“I see. But it’s a sickness that he won’t try to cure.”

In a low voice, leaning close to me so that I could have put my lips to hers, she said, “Were you holding anything back from him? Tell me the truth. What did Vornan say about energy?”

“Nothing. I swear.”

“And do you really believe he’s—”

“Most of the time. I’m not convinced. You know, I’ve got scientific reservations.”

“Aside from them?”

“I believe,” I said.

We were silent. I let my eyes roam down the ridge of her spine to the blossoming of her hips. Beads of perspiration glittered on her upturned tawny buttocks. Her toes were outstretched and pressed close in a little gesture of tension.

She said, “Jack wants to meet Vornan.”

“I know.”

“So do I. Let me confess it, Leo. I’m hungry for him.”

“Most women are.”

“I’ve never been unfaithful to Jack. But I would be, with Vornan. I’d tell Jack first, of course. But I’m drawn to him. Just seeing him on television, I want to touch him, to have him against me, in me. Am I shocking you, Leo?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“The comforting thing is that I know I’ll never get the chance. There must be a million women ahead of me in line. Have you noticed, Leo, the hysteria that’s building up over this man? It’s almost a cult. It’s killing off Apocalyptism practically overnight. Last fall everyone thought the world was about to end, and now everyone thinks we’re going to fill up with tourists from the future. I watch the faces of the people on the screens, the ones who follow Vornan around, cheering, kneeling. He’s like a messiah. Does any of this sound sensible to you?”

“All of it does. I’m not blind, Shirley. I’ve seen it up close.”

“It frightens me.”

“Me also.”

“And when you say you think he’s real — you, hardheaded old Leo Garfield — that’s even more scary.” Shirley gave me the shrill giggle again. “Living out here on the edge of nowhere, I sometimes think the whole world’s crazy except Jack and me.”

“And lately you’ve had your doubts about Jack.”

“Well, yes.” Her hand covered mine. “Why should people be responding to Vornan like this?”

“Because there’s never been anyone like him before.”

“He’s not the first charismatic figure to come along.”

“He’s the first one peddling this particular tale,” I said. “And the first in the era of modern communications. The whole world can see him in three dimensions and natural color all the time. He gets to them. His eyes — his smile — the man’s got a power, Shirley. You feel it through the screen. I feel it close up.”

“What will happen, eventually?”

“Eventually he’ll go back to 2999,” I said lightly, “and write a best-seller about his primitive ancestors.”

Shirley laughed hollowly and we let the conversation trickle to nothingness. Her words troubled me. Not that I was surprised to find she was drawn to Vornan, for she was far from alone in that; what upset me was her willingness to admit it to me. I resented becoming the confidant of her passions. A woman admits her illicit desires to a harem eunuch, perhaps, or to another woman, but not to a man whom she realizes has suppressed designs of his own on her. Surely she knew that but for my respect for their marriage, I would have reached out for her long ago and would have been received willingly. So why tell me such things, knowing that they must hurt me? Did she think I would use my supposed influence to lure Vornan into her bed? That out of love for her I would play the panderer?

We lazed away the day. Toward late afternoon Jack came to me and said, “Maybe you aren’t interested, but Vornan’s on the screen. He’s being interviewed in San Diego by a panel of theologians and philosophers and stuff. Do you want to watch?”

Not really, I thought. I had come here to escape from Vornan, and somehow no moment passed without mention of him. But I failed to answer, and Shirley said yes. Jack activated the screen nearest us, and there was Vornan, big as life, radiating charm in three dimensions. The camera gave us a view of the panel: five distinguished experts in eschatology, some of whom I recognized. I spied the long nose and drooping brows of Milton Clayhorn, one of the pundits of our San Diego campus, the man who, they say, has been devoting his career to getting Christ out of Christianity. I saw the blunt features and time-freckled skin of Dr. Naomi Gersten, behind whose hooded eyes lurked six thousand years of Semitic anguish. The other three seemed familiar; I suspected they had been neatly chosen to represent each creed. We had come in late in the discussion, but as it turned out, just in time for the detonation of Vornan’s megaton bomb.

“ — no organized religious movement in your era whatever?” Clayhorn was saying. “A withering away of the church, so to speak?”

Vornan nodded curtly.

“But the religious idea itself,” Clayhorn vociferated. “That can’t be gone! There are certain eternal verities! Man must establish a relationship delineating the boundaries of the universe and the boundaries of his own soul. He—”

“Perhaps,” Dr. Gersten said to Vornan in her small cracked voice, “you could tell us if you understand at all what we mean by religion, eh?”

“Certainly. A statement of human dependence on a more powerful external force,” said Vornan, looking pleased with himself.

A furry-voiced moderator said, “I think that’s an excellent formulation, don’t you, Monsignor?”

I recognized now the long-chinned man in the turned-about collar: Meehan, a television priest, a figure of fair charisma himself, who spent a moment summoning resonance and said, “Yes, that’s excellently put, in its fashion. It’s refreshing to know that our guest comprehends the concept of religion, even if” — the Monsignor showed a momentary crack in his faзade — “as he says, our present-day religions have ceased to play a meaningful role in the life of his times. I venture to say that perhaps Mr. Vornan is underestimating the strength of religion in his day, and possibly is, as so many individuals do today, projecting his personal lack of belief onto society as a whole. Might I have a comment on that?”

Vornan smiled. Something ominous sparkled in his eyes. I felt the clutch of fear. Using the eyes and the lips at once! He was cranking up the catapult for a blow that would smash the enemy walls. The panel members saw it too. Clayhorn cringed. Dr. Gersten seemed to vanish like a wary tortoise into the folds of her own neck. The famed Monsignor braced himself as if for the blade of the guillotine.

Vornan said mildly, “Shall I tell you what we have learned of man’s relationship to the universe? We have discovered, you see, the manner by which life came into being on the earth, and our knowledge of the Creation has had its effect on our religious beliefs. I am not an archaeologist, please understand, and I can give no details beyond what I say here. But this is what we now know: Once, in the distant past, our planet was wholly lifeless. There was a sea covering nearly everything, with rocks here and there, and both sea and land were lacking even in the merest microbe. Then our planet was visited by explorers from another star. They did not land. They merely orbited our world and saw that it was without life, and thus of no interest to them. They paused only long enough to jettison certain garbage that had accumulated aboard their ship, and then journeyed elsewhere, while the garbage they had dumped descended through the atmosphere of the earth and found its way into the sea, introducing certain factors that created a chemical disturbance which set in motion the beginning of the process that resulted in the phenomenon known as” — the panel was in turmoil: the camera swung in mercilessly to reveal the grimaces, the scowls, the wild eyes, the stony jaws, the gaping lips — “life on earth.”