Phil turned on him. “Well, what do you think?”
“Oh, the same as you do, I guess. I’m stumped. Does anybody mind if I eat breakfast—or drink some coffee, at least?”
Bierce came in before they had a chance to talk it over after breakfast—by tacit consent they had held their tongues during a sketchy meal.
“Good morning, ma’am. Good morning, gentlemen.”
“Good morning, Mr. Bierce.”
“I see,” he said, searching their faces, “that none of you look very happy this morning. That is not surprising; no one does immediately after experiencing the records.”
Ben pushed back his chair and leaned across the table at Bierce. “Those dreams were deliberately arranged for us?”
“Yes, indeed—but we were sure that yo u were ready to profit by them. But I have come to ask you to interview the Senior. If you can hold your questions for him, it will be simpler.”
“The Senior?”
“You haven’t met him as yet. It is the way we refer to the one we judge best fitted to coordinate our activities.”
Ephraim Howe had the hills of New England in his face, lean gnarled cabinet- maker’s hands.
He was not young. There was courtly grace in his lanky figure. Everything about him—the twinkle in his pale blue eyes, the clasp of his hand, his drawl-bespoke integrity.
“Sit yourselves down,” he said, “I’ll come straight to the point”—he called it ‘pint.’ “You’ve been exposed to a lot of curious things and you’ve a right to know why. You’ve seen the Ancient Records now—part of ’em. I’ll tell you how this institution came about, what it’s for, and why you are going to be asked to join us.”
“Wait a minute, Waaaait a minute,” he added, holding up a hand. “Don’t say anything just yet…”
When Fra Junipero Serra first laid eyes on Mount Shasta in 1781, the Indians told him it was a holy place, only for medicine men. He assured them that he was a medicine man, serving a greater Master, and to keep face, dragged his sick, frail old body up to the snow line, where he slept before returning.
The dream he had there—of the Garden of Eden, the Fall, and the Deluge—convinced him that it was indeed a holy place. He returned to San Francisco, planning to found a mission at Shasta. But there was too much for one old man to do—so many souls to save, so many mouths to feed. He surrendered his soul to rest two years later, but laid an injunction on a fellow monk to carry out his intention, It is recorded that this friar left the northernmost mission in 1785 and did not return.
The Indians fed the holy man who lived on the mountain until 1843, by which time he had gathered about him a group of neophytes, three Indians, a Russian, a Yankee mountainman. The Russian carried on after the death of the friar until joined by a Chinese, fled from his indenture.
The Chinese made more progress in a few weeks than the Russian had in half of a lifetime; the Russian gladly surrendered first place to him.
The Chinese was still there over a hundred years later, though long since retired from administration. He tutored in esthetics and humor..”And this establishment has just one purpose,” continued Ephraim Howe. “We aim to see to it that Mu and Atlantis don’t happen again. Everything that the Young Men stood for, we are against.
“We see the history of the world as a series of crises in a conflict between two opposing philosophies. Ours is based on the notion that life, consciousness, intelligence, ego is the important thing in the world.” For an instant only he touched them telepathically; they felt again the vibrantly alive thing that Ambrose Bierce had showed them and been unable to define in words. “That puts us in conflict with every force that tends to destroy, deaden, degrade the human spirit, or to make it act contrary to its nature. We see another crisis approaching; we need recruits. You’ve been selected.
“This crisis has been growing on us since Napoleon. Europe has gone, and Asia— surrendered to authoritarianism, nonsense like the ‘leader principle,’ totalitarianism, all the bonds placed on liberty which treat men as so many economic and political units with no importance as individuals. No dignity—do what you’re told, believe what you are told and shut your mouth!