John Paul Henry - The Golden Halls Of Hell [Novelette]

She had worked out how she would die. By drowning. She had established all the alibis. For several weeks she had been walking down to the little beach at the end of the road, at six o'clock in the morning, had left her towel, sunglasses and rubber slippers on the sand, and taken a swim in the surf.

At 6:30 she had walked back, wet and glistening in the sunrise, and had been seen by all the early walkers and window openers along Bay View Road.

She had catered for the "I-told-you-so" experts. Several of her acquaintances - she had no friends - had taken the trouble to tell her when they met in shops that one should never swim alone in the sea around San Sebastien. She had smiled and said, "But I never go out deep," and they had shaken their heads doubtfully. How knowingly they would shake their heads when the news broke.

She had prepared it all. When, one morning - tomorrow? - the towel and the slippers and the sunglasses were found on the sand, everyone would recognize exactly what had happened. With luck, her body would be taken by a shark. If not, it would be so bloated by the time it drifted ashore, that no one would think of a postmortem examination.

For she was not going to do it the hard way. Life had been hard enough and in death, she felt, she had earned a little luxury. She had forty-eight barbiturate tablets care fully accumulated from different doctors on different islands over a year, and when she walked down to the beach for the last time, in the night - not in the early morning as everyone would think - she was going to sit in the dark on the sand and swallow these pills - remember to take a paper cup with something to drink - and wait for them to start to take effect, so that when she swam out at last into the warm, black sea, her soft, treacherous body could not disobey her stronger mind and turn in that black water to claw its pathetic, hopeful way back to shore.

Felicity had it all planned. She went over the plan and it was good. That is why, that evening, she sat in the little pink box of a concrete house in the upper reaches of Bay View Road, between a blue house and a green one, playing two-pack solitaire for the umpteenth time.

The weekend letters to Christine and John and Paul were already written and waiting to be posted on Monday - full of gay plans for the coming holidays. Further proof of no suicide. The empty can of beans in the bin proved that she had had supper normally. She even left the dirty pan soaking in the sink, though she emptied the warm beans down the loo. It was just too much effort to eat. She would leave no will - but what did that matter? Nothing in the world belonged to her but a few clothes and some grudging gifts of jewelry, bought in parts of the world where jewelry is cheap.

Felicity listened to the usual night noises of San Sebastien. The moan and roar of the sugar factory, the tortured braying of donkeys, the dog fights and the yowling cats. She wasn't interested in the sounds at all; she was interested in ... was it going to rain?

She peered through the slatted windows that turned the pink box into a mental rat-cage and tried to see if the stars were clear. They were. She looked at her watch. Only ten o'clock. In half an hour she would switch off the beastly little gilt lights and go to her bedroom, as usual. She would undress and wait in the dark until two or three in the morning, when even the dogs on San Sebastien slept. Then, if the weather was fine, she would slip into her costume and slippers and walk quietly down the road.

If it looked like rain, rain that would soak the little toweling pile on the beach and might cast a mild doubt on the accidental nature of her death, then she would go to sleep in bed and live through another day or two, or three. She had lived through some ... fourteen thousand? ... already. A few more wouldn't make any difference.

The game of solitaire came out successfully, as it too often did. Felicity shuffled the packs, ready to deal again.

Then, up the road, came the sound of someone running. Bare feet on the tarmac, and now a gasping breath. A chorus of barks broke out indignantly. The neighbor's German shepherd dog, poor half-starved thing, growled and sprang at the garden fence and bayed like a demented soul.

Felicity heard the squeak of the wrought-iron gate that guarded her ragged garden and hideous porch. Then the footsteps slapped once and the front door was flung open. A man stood there, wild and trembling, with his hair and beard a mess. The German shepherd flung himself at the garden wall and scrabbled in a cacophony of barking.

The man jumped inside the door and pushed it to behind him and stood there, staring at Felicity. He was youngish, white, bearded and unhealthy-looking. Long, loose clothes fell airily to his feet. Felicity put him down as a Hippie of the harmless kind. Then he pointed a long, quavering finger at her and panted, "Take me to the King!"

Felicity was alone and naked except for a long, loose housecoat that brushed her neck and kept the mosquitoes off her ankles. She was white in an anti-white town. Probably no one would come if she screamed, but she wasn't in the least frightened. She had a job to do, and if some little nut wanted to interfere he could buzz off, that was all.

"This is 41 Bayview Road," she said slowly and clearly. "You've got the wrong house. Where do you want to be?"

"Mistress," he said, "where is thy husband? I bring tidings of great import. I must go to the King."

"My husband's away," Felicity said, "in Barbados. You've come to the wrong house. Do you want the Bay View Hotel? Or are you off a ship?"

He wasn't listening. He was looking all round the room as if he'd never been in a room before, taking in the peeling floor tiles, the smeared, bright walls, the plastic chairs, the gilt lights and gold stars on the ceiling.

"What is this place?" he asked suddenly. The lights seemed to fascinate him. He kept staring at them in turn. There was even a small, damaged chandelier.

"This is 41 Bayview Road," Felicity repeated, clearly and carefully, still holding the two-pack cards in her hands, still sitting at the flowery table. "The hotel is farther down, on the left near the sea."

Then suddenly he crumbled. He looked at the chandelier again, where the electric bulb leered drunkenly behind the missing drops of glass. His face melted and his little mouth twisted under the thin beard. He stumbled forward a couple of steps and caught hold of the back of a chair.

"This is not Ashby?" he asked brokenly.

"This is Charlotte Town, San Sebastien, West Indies," Felicity said, rather grimly. Why was she always a magnet for the unfortunate, the troubled, the insane? Would psychiatrists say she welcomed other peoples' misfortunes as a distraction from her own?

The little nut put his head in his hands and wept like a child.

"You need a drink," Felicity said, and got up. She pushed him firmly into the chair, went to the kitchen and drowned two jiggers of rum in soda. If he was a Love Child he might object to naked alcohol.

"Drink this," she said, forcing it on him, and he obeyed, little-boy like, spluttering and weeping and making quite a mess into his beard.

She gave him a Kleenex and slipped into the bedroom. A long housecoat over nothing is a bad basis for decision-making and this Hippie obviously had to be dealt with. She put on the shirt and shorts that she'd worn before having a shower.

When she got back into the sitting room, moments later, the man had finished the rum and mopped himself up a bit and turned his large, bulging, wet, brown eyes towards her.

"Well, now - " Felicity began briskly, but up came the bony forefinger and the Hippie sprang to his feet.

"Jezebel!" he hissed. "Wanton!" Felicity's jaw dropped.

He clasped his hands together, raised his eyes, shut them and started to mutter rapidly. He was praying. She distinctly heard the words, "Lord deliver us ..." and "... lustful women ..."

Felicity stood there, bare-legged, bare-armed and indignant. This was W.I., not the Trucial States and anyway she was in her own house.

She took a stride towards him, but he started shivering and his prayers increased so frantically that she thought the neighbors might hear.

It was easier to give up. Felicity went back to her bedroom and came out with her housecoat buttoned over her shorts and shirt. "Is that better?" she asked acidly.

He simmered down and sat down, and the rum started to bring some color into the quivering white cheeks.

"Look," Felicity said, "it's late, and you can't stay here. Where are the rest of your Group?"

He stared at her.

"Where are your friends?" she asked. "I'll ring them up and get them to collect you. Where do you come from?"

The rum really was taking effect. Perhaps she shouldn't have made it so strong. His eyes went quite round and his hair fairly bristled and he raised that bony forefinger like Merlin prophesying Doom.

"Mistress," he hissed, "I come from the Golden Halls of Hell."

Oh-God-why-does-it-always-have-to-be-me? she thought again, as the stars twinkled brightly through the rat-cage windows. What must she do? There was no mental asylum on San Sebastien, and of the two doctors, one would not come out at night except for politicians, and the other was in Antigua for the week. The hospital? Could she persuade a little night-nurse Junior to accept this dubious little twit - even if he agreed to go there?

He was muttering to himself "... Devils ... great light... . deep magics. To me it has been revealed. I was chosen to warn men while yet there is time ..." He blinked. "Is there time?" he asked suddenly and lucidly. "What year is this, Mistress?"

"1971," Felicity snapped. He must be a worse case than she had thought.

"Nineteen ... seventy ... one," he repeated the words like some astounding new piece of information, writing them with that forefinger on the golden flowers of the repulsive table. "Nineteen ... seventy ... one. Oh Lord, forgive me my transgression!" and the poor little manling once more melted and dissolved and shrank into his hairy self and blubbered like a four-year-old, rocking to and fro. "Have pity on me," he kept whispering. "Mercy, oh Lord."

Felicity looked at her watch. It was well past eleven now, and a perfect night for the suicide. But what could she do with the Hippie? She had no friends to telephone for help. If she turned him out on the street, he might fill himself up with dope that would fight with the alcohol and either knock him out, or make him dangerous. The last thing Felicity wanted to do was to get involved in a court case where she might be called as a witness or anything ...

She looked at the poor, shaking, pathetic little creature and suddenly put her hand on his shoulder. He was flaming hot. Temperature about 102, if Felicity's experience with children was anything to go by. She made up her mind.

"Look," she said, "would you like to spend the night here? Then we can sort everything out in the morning." Next day was Sunday. She could turn him over to Father Delaney at the Episcopalian Church. Father Delaney adored having white members in his congregation. He might even consider this poor specimen an asset. Anyway, he would have contacts and know how to get rid of him kindly.

The Hippy gave her the wettest look of noncomprehension she had ever seen.

"Come on," Felicity said firmly and propelled him across the floor towards George's bedroom. The bed was made up.

"You can lie down on this bed and sleep," she said. "Here are some pajamas."

She wound open the slatted windows, cursing when she saw how clear the night was. The Hippy stood quite still at the foot of the bed. He was shivering, and a few insects were buzzing round.

"Put these pajamas on," Felicity said in a nanny-bullying tone. "Get your clothes off, and you'll be more comfortable."

He was wearing a long, feminine catsuit that shimmered faintly and moved around him with a gentle, attractive sort of independence.

"How d'you undo this thing?" Felicity asked. It was messy with rum and coke and didn't appear to have a zipp.

The message got through. He clawed at his front and the suit parted, revealing a hollow white chest decorated by a few long, black hairs.

Felicity went into the kitchen to set up and light a green mosquito coil, and for good measure she crumbled two aspirins into a glass of powdered milk.

When she got back into the bedroom, the Hippy had clambered into the pajamas and was actually getting into bed, sensibly. He drank his milk like a baby and indicated that he wanted the windows shut.

There was only one more mild outburst that night. When he sniffed the mosquito coil, the little nut stiffened till his joints creaked. "Incense? Art thou a papist, Woman?"

"Nonsense," Felicity said. "That's not incense, that's a good Chinese remedy for keeping the mosquitoes away. Go to sleep," and she rammed him down firmly on the pillow as if he were John or Paul ten years before. "Go to sleep," she repeated. "You're ill. You've got a fever. We'll talk about things in the morning."

She clicked off the light in a purposeful way, and from the dark bed came the first sensible remarks of the evening.

"Thou art kind, Mistress," he murmured in the quasi-Elizabethan that he seemed to favor. Obviously he liked being bullied. Some men do. Then he went on in rapid, everyday American, like a child repeating a lesson. "No fear of a virus infection. What I got is hyper-culture-shark."

Felicity went back to the table and picked up the playing cards and considered the position:

1. She had a nut on her hands.

2. He was some sort of avidly religious nut.

3. He was sick.

4. He said he was suffering from culture-shark. Culture shock or Cultural Shock. Felicity had heard the phrase from Peace Corps volunteers. Being British, she preferred the word homesickness. Why should a God-struck Hippie who carried his world about with him suffer culture shock in a brief contact with normal everyday living? She gave it up.

It started to rain, and then Felicity felt better. The night couldn't have been used for a suicide after all. She went to bed. With luck, the little Hippie would have run away by the next morning. Easy come, easy go. She locked her bedroom door, but left the front door on the latch. Before going to sleep she examined the damp garment he had taken off. It was all in one piece and it was made of the most beautiful, sophisticated material that Felicity had ever seen. There were no buttons or fastenings, but when she pressed the two sides of the front opening together they fused into one another, and then parted at a sharp tug. There was no stitching on it at all. The legs and arms and trunk were molded into a soft, fluid, almost living whole.

An extraordinary phrase sprang into Felicity's mind, prompted, no doubt, by the little man's religious vocabulary. She turned the exquisite garment about in her hands and thought - The Seamless Robe of Christ.

He was still there in the morning, asleep at eight o'clock, but cool and healthier-looking, so Felicity fed herself an apple and cooked him some bacon and eggs. It was lucky that the refrigerator was well-stocked. Normally she ate from can to cold can while George was away, but this weekend she had brought in a lot of provisions as supplementary evidence of no-suicide intent.

The Hippie wolfed his breakfast and gulped down great quantities of tea. Felicity cooked him some more bacon since he seemed to enjoy it so much, and wished mildly that he hadn't renounced the use of knife and fork. He managed to get quite a lot of fat on to George's sheets with his messy fingers, but there was something very endearing about his fragile little hairy figure, drowned in the huge striped pajamas. Felicity was wearing her housecoat again, so as not to shock him.

"We'll get dressed and go to church and see Father Delaney," she told him quite calmly, but the Hippie chose to electrify himself at the news.

"Father Delaney - papist - tool of the Scarlet Woman - " he hissed.

"No, no, no, no, no," Felicity cried, exasperated. "Father Delaney's a perfectly ordinary vicar of a perfectly ordinary Church of England. Absolutely Protestant." He simmered down. "You'd like to go to church, wouldn't you?" she asked.

"Nay, Mistress, I will not enter a steeple-house again," he said. "The Word of the Lord comes to he who listeneth and waiteth. In the fields, in the home, beside the shores of the sea. A so-called House of God is often a mockery, where men can think lewd thoughts, though their vile bodies be outwardly penitent upon their knees."

Oh God he's further gone than I thought, she panicked. What am I going to do with him?

Suddenly he smiled, a sweet, gentle smile that had more power in it than seemed possible from such a feeble little frame. "I do not wish to be discourteous to thee, Mistress," he said. "Nor seem to mock, for it is better that thou shouldst take thyself to the steeple-house than walk in darkness."

"Thank you," Felicity said. Well, what could she say?

"Hast thou Seen the Light?" he asked eagerly.

Now here was a problem. He would be talking about The Way next, and Felicity did not feel equal to Sen or Yin and Yang or Whatever at that hour of the morning.

"If your Group don't go to... er ... steeple-houses," she asked, "where do you normally meet to ... er ... Worship the Lord?"

"In barns," he said wistfully, as if remembering something that had meant a lot to him and was not now available. "In halls, if they do not cast us out. In the big rooms of farmhouses where Friends are welcomed. On the moors above Kendal where our Founder first preached the Word."

"Who is your Founder?" Felicity asked gently. She despised that faculty in herself which attracted the weak and the uncertain. She did not know that her clear, blue eyes gave out a sure, innocent - but not stupid - strength that offered instant empathy and help. It was not a quality in much demand at political cocktail parties. Here was a nut, but she sensed by now that he would never be a dangerous one, and she suspected that his religion came from the heart, not from LSD.

"Our Founder, George Fox, who now lives near Ulverstone," he said simply. "I am of the Society of Friends, that men sometimes call Quakers."

Now Felicity was on firmer ground. One of her friends at Cambridge had been a Quaker. She had been very gifted, very rich, and above all very sane.

"How did you get to the Caribbean?" Felicity asked.

"Is this the Caribbee?" he responded in a helpless way.

You know damn well it is and how can I help you if you won't make the slightest effort? said her mind grimly, but her lips had years of practice in functioning on their own. "This is San Sebastien, West Indies," they said politely. "You must have got here from somewhere, and it's not on the normal tourist run. Where did you come from? Miami? Jamaica? Where were you before?"

"I was in Hell, Mistress," he said, and he seemed to contract into two huge, frightened eyes.

Here we go again. He must be a drug-addict after all.

"O.K." Felicity agreed. "But you weren't in Hell always, were you? How did you get to Hell? Where were you before?"

He would have wept, but there was half-a-pound of good bacon inside him, so he only gulped a couple of times. "Mistress, I sinned," he said. "I did the most grievous sin against my God and Man."

Another blind alley.

"O.K.," Felicity said patiently, "But before you sinned and went to Hell, where were you?"

"In Ashby," he told her. Where was Ashby? The States? The Bahamas?

"Which Ashby?" she asked, like a dentist drawing teeth.

"Ashby-de-la-Zouche in the county of Leicestershire."

"What were you doing there?" she asked, intrigued.

"I was practicing my trade, Mistress," he said quite normally. "I am a journeyman weaver."

If ever a man was sincere, this was the man. But what did he mean? Had Hippie colonies set up little medieval outfits all over rural England?

Go on and get to the bottom of it. "Right," said Felicity, ever so calm and patient. "You were in Ashby, then you went to Hell, then you turn up here in San Sebastien. How did you get to Hell in the first place?"

"I hanged myself from a beam in Jacob Morton's barn," he explained. "I sinned against my Maker and my sufferings are truly earned." Tears rolled down and disappeared into the thin edges of his beard, but the wet, bulging eyes clung to Felicity's with the soft trust of a confiding child.

"They were to put me in the stocks on the next day," he said. "They pilloried me in Exeter and Lincoln. They pelted me with filth. There were men with great sticks gathering for what they call the Easter Fair. They had dogs. My trust failed. Like Peter I betrayed my Lord. I could not follow in His steps to Calvary." Felicity was adult, intelligent, highly-educated and once thought a promising biochemist. And yet she believed every extraordinary word that the little man said.

"Easter was over a month ago," she half-whispered. "Where have you been since ... since... you left Ashby?" The analytical, unaffected part of her brain was still stolidly pursuing the problem, (a) Where does he come from? (b) How can we get him back?

"Mistress, I told thee," he said, himself the patient one now. "I have been with sinners in the Golden Halls of Hell."

Felicity was defeated. The analytical part of her mind closed down, and left the ordinary part simply curious. "What was it like?" she asked.

"Full of devils in bright raiment. Full of lusts and music and naked women." He was all frightened eyes again. "They smiled and beckoned and summoned me with bold enticements. They tried to feed me upon strange delights, but my lips were closed."

"It doesn't sound too awful," Felicity said reasonably, but the little man was shivering with genuine revulsion.

"The flesh," he whispered. "The flesh is weak, but Thine arm was about me, Oh Lord. Even in Hell Thou gavest me the strength to defy them. Soft words went as nought whilst I could call upon Thy Name." He must have escaped from some expensive loony-bin where they were very, very kind to him, Felicity thought.

Then there was a sudden urgent tapping at the front door.

"The devils have come for me!" shrieked the little man, who sprang up in bed and clutched Felicity's housecoat. "Nonsense!" she snapped, but did not like it when she heard the door open and footsteps crossing the sitting room. Anybody who came into a house like that in San Sebastien would be carrying a cosh, and the Hippie wasn't much protection. Felicity almost - but not quite - wished that George were at home.

"Who's that?" she called sharply. The bedroom door opened and her heart stopped its sudden wild hammering. The man in the door was white, grave and utterly law-abiding in appearance. He was cleanshaven, too. His smooth, close-fitting outfit did not make him look in the least like a Hippie, he was more a superior sort of junior executive.

"Get thee behind me, Satan!" screamed the little man, gibbering on the bed beside Felicity.

"Jeremiah Dickenson, be still," said the newcomer fixing his eyes on the poor little chap. Some brief struggle passed mentally between them above Felicity's comprehension, and then Jeremiah flopped and lay, white and doll-like, disjointed, on George's bed.

"You fascist BEAST!" Felicity cried, leaping to her feet. (She reverted, regrettably, to childhood on the very rare occasions when she lost her temper.) "You've killed him, poor little thing. He wasn't doing you any harm."

The executive turned uncomfortably penetrating eyes on her and she was conscious of her crumpled housecoat, lack of make-up and tumbled, shoulder-length hair. Felicity had no reason to think of herself as wildly attractive. The sort of men who admired her were not the sort who rushed forward to say so on first acquaintance. But she prided herself, normally, on a very competent protective coloring.

Oddly enough, her appearance did not seem to upset the newcomer. He was ... respectful; in fact, almost awed -

"Lady, I haven't killed him," he said, bowing fluidly from the waist. "He's only unconscious. He can be recalled at any time. I just put him out of his misery until we decide what to do with him."

"Well don't, for goodness sake, send him back to the Home where he was before," she said brusquely. "He really, truly thinks he's been in Hell."

"We shall value your advice deeply," he said. "The position is unique - disastrous, in fact. We have no precedents to guide us. It is most fortunate that you are here."

Pompous. Authoritative. Mocking her? No - he was absurdly deferential.

"Will you excuse me while I make a report to the Center?" he asked.

"Do what you like. I'm going to get dressed," Felicity said and brushed past him to get to her own bedroom.

When she came out again, all tidy, Jeremiah Dickenson was still unconscious on the bed and the visitor seemed to be gone. Then he came into the sitting room from the front door again, with news.

"A doctor and his assistant will be here in a few hours. They will come in a three-man transporter and take Jeremiah away."

"Then you'd better sit down," Felicity said. "Would you like a cup of coffee?" She was her usual self. Smooth clothes, smooth hair, smooth words. A competent shell surrounding a still depth of - "emptiness" she would have said drearily.

"Thank you, that would be interesting," the newcomer said.

Interesting was not the word, Felicity thought wryly. She hated cooking, and her food, mechanically produced, had all the slick appearance and dead flavor of tourist hotel meals. But her visitor savored the cup of pre-fab coffee and powdered milk as if it were in the Napoleon brandy class.

"This is delicious, Lady," he said at last.

"Please don't call me 'lady'. My name is North."

"Your pardon, Felicity North. I meant no disrespect."

"How did you know my name was Felicity?"

He looked confused for a moment, then laughed. "Your pardon again. Your name is so familiar that I had forgotten it is still uncelebrated."

"What do you mean - my name is familiar?" she asked quickly. She was annoyed, but he was relaxed and amused.

"Felicity North, born in 1933 in England, Europe, daughter of a rural doctor and a mother who died young. Won scholarships to Birmingham High School and afterwards to Newnham College, Cambridge; mother, by her first union, of three children, author of 'Chains of the Soul', 'Spiritual Rebirth' ..."

She sprang up, and her chair fell back upon the floor. She was shaking with anger - and also with fear.

"What are you talking about? I'm not the author of anything. Who are you? Where do you come from? How do you know so much about me?"

"Forgive me for disturbing you," he said, now very grave and very polite. "I am not usually employed in time manipulation and have not studied your local means of communication. I have been uncouth. Forgive me, Lady."

"Who are you?"

"David Lesley, Controller, Head of the First Area in the Western Hemisphere," he bowed again.

Felicity was very deeply frightened. This man was powerful, in spite of his youth, and he was utterly sure of himself. "Where do you come from?" she asked.

"From Washington originally. I was chosen for this special mission and traveled here from the History Research Center on San Sebastien in the early part of '73."

Now Felicity was hopelessly confused. Missions and Washington and First Areas - she thought, if she thought at all, in terms of the C.I.A.

"Is Jeremiah Dickenson a political prisoner, then?"

"No, no," he laughed. "Jeremiah Dickenson is a mistake. A foolish error made by the History Research people."

"What do you mean? He's alive, isn't he? He's real, just like you and me."

"He's very much alive, unfortunately, and the historians will have to deal with him. When they took him at his suicide, they didn't realize that a religious fanatic of his tenacity cannot reorientate. His mind, they tell me, is as tightly shut as a flenton."

"Please," Felicity said, "just tell me one thing. I'm mad or you're mad, and I don't really mind if it's I - but how can Jeremiah commit suicide with a rope round his throat AND be alive at the same time."

"He didn't die when he hanged himself. He struggled till his mind blanked out, and then the historians took him, untied the rope and left it lying on the barn floor. He didn't die, he left his period. All his contemporaries thought he had run away. Nobody was surprised. His life in the Seventeenth Century had become quite intolerable."

Then I went to Hell and devils tempted me. They spoke sweet words. Felicity flushed with anger. They had no right to treat Jeremiah like that. He was only a baby. "Why didn't you tell him? Why let the poor little beggar suffer? He thought he was dead."

"Lady, they tried," David Lesley assured her. "They did everything they could to explain that he had been rescued and that the rest of his life could be happy. They gave him every form of gratification. But he rejected them all. In his mind, a truly religious life is equated to suffering. No cross, no crown. He is a simple little man and lives by that fact alone."

"What are you going to do with him?"

"I think the historians will have to accept defeat. Jeremiah is no use to them for information purposes, and yet he cannot be allowed to crucify himself for the rest of his life - which won't be long. He was riddled with disease, you know. The mind doctors will probably remove his consciousness of everything that has happened from birth and restore it with an uncomplicated, childlike, contented pattern, so that he can finish his life without distress in the last quarter of the Twenty-first Century."

Here it was at last. A fact that Felicity could grasp. A key. Something to tie Jeremiah and the Controller and the Seamless Clothes into a comprehensible whole.

"Then you come from the Twenty-first Century?" she asked. She didn't disbelieve. She just wanted information.

He looked mildly surprised. "No, Lady," he said. "I was born in 2153."

Now Felicity was really out of her depth and sinking. Her delicate face shrank, like Jeremiah's, into two huge, uncertain eyes. The visitor hurried to help.

"The History Research Station," he explained, "was ... is ... that is, to you will be in San Sebastien, Caribbean. It used to be one of the two places in the world to have full time-transportation facilities. That's why it's here. The Caribbean was the first World Center of weather control with the utterly stable conditions that are required."

"Go on."

"From about 2050, world historians of sufficient standing were allowed to bring back from the past live specimens - "

"People!" Felicity gasped.

"Yes, people - to get first-hand information on language customs and beliefs."

"How interesting. How enlightening. You cold-blooded fiends. I suppose it doesn't worry you that people like Jeremiah would be upset - would feel culture-shock," she sneered, "would rather wallow in their dirty little Seventeenth Century than live like ... like ... like tadpoles in your beastly history laboratories: You brutes."

"Not us, Lady," he assured her. "In my time the living-recall method has been stopped for twenty years or more. We have easier ways of checking now."

"Well ... wait a minute - " Felicity's mind groped about painfully. "If you are in the future for them - the people who snatched Jeremiah why don't you go back to them and stop them doing it."

"My dear lady, I can't alter history," he said, shocked.

"But you ... they ... are altering history all the time. They're taking people, real people, out of their own time into the future and leaving an empty space where they should have been alive and having children and inventing things."

"I haven't made myself clear," he said. "I would make a poor instructor. The historians never take ... took ... people from normal existence. They only allowed themselves to remove adults who were on the point of taking their own lives - suicides. Finding them and taking them at exactly the right moment involved the most tremendous amount of research and investigation and trial and failure and disappointment. The expense was enormous. They were glad to discontinue it."

"But if your ... their... history research is all carried out on suicides, they must have got a pretty distorted sense of history," Felicity objected. "Fancy basing all your information on the evidence of a bunch of neurotics!"

"Suicides weren't neurotics," he corrected her gently. "They were people whose mentality was not adjusted to the time or place in which they lived. This does not mean that they were inferior. Only that they found local conditions intolerable. Sometimes they saw a lot further than the other people of their day."

"But ... but ... but - " Felicity felt there must be a flaw somewhere.

"Are you neurotic?" the Controller asked her seriously.

She blushed to the roots of her thick, golden hair. He knew she was planning to kill herself. Yet somehow it didn't seem to matter at all that he knew.

"I don't think so," she said simply. "I don't worry. I don't get all churned up like I used to. I don't care about anything at all. I'm dead inside. Empty. Except for a few practical purposes, I don't need to exist." It was soothing to see oneself as a small academic problem. "That's why I'm doing it," she explained. "There's just no point in going on. When they find my towel and my sunglasses and my slippers on the beach tomorrow morning, nobody will really miss me. And I get no joy out of living. I'm no use to anybody, so - why exist?"

"You are unusual," he said. Again there was that curious tinge of awe in his voice. "Most of the history recalls came over in passion of one sort or another, or fear. They tended to be minorities, the victims of persecution. Earlier ones, like Jeremiah, found it easier to believe that the Twenty-first Century actually was the heaven that they had been brought up to believe in. They had no difficulty in settling down. People from your time and later were able to accept the fact of time-manipulation and thought themselves lucky to escape their own surroundings. I can assure you that the history recall scheme was considered most successful in its day, in spite of the cost. We still use visions made in the Center in our schools."

"Tell me about your life," Felicity asked him urgently. The new ideas - time travel - escape - were sinking slowly through her mind, and for the first time she was realizing that 1971 need not be the rat-cage that it had seemed. There were more distant boundaries, freer horizons.

"I would be honored to oblige you, Lady, but it is most expressly forbidden," he said with genuine regret.

Her face fell. She had been under strain, and the usual mechanical self-control was weakening. David leaned forward in immediate sympathy. "You, of all people, need have no fear of the future," he said comfortingly.

Felicity gulped. "The future! Listen," she said, "the future doesn't exist for me. I'm going to commit suicide ... but you know that - " Her mind bounced and jarred and subsided into new, unfamiliar tracks. "You've come to take me away," she whispered. "When I swim out to sea tonight, you're going to catch me, just as I'm going down for the last time and take me - transport me - into your time, aren't you?"

"Not my time, Lady," he said. "Into 2073."

Felicity didn't want it. She didn't want to be a history specimen in a labeled cage. Her life had been hard enough. Why should it carry on, and on, and on, when she, its owner, chose to end it?

"You can't make me go," she said, gripping the edge of the dining table, pressing the obscene gold flowers into their sick-colored background. "You can't force me. I can find ways of killing myself that won't give you time."

He seemed perplexed, that smooth authoritative, competent man. Felicity had got him ruffled. "I've handled this badly," he said, and then relaxed again. "History says that you came willingly," he told her mildly.

Felicity got up and paced the horrible little room. Backwards and forwards, she struggled with unfamiliar temptations: herself, the dead mind that was Felicity North obstinately clinging to its protective deadness against another person's "inevitable" - clinging to lifelessness, not daring to trust a possible glimpse of Heaven.

"Please, please do not be so upset," David begged. "The transporter from the History Center will be here shortly for Jeremiah. I should be marked forever by history if the doctor found that I caused you such unhappiness."

She sat down.

"Please," he said again. "I was chosen for this mission for my authority, not for my knowledge of this period, which is negligible. I know only the basic facts of your pre-existence. Tell me about your life. Perhaps I can help you to see clearly why it is good for you to continue it."

"Well - " she said, and sighed, and then went on. It was easier to talk than think. "What do you want to know? Look around you. You can see what my life is."

He studied the miserable little room. "You were, of course," he mused, "a person to whom visual beauty was of very great importance. A thenistor. I wish I could show you ... but surely, Lady, the Twentieth Century produced less stultifying homes than this?"

"You don't understand, it's cheap." Felicity explained. She had never in her life talked impersonally about herself like this. But then - no one had ever been interested before. "There are lovely homes nowadays, but not for us. This is a rotten sample, but the rent is low. The oven doesn't work and the water heater won't heat and the loo leaks. Tourists won't look at it, and it was built in the hope of tourists coming. George felt he was lucky to find it. Good houses have fantastically high rents here."

"George is your lover?" he asked. Felicity grimaced. "My husband," she corrected.

"And your children? Do families not live together in units at this time?"

"My children are all at school in England - at boarding school. Most families live in units as you call it, but George travels round, and the children need settled schooling. We've been living in different countries ever since we were married. George used to be an administrator. Now he's a Labor Adviser to new governments. We are in the West Indies for this tour. Next year we may be in Fiji or Sierra Leone."

He nodded understandingly. "With Twentieth Century travel conditions," he said, "and air transport ... what do you call it? jets? ... that must make a very hard life indeed."

"It isn't hard," cried Felicity, stung. "It's very easy and comfortable compared to most people's lives. Sometimes I go with George to different places if the accommodations are free - to Dominica and St. Kitts and Trinidad. And let me tell you that jet travel is considered a luxury, and only rich people can do it for pleasure. Everybody envies me the life I lead."

"Then why do you plan to leave it?"

She grimaced again. "I'm so tired," she said. "So deadly, deadly tired and useless. I'm nothing but an expense to George - and he's a man that doesn't like expense."

David's forehead creased. "You mean that George uses his ... er ... money to buy your food and clothing and to exchange for the use of this house?"

"Exactly," Felicity agreed with a small, hopeless lift of her hands. "I couldn't put it better myself. George uses money - of which he has a very high opinion - to pay for me to exist as a parasite. In return for that, I cook his food for him and wash his clothes - a job which any sixteen-year-old half-wit could do for a pittance."

"But you were a brilliant student. Why don't you earn money and maintain yourself? Surely in the early days of science there was employment for good scientists?"

He was so sensible, Felicity thought, it was like talking to the logical part of one's own mind. Too sensible by half.

"Look," she said wearily. "I gave up my work when I married George. I was a fool, if you like, a blind, witless, stupid little fool, but I was In Love - do you understand? Twentieth Century girls are conditioned to Love and Marriage and Motherhood from the cradle. Whatever else you do, the Home comes first. If I deserted George now, I'd be a pariah ... no, that's not true and I wouldn't care a damn about that, anyway. The fact is, I c-c-can't go back to work b-because I'm seventeen years out of date. For my work I'd need a laboratory and technicians and there aren't any nearer than Florida. Besides, who'd want me? So much has been learned in the last seventeen years that I don't even know about."

His face was so deeply sympathetic that Felicity found herself weeping. The bitter, unaccustomed tears rolled down her cheeks.

"Y-you must excuse me," she sobbed, mopping guiltily. "S-s-selfpity is s-s-so stupid. But I haven't talked about myself for years."

"You are not adjusted to the time in which you are living," he said. "You have been educated like a Twenteith Century male and forced to live like a Nineteenth Century female. How do other women of your period survive?"

"They m-manage, I suppose," Felicity sniffed. "They really believe in Love and Home and Children, perhaps. They ... they have houses of their own and neighbors and roots and beautiful things to make up for what they lose. You mustn't think I'm representative. Please don't despise Twentieth Century Woman because of me," and she managed a watery smile.

"On the contrary, your despair seems perfectly natural," he said. "But on the other hand, other women survived. Perhaps you lack the strong maternal instinct that brought the human race through so many difficulties."

"I expect you're right," Felicity said very humbly. "I'm a rotten mother. When the children were little I cared for them desperately. From the moment they started talking until they went away to school - at eight years of age - we had a wonderful time. I taught them all to read. They kept me company when George was away. Their little minds mopped up information like sponges and we used to laugh so much." The tears were rolling down again "Christine could listen to Bach when she was only seven," she remembered wistfully. "George was furious with me for buying records. I used to borrow record-players from people who went on leave. We were in Singapore then."

"But you are prepared to leave your children now," David reminder her.

"They're not my children any more," Felicity said bitterly, mutilating a Kleenex with stiff, savage fingers. "Their schools and George and their aunt have seen to that. Christine - she's sixteen - thinks Bach is `boring' now. The boys talk about games and television and car racing; and things I know nothing about. They love their aunt - George's sister. She's a widow and looks after them at vacation time when they don't come out to us. She adores them and sees that they have the `proper' clothes and the 'proper' friends and the 'proper' books to read. Of course they're terribly polite - they never tell me that I'm no use for anything except cooking now But I feel it. And anyway I can't cook half as well as Aunty B.

He let her sob and sob and sot and the tears were helpful. Why had she never cried before? She wept away the dreariness and the useless ness and the heartbreak, the lonely hours when she was on her own. And the lonelier ones when George was at home and nagging about the price of a tin of mustard.

The calm, authoritative super-future man just let her cry, and mop and finally face him squarely. And what is more, he did not despise her. He was utterly sympathetic, and there was no trace of contempt in his face. That made Felicity feel guilty. He still liked her. He didn't, obviously, understand.

"You can see that I'm a failure," she said honestly. "I've fallen down on every count that might justify existence - work, love, motherhood." She drew in a deep breath of what passes in San Sebastien for cool air. "I don't ... I honestly don't ... want to spend the rest of my life as a history exhibit. Please let me end it, as I'd planned, and call a stop."

The Controller took her damp hands across the table, scattering the playing cards. Good God - she had been playing solitaire! How many ages ago?

"Lady," he said earnestly. "You are not a failure. Your work - your true, vital work - has not even begun. You are blocked and trapped by circumstances, but your potential is as great as it ever was. You have a capacity for infinite love that does not flow merely because it is untapped. I cannot tell you more because it is forbidden. I ask, I beg of you to trust me."

What a face! There was more pure power, pure intellect and pure command in those eyes than Felicity had ever seen before.

"I would trust you," she said at last slowly. "If I can go into the future with you, and stay somewhere near you, then I will go."

"I am sorry, Lady," he said. "Your work comes earlier than mine in time. I will take you to 2073, but then I must leave you and return to my own century."

It was a bitter disappointment, and there were obvious, gaping drawbacks. "Take me with you," she begged. "I can't trust what I don't know."

"I cannot alter history," he said. The blank wall.

Felicity tore her hands away from his and went back to the squirrel-cage pacing. Some part of her brain noticed that it was hours past lunchtime and the sun had shifted over to the kitchen window. Her mind struggled - it was fighting for her death.

"You mean well, but you could be terribly mistaken," she flung over her shoulder at him, "and your arguments won't hold water. You say I can 'work' in the future but I know damn well - and you must know - that a biochemist of my time, and a rusty biochemist at that, won't stand a chance in a civilization that has time-machines. I would be about as much use an an alchemist. You said I was - would be - an author. What have I got to offer the Twenty-first Century? `Pilgrim's Progress'?" Her voice was tight with scorn.

"Your writing was incidental," he said. "It is cherished and admired as a revealing facet of your character - nothing more."

"Then you're lying to me when you talk about useful work," she accused him passionately. So desperate was she to believe, that she fought the chance of disillusionment with every weapon that she had.

"I did not promise you fame in biochemistry," he reproved her quietly. "Your work is ... shall we say? ... more concerned with genetics. I can tell you no more. It is forbidden."

"I don't know anything about genetics. If I was the greatest geneticist alive, I'd still be an ignoramus in 2073."

Now there was a disturbance on the porch outside. Felicity had not heard the gate squeak, but two men opened the door and came in.

One was middle-aged, dark-skinned and capable. The other was young and embarrassed, with a shock of yellow hair. Both wore floating catsuits of the Seamless Robe type, in iridescent colors.

They bowed deeply to David Lesley, raising their right hands to their foreheads. Felicity, they ignored. Her chin tilted up.

"Dr. John Lett, sir," the dark-skinned one said. He looked like a doctor. He was even carrying a bag.

"Emyl Peters, History Research Center, European division," the young one reported.

"Jeremiah Dickenson is in the room through there," David told them. 'He is in first-depth suspense. He can be moved without waking."

Jeremiah Dickenson! Felicity had completely forgotten her poor little Hippie - no, not Hippie - genuine, Seventeenth Century religious persecutee. They carried him in and laid him on a plastic sofa which was losing puffs of stuffing. He was blissfully asleep.

"Have we your permission to take him back, then, sir?" the doctor asked.

"No!" Felicity cried sharply. Never mind her future, Jeremiah was too vulnerable to look after himself. "You can't let the poor little thing wake up in Hell again. It isn't fair."

The two men from the Center looked at her as though a rabbit had said, "Good morning." The young one grinned. He wasn't in the least respectful.

The doctor went on, to David Lesley. "We plan to replace his memory patterns as soon as we get him to the Center."

"You shall not have him," Felicity said fiercely, and went and stood in front of the sofa. "He's a real person and his brain's not going to be changed like the engine of a car. Keep your hands off him, you ... you ... you mechanics!"

Now they stared at her, from head to foot. She was sure she heard the young one murmur, "Quaint." Then David Lesley quietly interposed. "There is no one whose advice I would respect more than the lady's."

Pompous. It surprised them. They looked from him to Felicity and then they became a little deferential, too. "What do you suggest we do with him, Miss ... er ... Mrs. - ?"

"Mrs. North," she told him, and tried to think.

"We can't transport him back to his own place and time, you know," the young man informed her. "The rope that started to hang him was found on the floor days ago. If we put him in another town, he would be persecuted all over again."

"Couldn't you take him back to a place where they don't persecute his sort of people?" Felicity suggested. "He must be with Quakers, who think the same way as he does about Sinning and The Flesh, and things. You can't cut him off from people who talk the same kind of language. But isn't there somewhere where folk like that weren't hounded? Wasn't there an Act of Indulgence or something ... oh no, I suppose that came later."

The men from the Center seemed doubtful. They looked at each other, then looked at David. He said nothing. He was looking at Felicity as an indulgent father might look at a promising child.

Inspiration came to Felicity out of the blue. "Listen!" she cried excitedly. "Leave him here - in the West Indies. There were early Quaker settlers here, I know. They were on Montserrat and ... wait ... Tortola, and once when I was in Nevis I found a Quaker cemetery marked on an old map. I walked from the hotel to find it - I had a friend once, who was a Quaker - but there are houses there now." Ideas were bursting in on her. "Drop Jeremiah down on the beach on one of the islands, as if he had been washed up from a shipwreck - there were masses of shipwrecks in those days. The Quakers will take him in. They're good, kind people. He can even do their weaving for them. They do grow cotton, don't they? ... didn't they?" she asked the shockheaded youth.

They all gave the matter serious thought, but the two newcomers did not seem to like it very much.

"Look," she begged the doctor, "you can influence his mind, can't you, without changing it drastically?"

"He's impervious to orientation, Mrs. North," the doctor said.

"Yes, yes, I know you can't budge his beliefs, but you could give him a few suggestions, couldn't you? Tell him that he got on a ship from Bristol, or somewhere, and then there was a storm? Block out the part about hanging and Ashby and put in a journey to the west country instead? For heaven's sake, hypnotists can do that now! Haven't you got any refinements in your time?"

The doctor's dark face crinkled at her. He was a most attractive man. "We could just about manage that," he said.

"Please," Felicity turned to the younger man. "Take a chance. I know you can't alter history, but Jeremiah's so small. It won't make any difference if his little body's buried in the West Indies instead of Staffordshire."

"It's against all the rules," the young man grumbled. "We're told that we must never interfere."

"Well, you have interfered and he isn't buried in Staffordshire," Felicity pointed out reasonably. "For all you know, history says that he did die on Nevis. Wait!" Her mind was most unclear, but surely there was something... She whipped round on David. "You are in the future, aren't you - their future, the History Center's future, as well as mine? What does your history say happened to Jeremiah?"

There was a sharp intake of breaths behind her. Unknowingly Felicity had broken a taboo. But David showed no sign of being disturbed. "There is no mention of his name in any record that I know of," he replied. "He has disappeared without a trace. Certainly there was no scandal of Anachronism connected with the History Center in 2073." Behind Felicity, a long, deep sigh of relief. David thought a while, then, "You have my authority to carry out the lady's suggestions," he said.

The two experts raised their respect for Felicity by several notches. They would be bowing next. The young one was looking distinctly relieved.

"I shall have to report to my Chief for permission to use the transporter laterally," he said. David made no objection. The youngster took a chair, sat down, hunched himself and appeared to go into a trance.

"Telepathy?" Felicity asked David quietly. Enormous interest was battling with enormous fatigue. She had eaten nothing but an apple for a long, long time, and her mind was being stretched in many painful directions.

"No," David replied. "The instrument is implanted in his skull." Felicity shuddered.

The doctor had lifted Jeremiah to the floor and was examining his scalp with a tiny stethoscope. Presently he clipped off a small portion of hair and started to fit a small, stubby, metallic object to Jeremiah's head. He took wires and implements from his bag, and David watched him with interest. Intuitively Felicity felt that the doctor's actions were, to David, "quaint."

Presently the historian tugged open the front of his catsuit and brought out a small pad and pen and started making notes. After another stretch of time, he relaxed and sat up straight.

"They recommend the shore of the island Tortola," he informed the others. "An area called East End. The year 1780, month of July, when wrecks might reasonably be expected."

David stood up. "I will go there ahead of you and inspect the place," he said, all cool authority. "I can suggest to the people that there has been a violent storm."

"Do you want to borrow my equipment, sir?" The doctor proffered his bag.

"It will not be necessary," said the Controller with a smile.

"But, sir, there may be danger," the young historian was appalled by David's intent. "The weather in this century is quite uncontrolled. You may come across a real storm."

"If I do, I shall come back and warn you. You have the directions? Give them to me, please."

"But, sir ... let me go - "

A look silenced him - almost. "You may be seen ..." his anxiety was genuine.

"I shall not be seen," David said very calmly and the younger man bowed and handed over the notes without another word. David left through the front door. Controllers were obviously going to mean real control in the Twenty-second Century.

"Now tell me exactly what you want this fellow to believe," said the doctor. Felicity had been watching him rig up a - microphone? - to the apparatus on Jeremiah's head.

The fair-haired man told him, clear and succinctly. He knew his history and made a good job of it. He even gave the name of the barque on which poor Jeremiah was to think that he had foundered.

"Right," said the doctor. "Is that everything?"

"Please," interfered Felicity, "the facts are right, but could you put a bit of color, so that he'll accept them as authentic? Make him think The Lord had Redeemed him" - her hands fluttered about - "could you suggest that the storm - the Tempest - was a sort of Punishment for all his sins and now he has been Cleansed or something and can be happy?"

She was afraid that the doctor would think her a nut, but he didn't, nice man. He nodded slowly. "I think I can get that across. Not in those words, but I know the technique behind salvation sensation."

"We'd best leave him on his own," the historian said, and led Felicity out on to the porch. They sat on the low concrete wall that surrounded it, and she cried, "Heavens, it's getting dark!" in great surprise.

The road was empty. The sugar factory was roaring away and a donkey had started to bray in the waste ground behind the hotel. "Can I get you something to eat?" she asked.

"No thanks, Mrs. North. I shall be in quarantine anyway when I get home. They'd flush me right out if I took on food as well."

"Do you often time travel?" she asked idly.

"No, ma'am. I'm not senior enough. But I was responsible for this disaster, so they sent me to help straighten it out."

"Disaster? Jeremiah?"

"Yes, ma'am," he blushed. "The doctors were dealing with his adjustment, but he was my responsibility. I gave him complete freedom of the Center and showed him the transporters. He wasn't able to part-adapt, like most of the oldies do, and line up our time with some mythical place in his imagination, so we tried to get cold facts across to him, tell him where he was and how he got there, and the doctors still couldn't get him to accept. Who would have thought the little monkey'd have worked out how to manage a transporter? He did everything wrong, but by a million-to-one chance he somehow got himself carried here."

"Where is the transporter?"

"It was in line with the time-lab at the Center. Near your beach. The Controller sent it back this morning."

"Won't you need it to get back yourselves?"

"We have our own."

"Where?"

"Over there." He nodded, and Felicity stared at the empty far end of the porch. There was nothing there, but tiny motes of dust in the last rays of daylight were whirling round in a glimmering pool. They moved, and around them the air was strangely still.

"I understand," she lied. All the strange events of the last twenty hours were starting to press in on her harshly, and she felt as if she might disintegrate, like those bright specks of dust. She found that she was trembling. "Forgive me," she said. "I'm very tired."

"It must be difficult for you when you don't even know about the time-concept," the young man said kindly. "I get a shock myself when I think where the Controller's come from."

"He's about as far ahead of you, in time, as you are from me, isn't he?"

"A little further. I'm not sure, but I'd say he's due to be born about the time I die."

"Don't you know?"

"No, Mrs. North. How could I?"

"Well surely you can travel into the future as well as the past. Don't you all go and check what's going to happen to you?"

"It's forbidden," he said very gravely. The old blank wall. "The early time manipulators tried it and they lost some of their best men that way. We leave that to the higher mathematicians Mrs. North, and maybe they'll work out something, but I can't explain the danger if you don't understand the time concept. No, we don't travel into our future, but sometimes we get a visitor from it to give a helping hand. Very, very occasionally. Guess I'm the only one of my year to see a real next-century Controller."

She clung to the wall because her body had started to sway. Darkness was all around and the stars were twinkling vigorously. A fine night. Why was that important? Oh yes, ages and ages ago she had been going to commit suicide. Her mind drifted off and came back with a jerk. She was going to commit suicide. Definitely. Somewhere, someone was trying to stop her, but she wouldn't let them. She was definitely going to die. Remember, Felicity, it's important. No one's going to stop you from dying.

The light from the sitting room spilled out over the porch, and suddenly David was there in his own patch of movement and stillness, beside the other larger one.

"Everything is prepared," David said, and to Felicity, "You must eat, Lady. You are weary unto death."

She slipped into the sitting room where the doctor was murmuring into his microphone. He had stripped Jeremiah, and the white, concave little body wrung her heart.

Felicity picked up the pajamas and went through into George's bedroom. All the strength had gone out of her. She was indeed weary unto death - Death! That was the important thing. She rallied her energy. What was there to do? Make her bed? Make George's bed?

She pulled off the sheets and put clean ones on. She stuffed the dirty linen and the pajamas in the wash bucket. George would think they were the ones he had used before he went to Barbados. She washed the coffee cups and breakfast things and then climbed into a swimming costume. As soon as the visitors had gone she would go down to the sea.

She draped a towel around herself, gathered up her slippers, sunglasses and barbiturate pills and did a final check of the house. Gracious! there was Jeremiah's Seamless Robe-thing.

Felicity crept back into the sitting room. But everyone was on the porch, ready to go. The young historian was carrying Jeremiah like a puppet in his arms. David was giving them some last-minute instructions. They were all set. Felicity pushed the Seamless Robe into the doctor's arms.

"Good-bye," she said faintly. "I hope you have a good journey," she said politely.

David said, "You should have obeyed me and taken food. You are weak." But he was not angry, that was a comfort.

"There is one more thing," he told the man and took the towel and sunglasses and slippers from Felicity. "Go down to the end of the road in this time," he said, "and leave these things on the beach. Put a rock on them so that they shall be found in the morning. Now go."

"Your leave, sir. Mrs. North," they said, bowing as well as they could with all their encumbrances.

Then they stepped into the larger patch of quivering air and - disappeared. The larger trembling space vanished with them, but enough remained to contain David and Felicity.

He switched the sitting-room light off, pulled the front door to, and then he took half a step towards her and held out his hand. "Come," he said, smiling. "It is time."

Felicity shook her head and clung to the doorpost for support. "I'm going to do it my way."

"No, you're not. You're going to come with me."

"I'm afraid," she said.

"You don't have to be afraid. Come, and come willingly. I can't alter history. You must trust me."

"How can I trust you when you won't even be there?"

He sighed. "I have told you too much already. I shall have to erase our conversation from your mind - all of it - but nothing else, I promise you. When you reach your new life you will not remember me."

"Then I'm not going."

"Now I realize why they needed a Controller for this mission," he said, laughing at her. "History records many things of you, Felicity North, but not that you were stubborn as a mule."

"You talk about me as if I were to be famous," she complained, rallying every last bit of energy, still pulling back from that patch of moving air. "But I know myself. I have nothing left in me to be famous with."

"Let me put it this way," he said, "and then let us go. Felicity, if the mother of Einstein had said that her life had been completely useless, would you agree with her?"

"I don't understand you," she said.

"Then I will exaggerate to give you some idea. Can you envisage a world in which the Virgin Mary had died at the age of ten?"

Felicity still didn't really understand. She was shaking too much. But she let him pull her gently across the porch and into the transporter.