy head, and threw the lever back in its slot. "I'm afraid we'll have to give them up. It's past midnight. We'll try again at noon tomorrow."
"Don't you dare leave the force field open for a few moments more?" Grundy pleaded.
Shaking his leonine head, Bowdler pushed some books into place so that the lever was hidden from sight. "I would if I could, Grundy. But they must take their chances now."
"Even if Comstock has found that poor girl," Helen said, "what can they do out in the night?"
"Twelve more hours before they can make another attempt to reach safety here." Grundy shook his head. "I can't imagine where they can hide from the omnipresent R.A.'s."
"If only Comstock knew a little more," Helen said, "but we didn't dare try to open his eyes till you were here and it could be done under your aegis."
"The poor innocent," Bowdler said, "you were right to wait for me, but I wish things had worked out differently. Pat doesn't know much more about reality than Comstock." He sighed and then rested his big head on the myriad chins that formed a collar of flesh around his neck.
"What," Grundy asked, "will the R.A.'s do if they capture them?"
"Stun them to death, I'm afraid," Bowdler said.
"No," Helen said hopelessly, "no, they wouldn't...."
But the R.A.'s would, all three of them knew that. Then they just sat and waited, Bowdler staring sightlessly off into a future that only he could envisage, Helen and Grundy holding onto each other desperately in just the same fashion that Pat and Comstock were clinging to each other, as they followed someone or something through a pitch black room that seemed to stretch out forever.
The peculiar door had swung to behind them making all seeing impossible. Comstock held his right arm around Pat's waist and held his left hand before him wishing that his finger tips could see.
The unknown voice that they had heard only once said, "Just a couple of seconds more, my buckos, and we'll be able to dispense with this blasted Stygian darkness."
A fumbling sound, a click, and then white light poured down in an iris-closing flood.
Blinking, Comstock and Pat looked around them. The room through which they had been moving sightlessly was big but not as big as their imaginations had made it. The clutter dwarfed the dimensions in any event. Every available foot of space ahead of them was piled high with a tangle of household objects that ranged from chairs and tables to rugs and bed linen.
Their mysterious host was facing them and as their eyes became accustomed to the light they saw a man of more than average height, lean as a willow branch, a piratical smile creasing his lantern jawed face, as he opened his arms in an all embracing gesture and said, "Welcome to the Haven."
Danger had made Comstock super-cautious, otherwise he might have ruined everything right then and there; for the first thought that occurred to him was that by some stroke of incalculable luck they had stumbled onto still another rebel. But remembering that Bowdler had said that there were only four fellow fighters altogether made Comstock wait for a lead. He said, "Thanks. You've probably saved our lives."
Hands on his narrow hips, the stranger frankly eyed Pat appreciatively. A low whistle preceded his next words, "Put twenty years on you, honey child, and you're going to be a real live doll!"
If this man liked old women, Comstock reasoned, he could not be a fellow rebel. But that made his conduct even more remarkable. Go slow, very slowly and carefully, Comstock brooded, as Pat smilingly asked, "May we know who you are?"
With vast mock-modesty, the man bowed low, and said, "I am known by a variety of names, none of them my own. I am perhaps best known as the Picaroon." Then he waited for them to express surprise and pleasure.
They just looked at him. Slightly crestfallen he rose from his bowing position, and said, almost anxiously, "You've heard of me? The Picaroon? I steal from the poor and give to the rich?"
Comstock turned his head and looked inquiringly at Pat. She was as puzzled as he.
Considerably crestfallen the man said, "The greatest outlaw in all New Australia? The man the R.A.'s would give their left arms to capture?" A frown crossed his face, then he said as though talking to himself, "The dirty rats! They were supposed to write me up, they promised they would, when I got sick and had to become a thief."
Whirling around on tip toe like a dancer, he pointed at the accumulation of odds and ends that crowded the room. "Then what have I been working so hard for? Why have I worked my fingers to the bone stealing ... stealing, out every night when I should be asleep, burglarizing every innocent house I come to? Why, I ask you, why? It's enough to make a man become a cynic, that's what it is!"
Slumping into a chair that was already overcrowded with various objects, he put his head in his hands. A terrifying thought seemed to occur to him. He looked up at them. "If you don't even know who I am, if they aren't even writing up my criminal exploits, what did I go to all the trouble of preparing this Haven for? If they're not chasing me, if there is no danger, how can my cure work?"
"I'm sure I don't know," Comstock said since the man seemed to want some kind of an answer. All the while the thief had been talking, Comstock had been racking his weary brain trying to recollect what illness crime was a cure for. He couldn't remember.
A hopeful look came over the man's face and he leaped up from his seat. A long forefinger jutted out at Comstock. The man said, "I've got it. You're lying to me! You're undercover workers for the R.A. You're spies come to root me out! Luckily I have taken precautions against that very thing. The Picaroon can't be caught napping! No indeed!"
Whirling around the man who called himself the Picaroon suddenly swooped towards a pile of metallic looking objects whose identity Comstock had not yet been able to determine.
The thing he grabbed was about three feet long, made of some shining metal, was about an inch in diameter and came to a point. The handle, if that was what it was, glittered as he inserted his hand in the metallic basketwork and twirled the point of the object dangerously near Comstock's nose. Comstock felt his nostrils twitch as the object stirred up a breeze as it swirled past him.
The lean man said, "I knew this old sword would come in handy some day. No one can outwit the Picaroon." He laughed and his voice was pitched at what Comstock considered an almost hysterical note.
The point of what the Picaroon had called a sword swung back and forth in front of Pat and Comstock. With his other hand he grabbed a long loop of narrow cloth and threw it to Pat. "Tie up your fellow spy and then I'll take care of you...."
Comstock said, "Do as he tells you, Pat, darling. Do it instantly." His voice quavered for he had suddenly recollected what sickness it was that thieving cured.
Unexpectedly docile, Pat did as she was directed. She tied Comstock's hands behind his back, not too tightly, however, Comstock was pleased to notice, and then turning, faced their captor.
She asked, "What now, noble Picaroon?"
"Good girl," Comstock thought, "She's realized that only madmen are forced to become anti-social creatures."
Humming to himself the Picaroon whirled the point of the "sword" under Comstock's chin and said to Pat, "If only you were a little older, child, you and I could make such beautiful music together.... But then there's no reason why I can't keep you here in the Haven till you age properly, now is there?"
"No," Pat agreed hastily, "none at all."
The lunatic whistled cheerily to himself as he cleared a free space on a couch and forced Pat to lie down on it. Then he tied her ankles with a silk scarf, and her wrists with a plastic substance that was known to have a tensile strength equal to that of the metal that this culture used for the framework of their buildings.
Donning a broad brimmed hat, and throwing a cape-like cloth around his wide shoulders, the Picaroon bowed deeply to Pat. Walking to one wall, he pressed his fingers against a projecting button and said, "'Tis not long past midnight ... there's a bad night's work still to be done. Tonight, the Picaroon strikes again!"
He was gone. They were alone. Comstock looked helplessly at Pat. She tried to manufacture a smile but it was no great shakes.
"If," Comstock said, "I can get this thing off my wrists, perhaps we can be out of here before that insane creature returns."
"Escape from this retreat directly into the Grandfather's Right Arms?" Pat asked gently.
Comstock stopped struggling with his bonds for a moment as he considered what she had said. "If we can fend off this 'Picaroon' until about eleven-thirty tomorrow then we can make a dash for Bowdler's house.
"I think that's our only chance, and a slim one it is."
Almost twelve hours ahead of them, at the mercy of a madman, before they could dare run the daylight gauntlet of the outdoors, under the menace of the R.A.'s. Comstock shuddered. The risk was tremendous, yet what else was there that they could do? He couldn't bear the thought of staying here in the Picaroon's Haven right around the clock, he didn't think he could stand twenty-four hours more of the nerve racking strain he was undergoing, even though that might be a more intelligent plan to attack.
Roughly twelve hours more, one way, and a full twenty-four the other....
Pat said, when she saw his brow furrowed with painful thought, "Now's the time to think of my name."
"Huh?" he said, not very intelligently.
"Patience and Fortitude, remember?"
He had the patience, the only question was whether or not he had the fortitude to put up with the Picaroon's mad fantasies.
At length the secret door opened and the man he was brooding about entered, bowed down with an even more useless collection of stolen objects than the ones which already burdened the room.
Striking an attitude, the Picaroon dropped the load he was carrying and roared, "Once more has the Picaroon dared the armed forces and the majesty of The Grandfather's law; once more his nimble fingers have plucked from the very heart of our solid citizenry those stolen treasures which will emblazon his name in the criminal hall of fame."
He bowed.
Pat said under her breath, "Patience and Fortitude...."
Then the Picaroon darted suddenly towards Comstock, his lean fingers outstretched. He said, "And you, you poisonous emissary of the forces of law and order, you, the Picaroon will punish in fitting style!"
Comstock held his breath as he waited to see what new vagary had further addled the brain of their insane captor.
CHAPTER 11
Before the Picaroon's fingers had quite tightened around Comstock's throat, Pat called out, "Perhaps there is some good reason why your exploits have not been emblazoned for all to read!"
The strong fingers slowly opened and the madman turned towards Pat.
Taking the cue, Comstock said hurriedly, "Yes, maybe your crimes have not been particularly spectacular!" Some place in Bowdler's huge library Comstock had run across a book devoted to the exploits of a super criminal. Rummaging through his memory, Comstock said, "I've got it! I know just the thing that the Picaroon can do that will insure his infamy becoming noticed."
As Pat began to speak, the Picaroon's head swivelled back and forth between her and Comstock. His steel grey eyes were no longer menacing, Comstock was pleased to note.
"How about," Pat suggested, "how about stealing...."
"One of the R.A.'s cars," Comstock interjected.
"Just what I was going to say. And then with the aid of the car, he can...."
"Go to the fountainhead, beard The Grandfather in his retreat."
"And make sure that his most fantastic and fabulous crime will become known to every living creature in our world by...."
"Snipping off The Grandfather's beard!" Comstock finished. Then he waited, his teeth pressed together on his bottom lip.
"But," the Picaroon said, in a rather bemused fashion, "that would be blasphemy."
"But think of the effrontery of it!" Pat said, leaning forward hopefully, paying no attention to the bonds that held her.
"Think of the shock of such an action! Every law-abiding citizen would rise up in wrath. Then the hue and cry would be such that no longer would the Picaroon work long hard hours through the night without ever getting the fame which is his due." Comstock could hardly believe that even this lunatic would fall for what they were suggesting.
"What a colossal feat ..." the Picaroon said, almost to himself, "Why didn'tIthink of it?"
His long legs carried him around the room, as unthinkingly, he strode up and down over the various bundles that were strewn around the floor.
A thought struck the man who called himself the Picaroon. "Where could we steal an R.A.'s car?"
This, of course, was the crux of Comstock's plan. Looking as unconcerned as he could, Comstock said, "Why, it just happens that Pat and I know where there is an abandoned car."
"An abandoned car?" The Picaroon grinned delightedly, snapped his fingers and said, "Then come, the night is young and there is dirty work to be done!" Running to Pat's side he released her. She rose, rubbed her fingers to restore the circulation and then untied Comstock.
Comstock eyed her torn dress, the involuntary deshabille that revealed more of her firm young b.....s than he thought any other man in the world should be in a position to observe and said to the Picaroon, "Remember, this is a most dangerous adventure on which we are about to embark. We are wanted as badly by the R.A.'s as you will be once you have snipped off The Grandfather's beard! We'd best wear some disguise."
"Then," the Picaroon said, "You two are really not police spies at all, are you?"
"Wait and see what the R.A.'s do to us if they catch us," Pat said grimly, while she rooted through a rag bag of old clothes trying to find some sort of garment with which to clothe herself.
"How exciting," the Picaroon said, slapping his hands together in delight, "and to think I was just about to crown my criminal career by murdering this man."
Comstock tried not to think about how close his demise had been and watched fascinatedly while Pat dropped her torn dress to the floor and donned a shapeless gown.
But when he saw the Picaroon was busy searching for male clothes he turned away from the delectable sight of Pat's n..e body and took the clothes that the Picaroon gave him. A floppy hat had a big enough brim so that in the dark Comstock's face would be hidden. A tight pair of trousers and a too big jacket of a different color than the things he had been wearing would have to suffice as a disguise. All Comstock could do really, was hope and pray that they would be able to get, with the Picaroon's aid, near enough to Bowdler's house so that while the Picaroon was busy trying to understand the mechanics of the abandoned car, he and Pat could make a run for it through the force field at the proper time.
The trip through the darkened city was a revelation to both Pat and Comstock. In Comstock's earlier, law-abiding incarnation, there had never been a night that found him in bed later than the curfew at ten. To find that the streets were completely deserted at two, or three o'clock in the morning came as no surprise, since he knew that all lawful souls would, of course, be asleep at that time.
But he had not been an alcoholic for a long enough period to find out that the bars stayed open long after midnight. The only people that there was the slightest chance of trouble with, were the roisterers who staggered out of the saloons from time to time, and here the danger was slight, for as soon as an inebriate hove into view the Picaroon would wink mightily, link arms with Pat on one side and with Comstock on the other and the trio would mimic drunkenness and sing bawdy songs till the real drunks were gone.
"What," Comstock asked, "are the chances of bumping into an R.A.?"
"Aha!" The Picaroon placed his long forefinger next to his nose. "You are attempting to tear aside the veil that hides the Picaroon's methods!"
"Fiddle faddle," Pat said nastily, "answer him!"
Coming to a halt on a silent street corner under a lamp post that cast a spotlight down around his piratical figure, the Picaroon said, "At night, after curfew, when all law-abiding citizens sleep...." He lowered his voice to a shadow of a whisper forcing Pat and Comstock to place their ears near his mouth, "you realize, don't you, both of you, that I am giving away my most cherished secret, the modus operandi that allows me to operate and so flout the law?"
They nodded.
"Then let it be known, but just to us, that I have found when all the other law-abiding citizens sleep, why, so do the R.A.'s."
Twirling in a mad pirouette, the Picaroon threw back his head and laughed. "From curfew to dawn, there is no law!"
Clapping a hand over the Picaroon's mouth, Comstock snapped, "Shut up! You'll rouse the dead with all that noise!"
A little sobered the Picaroon said, "Now you have my most valued secret, see that you guard it with your lives!" Putting his finger to his lips he added, "Hisssst...."
Pat asked, "What is it?"
"Nothing," the Picaroon said, "I just like to say hisssst...."
Shrugging behind the Picaroon's back, Comstock gestured to Pat to pay no mind to their mad guide. Aloud, he asked, "Do you know your way to 14 Anthony Comstock Road?"
"I know all the ways," the Picaroon said, and again taking the lead, walked with exaggerated steps, on tip toe, as though fearing to wake the sleeping world.
It was a long trip on foot and dawn was breaking as they came in sight of some landmarks that Comstock remembered. If his mental picture of the terrain was correct, the car in which Grundy, Helen and he had made their escape from the Fathers should be downhill from where he and Pat and the Picaroon were now standing.
He conveyed this information to the others and this time he took the lead with Pat behind him and the Picaroon still walking on tip toe bringing up the rear.
As they went downhill Comstock could see his goal. Bowdler's house lay still and quiet, the refuge for which he yearned. But it might just as well have been on the other side of his world for all the good it was as long as the force field surrounded it.
Waiting till the Picaroon's attention was on the car in the distance, Comstock pointed at the house and whispered to Pat, "That's it."
She nodded.
Then they reached the car and the Picaroon's almost idiot glee reached its apogee as he poked at the thing under the hood that made the "car" move.
Comstock didn't have the vaguest idea of whether or not the car could run. When he and Grundy and Helen had abandoned it, it had simply gone careening downhill and finally stopped. Why it stopped, or whether it would ever go again was an impenetrable question to Comstock.
But he didn't allow his lack of knowledge to stand in his way. Becoming dictatorial he told the Picaroon to stop fooling about with the mechanism and to watch and try to learn how to make the car go.
Then with the Picaroon standing at attention, Comstock got into the car, and went through the complex series of actions which in Grundy's case had served to animate the vehicle.
There was a muttering rumble from the "car" and it surged internally. However the rock which had halted its forward progress in the first place, still served to prevent it from proceeding.
The Picaroon snapped into action, and going to the rear of the "car" he pushed as the wheels of the vehicle began to spin to no avail at all.
At this point, Comstock, anxious to stall things as long as he could, since there was no chance of entering Bowdler's house till the sun was overhead, tried to turn off the motor. Instead he threw the motor into reverse and the car instantly backed up, carrying the Picaroon along with it.
He dangled from the rear of the car trying to muscle himself up out of the danger of the wheels while he yelled at the top of his lungs for Comstock to stop whatever he was doing.
Pat sat on the side of the road being of no help to Comstock at all, since she was busy being convulsed by giggles. The sight of the long-legged madman, his no longer jaunty cape entangled in his thrashing limbs, while Comstock wildly snapped things on and off on the control board, and the unguided car veered and yawed as it ran backwards up the steep hill was a little more than she could stand.
When the car had backed almost to the crest of the hill, Comstock found the key which turned the ignition on and off and managed to bring the "car" to a halt.
The Picaroon was in a towering fury. "Poltroon!" he roared at Comstock who was red-faced with embarrassment and anxiety. "How dare you treat a criminal figure of my stature in a manner more befitting some low comedy person like you?"
Dropping from the rear of the "car" the Picaroon raced around towards the driving wheel where Comstock sat helplessly trying to deduce what had gone wrong with his method of driving the "car".
The Picaroon's right hand darted out of sight under his cape and when it came back into view, Comstock was horrified to see that a steel blade perhaps ten inches long had become integral to the maniac's right hand.
"Blood!" the Picaroon stated almost calmly, "blood is the only thing that will erase this stain that you have placed on my criminal escutcheon."
With that he darted the sharp point of the knife straight at what would have been Comstock's Adam's apple, had not a beginning double chin covered it with fat.
There is no doubt that Comstock would have died at the wheel of the car, with a slit throat had not Pat, seeing the direction that the madman's mind was taking, picked up a rock and smashed it down on the Picaroon's head just in the only too well known nick of time.
Breath whooshed out of Comstock's lungs as he saw the knife blade falter, and then saw the Picaroon's head come careening down. Wide-eyed he watched as the man's unconscious body tumbled to the ground.
As soon as the Picaroon landed, Pat was at his side and her questing hand first took the knife from his flaccid grip and then she examined the rest of the arsenal that hung from the man's belt hidden till now by the all-encompassing cloth of his ridiculous cape.
The plethora of weapons clinked and clanked as she placed them to one side. She said, "When you get your breath, come and take some of these for yourself, dear."
Comstock found that if he didn't pay too much attention to the way his knees wobbled that he could navigate. Getting out of the car was hardest. Once he was on firm ground again he found that the various alarums and excursions through which he had lived had served to, if not make him callous to danger, at least make him bounce back a little faster than he had at the beginning of his departure from his normal way of life.
Holding his right forefinger on his left pulse for a moment he wondered why his poor weak heart had not long ago surrendered beneath the various assaults that had been made on it. But when he found that his pulse seemed to be practically normal he forgot about his heart until kneeling down next to Pat he smelled the fragrance of her hair. This time he did not have to take his pulse. He could feel his heart pounding.
She looked sideways at him and smiled gently. They were both kneeling next to the prostrate Picaroon. Their mouths were on a level. This made their kissing almost automatic.
The kiss might have lasted even longer than it did had not the Picaroon stirred. Pat broke away from Comstock's embrace and said, "We'd best tie him up so that we don't have any more trouble with him."
"By all means," Comstock said muzzily, his mind still concerned with the nearness of her.
It was only when she rose and went to the car looking for something with which to bind their captive that Comstock was able to think, shake his head and force his addled brain into action again.
Then using the cape as a blanket, Comstock swathed the madman in its folds. Next, when Pat returned with some rope they wound it around and around the man till he was completely bound.
Then, and only then, did Comstock turn and look across the distance that separated them from Bowdler's house and safety. The sun was well up now, which was good in that it shortened their waiting time, but was bad since it meant that the R.A.'s would be out on patrol in full force.
Pat, standing at his side, voiced his thoughts when she said, "Isn't there some way that we could signal to your friends so that we need not wait out here till noon?"
"The big danger to be avoided is that the R.A.'s may see us and so suspect the house."
Below them, the Picaroon rolled his head back and forth angrily. This was the only part of him that he could move. He said, "So youwerespies!" He spat. "I should have known. Always should the master criminal work alone. All the text books I have read make that point. It serves me right for not being a lone mink ... or wolf or whatever the earth word is."
Comstock paid no attention to his grumbling as he tried to assay the situation. They could not endanger the safety of the house by just walking into view of one of the windows and waving to capture the attention of Grundy or Helen.
If an R.A. were to see that...
Since that was impossible, what were their chances of being unobserved for ... looking up at the sun he tried to estimate how long it would be before noon. Perhaps two hours yet.
Putting his arm around Pat's waist he said, "Let's get as close to the force field as we can so that when it is lifted we can just make a dash for the house."
"And take a chance of being seen by an R.A.?"
That was right. When Bowdler told him to come back to the house at noon or midnight, he had had no way of knowing just how badly the R.A.'s would be wanting to get hold of Pat and Comstock. It hardly seemed possible to Comstock that so little time had passed since he had left the house and safety the day before to go hunting for an unknown girl.
He gulped as he realized what the tenor of his thinking meant. He said plaintively, "You mean we'll have to wait till midnight before we dare go to the house?"
She nodded.
Then, as one person they turned and looked down at the Picaroon. It would be unfair to keep the poor lunatic tied up the way he was for at least fourteen more hours...
The Picaroon was mumbling to himself, "You are who you are, if you think you are..."
Blinking thoughtfully, Comstock turned to Pat and said, "You know, that's a very interesting question. I'd like to think about it for a while."
"While you're thinking about it, darling, devote a little of your brain power to figuring out where we're going to get food and water to last us till midnight..."
The madman's words pounded at Comstock's brain washing away the reality of what the girl had said. "But how do you know you are?" That was a very interesting question.
Still squatting on his heels, Comstock looked unseeingly off into the distance and wondered what in the name of The Grandfather the answer to the lunatic's question could be.
He was something or someone called Comstock, he was sure of that. But how could he know he was Comstock, for sure, that is?
He was so engrossed that he did not even hear the Picaroon's mad giggle as the man said to Pat, "See ... see what my little question did to him? That's what happened to the first four doctors who examined me!" He laughed again. "That was when the Fathers decided that I was a madman and that my only cure was to become a criminal."
Worry made itself visible on Pat's face as she turned from looking at Comstock who was completely withdrawn inside himself. She looked down at their captive and asked, "Who were you before you became the Picaroon?"
The harsh piratical face lost its Harlequinesque self-derision as the man said, "I was the last philosopher."
CHAPTER 12
There was something so infinitely sad in the man's words that Pat was emotionally moved. Not knowing what a philosopher might be did not prevent her from feeling sorry that the bound man had been the last of whatever it was that he had been.
Comstock never knew about the conversation that the quondam Picaroon had with Pat, for all the while that the girl and the bound man talked, Comstock was in a little world of his own trying to chase down the reality of his own existence.
Sitting on the ground next to the man who called himself the Picaroon and the last philosopher, Pat found herself involved in a discussion of what the man spoke of as the eternal verities.
The sun rose higher and higher in the sky, noon came and went while Comstock went deeper and deeper into himself searching for the answer that does not exist.
When he had not moved for many hours, Pat tore herself away from what she was being told and asked, "What can I do for him?"
For the first time in many hours the philosopher gave place to the Picaroon and the madman, laughing gleefully as he said, "All you need do is find the answer for which he is questing. That will bring him out of the grey world into which the question has driven him."
Looking at Comstock, Pat felt fear like a live thing. There was no intelligence on his soft face. None at all. His eyes were unfocussed, his breathing very slow. His arms were hooked around his knees which were drawn up towards his chest. He had fallen over on his side.
Luckily Pat had no idea of what the foetal position looks like or she would have been even more frightened than she was.
Pat asked hesitantly, "Will you tell me the answer so that I can help him come back?"
Then the madman threw his lean face back and howled.
Wringing her hands, Pat wondered what had come over the man who such a short time before had told her wonderful things of which she had never dreamed.
When he was strangling with his own mirth, the man gasped, "My dear, I would gladly give the answer ... that's what I devoted all my life to searching for ... but the humor of it all is that there is no answer."
Then another paroxysm of laughter swept through him.
Deep down inside Comstock's brain in the never-never land to which the last philosopher's question had driven him, Comstock was dully aware that his body was being stroked. It felt nice and he made an animal sound deep in his throat. But the action did not serve to revive him any more than Pat's anxious voice which was shouting in his unhearing ears.
He never heard her say, "Darling, youmustcome back! The R.A.'s are coming."
Comstock never knew when a squad of R.A.'s surrounded the car, and by means of a frightening array of stun-guns forced Pat to help them carry first the tied-up lunatic and then the unresisting body of the man she loved into the car in which they had driven onto the scene.
Inside Bowdler's house Grundy, Helen and the owner of the robot house sighed as midnight came and went. Bowdler voiced all their feelings when he said, "I am afraid we must give them up for lost. We have waited through three periods. There has been no sign of them. None at all."
While he was saying this, the R.A.'s were driving away with Comstock, Pat and the Picaroon.
"Then we can wait no longer?" Helen asked.
Shaking his head, Bowdler said, "No."
Grundy rose to his feet as he murmured, "I'm glad. This waiting has been worse than anything that the Board of Fathers can mete out to us."
Helen and Grundy paused at the door of the house and looked back regretfully, Grundy spoke, "It's been a wonderful month we had, we can remember that, darling."
She kissed him and they walked out into the darkness with Bowdler close behind them.
He said, "I shall be with you, and you can depend on my helping in any way that I can."
"To face the Board of Fathers!" Grundy's face was set. "I'll tell them a few home truths no matter what they finally decide to do to us."
"You're so brave, sweetheart," Helen said. And looked at him admiringly.
"But it's still The Grandfather whom I fear the most." Grundy was honest enough to add.
Bowdler laid his heavy hands on each of them and said, "Courage."
Then they started on the way to their fates.
In the R.A.'s car, Pat sat between the lump of unresisting flesh that Comstock had become and the cocoonlike figure of the philosopher.
The man who was a criminal in spite of himself observed the way Pat looked down at Comstock and his harshly handsome face softened.
"My dear, perhaps it is better that he be the way he is, if what you have told me is true and you are both rebels against the bonds that chain all of us on this sorry world of ours. I fear what the Board of Fathers or The Grandfather may decide may be much worse than this condition that my question has caused."
"To die is hard, but to die without knowing that you are dying, is horrible," Pat said through clenched teeth.
"It is unmanly, I will not gainsay that." Then the man was silent.
Ahead of them the odd buildings that housed the Board and The Grandfather rose up in their way. The globular buildings inside of which were both the Elders and the Fathers were dwarfed by the height of the shaft of The Grandfather's residence.
The R.A.'s were as silent and seemingly unthinking as machines. Their first visible emotion had been one of jubilance at having caught Pat and Comstock but that had faded under the fear of punishment for not having caught them sooner.
They sat statue still, their hands on their guns as the car drove up to the entrance of the buildings.
One of the R.A.'s left the machine to go for further orders from his superior officer.
In the car the last philosopher said softly, "Perhaps whatever little nobility there is in man is best served by dying with one's eyes open. I shall not again retreat into the lie of the Picaroon." He smiled gently at Pat, and said, "I think I will like dying as one of you, as a rebel."
But all Pat's attention was on her beloved who had never stirred from the curled up position into which his thoughts had forced him.
Seeing this, the last philosopher said, "There is one chance, and only one that I can think of that may revive him. Perhaps love, an emotion of which I know very little, may be strong enough to pull him out of that place to which he has run for safety."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"To me," the man said, "as a philosopher, the charms of love and sex were never very strong. But I should imagine, just as pure speculation, that the two must be very tightly entwined."
Deep, deep down inside the thing that Comstock had become he felt a stirring of some kind of interest. He did not yet know what was causing the sensation, he could not hear the love words that Pat was whispering in his ear, he was not really conscious of her soft hands caressing him, but something was taking place, something that seemed to have reality in a place where there was no such thing.
So it was that the guards of the R.A. were as shocked by her behavior as earlier the waiting crowd had been when Comstock and Pat had broken the deepest, strongest held taboo of their culture.
At their side, the last philosopher chuckled as he saw the guards blanch, then turn their eyes away.
Their livid faces were turned from the scene as Pat literally drew Comstock back from the bourne to which he had retreated.
Gasping, astounded, Comstock came back to reality. He was terribly shocked when he saw what Pat had done, but this shock gave place to an even bigger one when he realized that they had been captured, that they were in front of The Grandfather's Retreat, and that there was no longer any chance for escape.
None at all.
Gasping, he asked, "What happened? Where have I been? How did we get here? Why don't I remember coming here?"
"Don't repeat my question," the last philosopher said, "or he may be trapped by it again."
Slurring over the crux of the matter, Pat gently tried to bring Comstock up to date.
The guards recovered some of their equanimity and brutally shoved all three of them out of the car. The last philosopher, still bound, crashed to his face as they evicted him. Pat hurried to untie him, and help him to his feet.
Then, inside a living square formed by the R.A.'s they were ushered back into the ante-room which Comstock, Grundy and Helen had escaped from a month earlier.
Surprise was piled on surprise for Comstock. When the R.A.'s shoved him into the room he saw, waiting, sitting in chairs, Helen and Grundy. Standing, pacing back and forth was Bowdler, his heavy face set with thought.
Helen cried, "We thought you were dead!"
Then there were introductions, and explanations, and it was only when Bowdler finally interrupted and said, "Hold everything. You realize it is late at night, and it is only because of the uniqueness of the situation that the Board of Fathers is sitting in extraordinary session, in order to decide what to do with you all, that I am here."
This sufficed to let Comstock and Pat know that Bowdler was still playing his double game.
Helen whispered in Comstock's ear. "Bowdler pretended that he had captured us and brought us here and then invoked the special session of the Fathers."
Just as the door that led into the Board of Fathers began to open, Bowdler said, his voice harsh with urgency, "I want you to go in there, not as prisoners come to judgment, but as stalwarts who demand a fitting place in the government of our world.
"Audacity, my little ones, audacity is the order of the day!" Bowdler smiled as he saw the puzzlement spread over Comstock's and Pat's faces. "Follow the lead of Grundy and Helen. I've had time to tell them a little more than I have told you two!"
The door was open wide now, and as Comstock girded his loins preparatory to what he was sure would be a battle to the death against impossible odds, the R.A. who had entered, bowed to Bowdler and said, "The Fathers request your presence, Father Bowdler."
Then their last prop was gone, and they just sat and waited, staring at the door which had closed behind Bowdler.
The three who had endured so much sat and waited. The three plus Pat and the last philosopher. When you have fought for as long as they had against forces strong almost beyond imagining, when you have struggled in despair, lived without daring to think, hope, when it finally comes is almost anti-climactic. At least Comstock found it so. Despite the traps, the violence, the hurts, the fear, they were now where they wanted to be.
They sat quietly, their hands folded, and if any feeling of triumph was in them, it was so muted as not to be observable. At that precise moment, when they sat in the ante-room, waiting for their reward, if reward it were to be, the only common emotion they shared was that they had fought a good fight. Fought as hard as it is in a person to fight for what they consider right.
Then the door opened and instead of the summons to come before the Board of Fathers which they had expected, The Grandfather entered the room. The Grandfather, with his high hooked nose, his broad forehead, deep set harsh old blue eyes, focussed on the middle distance, his strong old hands crossed on his stomach just below his patriarchal beard, his tremendous height forcing him to look down at them.
It was hard to believe.
Hard to believe that they, or anyone below the rank of Father would ever actually behold Him in the flesh.
When He spoke His voice was all the things they had known it would be... Deep as an organ base, calm, full of authority, stern, yet with a leavening of those other things that make up the whole man, his voice was almost gentle as he said, "Follow me, please."
They rose, and feeling like little children, followed his preposterously tall, spare back, out of the ante-room, into that other room where the Board awaited them.
There was no fear in them now as there would have been earlier. For they were not coming before the Board for judgement, but to be rewarded. At least that's what Grundy and Helen had been told by Bowdler.
The Grandfather pointed out Comstock, Helen and Grundy, and said, "These three are the original ones. The other two," his gesture pointed out the last philosopher and Pat, "are the newer recruits."
There was silence.
"They have come to join us," The Grandfather said.
The silence expanded.
"Gentlemen, Fathers all, these are three new Fathers." The Grandfather's voice faded away and there was no other sound. Some of the men who made up the Board of Fathers said a word.
But the ones who had fought their way up to this eminence stood in silence and looking about them, examined the men with whom they would now share the control of their whole world.
This was the moment of their triumph.
CHAPTER 13
When Bowdler and Grundy had first sounded out Comstock and had asked him the questions that had led him so far from the normal law-abiding life that had been his, one of the mainsprings of his conduct had been envy mixed with disgust that the Fathers whom formerly he had so revered had become monsters in his mind. Monsters who had used the whole planet as a breeding ground for their harems. For when the thought that only the Fathers were really fathers had struck Comstock he had resolved that he too would like to take part in such noble work.
Along with the sexual motive, Comstock had decided that if the Fathers controlled the world, he too would like to have a share in either controlling the world as it was, or perhaps with luck, helping to change the control in such a way that their world would be a better place to live in.
This mixture of ideas had resulted in his mental picture of the Fathers becoming an amalgam of monsters of pride, venery and power.
Looking about the room Comstock decided that he could not possibly have been further wrong in the way he had pictured the Fathers.
For his first feeling as his unbelieving eyes swept around the table at which the Fathers sat, was one of pity.
Far from being the creatures with inflated egos, the monsters of uxoriousness that his inflamed imagination had painted, these men who guided the affairs of his world were invalids... The lame, the halt and the blind.
Each face was torn by pain, every body bore the stigmata of some fatal disease.
Only the Grandfather, ridiculously tall and spare, standing at the far end of the gigantic room was as his imagination had foretold He would be.
In the silence that greeted them Comstock finally turned to Grundy and said, "I ... I don't understand."
The Grandfather walked to the head of the table and prepared to speak. While they waited, Grundy whispered, "Think a moment. The only cure for disease that our people know is vice. Right?"
Nodding, Comstock waited.
"But the only people on the whole planet who know how this cure works, what psychic machinery is involved, are the Fathers."
Comstock gulped and thought of his heart.
"To become a Father," Grundy added hurriedly as The Grandfather raised his hand for silence, "is a sentence of death. For once you know how sin cures sickness, it can no longer cure you."
"Fathers," The Grandfather said, and involuntarily, Comstock felt his heart fill with awe, so imbued had his upbringing been with respect and worship of the figure called The Grandfather; he tried to control the emotion that threatened to unman him, for his temptation was to fall down before The Grandfather.
"Fathers," the deep organ bass went on, "you know why we are gathered in this extraordinary conclave. So successful has been the regime that I have caused to come into being, that no longer can we hope to recruit new Fathers from amongst those brave souls who rebel against the government we have set up. Not for fifty years has a new rebel appeared to challenge our power. Therefore, as you all know, Father Bowdler, because he is the healthiest appearing of any of you, was empowered to go out into the world and find rebellious souls whom we may be able to use as leaders.
"I feared when first I caused the apparatus of power to be set up as I have done, that there would be instant and successful rebellion. It did not then occur to me that I would be too successful and that rebellion would be bred out of the blood of our people.
"We have, as you know only too well, arrived at a period of stasis from which our world may never recover.
"It therefore devolves upon the men who stand before you as well as the women who have made common cause with them, to come to our aid.
"Now that aid is to be given, what these new Fathers will be able to do before death claims them, I do not know. All that I can say with any assurance, is that if something is not done and done quickly, our world will go down the road to static death, never knowing what has toppled it from the high estate it held."
Comstock's mind was almost incapable of digesting what The Grandfather was saying. It had all happened much too quickly. To be raised in a matter of moments from a position where death seemed imminent first to a position on the Board of Fathers, and now, if he understood correctly, to be told that the future of the world was somehow his responsibility, was just too much.
His first instinctual response was to desire escape. Turning around he saw, directly behind him, a door which was ajar. Not that he wanted to escape very far, he just wanted to go off in a dark corner and sit and think the whole thing out.
The Grandfather was still speaking, as Comstock, unobserved, began to step backwards. The others, Comstock's fellow rebels were leaning forward, greedily drinking in what The Grandfather was saying.
"You will, in the next day or two," The Grandfather was saying as Comstock backed closer to the door, "be told just how our government operates. You will be told how, when the last scientists were martyred by an unreasoning mob, they tried, before death claimed them, in their wisdom to set up non-mechanical devices that would cure the sick. They knew that in the period of dark reaction by which they were swept to death, anything that smelled of machinery was doomed to destruction.
"You will then understand why I was in effect forced to cause this world of ours to enter a period of the strictest moral upbringing. Only under such a regime could the psychosomatic mechanisms that the scientists had explained, be able to work.
"I have been only too successful as you know. I have, by the restrictions I set up, brought into being a world where people fear sickness not because of the pain it brings, but because of the shame the sins which cure it bring in its path."
Then the door was near enough so that Comstock was able to duck through it. There was a hard bench just outside and as Comstock sat down on it, his brain awhirl, he heard the deep voice of The Grandfather say, just as Comstock pushed the door closed, "But enough of the way our world works now. I think the next subject under discussion will be just what we can do to make our world take the step from an inner-directed culture with ancestor-directed overtones, on and up to the next normal step which is an other-directed culture."
Inasmuch as the last thing that Comstock remembered clearly was when he brought the "car" under control and then tied up the man he knew as the Picaroon, he sat on the hard bench, his buttock muscles sore from lack of sleep, his stomach gurgling loudly from lack of food and water, and tried to reconstruct just what had been happening to him.
It was no use. There was a lapse he could not account for. He remembered that the Picaroon had asked him a question, but luckily he could not remember how it was phrased, and then the next thing he knew he was getting out of the R.A.'s car, being guided into the fearful sanctum of the Fathers, and then, first fearing instant death, he had then been apprised of his accession to power. Then the membership of the Board of Fathers had been revealed to be a sentence of death, and before his weary, battered brain could recover from that, The Grandfather had made it clear that the world's future was somehow his responsibility.
Comstock was only too aware of his mortality, as everyone is when fatigue has lowered one's defenses. He slouched down on the bench and tried to rationalize some of the recent events.
Aside from Pat, he would be only too grateful if the whole benighted affair had never been and he could once more awaken in bed with his mother near to comfort him.
The door on the far side of the room opened and an R.A. entered. Comstock was sunk too far down in a welter of self-pity to do more than raise his head tiredly and look at the R.A.'s stern face. The uniformed man produced a stun-gun and said, "You are under arrest."