" Hauserman lit
another cigarette. "Most minds are a lot closer to it than their
owners suspect, too. In fact, Professor, I was so convinced that yours
had passed over it that I brought with me a commitment form, made out
all but my signature, for you." He took it from his pocket and laid it
on the desk. "The modern equivalent of the _lettre-de-cachet_, I
suppose the author of a book on the French Revolution would call it. I
was all ready to certify you as mentally unsound, and commit you to
Northern State Mental Hospital."
Chalmers sat erect in his chair. He knew where that was; on the other
side of the mountains, in the one part of the state completely
untouched by the H-bombs of the Thirty Days' War. Why, the town
outside which the hospital stood had been a military headquarters
during the period immediately after the bombings, and the center from
which all the rescue work in the state had been directed.
"And you thought you could commit me to Northern State!" he demanded,
laughing scornfully, and this time he didn't try to make the laugh
sound natural and unaffected. "You--confine _me_, anywhere? Confine a
poor old history professor's body, yes, but that isn't me. I'm
universal; I exist in all space-time.
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