Assignment in Eternity

He sighed and gave up. "Joan. my dear, you are a bloodthirsty wench with ten thousand incarnations to go before you reach beatitude."

"I don't want to reach beatitude; I want to do old Brinckley in."

"Come along, then. Let's make some speed."

They were south of the Tehachapi by now and rapidly approaching Los Angeles. They flitted over the Sierra Madre range, shot across San Femando Valley, clipped the top of Mount Hollywood, and landed on the lawn of the President's Residence at Western University. Brincldey saw, or felt, them coming and tried to run for it, but Phil grappled with him.

He shot one thought to Joan. "You stay out of this, kid, unless 1 you for help."

Brinckley did not give up easily. His mind reached out and tried to engulf Phil's. Huxley felt himself slipping, giving way before the evil onslaught. It seemed as though he were being dragged down, drowned, in filthy quicksand.

But he steadied himself and fought back.

When Phil had finished that which was immediately necessary with Brincldey, he stood up and wiped his hands, as if to cleanse himself of the spiritual slime he had embraced"Let's get going," he said to Joan, "we're pushed for time."

"What did you do to him, Phil?" She stared with fascinated disgust at the thing on the ground.

"Little enough. I placed him in stasis. I've got to save him for use for a time. Up you go, girl. Out of here before we're noticed."

Up they shot, with Brinckley's body swept along behind by tight telekmetic bond. They stopped above the clouds. Brinckley floated beside them, starfished, eyes popping, mouth loose, his smooth pink face expressionless. "Ben!" Huxley was sending, "Ephraim Howe! Ambrose! To me! To me! Hurry!"

"Coming, Phil!" came Coburn's answer.

"I hear." The strong calm thought held the quality of the Senior. "What is it, son? Tell me."

"Not time!" snapped Phil. "Yourself, Senior, and all others that can. Rendezvous! Hurry!"

"We come" The thought was still calm, unhurried. But there were two ragged holes in the roof of Moulton's tent. Moulton and Howe were already out of sight of Camp Mark Twain,

Slashing, slicing through the air they came, the handful of adepts who guarded the fire. From five hundred miles to the north they came, racing pigeons hurrying home. Camp councilors, two-thirds of the small group of camp matrons, some few from scattered points on the continent, they came in response to Huxley's call for help and the Senior's unprecedented tocsin. A housewife turned out the fire in the oven and disappeared into the sky. A taxi driver stopped his car and left his fares without a word. Research groups on Shasta broke their tight rapport, abandoned their beloved work, and came fast!

"And now, Philip?" Howe spoke orally as he arrested his trajectory and hung beside Huxley.

Huxley flung a hand toward Brinckley. "He has what we need to know to strike nowl Where's Master Ling?"

"He and Mrs. Draper guard the Camp."

"I need him. Can she do it alone?"

Clear and mellow, her voice rang in his head from half a state away. "/ can!"

"The tortoise flies." The second thought held the quality of deathless merriment which was the unmistakable characteristic of the ancient Chinese.

Joan felt a soft touch at her mind, then Master Ling was among them, seated carefully tailor-fashion on nothingness. "I attend; my body follows," he a

Whereupon Joan realized that he had borrowed the faculties other mind to project himself into their presence more quickly than he could levitate the distance. She felt unreasonably nattered by the attention.

Huxley commenced at once. "Through his mind " He indicated Brinkley, I have learned of many others with whom there can be no truce. We must search them out, deal with them at once, before they can rally from what has happened to him. But I need help. Master, will you extend the present and examine him?"

Ling had tutored them in discrimination of time and perception of the present, taught them to stand off and perceive duration from eternity. But he was incredibly more able than his pupils. He could split the beat of a fly's wing into a thousand discrete instants, or grasp a millenium as a single flash of experience. His discrimination of time and space was bound neither by his metabolic rate nor by his molar dimensions.

Now he poked gingerly at Brinckley's brain like one who seeks a lost jewel in garbage. He felt out the man's memory patterns and viewed his life as one picture. Joan, with amazement, saw his everpresent smile give way to a frown of distaste. His mind had been left open to any who cared to watch. She peered through his mind, then cut off. If there were that many truly vicious spirits in the world, she preferred to encounter them one at a time, as necessary, not experience them all at once.

Master Ling's body joined the group, melted into his projection.

Huxley, Howe, Moulton, and Bierce followed the Chinese's delicate work with close attention. Howe's face was bleakly impassive; Moulton's face, aged to androgynous sensitivity, moved from side to side while he clucked disapproval of such wickedness. Bierce looked more like Mark Twain than ever. Twain in an implacable, lowering rage.

Master Ling looked up. "Yes, yes," said Moulton, "I suppose we must act, Ephraim."

"We have no choice," Huxley stated, with a completely unconscious disregard of precedent. "Will you assign the tasks. Senior?"

Howe glanced sharply at him. "No, Philip. No. Go ahead. Carry on."

Huxley checked himself in surprise for the briefest instant, then took his cue. "You'll help me. Master Ling. Ben!"

"Waiting!"

He meshed mind to mind, had Ling show him his opponent and the data he needed. "Got it? Need any help?"

"Grandfather Stonebender is enough"

"Okay. Nip off and attend to it."

"Chalk it up.' He was gone, a rush of air in his wake.

"This one is yours. Senator Moulton."

"I know." And Moulton was gone. By ones and twos he gave them their assignments, and off they went to do that which must be done.

There was no argument. Many of them had been aware long before Huxley was that a day of action must inevitably come to pass. but they had waited with quiet serenity, busy with the work at hand, till time should incubate the seed.

In a windowless study of a mansion on Long Island, soundproofed, cleverly locked and guarded, ornately furnished, a group of Bve was met three men, one woman, and a thing in a wheel chair. It glared at the other four in black fury, glared without eyes, for its forehead dropped unbroken to its cheekbones, a smooth sallow expanse.

A lap robe, tucked loosely across the chair masked, but did not hide, the tact that the creature had no legs.

It gripped the arms of the chair. "Must I do all the thinking for you fools?" it asked in a sweet gentle voice. "You, Arthurson you let Moulton slip that Shasta Bill past the Senate. Moron." The epithet was uttered caressingly.

Arthurson shifted in his chair. "I examined his mind. The bill was harmless. It was a swap on the Missouri Valley deal. I told you'-"

"You examined his mind, eh? Hmm he led you on a personally conducted tour. you fool. A Shasta bill! When will you mindless idiots learn that no good ever came out of Shasta?" It smiled approvingly.

"Well, how was I to know? I thought a camp near the mountain might confuse ... them."

"Mindless idiot. The time will come when I will find you dispensable." The thing did not wait for the threat to sink in, but continued, "Enough of that now. We must move to repair the damage. They are on the offensive now. Agnes "

"Yes." The woman answered.

"Your preaching has got to pick up "

"I've done my best."

"Not good enough. I've got to have a wave of religious hysteria that will wash out the Bill of Rights before the Shasta camp breaks up for the summer. We will have to act fast before that time and we can't be hampered by a lot oflegalisms."