The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

” ‘But how will I recognize these others?’ I said. ‘How will Iget to where they are or they to me? Where are they?’

“While asking these questions, I felt awed and elated at the same time. That one of the beings who had raised us from the dead and made this world should be asking for my help! I, Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, who am just a human-being, however great certain of my talents are. That he should pick me from many billions!

“He knew his man, knew I would not be able to resist his challenge. If I could have stood up, I’d have crossed swords with him-if swords were available-and I’d have pledged my loyalty with a toast-if wine had been handy.

” ‘You’ll do as I ask?’ he said.

” ‘But certainly!’I said. ‘You have my word, and I never go back on that!’

“Jill, I won’t go into any more detail about what else he said. Except… he did say that I was to tell Sam Clemens that he should be on the lookout for a man named Richard Francis Burton. He was one of those chosen. And we were to wait for a year in Virolando for all of us to get together. If some didn’t show, then we were to go ahead. And we would be hearing from him-the Stranger-in the near future.

“He gave me directions to find Clemens, who was down-River about ten thousand leagues. Clemens would be building a great boat made of ore from a meteorite. I knew who Clemens was though I’d died one hundred and eighty-one years before he was born. After all, was not his Earthly wife sleeping in my bed? I told him that, and he chuckled and said, ‘I know.’

” ‘Is this not embarrassing for me?’ I said. ‘And especially for Livy? Would the great Clemens even admit me aboard his so grand boat in this situation?’

”’ Which is more important to you ?’ he said with some degree of impatience. ‘A woman or the salvation of the world?’

” ‘That would depend upon how I felt about the woman,’ I said. ‘ Objectively and humanely, there is no argument. I am humane but I am not objective.’

” ‘Go there and find out what happens,’ he said. ‘Perhaps this woman will prefer you.’

‘ “When Cyrano is on fire with love,’ I said, ‘he does not cool off at command.’

“Then he stood up, and said, ‘I will see you,’ and he was gone. I dragged myself with my arms, my dead legs trailing uselessly, to the door, and pushed it open. There was no sign of him. The next morning, I announced to Livy that I was tired of this place. I wanted to travel, to see this brave new world. She said that she was tired of traveling. But if I went, she would go with me. So we set out. The rest you know.”

Jill felt a sense of unreality. She believed Cyrano’s story, but it nevertheless made her feel as if she were a player on a stage, the sets of which concealed something frightening. And she was also an actor who had not been given the script.

“No, I don’t know the rest. What about you and Clemens? What did he know that you didn’t? And did any of the others this Ethical had chosen show up?”

“Clemens was visited twice by the Ethical. Clemens calls him X or the Mysterious Stranger.”

Jill said, “He wrote a book once titled The Mysterious Stranger. A very sad, bitter story, overwhelmingly pessimistic. The Stranger was Lucifer.”

” He told me about it. However, he did not know much more than I did. Except that this X had somehow deflected a meteorite so that it would fall where Clemens could find it.”

“Do you realize the energy that would take?”

“It was explained to me. Anyway, Sam broke his word to the Stranger. He told Joe Miller and Lothar von Richthofen about him. He said that he could not help telling them.

“Also, there were two more. A giant red-haired savage of a man named John Johnston. And . . . Firebrass!”