All this, it was explained to Caxton, was much too involved a process. Adeledicnander simplified the method by - what? Caxton couldn’t quite get it clear. Apparently, the opposing fields were not needed because the adeledicnander electrons ‘knew’ how to be at different heights.

  Though he could not understand the science, they all three presently understood the practical operation.

  And that was the second day.

  On day three, they were taken up in a ship to the top of the atmosphere.

  From that height, the three men from a distant time looked down on the planet. It was a tour, and a bird’s-eye view of a world about the size of Earth, it said in the guidebook they each held. This one was named Blake; and after a while it was too much to see quickly.

  Cities and more cities. Endless miles of agriculture, then a vast ocean. Their vessel moved through the outer fringes of the atmosphere at a speed that devoured the miles and girdled the planet in approximately seven hours. At that height and that speed it was difficult to distinguish Blake from Earth. The continents were not clearly defined; so they could have been anything, anywhere.

  Each morning, Caxton got out of his beautiful bed in his fine, large room, and he looked around him, and shrugged impatiently. And, when the schedule for the day was presently announced - always somebody else’s idea, never his - there was the same sense of enforcement, and the belief that ahead was another joyless day. And it was.

  On their tours, he saw almost nothing. His mind was elsewhere than on the scene around, or below, or beyond. Afterwards, when Renfrew and Blake were discussing the day’s activities, a dim memory would flit through Caxton’s mind of the event described. And for a few moments he would smile and nod, and even make an occasional retrospective comment of his own. Sometimes - not too often - in those after-memories, he found himself tolerantly interested in the day. At such moments, he was again amazed and disappointed in himself. Because, really, he told himself, there was no hurry. Past time waits forever … somewhere. And yet, by the next morning, some part of him didn’t believe that anymore; and there was the anger, and the frustration, and another endless day of tagging along with his two excited companions.

  The change came on the eleventh day. It was noon. Blake and Caxton were in their hotel apartment. Renfrew, who had gone downstairs for an unstated reason, came in grinning. He said, ‘I’ve been hearing those low-key thoughts of yours, Peter, so I finally let them penetrate.’

  He explained: ‘You may be interested to know that I’ve just bought tickets to Earth for all of us, and I understand there will be some equivalent of a ticker-tape welcome awaiting us when we get there.’

  Silent but reflective, Caxton continued to lie on the couch, but he shook his head ever so slightly. Getting to Earth was apparently going to be as simple as Renfrew wanting it to happen.

  I, he thought, feeling baffled, couldn’t have done it under three weeks or a month.

  Thinking that, he had one of his few wonders about himself, but the negative feeling didn’t last very long. Because…

  To Earth. Thank God.

  XVII

  They made the trip, of course, in three hours; and of course, it took almost as long to get to their hotel from the spaceport through the cheering crowds.

  That night - when asked by interviewers on an around-the-world broadcast - what he wanted most to see on Earth, Caxton said, ‘The city of Lakeside.’

  The interviewers were astonished. ‘But why? You were not born there. That isn’t where you lived.’

  ‘I dreamed it,’ said Caxton blandly. He embellished his lie. ‘Somewhere in the long sleep, perhaps as I was coming to, that name came to me, and so I’m curious. Obviously’ - with the same blandness - ‘after five centuries, we can only look at our home towns like people exploring archaeological remains. Naturally, I want to go there. But Lakeside first.’

  It was a bold thought, it seemed to him, to name the city where he had emerged from the Palace of Immortality - several hundred years ago. But he had to believe that the Possessors knew that it was he who had gone along on this incredible journey, and they must know, also, that he had a purpose connected with them. So his presence here was not a secret.

  No no, thought Caxton, they can see me, but I can’t see them. His hope was that his frankness and his sincerity - as proved by his coming this tremendous distance in time - would now win him the entry that had earlier (somewhere) been denied him.

  That, it seemed to him, was his simplest and most direct possibility.

  The camera crew had come directly to the hotel; and so, as Caxton emerged from his part of the interview, Blake was waiting for him at the door. Through the transparencies behind Blake, Caxton could see that several other men were watching him as if they had personal plans for him.

  But it was Blake first, and Blake who said, ‘That’s the one that does it, Bud.’ Caxton had an idea of what was coming, and braced himself. He considered Blake a formidable individual, and it had simply been his good luck so far that the man’s attention had been on his former boss. Thus he had avoided a direct confrontation with one of the shrewdest people he had ever met - until now.

  Blake continued, ‘Peter,’ he said, and he shook that dark-haired head of his chastisingly, ‘you never lived in Lakeside, did you?’

  Caxton had to admit, no, he hadn’t.

  ‘In fact, if I recall correctly, your home city is about five hundred miles further west.’ When Caxton said nothing. Blake asked, ‘Have you ever been to Lakeside?’

  Caxton decided that his one trip there in the year 2083 A.D. didn’t count as a visit. So he shook his head once more, and tried this time to put on a somewhat mystified expression.

  ‘Okay, okay!’ Blake was shaking his head. ‘If that’s the way you want it, my friend, that’s the way it will be.’ He caught Caxton’s arm in a comradely gesture, and drew him through the door to the men who were waiting outside the broadcast room. ‘There’s a man here who wants to meet you.’ He beckoned and a stern-faced man in his forties came forward. Blake said, ‘Mr Bustaman, I want you to meet my friend, Peter Caxton. Peter, this is - ‘ He said a word that sounded like ‘Schlemiel,’ but of course that was impossible, and after such a beginning Caxton dared not ask for the name again. Something Bustaman. He left it at that; and was murmuring his acknowledgement when for the first time he actually looked at the man.

  It was a moment of déjà-vu. Not, ‘I’ve been here before,’ but ‘I’ve seen this man before.’ Where? Caxton began to tremble. In the twentieth century - where else? And if that was so, then… then -

  Blake was speaking again. ‘Mr Bustaman differs from most of the people we have met in this era because like Cassellahat he speaks Middle American just about like a native.’

  A Possessor!

  What saved Caxton from standing there and giving himself away, for he was actually overwhelmed, was that the other men were pressing forward, smiling, shaking his hand, murmuring words in the dialect of the time which Caxton could now understand, somewhat, and to which he responded in his slow way of speaking each word.

  And with each passing moment, he was recovering his front, which was normally made of marble and iron; and every instant he was thinking, Where? Who? During that minute and a half of rapid introductions, his memory ranged over his entire experience with the Possessors and it was not so much, then, that he was able to visualise Bustaman aged to seventy years, but that in wildly casting his thought over the various people he had seen in, and in connection with, the Palace of Immortality, his mind focused swiftly on one person. . That old man… . What was it the salesman, Kellie, had said: ‘He looks like all the tough sales managers in the world?’

  I’ve got to keep contact with this fellow! As they were separating, he said as much in his desperation - and got a surprised look from Bustaman. ‘But, of course,’ said the man, politely, ‘I’ll see you in the morning, as we have just arranged.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Peter’ - it was Blake - ‘you’ve done it again.’ He caught Caxton around the shoulders with one arm, laughed in a friendly but slightly apologetic fashion, and leaning forward, explained to Bustaman, ‘We can’t seem to get this man all the way into the twenty-fifth century. He keeps slipping … somewhere.’ To Caxton, Blake said, ‘Mr Bustaman has a private air yacht that everyone agrees is superior in comfort to what the government has available; so he will be taking us to Lakeside tomorrow.’

  XVIII

  The procession of machines that flew along to Lakeside the next day consisted of Bustaman’s beautiful ship, a government protective vessel, and a large craft with camera crews and reporters, who, apparently, would be following their every move.

  The interior of Bustaman’s luxury ship was the size of a private railroad car; and, except that it was streamlined in the familiar airstream style, that was just about the way it looked from the outside, also. Caxton sat in a plush chair beside a huge view window; what bothered him was that, presumably, he had already achieved his purpose. The sudden appearance of Bustaman was, in its way, all that he had hoped to accomplish in mentioning Lakeside at all.

  Nonetheless, he decided he would not waste the trip, but would boldly try to locate the house he wanted… .

  There was only one trouble, it developed, with that goal. When the expedition reached Lakeside, and under his guidance flew back and forth over the city, he couldn’t find anything that looked like the house.

  He kept telling himself that hills were essentially changeless. Hard to believe that someone - a builder, a city planning commission, a military necessity, or whatever - had taken the time, the trouble, and the money to level a viewsite like the one on which the house had stood in 2083 A.D.

  Yet, in all Lakeside, there were visible only two major hill formations. Caxton approached them from all angles - and only succeeded in confusing himself. From the air and from the ground there was nothing that resembled what he had seen. Of course, it was now four hundred years later. On one of the hilltops, the city had constructed a museum, which was rather stupid, it seemed to a highly irritated Caxton. When, on checking, he learned that it had been built only forty-eight years before, he began to have the sickening suspicion that this was indeed the spot; and that here, as a result of somebody’s idiocy, was the end of his hope.

  They flew back to New York late in the afternoon. Caxton had the feeling that he must look like a fool to those people who had watched him on their wall screens all day - or at least on and off all day. He couldn’t accept that anybody was still that interested in the visitors from the past so that they would continue to put their principal attention on such a dull event as a journey in search of nothing.

  Yet, when he was questioned on television that night, the interviewers seemed to be intent, seemed to take him seriously, and were enormously interested in his statement that perhaps what he was looking for could not be found in a one-day visit. He therefore stated it as his intention to move to Lakeside for a while.

  ‘But what do you expect to find, Mr Caxton?’ the interviewer insisted.

  ‘I don’t know. I have a feeling I’ll know it when I see it.’

  The man was smiling. ‘Mr Caxton, you have certainly captured the imagination of this rather prosaic era with that mystic dream of yours. It has some of the aspects of the ancient quest for the Holy Grail, and we shall’ - he looked up at the camera - ‘keep our viewers informed of the progress of the quest. Good luck, sir.’

  He held out his hand, and Caxton shook it. On his way to his room, he was thinking: My quest is for immortality, and for that quest I have the same fanaticism as those long-ago crusaders. In fact -

  It occurred to him that for what the announcer knew of his purpose, the comparison was inappropriate and even lacking in good taste. But there was a similarity to his real, hidden goal, for those quest-seekers long ago there had come the dreadful awareness that man was mortal; and so they had done in their way and for their time what he was doing now, with the same total commitment. Had theirs been madness? He had always thought so. Was his? If it was, or wasn’t, either way it was impossible to give up. What else was there to do? Go back to Centaurus? - he couldn’t care less. Get involved with the twenty-fifth century? Grudgingly, he agreed with Blake and Renfrew that such a thing was not impossible, but it wouldn’t be easy. They were like immigrants from a very backward country, and such types usually settled in some ghetto of their own kind. Only there was no such ghetto for immigrants out of time.

  That night, while Blake and Renfrew watched him wordlessly - for a while - Caxton packed his clothes. Aware of their eyes following his movements, he felt infinitely foolish, and yet determined. It was Caxton who finally broke the silence. ‘I’ll be gone for a few days. I hope you don’t mind.’

  The two men exchanged glances, and then Renfrew came over to where Caxton was bending over his suitcase, and threw one arm over his shoulder. He said impulsively, ‘We’re going with you, pal. Ned and I can work out of Lakeside just as easily as from anywhere else. Okay?’

  It was another one of those crazy, emotional moments… For God’s sake, thought Caxton as he fought back the tears, if I don’t watch out for these two one of these days I’ll burst out crying like a woman, and tell them the whole mad story.

  They moved to Lakeside.

  Bustaman came along. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘I’m independently wealthy. So I’ll just place myself at your disposition. I have nothing else that I’d rather do.’

  Caxton considered that grimly. It was beginning to seem certain that even the ‘opposition’ in the Palace of Immortality was not planning to make things easy for him.

  XIX

  During the next seventeen days, Caxton’s daily journal - if he had had the patience to write one - could have read:

  Went to Piffer’s Road every day for a week. It’s now part of Central East 42, which consists of a long shopping mall, running thirty-seven and a half miles from somewhere north of Warwick Boulevard to somewhere south of Kissling Drive, with a lake of residences extending along either side. There are seventy-three Central East cities of this type. This is what Cassellahat meant when he said that there had been a return to the city structure. In Central East 42, I found no clue to the Palace of Immortality.

  … It is the middle of the second week. I managed to give everybody the slip, and have hired a research firm to trace down the ownership of all the houses on the two hills in Lakeside. It will take a few days.

  … Well, it appears that a family named Magoelson owned one of the houses until the property was taken over for the museum. And that in every generation, the head of the Magoelson family was called Daniel. The research firm is now tracing down the Magoelson family in this generation. They expect to have the addressees for me by tomorrow or the day after. Is this it? Have I found a Possessor of the main Palace group? I hope so. Renfrew and Blake are becoming restless… .

  That night - of the day he had that thought - Renfrew and Blake invited him out for a drink. Caxton went, but he was uneasy. Something in their manner…

  In the darkness of the bar, they raised their glasses at Blake’s suggestion, and drank to the beautiful women of all ages. Having sipped from his glass, Blake made a face, and said, ‘As we may now surmise, people probably reflect in their body odors the food they eat. Thus, Chinese dogs of our time barked ferociously at white visitors, and ignored Chinese travelers, who presumably ate the same food as the people of the village. And so it could be that we wouldn’t care to associate closely with a woman of Shakespeare’s day, and would be quite willing to leave Cleopatra to Caesar and Marc Anthony. Bathing apparently is not the factor. Large quantities of cologne help, but it looks like we may have to subject our cells to several more months of the current era diet before we finally merge into the universal smell.’

  He paused; and Caxton, who was beginning to feel relieved - the conversation so far didn’t seem to be too different, or any more significant than previous ones - did one of his square ‘things,’ as he realised afterward: he actually took Blake’s words at their face value. He said, ‘I’ve looked into that a little. I think it’s the fertiliser they used then, and now. In old China, you may recall, human feces was carefully fed back into the soil with nauseating results, from the Western point of view. Here, they use a chemical compound, unknown in our time.’

  He was about to give a more detailed description of the substance, when he caught a look in Renfrew’s eyes, and stopped. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

  Blake parted his lips to speak again, but Renfrew placed a restraining hand on his friend’s arm, and said with his smile, ‘Remember when you two offered me your money. I said I had a thought-’

  Caxton could feel a change in his face.

  He had forgotten.

  The gift of two and a half million credits from the governments of the four habitable planets of the Centaurus suns was apparently a division into three equal amounts of money that Renfrew had invested for them in government bonds five hundred years before. At the time, a law had been passed authorising such a long-term investment, and of course it was an arbitrary government act that had now divided it equally among the surviving time travelers. All the money in truth belonged to Renfrew.

  Shortly after this source of the lavish funds was clarified, Blake had immediately offered his share to Renfrew and, after the slightest hesitation, so had Caxton. To his disappointment, Renfrew had not immediately rejected the proffered money. At the time he said with a smile, ‘Let’s leave things as they are. But I’ve got a thought about something that may require me to ask you both to chip in rather extensively. If that materialises, then I’ll take a raincheck. Otherwise, forget it.’

  Which was a pretty generous statement. But it sort of left the money not Caxton’s.

  Now, he braced himself for disaster, thinking: Am I going to have to make an accounting?