hting in, before you grabbed me and
brought me here? The Commies?"

"No, the United Nations," Anthony told him. "At least, they were the
least exhausted when both sides decided to quit."

"Then what's this dictatorship.... The Guide? Extreme Rightist?"

"Walter, you'd better tell him," Gregory said.

* * * * *

"We damn near lost the war," the man in the black jacket and striped
trousers said, "but for once, we won the peace. The Soviet Bloc was
broken up--India, China, Indonesia, Mongolia, Russia, the Ukraine, all
the Satellite States. Most of them turned into little dictatorships,
like the Latin American countries after the liberation from Spain, but
they were personal, non-ideological, generally benevolent,
dictatorships, the kind that can grow into democracies, if they're given
time."

"Capitalistic dictatorships, he means," the cadaverous man in the blue
jacket explained.

"Be quiet, Carl," Anthony told him. "Let's not confuse this with any
class-struggle stuff."

"Actually, the United Nations rules the world," Walter continued. "What
goes on in the Ukraine or Latvia or Manchuria is about analogous to what
went on under the old United States government in, let's say,
Tammany-ruled New York. But here's the catch. The UN is ruled absolutely
by one man."

"How could that happen? In my time, the UN had its functions so
subdivided and compartmented that it couldn't even run a war properly.
Our army commanders were making war by systematic disobedience."

"The charter was changed shortly after ... er, that is, after...."
Walter was fumbling for words.

"After my death." Benson finished politely. "Go on. Even with a changed
charter, how did one man get all the powers into his hands?"

"By sorcery!" black-coat-and-white-bands fairly shouted. "By the help of
his master, Satan!"

"You know, there are times when some such theory tempts me," Paula said.

"He was a big moneybags," Carl said. "He bribed his way in. See, New
York was bombed flat. Where the old UN buildings were, it's still hot.
So The Guide donated a big tract of land outside St. Louis, built these
buildings--we're in the basement of one of them, right now, if you want
a good laugh--and before long, he had the whole organization eating out
of his hand. They just voted him into power, and the world into
slavery."

Benson looked around at the others, who were nodding in varying degrees
of agreement.

"Substantial