After Utopia

Chapter One

Tracy Cogswell yawned again, gave up and left the letter in his typewriter unfinished. He could do it in the morning. It wasn’t important anyway. Some instructions to a group of Montevideo.

He sometimes wondered at the advisability of the movement’s making an effort in countries like Uruguay. What was the percentage? The decisions were going to be made in the most advanced countries: the United States, Common Europe, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China. The small nations could do no more than string along. The movement couldn’t succeed in a country that wasn’t highly industrialized and self-sufficient.

He was living in a small apartment, in a small apartment house, on Rue Dr. Fumey, Tangier, Morocco. In a city famed for the anonymity of its population, Tracy Cogswell was possibly the most anonymous of them all. At times he wondered if even Interpol was familiar with his efforts. They probably were. You didn’t fight in Spain as a boy and twenty years later in Hungary—not to mention his other activities over the years—without getting into the dossiers of the political police of the world, on both sides of the Curtain.

For a moment, he considered taking an amphetamine and knocking out some more work, but decided against it. That wasn’t the way. Over a period of time you got more done without resorting to lifters, and Tracy Cogswell was trained in the long view.

He considered the pamphlet sitting on the coffee table next to his reading chair. It was an early work of the older Liebknecht, and Cogswell wasn’t finding the going particularly easy, largely because he didn’t know very much about what the situation in Imperial Germany had been before the turn of the century. However, in its way it was a classic, and Cogswell, though not a scholar by inclination, worked at acquiring a good foundation.

He decided that he was too groggy to concentrate on political economy, put his beret on his head, and left the room. Come to think of it, he hadn’t been out all day and that didn’t pay off. He’d wind up in a mental rut and there were too many people depending on his staying out of ruts. It was not by error that Tracy Cogswell was working full-time in the movement as a sort of international clearinghouse.

The apartment was a fifth floor walkup. During the three years that Cogswell had lived here, he’d had no visitors other than the plumber and, once, an electrician. And each time they’d appeared he’d gone to considerable trouble to alter the apartment’s usual appearance, to make it look a bit less than what it really was. On the occasion where it was necessary to make explanations, Tracy put himself over as an unsuccessful writer, always at work on his serious novel. But the layout of his apartment was different from what even the most extensive researcher among writers might utilize. Too many files, too many stacks of mimeograph paper, too many pamphlets, leaflets, brochures; and his library was heavy with political economy, practically bare of anything else save a certain amount of history and reference.

Ordinarily, the recreation Cogswell allowed himself was rather limited to attending the local cinema. In the movies one can relax mentally and physically—and anonymously. Tonight, however, he had no desire for the Hollywood never-never land.

He walked down Rue Dr. Fumey to Rue De La Croix and turned right up to Mousa ben Nusair and the Bar Novara. This was the French section of town, and, except for an occasional haik clad, veiled fatima on her way home from a maid’s job, you could have thought yourself in Southern France.

Paul Lund’s bar had few claims to uniqueness so far as its appearance was concerned. It looked like any other bar.

The Vandyked owner-bartender was a typical resident of extradition-free Tangier. Exsmuggler, excon man, ex-half a dozen other types of criminal, the knowledge that Interpol was waiting for him anywhere out of Tangier kept him hemmed in; and kept him honest, for that matter. Paul Lund was smart enough not to foul his sole remaining nest.

Paul said, “Hi, Tracy. Haven’t seen you for donkey’s years.”

Cogswell said, “I’ve been working. Having trouble with my eighth chapter.” He flicked his eyes over the two other occupants of the bar and recognized them both: an American sergeant of the marines, stationed at the local consulate, and a French teacher at the French lycée, a parlor-pink type who got his kicks out of supporting the Commie party line in public but who, in the finals, would probably turn out to be a rabid DeGaulle man.

Paul was saying, “Eight chapters? Haven’t you got any further than that with that poxy book of yours? Wot’ll you have?”

“I’m rewriting,” Cogswell said. “Let me have a pastis.”

“Absinthe?”

“Hell no, that stuff fuzzes up my head for days.”

Paul Lund poured an inch of Pernod into a tumbler and added three parts of cold water to it. Cogswell climbed up on one of the tiny bar’s six stools and took a sip. He wondered how Desage was doing in Marseille. The police had nabbed him the week before, but they had nothing on him. France was one of the countries where the movement was legal; the authorities didn’t like it, but it wasn’t illegal. The same was true of the States and England. In the smaller countries they were underground. The smaller ones and the Soviet countries. It meant a bullet in the back of your head if you were caught behind the Curtain.

Paul winked at him and indicated the other two customers with a gesture of his head. “Jim and Pierre are solving all the troubles of the world.”

Cogswell grunted. He listened uninterestedly to the argument. It occurred to him that Jim looked surprisingly like a taller Mickey Rooney and Pierre Meunier like David Niven.

The argument wasn’t unique. The American marine evidently got his opinions as well as his facts from Time. Pierre Meunier was reciting the Commie party line like a tape. In fact, as Cogswell listened he decided that Meunier wasn’t even doing a particularly good job of that. He evidently wasn’t aware of the fact that the party line had shifted in one or two particulars just that morning. Among other things, the American president was no longer a mad fascist dog; he was now a confused liberal. Meunier seemed to be of the opinion that he was still a mad fascist dog.

Jim finally turned to Tracy Cogswell plaintively. “Look, Mr. Cogswell, what do you think? Should the free world put up with the Russkies using the UN for a propaganda drum?”

“Free world!” Pierre Meunier snorted. “Yankee dollar imperialists on one extreme and feudalistic countries like Saudi Arabia on the other. The free world! Among others, Portugal, with its African slave colonies. Morocco, with its absolute monarchy. South Africa, that land of freedom! And Spain, that one! And the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, and Nicaragua, and Formosa, and South Korea and South Vietnam. All those freedom-loving countries.”

Tracy Cogswell made a point of avoiding political discussions in Tangier. It wasn’t his job to make individual converts. His position as an international coordinator remained possible so long as he remained anonymous. He also made a point of not arguing his political beliefs while he was drinking.

But in this case, something had happened. Jim had called him Mr. Cogswell. Unconsciously, Cogswell ran his right hand up over the scar that ran along the ridge of his jaw, disappearing into the sideburn. A mortar bomb fragment had creased him there at the debacle at Gerona during the Spanish civil war. The sideburn was now going gray. Jim must have been a child when the Abraham Lincoln Battalion had been all but wiped out at Gerona toward the end of the Spanish fracas.

Spain! That was where, even as a teenager, he’d gotten his bellyful of the damn Russians and where he’d begun to achieve some maturity in political economy. Spain, where the idealistic kids of a score of countries had flocked to fight for democracy and had wound up dying for Russian expediency.

Mr. Cogswell, yet! Was he that far along? Did he look like an old fogy to the marine?

He pushed his glass over toward Paul Lund and said, “Let’s have another one.”

To Jim he said, “Our position seems to be that the virtues of western democracy are so superior to the Soviet system that a few blasts on our trumpet will bring the Commie Jericho down. It might’ve been true, had the premise it rested upon been a little sounder. Unfortunately, the West doesn’t form the community of unsullied virgins which the triumph of virtue predicates. As a matter of fact, the most shrill of the anti-Commie harridans are usually those of least political repute. For every Denmark or Holland, we’ve got a South Korea or Turkey. The big western powers seem to have recruited their allies not for their adherence to the principles we preach but for their opposition to the principles we oppose.”

Pierre Meunier was grinning happily. “My point, exactly,” he said.

Tracy Cogswell turned on him and snapped, “As for the Commies, where did you get the idea that because one side might be wrong, the other must be right?”

Meunier said something like, “Ung?”

Cogswell growled, “I sometimes think that if there wasn’t any such thing as the Communist party that it’d be to the interest of the western powers to create one. It makes the biggest bogy of all time. In the name of fighting the Commies you can pull just about anything in the way of keeping your people from examining your own institutions. In Guatemala, if the fruit pickers decide they need a union to get better pay than six bucks a week, the cry goes up they’re commies! and the leaders are thrown into the jug. In South Africa the natives decide that some of the freedom they’ve been hearing about might be a good idea and start making some noises to that effect. Commies! the call goes up and they’re slapped down flat. It applies to every country outside the Soviet ones. Any man in his right mind can see that what they’ve got in the Soviet Union is no answer, so even men of good will allow almost anything to be pulled just as long as its done in the name of fighting communism.”

Tracy Cogswell took an angry pull at his drink, finishing it. “I think that the worst thing that ever happened to social progress was that damned premature Bolshevik revolution.”

Paul Lund was laughing at him. “What side are you on, anyway?”

Cogswell slid off his stool and tossed two hundred francs to the counter. He grunted his disgust. “That was the point I was trying to make. It’s about time the people in this world find out both sides are wrong and start looking for something else. Good night, gentlemen.”

Jim said vacantly, “So long.” He hadn’t followed Cogswell’s argument very well, but he could see by Meunier’s unhappy expression that the party line hadn’t been extolled.

Back in his apartment, he grunted sourly to himself. What did he think he was accomplishing? None of the three men he’d sounded off to were potential material for the movement. And there was a remote possibility that, as a result of his little curse-on-both-your-houses speech, word would get around that he, Tracy Cogswell, had rather strong political opinions, and that was the last thing he wanted.

He went out into his tiny kitchen and poured himself still another drink. Cogswell wasn’t generally much for belting the bottle, but at the moment he felt the need for another drink. He brought his glass back to the living room and sat it on the coffee table next to his reading chair.

He picked up the Leibnecht pamphlet and thumbed through the pages idly. He was still in no mood for concentration.

Something alien flickered in his eyes, and he scowled and looked up at the wall opposite. There seemed to be some sort of light reflection. No, that wasn’t the word.

Cogswell frowned, trying to figure out what it could be. Some reflection, or something, from somewhere. But where? Anything coming through the window that opened onto Rue Dr. Fumey would hardly…

He squinted at the vague flickering. What was it that it reminded him of? Why, a Fourth of July pin wheel, like they used to have when he was a kid in Cincinnati. One of the little penny ones.

His mind went back to Cincinnati.

The big swimming pool where the adults would throw in pennies and you’d dive for them. You could get enough to go to the movies if you worked at it long enough. Ten cents was the price of a kid’s admission.

The movies in Cincinnati, back in the 1920s. He’d been a real fan. Lon Chaney, Hoot Gibson, Rin-Tin-Tin, Tom Mix, Our Gang.

The pin wheel was larger and turning faster. What in the world could it be? Quite an optical illusion. He knew that if he got up and walked over to it, either it would fade away or he would be able to determine what caused it. He felt too lazy to make the effort.

It still seemed to be growing in size.

That Pernod he’d had at Paul Lund’s had hit him harder than he’d expected. Evidently he’d had too little dinner, and the alcohol had free range.

Of a sudden, Tracy Cogswell shook his head. He was getting drowsy and that wasn’t right. That damned spinning was having hypnotic effect on him. He was going to have to…

Part of him backed away in astonishment. Why, he was actually, in a strange manner, under. Asleep, though still awake, from the effects of the spinning and… and something else. He didn’t know what else. Good Jesus Christ, certainly Paul hadn’t put something in his drink. No, that was ridiculous.

But now, in an impossible sort of way, part of his brain seemed to stand off and watch the rest of him. As though—what was the term the occult crackpots used?—as though his astral body was standing aloof from him and watching his every action.

Chapter Two

Tracy Cogswell stood up suddenly. The pinwheel was gone now. But there was still something there. And still his second self stood off and seemingly watched, completely puzzled. And there was even a touch of fear. Was he simply drunk?

Purposefully, Cogswell strode over to the heaviest of the steel files, fished his keys from his pocket and unlocked it. Inside the bottom drawer was a heavy strongbox. Another key opened it. He fished out more than a thousand dollars in pounds, French francs, fifty-dollar bills and British gold sovereigns. His emergency money. He also brought forth two bankbooks, one on Barclay’s in Gibraltar and one on the Moses Pariente bank here in Tangier, as well as his emergency forged Australian passport.

He tucked all of these into his pockets and went into the bedroom where he fished a suitcase from under the bed.

While his separate ‘sane’ self watched in growing amazement and disconcertedness, Tracy Cogswell rapidly packed his bag. He ignored the light Luger in the top drawer of his bureau and, contrary to his usual custom, packed no reading material at all.

Fifteen minutes after first seeing the pin wheel, he was carefully locking the door of his apartment behind him.

Down on the street, he strolled over to Rue Goya, tossing his apartment keys into a corner refuse can on the way. In front of the Goya Theatre, he hailed a Chico Cab and said, “ Je voudrais aller au Grand Zocco.”

This could only be a dream. A dream composed of too much work, too little relaxation, too much strain, and two of Paul Lund’s heavy charges of Pernod.

But all the time he knew it was no dream.

In the Grand Zocco, the open-air market of the medina section of town, he paid the cab driver and started purposefully down the Rue Siaghines, which led to the Petit Zocco, once the most notorious square in the world.

Past him streamed the multiracial populace of what was possibly the most cosmopolitan city on earth. Berbers and Arabs, Rifs and Blue men, shabby Europeans from both sides of the Curtain. Indians in saris, Moslems in jellabas and shuffling babouche slippers. The Moorish fez, the Indian turban, the Jewish skullcap, the French beret. Rue Siaghines, the widest street in the medina, practically the only one in which you couldn’t touch the walls along both sides while standing in the middle. Lined by Indian shops with the products of a hundred lands. Cameras from Germany, perfumes from France, watches from Switzerland.

And, for that matter, pornography from Japan, hashish from southern Morocco, heroin from Syria, aphrodisiacs from Egypt.

As he walked, his mentally clear astral self stood back in dumbfounded amazement. If this were no dream, then where was he going, what was he doing? Tracy Cogswell seldom came into the native section of Tangier. He had no reason to. His work and what little recreation he allowed himself all took place in the westernized section of town. He shopped in the French market, ate occasionally in a French or Spanish restaurant, visited the American library to read the papers and magazines, attended the cinema possibly two or three times a week.

He came to the Petit Zocco, crossed it, and took the narrow side street to the right, the one headed by what had been the Spanish post office when Tangier had been an International Zone. He ended at the Tannery Gate.

A hundred yards down it, he turned into Luigi’s Pension, an establishment he’d never noticed before, one of a dozen similar cheap hotels.

Luigi, who Cogswell decided looked like a sinister version of the Mexican comedian Cantinflas, spoke English. Their business was quickly transacted. Tracy Cogswell’s voice showed no indication of stress, certainly Luigi acted as though nothing untoward was going on. A man with a suitcase and an Australian passport was taking a room with full pension, three meals, at a cost of five hundred Moroccan francs per day. A bit over an American dollar.

The room was windowless, and drab beyond what the average westerner would expect. Tracy Cogswell didn’t notice. He shoved the suitcase in a corner unopened, undressed himself, locked and bolted the door, and went to bed.

When the physical body fell off to sleep, the mental astral self, which was the sane Tracy Cogswell, lapsed into unconsciousness as well, unbelieving all the time. Tomorrow it would be different.

The next day it was not different.

Tracy Cogswell awoke, as did his mental otherself, the sane self. As purposefully as during the previous evening, he dressed, went down for his breakfast, and then out onto the street. He walked down the hill to the foot of the medina area, and then he went out through the old Tannery Gate and took a Chico Cab to the Moses Pariente bank. At the bank he withdrew all the money his account contained, more than eight thousand dollars. He took it in large bills and then set about other business.

He made reservations to fly over to Gibraltar. He sought out a real estate agent with whom he had never come in contact before, and, using his Australian name, started the preliminary steps toward buying a fairly large piece of land in the vicinity of Cape Spartel, out near the Grottos of Hercules.

His astral self stood back aghast. This was organization money. The movement raised its funds the hard way. There were few of even moderate means among the members. This money was the dollar bills, the fifty-cent pieces, the hundred-peseta notes, the five escudas, the twenty dinars, the ten piasters—bills and coins of dedicated believers in the movement all over the world. It was in his safekeeping to be used, here, there, wherever an emergency or an opportunity arose.

The buying of the land was only the beginning. His expenditures went on in shocking disregard of reason. He entered an electrical supply house and ordered equipment that he had never heard of; it was not available in Tangier, had to be brought down from Switzerland and Germany. He asked that it be flown!

Days went by. He had no idea what was motivating him, unless it was sheer insanity of a type he’d never heard of. He—his real self—had no control whatsoever over his actions. Nor any understanding of them.

He went to Gibraltar and secured the money he had on deposit there. Once again it was money that belonged to the movement.

He made arrangements with a local craftsman to build to peculiar specifications an airtight metal box some seven feet in length and resembling a coffin.

He made arrangements with a contractor to have a sturdy monument built on the piece of land he’d purchased near the Grottos.

He bought delicate tools, some of which had to be flown in from New York.

He had no idea of the passage of time. Weeks must have elapsed before he spotted Whiteley. Dan Whiteley, one of the movement’s trouble-shooters, and Tracy Cogswell’s oldest and best friend. They had been co-workers. Even in his peculiar mental condition, Tracy unconsciously stroked his stiff left elbow. The elbow had been shattered by a fluke shot from a machine pistol in the hands of one of Tito’s bullyboys, that time when they’d smuggled Djilas across the Yugoslavian border. Dan Whiteley had been along on that operation. Easygoing in appearance, resembling Jimmy Stewart of twenty years earlier, he was a good man in the clutch.

There was no doubt about the tall, rangy Canadian’s reason for being in Tangier. No doubt at all. When last Cogswell had heard from him, he’d been on an assignment in the Argentine.

His sane self, his inner self, wanted to dash forward and throw himself into his friend’s hands. Anything was better than this, even death. His stolen body was betraying everything he had stood for during his adult life. Already, he had practically disposed of the full amount of money entrusted to him by the Executive Committee.

But he didn’t dash forward to greet Whiteley. Instead, he shrank back into an alcove and watched the other man narrowly. The Canadian hadn’t spotted him. Tracy Cogswell followed along behind, the quarry stalking the hunter.

They left the medina, proceeded up the Rue de la Liberte to the Place de France and then down ultramodern Boulevard Pasteur to Rue Goya, and then over to Moussa ben Maussair. It was obvious where Whiteley was going now. Tracy Cogswell held back more than a full block and watched the other disappear into Paul Lund’s bar. He didn’t know how long Dan Whiteley had been in town, but obviously the other was hot on his trail.

He returned to his pension room, dragged out some of his newly arrived packages, a soldering iron and other new tools, and set to work.

To work on what? He had no idea. Most of the tools were strange to him, as was the other equipment he had ordered. Tracy Cogswell had never been mechanically inclined, but everything he did now belied that fact. He worked almost until dawn.

Now that Whiteley was in town, Cogswell stayed off the streets as much as possible. He transacted as much business over the phone as he could.

For some things he had to emerge. The time, for instance, that he rented the truck, had his metal cabinet hoisted aboard, and transported it out to the monument on his Cape Spartel land. The monument, also completed by now, reminded his inner self of one of the Moslem holy men’s mausoleums that abounded in northern Morocco.

Somehow, despite his stiff elbow, he managed to manhandle the heavy cabinet from the truck and into the small inner chamber of the monument. Why he did this, he had no idea whatsoever.

He was evidently waiting for something. He knew not what. He stuck to his room, emerging only to take his meals. Even that he discontinued after spotting Whiteley passing the pension’s street window one day. From then on, he had Luigi deliver his food to his room. The little Italian said nothing. Probably he had seen men on the run before and was possibly wondering if it was the sort of thing where he might pick up a few thousand francs by informing on his guest.

A piece of delicate electrical equipment from Sweden finally came. He dumped all of his clothes and other belongings from his suitcase and filled it with some of his precision tools, the equipment he had been working on, and a small folding entrenching tool.

He carried his suitcase out of his room, locking the door behind him, paid off Luigi, and made his way into the street. As he walked down from the Petit Zocco toward the harbor and the Avenue de Espana, where he could get a cab, he heard the sound of quick pattering feet behind him.

He spun and stared. It was Dan Whiteley, running hard.

Tracy Cogswell sprinted down the long incline and past the Grand Mosque. He caromed from time to time against protesting Moors and Arabs. Behind him, the lanky Dan Whiteley was shouting in rage.

He was comparatively safe. Even if Whiteley had gunfire in mind, it couldn’t be done here. Besides, a dead Tracy Cogswell could never return the nearly twenty thousand dollars he’d had custody of, and Whiteley had no way of knowing it had all been spent by now. Besides, again, no matter how dedicated the Canadian might be, Cogswell doubted that the other could find it within him to shoot his old companion. They’d been through too much together.

He slammed out onto the Avenue de Espana and with providential luck, ran immediately into a Chico Cab the moment he emerged from the Marine Gate. He climbed in, yelled at the driver to take him to the Boulevard Pasteur. He peered over his shoulder, saw the frantic Dan Whiteley trying to find a cab and failing.

On Pasteur Boulevard he exchanged cabs and rode up the Rue Alexandria to the Marshan district in the vicinity of the Carthaginian tombs. Here he switched cabs again and ordered the driver to the Grottos of Hercules on the Atlantic coast.

It was dark by the time they arrived. He dismissed the driver, who looked at him strangely for only a brief moment and then took off. Tracy Cogswell had given him, in way of a tip, the last francs he had in his pockets.

For a moment, Tracy Cogswell stared out over the sea, watching the beer-head waves break in their desperation against the volcanic rock that lined the shore at this point. Some of the grottos could be seen here. He could see the Grottos of Hercules, where the mythological Greek hero had supposedly lived while throwing up the Pillars of Hercules and seeking the Golden Apples of the Hesperides. Probably the world’s strongest man had never existed, but Neolithic remains in the grottos indicated that humans had been here long before the Greeks had infiltrated the peninsula that now bears their name.

He took up his suitcase and walked the mile or so to the monument he had constructed. He entered it and bolted the heavy door behind him.

His conscious mind was beginning to find a horror that surpassed anything he had suffered thus far. He realized that the culmination of all that had gone on for these past weeks was now upon him. And he still had no conception of what he was about.

Tracy Cogswell brought the entrenching tool from his bag, unfolded it, and began to dig. In about two hours he had broken through to a chamber beneath: a natural chamber, related to the larger grottos in the vicinity.

He tugged and levered his large metal box until he was finally able to lower it into the small cave. He set up a heavy flashlight, brought forth his tools and began attaching the equipment he’d labored upon so long to the various entries and nipples that had obviously been built to receive it. He worked for many hours.

Finally, it was through. Somehow he knew it was through.

With the entrenching tool, he then began steps to close the cave’s narrow entrance behind him. To bury himself alive!

He strained mentally, his mind screaming its agony, without effect. He worked, zombielike, heedless of his growing horror, his pyramiding, mind-shattering horror.

When it was done, he climbed into the metal box. And now he understood. The container which looked like a coffin was exactly that.

He brought a hypodermic needle from a set that he had purchased a week before, filled it with a combination of drugs he had concocted several days before, and pressed it home in his left arm.

He leaned back, closed the metal top above him, flicked the lugs securely and—his true mind collapsing within itself—sighed and died.

Chapter Three

Tracy Cogswell awoke. That isn’t quite the word. He came alive again.

His first impression was: I’m whole again. I’m in complete control of my own mind and body.

Unconsciously, his hand, weak and trembling, went up to caress the scar which ran along the ridge of his jaw. The scar was gone. But it couldn’t be, he’d had the scar since the age of seventeen.

And it came to him suddenly that his left arm was no longer stiff at the elbow. Was this his own body? What had happened?

Everything was flowing back to him. The insane happenings. His body taken over by… by whatever it was that had taken it over. The monument, the coffin, the expenditure of all the money the International Executive Committee had entrusted him with.

He looked about the room. A man of approximately thirty years of age was seated beside the bed, evidently waiting for Tracy to awaken. He was slight of build and looked considerably like the younger Leslie Howard playing some easygoing part. He seemed to be interested in a piece of what looked like green stone. He was holding it in a somewhat cramped fashion, running his thumb over its surface.

His eyes came idly to Tracy Cogswell’s face and lit up when he noticed Cogswell was awake. He had a lazy charm which was immediately felt.

He said, “Well, awake at last, eh?”

Cogswell took in the other’s clothes, or, rather, the lack of them. A brief vest-like top garment beneath which the chest was bare, a kilt of some ultrasoft material, and sandals. He’d never seen such garb anywhere. He still looked like Leslie Howard, but as though the actor was done up for a masquerade.

The other came to his feet in a fluid, lazy motion. “My name’s Edmonds,” he said. “Jo Edmonds. Just a moment, I’ll be right back.”

He left, and Tracy Cogswell looked about the room. His mind felt blank. There was too much to assimilate. The room was attractive enough, comfortable looking, but as alien in appearance as the costume of… what was the fellow’s name?… Jo Edmonds.

Edmonds returned with an older man, who was obviously excited.

“Well,” he said happily. “Well, we did it, didn’t we?”

“What?” Cogswell said, his voice still stiff.

The older man’s costume was as bizarre as Edmonds’ was bizarre but without similarity. His clothing resembled the haiks worn by the Arab women, or, better still, a Roman toga: white and draping.

Jo Edmonds said, “Tracy Cogswell, may I introduce Academician Walter Stein.” He paused for a moment, smiled lazily, and added, “the genius responsible for your presence here.” His thumb was still caressing the bit of green stone.

Cogswell felt too weak even to come to his elbow. “Why?” he said.

Stein bustled over to him, patted his pillow, obviously pleased. “Now, no more now,” he chortled. “Later, when you’re stronger. Now you must rest. First, we’ll get just a touch of food into you, and then you’ll rest. Oh, there must be quite a bit of rest at first.”

That was all right. Almost anything was all right. Food and rest. That was obviously the ticket. All problems could be solved later.

The food came, brought by a girl in her late twenties who looked somewhat like Paulette Goddard back when that actress had been the reigning beauty of Hollywood. She also had some facial resemblance to the older of the two men.

The food consisted of a thick soup. She watched him, wide-eyed and speechless, as she fed him. She wore an outfit composed of a bikini-type top, a pair of peddle-pushers, and startling shoes of golden color.

Yes, Paulette Goddard, Tracy thought. She looks something like Paulette Goddard, and she has a better figure. Wherever I am, they’ve got some strange ideas about clothes.

When he awoke the second time, there was more food. After a while, they’d gotten him up into a chair and pushed him out onto a terrace. He recognized the scene. No other houses were in sight, but there was no doubt about it, he was within a mile of Cape Spartel, atop the mountain which rises above Tangier and looks out over Spain and the Atlantic. Over in that direction was Trafalgar. When Nelson had fought his last naval battle with the fleets of Bonaparte, residents had been able to hear the thunder of the guns.

There was little else he could indentify. The architecture of the house was extreme to the point of making Frank Lloyd Wright’s wildest conceptions a primitive adobe by comparison. The chair in which he sat was wheelless, but it carried him at the gentlest direction of Jo Edmonds’ hand.

The three of them—the girl’s name, it turned out, was Betty Stein—accompanied him to the terrace, treating him as though he were porcelain. Tracy Cogswell was still weak, but he was alert enough now to be impatient and curious.

He said, “My elbow.”

Academician Stein fluttered over him. “Don’t overdo, Tracy Cogswell, don’t overdo.”

Jo Edmonds grinned, and, turning on his charm, said, “We had your elbow and various other, ah, deficiencies taken care of before we woke you.”

Tracy was about to say “Where am I?” but he knew where he was. Something strange was going on but he knew where he was. He was within a few miles of Tangier proper and in the strangest house he’d ever seen, and certainly the most luxurious. For a moment that fact struck him. He was, on the face of it, in the hands of the opposition. Only a multimillionaire could afford this sort of an establishment, and none of the ultra wealthy were sympathetic to the movement.

He considered Jo Edmonds’ words and accepted them. But he realized the implications of accepting them. He’d had that arm worked on in London by a man who was an organization sympathizer and possibly the world’s outstanding practitioner in the field. He had saved the elbow, but let Tracy know it would never be strong again. Now it was strong.

By the third day, he was up and around and beginning to consider his position and how to escape from it. He kept his mind from some of the more far-out aspects of the thing. Explanations would come later. For now, he wanted to evaluate his situation.

He didn’t seem to be a prisoner, but that was beside the point. You didn’t have to have steel bars to be under duress. The three oddly garbed characters who had him here seemed to be of good will, but Tracy Cogswell was experienced enough in world political movements to know that the same man who sentenced you to the gas chamber or firing squad could be a gentle soul who loved his children and spent his spare time puttering happily in a rock garden.

There were a few moderately wealthy persons in the movement but certainly no one this wealthy. He was in the hands of the enemy, and, considering the amount of trouble they had gone to, there was something big in the wind.

He wondered about the possibilities of escape. No, not yet. For one thing, he’d never make it. He was still too weak, particularly if he had to fight his way out. For another thing, he had to find out what was happening. He had to ferret out information about what was going on. Perhaps… just perhaps… there was some explanation that would make sense to Dan Whiteley and the International Executive Committee. At least that was the straw he clung to.

He had made his own way out to the terrace again and had seated himself on a piece of furniture somewhat similar to a lawn chair. That was one of the things that got to him. Even the furniture in this ultra-automated house was so far out as to be unbelievable.

Jo Edmonds drifted easily onto the terrace and raised his eyebrows at Cogswell. He was wearing shorts today, and slippers that seemed somehow to cling to the bottom of his feet, although there wasn’t a strap on top. He was flipping, as though it was a coin, the flat green stone.

“How do you feel?” he said.

Cogswell said irritably, indicating the stone, “What in the hell’s that?”

Edmonds said, in his mild voice, “This? A piece of imperial jade. Do you enjoy tactile sensation?”

Cogswell scowled at him. “What in the devil are you talking about?”

Edmonds said, and there was enthusiasm in his usually lazy voice, “The Chinese have been familiar with the quality of jadeite—a sodium aluminum silicate, belonging to the pyroxenes, you know—for centuries. They’ve developed its appreciation into an advanced art form. I have a small collection and make a point of spending an hour or so every day over it. It takes considerable development to obtain the sensual gratification possible by stroking jade. Some people never develop it.”

Cogswell said disgustedly, “You mean to say you’ve got nothing better to do with your time than to pet a piece of green stone?”

Edmonds was somewhat amused. “There are less kindly things to which to devote yourself,” he said.

Walter Stein emerged from the house and looked worriedly at Cogswell. He said, “How are you feeling? You’re not overexerting yourself, are you?”

A Paul Lucas type, Tracy had already decided. Paul Lucas playing the part of an M.D.

Tracy said, “I’m all right, but, look, I’ve gotten to the point where if I don’t find out what’s going on, I’ll go completely around the corner. Let’s get to some explanations. I realize that somehow or other you rescued me from a crazy nightmare I got myself into. My only explanation is that I must have had a complete nervous breakdown. I didn’t think I was the type.”

Jo Edmonds chuckled, good-naturedly.

Cogswell turned on him. “What’s so damn funny?”

Academician Stein held up a hand. “I’m afraid, Mr. Cogswell, that Jo’s humor is poorly taken. You see, we didn’t rescue you from yourself. No, hardly. It was we who put you into your predicament. Please forgive us, but it was for a very good reason.”

Cogswell stared at him.

Stein said uncomfortably, almost sheepishly. “Do you know where you are Tracy Cogswell?”

“Yes, I know where I am. Tangier is a few miles over in that direction. And that’s Spain, over the water there.”

Walter Stein said, “That’s not exactly what I meant. Let’s cut corners, Mr. Cogswell. You are now in the year 2045 a.d., or at least you would be if we still used the. somewhat inefficient calendar of your era. We haven’t been utilizing it since the turn of the century. We now call this the year 45 New Calendar.”

Cogswell thought to himself that it didn’t really come as too much of a surprise. He knew that it was going to be something like that.

“Time travel,” he said aloud. It was a field of thought he had never investigated, but he was dimly aware of the conception. He had seen a movie or two, such as Berkley Square, in which Tyrone Power had played a time traveler who found himself in the world of Boswell and Dr. Johnson, and he had read a few short stories over the years. And hadn’t he read a short novel by H.G. Wells or somebody about a time machine that took the inventor far into the future?

“Well, not exactly,” Stein said, scowling a bit. “But, yes, in a way.”

Edmonds laughed softly. “You’re not being very definite, Walter.”

The older man had taken a seat on the low stone parapet that surrounded the terrace. Now he leaned forward, elbows on knees, and clasped his hands together. His voice was less than comfortable. He said, “Time travel isn’t possible, Mr. Cogswell, not so far as we know. The paradoxes would seem to be insurmountable.”

“But you just said—”

The other was obviously seeking for words that would make sense. He said, “What it amounts to is that you’ve been in a state of suspended animation, I suppose you could call it.”

For Tracy Cogswell things were beginning to fit into place. There were still a lot of loose ends, but the tangle was coming out.

He said slowly, working it out as he went. “But you would have had to travel back to my day to hypnotize me. To take over my actions.”

Stein said, his tone very serious, “Not our physical selves, Tracy Cogswell. It is impossible to send matter through time. Except forward, of course, at the usual pace. However, the mind can and does travel in time. Memory is nothing more than that. In dreams, the mind even travels ahead sometimes, although we do not as yet understand how that is possible, and it is usually in such a haphazard manner that it is impossible to measure, to get into a laboratory for study and to gather usable data.”

Jo Edmonds said, “In your case, it was a matter of going back into the past, seizing control of your mind and then your body, and forcing you to perform yourself the steps that would lead to your, ah, suspended animation, as the academician puts it.”

For some reason, the younger man’s easygoing tone irritated Cogswell. “What in the hell’s an academician?”

Edmonds raised his eyebrows. “Oh,” he said, “that’s right. The degree evolved after your period. It was found that even the Ph.D. had become somewhat commonplace, so the higher one of academician was created. It is quite difficult to attain.”

Cogswell’s irritation was growing. The two of them, no matter how well intentioned they might seem to be now, had a lot to answer for. Besides that, they were so comfortably clean, so obviously well fed, so unworried and adjusted. They had it made. It probably took a dozen servants to keep up this house, to wait hand and foot on Betty and Walter Stein and Jo Edmonds, to devote their lives to these two so that they could continue to look so comfortably sleek. And how many people did it take, slaving away somewhere in industry or office, to provide the funds necessary to maintain this fabulous establishment? Parasites!

Tracy said flatly, “So you figured out a way of sending back through time. Of hypnotizing me. Of providing my hypnotized body with information that allowed it to put itself into a state of suspended animation. To accomplish this, I absconded with some twenty thousand dollars. Perhaps that isn’t a great deal in your eyes, but it was composed of thousands upon thousands of tiny donations… donations to a great cause. An attempt to make the world a better place to live in. To end poverty and war.”

Stein was frowning worriedly and clucking under his breath. But the ever easygoing Edmonds had an amused expression on his face, as though Cogswell couldn’t have said anything further out.

Cogswell snapped, “When I’ve got back some of my strength, I’d like to take a crack at wiping some of that vacant-minded amusement off your pretty face, Edmonds.”

“Sorry, old chap,” Edmonds said. “No idea of irritating you was intentioned.”

Tracy snarled, “For now I’d like to know this: Why!”

The girl, Betty, came out then and looked from one to the other. She said impatiently, as though the others were idiots, “What are you doing, Father? And you, Jo? Good heavens, look at the state Mr. Cogswell is in. I thought you weren’t going to discuss this project with him until he was suitably recovered.”

This project, yet! What project! Tracy Cogswell was getting more out of his depth by the minute.

He glared at the girl. “I want to know what the big idea is!” he snapped. “I’ve been kidnapped. On top of that, in spite of the fact that seemingly I did it, actually you bastards are guilty of stealing twenty thousand dollars of money that was intrusted with me. I want an explanation.” He could feel the flush of extreme rage mounting over his face, and he didn’t give a good goddamn.

“See?” she said indignantly to Academician Stein and Jo Edmonds. “You’ve upset him terribly.”

The two men looked at Cogswell in embarrassment. “Sorry. You’re right,” Edmonds said to her. He turned on his heel and left, nervously thumbing his piece of jade.

Stein began bustling and clucking again, attempting to take Cogswell’s pulse.

Tracy jerked his arm away. “Damn it,” he said, ignoring the girl. “I want to know what this is all about. You bastards have a lot to answer for.”

“Later, later,” the older man soothed.

“Later, my ass!”

It was Betty who said, “See here… Tracy. You’re among friends. Let us do it our way. Answers will come soon enough.” She added, like a nurse to a child, “Tomorrow, perhaps, I’ll take you for a pleasant ride over Gibraltar and up the Costa del Sol.”

In the morning, for the first time, Tracy Cogswell ate with the rest of them in a small breakfast room. The more he saw of the house, the more he was impressed by its efficient luxury. Impressed wasn’t quite the word. Cogswell had never known this sort of life, and he had never desired to. The movement had been his life. Food, clothing, and shelter were secondary things, necessary only to keep him going. The luxuries? Oh, he liked good food when it came to him… and good drink, for that matter. But he had seen little of them, and he wasn’t particularly regretful.

He’d expected to be waited upon by Moorish servants, or possibly even French or Spanish ones. However, evidently he was being kept under wraps. The table in the breakfast nook was automated; it operated by dials. Betty did the ordering, and when the dishes appeared—the table top had sunk and then returned with them—served them.

The food, admittedly, was out of this world. He wondered if Betty Stein had cooked it herself, earlier. But no, of course not. Betty Stein was much too decorative to have any useful qualities. She was dressed today in a brief outfit that looked something like Tarzan’s wife, Jane, used to wear in Edgar Rice Burroughs movies.

The conversation was desultory, and obviously deliberately so. Walter Stein even avoided Tracy’s eyes for some reason. However, there was still amusement behind those of Jo Edmonds.

Toward the end of the meal, Stein said, “How do you feel, Mr. Cogswell? Up to the little jaunt that Betty suggested yesterday? You’re sure it wouldn’t tire you too much? After all, it’s been just a few days.”

Tracy growled, “I don’t see why not.”

The way he felt, the more information he gathered about his surroundings, the better prepared he would be to take care of himself when and if he went on the run from whatever situation they’d gotten him into. In his time, Tracy Cogswell had been on the run more than once; his experience had taught him to case the area as well as he could.

He was able to walk by himself to the garage, although Academician Stein bumbled worriedly along beside him all of the way.

Cogswell was settled into the front seat of a vehicle that didn’t look so much different from a sport sedan of his own time, except for the fact that it lacked wheels. Betty took her place behind the controls, beaming at him reassuringly. The controls didn’t look too much different from those of a car of the late 1950s, a steering wheel, some foot pedals, and a conglomeration of gadgets on the dashboard.

The difference came, Cogswell found, when they emerged from the garage, proceeded a few feet, and then took to the air, without wings, rotars, propeller, jets, or any other noticeable method of support or propulsion.

She could see he was taken aback and said, “What’s the.matter, Tracy?”

Cogswell said wryly, “I hadn’t expected this much progress in this much time.”

“Oh, you mean the car?”

So they still called them cars.

“You needed wings in my day,” Cogswell said dryly.

She was obviously a skilled driver… or pilot, as the case might be.

“I sometimes get my dates mixed,” Betty said, making a small moue. “But I thought that you were beginning to get air-cushioned cars, hover-craft, that sort of thing, in your time. And hadn’t Norman Dean already begun his work?”

“Never heard of him,” he said. Cogswell was looking down at the countryside beneath him.

Tangier had changed considerably. It had obviously become an ultrawealthy resort area. Gone was the Casbah, with its Moorish slums going back a thousand years and more. Gone was the medina with its teeming thousands of poverty-stricken Arabs and Riffs.

Tracy grunted to himself. He supposed that as Europe’s and America’s wealthy had discovered the climactic and scenic advantages of northern Morocco, they had displaced the multitude of natives who had formerly made uncomfortable by their obvious need those few of the well-to-do who had lived here before. The rich hate to see the poor; it makes them uncomfortable. Tracy Cogswell remembered the old story about the lush in the nightclub listening tearfully to a plaintive blues singer and saying, “Throw her out, she’s breaking my heart.”

There were quite a few of the flying cars such as he and Betty were in. That was a good thing, though. With flight on various levels, there was no congestion. However, he assumed that probably other traffic problems had evolved.

Betty put on speed and in a matter of five or ten minutes they were circling Gibraltar, perhaps the world’s most spectacular landfall. Here too the signs of the military of his own period had given way to villas and what he assumed were luxury apartment buildings.

Tracy said, “Where are all the stores, garages, and other business establishments?”

She said, “Underground.”

“Where you can’t see them and be bothered by their unattractiveness, eh?”

“That’s right,” she told him, evidently missing his sarcastic note.

They flew north along the coast, passing Estapona, Marbella and Fuengirola. Cogswell was impressed. Even in his own time the area had been booming, but he had never expected to see anything like this. Why, the whole coast seemed dotted with villas.

“It’s much too crowded,” Betty said in disgust. “I’ve always been amazed that so many people gravitate to the warm climates.”

He said impatiently, “Everyone would, wouldn’t they, given the wherewithal?”

“But why? She was surprised at his words. ”Why not stay in areas where you have season changes? For that matter, why not spend some seasons in the far north and enjoy the extremes of snow and cold weather? Comfortable homes can be built in any climate.”

Cogswell grunted. “You sound like that queen—what was her name?—who said ‘Let them eat cake.’ ”

Betty frowned not getting it. “Marie Antoinette? How do you mean I sound like her?”

Tracy Cogswell said impatiently, “Look. You people with lots of dough don’t realize what it can mean for somebody without it to spend some time in the sun. And… if possible, and it usually isn’t… to finally retire in a desirable climate in your old age. It’s something a lot of poor working stiffs dream of, but you wouldn’t know about that.”

Betty looked at him from the side of her eyes and frowned. “Dough?” she said.

“Money,” Cogswell said, still impatient. “Sure, if you have piles of money, you can build swell houses even up in Alaska, and live comfortably. You can live comfortably just about anywhere, given piles of money. But for most people, who’ve probably lived the greater part of their lives in some near-slum, in some stinking city, the height of ambition is to get into a warm climate and have a little bungalow in which to finish off the final years.”

Suddenly, Betty laughed.

Tracy Cogswell froze up, his face went expressionless. Until this, he had rather liked the beautiful girl. Now she was showing the typical arrogance of the rich.

She indicated the swank villas beneath them. They were flying over Torremolinos now, which had once been an art colony. She said, “Were you under the impression, Tracy, that those people down there had lots of money?”

That took time to sink in. It couldn’t possibly mean what he first thought.

Tracy said, “Possibly they don’t have by your standards, but by mine, yes.”

Betty said flatly, “None of them have any money at all, and neither do I.”

That was too much. He gaped at her.

Betty said, “There is no such thing as money any more, and there hasn’t been for quite a while. It was eliminated decades ago.”

He figured that he understood now, and said, “Well, it’s the same thing. Whatever the means of exchange is, credit cards, or whatever.”

Betty laughed again and there was honest amusement in her voice, not condescension. She said, and her voice was gentle now, “Tracy Cogswell, in all those years you belonged to your movement, in all the years of dedication, did you really think, really inwardly believe in your heart of hearts, that someday it might come true? That someday the millineum would arrive, Utopia be achieved?”

A deep cold went through him. He closed his mouth but continued to stare in disbelief at her.

“Tracy,” she said gently, “your movement was successful more than sixty years ago.”

After a long moment, he said, “Look, could we go back to the house? I could use a drink.”

She laughed still once again and spun the wheel of the hover-craft.

Chapter Four

They were all three amused by his reactions, but it was a friendly amusement and with a somehow wry connotation which Tracy Cogswell didn’t quite get. So many things were bubbling through his head, so many questions to ask, he didn’t even have time for a complete answer before he was hurrying on to the next one.

“And the Russkies? What happened over there?” he demanded. “The Soviet Union and the other Commie countries?”

Jo Edmonds said, “The same as everywhere else. Overnight, the contradiction that had built up through the decades of misrule and misdirection finally boiled over. It was one of the few places where there was much violence. The Communists had gone too far, had done too much to too many, to have been allowed peaceful retirement.”

Betty shook her head. “According to accounts of the period, in some places it was quite horrible.”

Tracy Cogswell drew from his own memories pictures of members of the secret police hanging by their heels from lamp posts. He had been active with the Freedom Fighters in Budapest, during the 1956 uprising against the Russians. “Yes,” he said uncomfortably. Then he asked, “But countries like India, the African nations, South America and the other undeveloped countries. How do they stand now?”

Academician Stein was chuckling softly. “These things seem so long ago to us,” he said. “It’s almost unbelievable that they can be news to an intelligent adult. The backward countries? Why, given the all-out support of the most industrially advanced, they were brought up to a common level within a decade or two.”

“It was a universally popular effort,” Betty added. “Everybody pitched in. Instead of sending so-called aid to those countries, consisting largely of military equipment, we sent real aid and no strings attached.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Cogswell blurted. “But, look… look, the population explosion. What happened there?”

Jo Edmonds, who was sitting relaxed in an armchair near the fireplace of the living room, a drink in one hand, his inevitable piece of jade in the other, said easily, “Not really much of a problem, given world government and universal education on a high level. If you’ll remember, the large families were almost always to be found in the most backward countries, or among the most backward elements in the advanced countries. Education and really efficient methods of birth control ended the problem. Population is static now, if not declining. It was the European countries and Japan that first turned the corner. In the year 1972, West Germany lost population, the first of the advanced countries to do so.”

“Look,” Cogswell said happily, “could I have another drink? This must be the damnedest thing that ever happened to a man. Why, why it’s as though Saint Paul woke up in the year, well, say, 1400 a.d. and saw the strength of the church that he had founded. He would have flipped, just as I’m doing.”

All three of them laughed at him again and Jo Edmonds got up, slipped his jade into a side pocket and went over to the sideboard and mixed him another drink.

Tracy Cogswell said, “That reminds me of something. How about servants? It must take a multitude of maids to run a house like this.”

Betty made a moue at him. “Nonsense. You aren’t very good at extrapolation, are you, Tracy? Why, even in your own day in the advanced countries the house was automated to the point where even the well-to-do didn’t have domestic help. Today, drudgery has been eliminated. Anyone can have just about as large a house as they want and keep it up by devoting only a few moments a day to its direction.”

It was still all but inconceivable to him. “And everybody, just everybody can afford a place like this?”

It was the academician’s turn again. As they’d all been doing, he prefaced his explanation with a laugh. “Given automation and cheap, all but free power, and what is the answer? Ultraabundance for everyone. Surely the signs must have been present in your day. That was the goal of your organization, was it not?”

“Yes,” Cogswell said, shaking his head. “Yes, of course.” Then he added, his voice very low, “Jesus H. Christ.”

They all laughed with him.

Jo Edmonds brought the fresh drink and Cogswell knocked it back in one long swallow.

He considered for a moment. “Look,” he said, “I don’t suppose anyone remembers what happened to a fellow named Dan Whiteley.”

“Whiteley?” the Academician scowled.

“He was a member of the organization,” Tracy explained. “A very active one.”

“Dan Whiteley,” Betty said. “I read something about him. Let me see. He was a Canadian.”

“That’s right,” Tracy Cogswell said, leaning forward. “He was from Winnipeg.”

“Did you know him?” Betty said, her voice strange.

He said slowly, “Yes, yes I knew him quite well.” Unconsciously, he stroked his left elbow. The others had been in favor of leaving him behind. Dan had carried him, one way or the other, half the night. Toward morning, Tito’s secret police had brought up dogs and they’d been able to hear them baying only half a mile or so behind.

Betty said gently, “The Communists got him when he was trying to contact some of their intellectuals and get your movement going in China. He succeeded, but later was caught and shot in, I believe, Hankow. He’s now sort of a martyr. Students of the period know about him.”

Cogswell took a deep breath. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s the way Dan Whiteley would have ended. In action. Could I have another drink?”

Stein said, “You’re not overdoing, are you?”

“No, of course not. Look, how about cancer, and space flight, and how about interracial problems and juvenile delinquency?”

“Hold it!” Jo Edmonds told him. Somehow there was a strained quality in the laugh that Cogswell couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Stein said, “You can imagine how long any of the old diseases lasted once we began to devote the amount of time to them that our scientists had formerly put into devising methods of destroying man.”

Betty said, “About the space program. We have a few observatories and some laboratories on the moon, and orbiting communications satellites.”

Edmonds brought the drink and Tracy took a long swallow and then shook his head.

Walter Stein was quickly on his feet. “See here,” he said, “you’re pale. We’ve allowed you to push yourself too far.” He clucked unhappily. “Betty was premature, this morning. We hadn’t expected to allow you so much excitement for several days yet. Now, back to bed for you. We can talk further, in the morning.”

Tracy nodded. “I feel a little tired and a little tight,” he admitted.

He went back to the room they had assigned him and undressed, his mind still in a whirl. In bed, just before dropping off into sleep, he gazed up at the ceiling. What did he feel like? He felt something like he had as a kid, back there in Cincinnati, when tomorrow was going to be Christmas, when tomorrow was going to be the best day that ever was.

He was drifting off into sleep before a worrying thought wriggled up from below. He never quite grasped it all. He remembered once when his father had been unemployed and Christmas had been bleak. He never quite grasped it all. However, his subconscious worked away.

They were waiting for him on the terrace, which they had set up for breakfast, when he emerged in the morning. He was dressed, as they were, in most imaginative clothes. Cogswell had already come to the conclusion that fashions and styles were a thing of yesteryear; people dressed in the most comfortable way they damn well pleased. He supposed that followed; fashion had largely been a matter of sales promotion, and he assumed that sales promotion was in the doldrums these days. His own Bermuda shorts, sports shirt and sandals had been beside his bed when he had awakened.

And for the first time since his being brought out of hibernation, or whatever you could call it, he felt really fit, both mentally and physically alert. He felt that he was ready for anything.

After they’d exchanged the standard good mornings and questioned him on his well being, Tracy came immediately to the point.

“See here,” he told them. “Yesterday, I was pretty well taken up with enthusiasm. I doubt if many men live to see their own ideas of Utopia achieved. In fact, looking back, I can’t think of a single example. But, anyway, now I’d like to get some basic matters cleared up. I’d like to get down to the nitty-gritty.”

Jo Edmonds finished his cup of coffee, leaned back in his chair, fished his piece of jade from a pocket, and began fiddling with it. He said, “Fire away, old chap,” but he, like the other two, seemed to have a faint element of tension.

Cogswell took his chair and said, “All right now. As I understand it, through a method devised by the academician, here, you were able to send his mind back in time to my age, hypnotize me, or whatever you want to call it, and force me to take the steps that resulted in my being, well, deep-frozen.”

Walter Stein shrugged. He still reminded Cogswell of Paul Lucas playing the part of an anxious scientist. “That’s a sufficient explanation,” he said. “At least as near as I would expect a layman to get.”

Cogswell looked at him questioningly. “What was all that jazz about the monument, and that cave or grotto or whatever it was beneath it?”

Stein said, “We had to have some place to leave your body where it wouldn’t be discovered for a period of nearly a century. A cave beneath a holy man’s tomb was as good a bet as any. Even today, such monuments are respected by the local people.”

“I see,” Cogswell said, pouring some coffee into his cup. “I’ve got some mind-twisting questions I want to ask about what seem to me some really far out paradoxes, but they can wait. First, what happened after I’d gone? What do the records say about my disappearance? What did the International Executive Committee do? What kind of a report was given out about me to the membership of the movement?” As he spoke, his face tightened.

Betty took up the ball. She said, very softly, “Remember, Tracy, when I told you yesterday that Dan Whiteley had been killed by the Chinese communists and had become a martyr, known to any student of the period?”

He waited for her to go on.

She said, still softly, “You are also so known. Tracy Cogswell, the dependable, the incorruptible, the organization man plus ultra, the indominable field man.” She spoke as though reciting. “Fought in Spain in the International Brigades as a boy. Friend of George Orwell. Spent three years in Nazi concentration camps before escaping. Active in overthrowing Mussolini. Fought on the side of the Freedom Fighters in the Hungarian tragedy of 1956. Helped Djilas escape from Tito’s dictatorship. Finally was given post of international secretary, coordinating activities from Tangier.”

She took a deep breath before going on. “Captured by Franco’s espionage-counterespionage agents and smuggled into Spain. Died under torture without betraying any members of the organization.”

Tracy spilled his cup of coffee as he came to his feet. His voice was strained. “But… but Dan Whiteley was there, at the end. He knew that last wasn’t true. I appropriated almost twenty thousand dollars of the movement’s money. It must have been practically the whole international treasury, and that’s why he had been sent to find out what in the hell was going on.”

Jo Edmonds said with sour humor. “It would seem that your organization needed a martyr more than it needed a traitor or even the money. You’ve gone down in history as Tracy Cogswell, the incorruptible, the dependable, the perfect organization man.”

Cogswell slumped back into his chair. At least in this fashion a hundred friends and comrades had never known his final act of betrayal. He hadn’t been able to resist, but still it had been betrayal. Those friends and comrades he had fought shoulder to shoulder with to make a better world.

He said wearily, “All right. Now we come to the question that counts.” He looked from one face to the other. They obviously knew what he was about to ask. He asked it: “Why?”

Jo Edmonds, for once, slipped his piece of jade back into a pocket. He opened his mouth to speak, but Academician Stein quieted him with a shake of his head.

He said, “Let me do this, Jo. We’re at the crux of the matter. How we put this now means success or failure of the whole project.”

Tracy Cogswell was beginning to come to a boil. “What project, damn it?” he snapped.

“Just a minute,” Stein said, flustered a bit, obviously not used to dealing with persons in extreme anger. “Let me give you some background.”

Tracy Cogswell snapped, “I’ve been getting background for days. Tell me why I’m here!”

The other was upset. “A moment please, Tracy… I’m going to call you Tracy… man was an aggressive, hard-fighting animal from the time he first emerged from the mists of antiquity. Physically weak, as predatory animals go, he depended on brains and cunning to subjugate his fellow beasts. Only those clever enough to outwit the sabertooth, the cave bear, the multitude of other beasts more dangerous physically than man, survived.”

“Jesus Christ, I don’t need this,” Cogswell protested.

“A moment, please. You will see my reasons. Even when his fellow beasts were conquered, man still had nature to combat. He still had to feed, clothe, and shelter himself. He had to adjust to the seasons, protect himself during the cold and the night, floods and storms, of droughts and pestilences. And step by step he beat out his path of progress. It wasn’t always easy, Tracy.”

“It was never easy,” Cogswell growled impatiently.

“All along the way,” Stein continued, “man fought not only as a species but as an individual. Each man battled not only nature, but his fellow man as well, since there was seldom enough for all. Particularly when we get to the historic period and the emergence of the priest and the warrior and finally the noble: Man was pitted against his fellows for a place at the top. There was room there for only a small number.”

The academician shook his head. “Survival of the fittest,” he said. “Which often meant, under the circumstances, the most brutal, the most cunning, the conscienceless. But it also meant the strengthening of the race. When a ruling class was no longer the most aggressive and intelligent element of a people, it didn’t long remain the ruling class.”

Walter Stein hesitated for a long moment. “In short, Tracy, all through history man has had something to fight for… or against.” He twisted his mouth in a grimace of attempted humor. “It’s the nature of the beast.”

“Isn’t all this elementary?” Cogswell said. Some of the heat of his impatience was gone, but he still couldn’t understand what the other was building up to.

The other said, uncertainly, “I suppose the first signs of it were evident even in your own period. I recall reading of educators and social scientists who began remarking on the trend before the twentieth century was halfway through. Remarking on it and bewailing it.”

“What trend?” Cogswell scowled.

“In the more advanced countries of your period. The young people. They stopped taking the science and engineering courses in school; they considered them too difficult to bother with. A youngster didn’t have to fight to make his way; the way was greased. The important thing was to have a good time. Find an angle so that you could obtain the material things everyone else had, without the expenditure of much effort. Don’t be an egghead. Don’t stick your neck out. Conform. You’ve got cradle to the grave security. Take it easy. You’ve got it made.”

“Some went to the other extreme,” Tracy said unhappily. “They dropped out completely. Left school. Didn’t care about the material things. The boys grew beards and long hair, the girls didn’t give a damn what they looked like. Most of them used marijuana or even harder drugs. At first they were known as beats, or beatniks. Later they started calling them hippies. What was the term?… ‘Rebels without a cause’.”

Betty Stein, who had been silent for a long time, said softly. “And the most advanced countries… so far as social progress was concerned, countries like Denmark and Sweden… had the highest suicide rates in the world.”

“That’s the point,” Stein nodded. “They had nothing to fight against and man is a fighting animal. Take away something to work for, to fight for, and he’s a frustrated animal.”

A horrible understanding was growing within Tracy Cogswell. He looked from one to the other of them, almost desperately.

He said, “What did you bring me here for?” And his voice was hoarse.

Academician Stein ignored him and pressed on. “Since the success of your movement, Tracy Cogswell, there has been world government. Wars and racial tensions have disappeared. There is abundance for all, crime is a thing of the past. Government, if you can call it that, is so changed as hardly to be recognizable from the viewpoint of your day. There are no politics, as you knew them.”

Jo Edmonds said bitterly, “You asked about space flight yesterday. Sure, there are a couple of small bases on the moon, unmanned bases, automated bases, but nothing new has been done in the field for a generation. We have lots of dilettantes”—he flicked his beautifully carved bit of jade—“lots of connoisseurs, lots of gourmets… but few of us can bother to become scientists, builders, visionaries.”

“Why did you bring me here!” Cogswell repeated.

“Because we need your know-how,” Edmonds said flatly. He seemed a far cry from his usual easygoing self.

Cogswell’s eyes became tired-looking. “My know-how?”

Betty said gently, “Tracy, when we sought back through history for someone to show us the way, we found Tracy Cogswell, the incorruptable, the dependable, the lifelong, devoted organization man.”

Tracy Cogswell was staring at her. “Who are you people?” he said. “What’s your angle?”

It was Academician Stein who answered, and he said what Cogswell now already knew. “We’re members of a new underground. The human race is turning to mush, Tracy. Something must be done. For more than half a century we’ve had what every Utopian through history has dreamed of. Democracy in its most ultimate form. Abundance for all. The end of strife between nations, races, and, for all practical purposes, between individuals. And, as a species, we’re heading for dissolution. Tracy Cogswell, we need your experience to guide us. To overthrow the present socioeconomic system and form a new society.”

Edmonds leaned forward and put it in another way.

“You… and your movement… got us into this. Now get us out.”