brains out.
The decision had cost Benson a battle with his conscience from which hehad emerged the sole survivor. The conscience was buried along with BillMyers, and all that remained was a purpose.
Evri-Flave stayed on the market unaltered. The night before the nationalelection, the World Sovereignty party distributed thousands of gallonsof Evri-Flave; their speakers, on every radio and television network,were backgrounded by soft music. The next day, when the vote wascounted, it was found that the American Nationalists had carried a fewbackwoods precincts in the Rockies and the Southern Appalachians and onecounty in Alaska, where there had been no distribution of Evri-Flave.
The dreams came back more often, now that Bill Myers was gone. Bensonwas only beginning to realize what a large fact in his life thecompanionship of the young psychologist had been. Well, a world of peaceand beauty was an omelet worth the breaking of many eggs....
He purchased another great tract of land near the city, and donated itto the UN for their new headquarters buildings; the same architects andlandscapists who had created the estate at Carondelet were put to workon it. In the middle of what was to become World City, they erected asmall home for Fred Benson. Benson was often invited to address thedelegates to the UN; always, there was soft piped-in music behind hiswords. He saw to it that Evri-Flave was available free to all UNpersonnel. The Senate of the United States elected him as perpetualU. S. delegate-in-chief to the UN; not long after, the Security Councilelected him their perpetual chairman.
In keeping with his new dignities, and to ameliorate his youthfulappearance, he grew a mustache and, eventually, a small beard. The blacknotebook in which he kept the records of his experiments was always withhim; page after page was filled with notes. Experiments in sonics, likethe one which had produced the ultrasonic stun-gun which rendered lethalweapons unnecessary for police and defense purposes, or the new musicalcombinations with which he was able to play upon every emotion andinstinct.
But he still dreamed, the same recurring dream of the young soldier andthe old man in the office. By now, he was consistently identifyinghimself with the latter. He took to carrying one of the thick-barrelledstun-pistols always, now. Alone, he practiced constantly with it,drawing, breaking soap-bubbles with the concentrated sound-waves itprojected. It was silly, perhaps, but it helped him in his dreams. Now,the old man with whom he identified himself would draw a stun-pistol,occasionally, to defend himself.
The years drained one by one through the hour-glass of Time. Year afteryear, the world grew more peaceful, more beautiful. There were no moreincidents like the mass-suicide of Munich or the mass-perversions of NewOrleans; the playing and even the composing of music was strictlycontrolled--no dangerous notes or chords could be played in a worlddrenched with Ingredient Beta. Steadily the idea grew that peace andbeauty were supremely good, that violence and ugliness were supremelyevil. Even competitive sports which simulated violence; even childrenborn ugly and misshapen....
* * * * *
He finished the breakfast which he had prepared for himself--he trustedno food that another had touched--and knotted the vivid blue scarf abouthis neck before slipping into the loose coat of glossy plum-brown, thenchecked the stun-pistol and pocketed the black notebook, itsplastileather cover glossy from long use. He stood in front of themirror, brushing his beard, now snow-white. Two years, now, and he wouldbe eighty--had he been anyone but The Guide, he would have long agoretired to the absolute peace and repose of one of the Elders' Havens.Peace and repose, however, were not for The Guide; it would take anothertwenty years to finish his task of remaking the world, and he would needevery day of it that his medical staff could borrow or steal for him. Hemade an eye-baffling practice draw with the stun-pistol, then holsteredit and started down the spiral stairway to the office below.
There was the usual mass of papers on his desk. A corps of secretarieshad screened out everything but what required his own personal andimmediate attention, but the business of guiding a world could only bereduced to a certain point. On top was the digest of the world's newsfor the past twenty-four hours, and below that was the agenda for theafternoon's meeting of the Council. He laid both in front of him,reading over the former and occasionally making a note on the latter.Once his glance strayed to the cardboard box in front of him, with theenvelope taped to it--the latest improvement on the Evri-Flave syrup,with the report from his own chemists, all conditioned to obedience,loyalty and secrecy. If they thought he was going to try that damnedstuff on himself....
There was a sudden gleam of light in the middle of the room, in front ofhis desk. No, a mist, through which a blue light seemed to shine. Thestun-pistol was in his hand--his instinctive reaction to anythingunusual--and pointed into the shining mist when it vanished and a manappeared in front of him; a man in the baggy green combat-uniform thathe himself had worn fifty years before; a man with a heavy automaticpistol in his hand. The gun was pointed directly at him.
* * * * *
The Guide aimed quickly and pressed the trigger of the ultrasonicstunner. The pistol dropped soundlessly on the thick-piled rug; the manin uniform slumped in an inert heap. The Guide sprang to his feet androunded the desk, crossing to and bending over the intruder. Why, thiswas the dream that had plagued him through the years. But it was endingdifferently. The young man--his face was startlingly familiar,somehow--was not killing the old man. Those years of practice with thestun-pistol....
He stooped and picked the automatic up. The young man was unconscious,and The Guide had his pistol, now. He slipped the automatic into hispocket and straightened beside his inert would-be slayer.
A shimmering globe of blue mist appeared around them, brightened to adazzle, and dimmed again to a colored mist before it vanished, and whenit cleared away, he was standing beside the man in uniform, in the sandybed of a dry stream at the mouth of a little ravine, and directly infront of him, looming above him, was a thing that had not been seen inthe world for close to half a century--a big, hot-smelling tank with ared star on its turret.
He might have screamed--the din of its treads and engines deafenedhim--and, in panic, he turned and ran, his old legs racing, his oldheart pumping madly. The noise of the tank increased as machine gunsjoined the uproar. He felt the first bullet strike him, just above thehips--no pain; just a tremendous impact. He might have felt the secondbullet, too, as the ground tilted and rushed up at his face. Then he wasdiving into a tunnel of blackness that had no end....
* * * * *
Captain Fred Benson, of Benson's Butchers, had been jerked back intoconsciousness when the field began to build around him. He wasstruggling to rise, fumbling the grenade out of his pocket, when itcollapsed. Sure enough, right in front of him, so close that he couldsmell the very heat of it, was the big tank with the red star on itsturret. He cursed the sextet of sanctimonious double-crossers eightthousand miles and fifty years away in space-time. The machine guns hadstopped--probably because they couldn't be depressed far enough to aimat him, now; that was a notorious fault of some of the newer Pan-Soviettanks. He had the bomb out of his pocket, when the machine guns beganfiring again, this time at something on his left. Wondering what hadcreated the diversion, he rocked back on his heels, pressed the button,and heaved, closing his eyes. As the thing left his fingers, he knewthat he had thrown too hard. His muscles, accustomed to the heaviercast-iron grenades, had betrayed him. For a moment, he was closer todespair than at any other time in the whole phantasmagoric adventure.Then he was hit, with physical force, by a wave of almost solid heat. Itdidn't smell like the heat of the tank's engines; it smelled like moltenmetal, with undertones of burned flesh. Immediately, there was amultiple explosion that threw him flat, as the tank's ammunition wentup. There were no screams. It was too fast for that. He opened his eyes.
The turret and top armor of the tank had vanished. The two massivetreads had been toppled over, one to either side. The body had coll
apsedbetween them, and it was running sticky trickles of molten metal. Heblinked, rubbed his eyes on the back of his hand, and looked again. Ofall the many blasted and burned-out tanks, Soviet and UN, that he hadseen, this was the most completely wrecked thing in his experience. Andhe'd done that with one grenade....
Remembering the curious manner in which, at the last, the tank had begunfiring at something to the side, he looked around, to see the crumpledbody in the pale violet-gray trousers and the plum-brown coat. Findinghis carbine and reloading it, he went over to the dead man, turning thebody over. He was an old man, with a white mustache and a small whitebeard--why, if the mustache were smaller and there were no beard, hewould pass for Benson's own father, who had died in 1962. The clothesweren't Turkish or Armenian or Persian, or anything one would expect inthis country.
The old man had a pistol in his coat pocket, and Benson pulled it outand looked at it, then did a double-take and grabbed for his