k of
reconstruction was crying hungrily for all the labor and capital that
had been idled by the end of destruction, and more. There was a new
flood-tide of prosperity, and Evri-Flave rode the crest. The estate at
Carondelet was finished--a beautiful place, surrounded with gardens,
fragrant with flowers, full of the songs of birds and soft music from
concealed record-players. It made him forget the ugliness of the war,
and kept the dreams from returning so frequently. All the world ought to
be like that, he thought; beautiful and quiet and peaceful. People
surrounded with such beauty couldn't think about war.

All the world could be like that, if only....

* * * * *

The UN chose St. Louis for its new headquarters--many of its offices had
been moved there after the second and most destructive bombing of New
York--and when the city by the Mississippi began growing into a real
World Capital, the flow of money into it almost squared overnight.
Benson began to take an active part in politics in the new World
Sovereignty party. He did not, however, allow his political activities
to distract him from the work of expanding the company to which he owed
his wealth and position. There were always things to worry about.

"I don't know," Myers said to him, one evening, as they sat over a
bottle of rye in the psychologist's apartment. "I could make almost as
much money practicing as a psychiatrist, these days. The whole world
seems to be going pure, unadulterated nuts! That affair in Munich, for
instance."

"Yes." Benson grimaced as he thought of the affair in Munich--a
Wagnerian concert which had terminated in an insane orgy of mass
suicide. "Just a week after we started our free-sample campaign in South
Germany, too...."

He stopped short, downing his drink and coughing over it.

"Bill! You remember those sheets of onion-skin in that envelope?"

"The foundation of our fortunes; I wonder where you really did get
that.... Fred!" His eyes widened in horror. "That caution about
'heightened psycho-physiological effects,' that we were never able
to understand!"

Benson nodded grimly. "And think of all the crazy cases of
mass-hysteria--that baseball-game riot in Baltimore; the time everybody
started tearing off each others' clothes in Milwaukee; the sex-orgy in
New Orleans. And the sharp uptrend in individual psycho-neurotic and
psychotic behavior. All in connection with music, too, and all after