course, less well-meaning persons ferreted out
the secrets of its disciplines and drugs, and put their own versions on
the market. Many a refrigerator in many an empty apaitment held dishes
of blood and tissue culture while the absconding family played hookey
in Gondwanaland.
Within the Wenlock empire, too, all was not well. An article in Dental
World for January of the previous year entitled "The Discipline and
Dental Pay" first brought the name of Norman Silverstone to Bush's
attention, and then he came across it again in one or two of the other
tattered magazines. As a commentator pointed out, the whole theory of
mind-travel rested on few facts and a mass of supposition, rather as
the theories of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud had, at the end of the
nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Silverstone
played Jung to Wenlock's Freud. Although nobody could deny the fact of
mind-travel, there were several who denied that Wenlock's was the correct
interpretation of what it was. Most powerful among these was Wenlock's
one-time friend and associate, Silverstone. Silverstone maintained that
the human mind could certainly be freed from the psychotic barrier behind
which it had built its time-locked supremacy over the rest of the animal
kingdom; but he claimed that there were yet more extraordinary powers
to be released, and that the limitations of mind-travel, debarring most
human travelers from most of historic time, were evidence of the fact
that the discipline was but a fragment -- probably a distorted fragment --
of a greater whole.
Silverstone was of a retiring disposition, a man who refused to be
interviewed or photographed, and his occasional contributions to the
dispute were so abstruse that it could hardly be said that he constituted
a too-formidable opposition to Wenlock. Nevertheless, he and his followers
provided an instrument that proved useful to governments wanting to have
a hand in the administration of the local institutes and mind-stations.
For obvious reasons, the supply of antique magazines stopped at the time
of the revolution, but Bush thought he could see clearly enough the ensuing
train of events. In most countries, the severe slump conditions would be
accentuated by stock market crashes; unemployed men would march on the
capital; the half-starved would riot; tougher governments would be called
for, by haves and have-nots alike, although for different reasons.
He sat in the untidy room, inventing discomforts.
The unsettled conditions, would not last. The nations would recover,
as they had recovered before. He already had a sign that General Bolt's
regime might be of limited duration -- almost a mystical sign, although
at the time it had gone almost unheeded. When he was standing in Room 3,
locked in a sort of fit and waiting for the summons before Franklin, the
Dark Woman had appeared. At the time, his mind had been too preoccupied
for this visitant from the future to register fully with him. But he
realized now that, shadowy as she was, she had glowed slightly, for
all the world like a phantom in the mock-Victorian pageants his mother
had taken him to as a boy. It could mean only one thing: that in her
age, she was standing in the open; in other words, the Institute was
demolished in her day; which argued that the General's protective wing
would not always be there. Not always, but his phantom watcher might
be five hundred years ahead, which was a long time. Well, there was
hope. The most dreadful things passed.
He looked round the waiting room. She was not with him at present. However
faithful she was, she had to have some time off duty. Then he thought:
Or is she a figment of my imagination, my anima? Aren't I radically
unbalanced, by turns cowardly and over-bold, under-sexed and sex-obsessed?
Maybe the Dark Woman is just a projection of my dissociated personality.
But she was more than that. She was the future, for its own
the secrets of its disciplines and drugs, and put their own versions on
the market. Many a refrigerator in many an empty apaitment held dishes
of blood and tissue culture while the absconding family played hookey
in Gondwanaland.
Within the Wenlock empire, too, all was not well. An article in Dental
World for January of the previous year entitled "The Discipline and
Dental Pay" first brought the name of Norman Silverstone to Bush's
attention, and then he came across it again in one or two of the other
tattered magazines. As a commentator pointed out, the whole theory of
mind-travel rested on few facts and a mass of supposition, rather as
the theories of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud had, at the end of the
nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Silverstone
played Jung to Wenlock's Freud. Although nobody could deny the fact of
mind-travel, there were several who denied that Wenlock's was the correct
interpretation of what it was. Most powerful among these was Wenlock's
one-time friend and associate, Silverstone. Silverstone maintained that
the human mind could certainly be freed from the psychotic barrier behind
which it had built its time-locked supremacy over the rest of the animal
kingdom; but he claimed that there were yet more extraordinary powers
to be released, and that the limitations of mind-travel, debarring most
human travelers from most of historic time, were evidence of the fact
that the discipline was but a fragment -- probably a distorted fragment --
of a greater whole.
Silverstone was of a retiring disposition, a man who refused to be
interviewed or photographed, and his occasional contributions to the
dispute were so abstruse that it could hardly be said that he constituted
a too-formidable opposition to Wenlock. Nevertheless, he and his followers
provided an instrument that proved useful to governments wanting to have
a hand in the administration of the local institutes and mind-stations.
For obvious reasons, the supply of antique magazines stopped at the time
of the revolution, but Bush thought he could see clearly enough the ensuing
train of events. In most countries, the severe slump conditions would be
accentuated by stock market crashes; unemployed men would march on the
capital; the half-starved would riot; tougher governments would be called
for, by haves and have-nots alike, although for different reasons.
He sat in the untidy room, inventing discomforts.
The unsettled conditions, would not last. The nations would recover,
as they had recovered before. He already had a sign that General Bolt's
regime might be of limited duration -- almost a mystical sign, although
at the time it had gone almost unheeded. When he was standing in Room 3,
locked in a sort of fit and waiting for the summons before Franklin, the
Dark Woman had appeared. At the time, his mind had been too preoccupied
for this visitant from the future to register fully with him. But he
realized now that, shadowy as she was, she had glowed slightly, for
all the world like a phantom in the mock-Victorian pageants his mother
had taken him to as a boy. It could mean only one thing: that in her
age, she was standing in the open; in other words, the Institute was
demolished in her day; which argued that the General's protective wing
would not always be there. Not always, but his phantom watcher might
be five hundred years ahead, which was a long time. Well, there was
hope. The most dreadful things passed.
He looked round the waiting room. She was not with him at present. However
faithful she was, she had to have some time off duty. Then he thought:
Or is she a figment of my imagination, my anima? Aren't I radically
unbalanced, by turns cowardly and over-bold, under-sexed and sex-obsessed?
Maybe the Dark Woman is just a projection of my dissociated personality.
But she was more than that. She was the future, for its own
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