ANDREW shook his head. “Not where. They just found out about it. Just now. We still have time . . .”
“We’ll call in all the ships,” said Herkimer. “We’ll have to pull all the guards off the crisis points . . .”
“But you can’t,” cried Eva. “That’s exactly what they would would want you to do. That is all that is stopping them . . .”
“We have to,” Herkimer said grimly. “There’s no choice. If they destroy the Cradle . . .”
“Herkimer,” said Eva, and there was a deadly calm in her unhurried words. “The mark!”
Andrew swung around toward her, then took a backward step. Herkimer’s hand flashed underneath his coat and Andrew turned to run, heading for the low wall that rimmed the patio.
The knife in Herkimer’s hand flashed in the Sun and was suddenly a spinning wheel that tracked the running android. It caught him before he reached the wall and he went down into a heap of huddled clothing.
The knife, Sutton saw, was neatly buried in his neck.
XLV
“HAVE you noticed, sir,” said Herkimer, “how the little things, the inconsequential, trivial factors come to play so big a part in any happening?”
He touched the huddled body with his foot.
“Perfect,” he said. “Absolutely perfect. Except that before reporting to us, he should have smeared some lacquer over his identification mark. Many androids do it in an attempt to hide the mark, but it’s seldom much of a success. After only a short time, the mark shows through.”
“But lacquer?” asked Sutton.
“A little code we have,” said Herkimer. “A very simple thing. It’s the recognition sign for an agent reporting. A password, as it were. It takes a moment only. Some lacquer on your finger and a smear across your forehead.”
“So simple a thing,” said Eva, “that no one, absolutely no one, would ever notice it.”
Sutton nodded. “One of Trevor’s men?
Herkimer nodded. “Impersonating one of our men. Sent to smoke us out. Sent to start us running, panicked to save the Cradle.”
“This Cradle . . .”
“But it means,” said Eva, “that Trevor knows about it. He doesn’t know where it is, but he knows about it. And he’ll hunt until he finds it and then . . .”
Herkimer’s gesture stopped her. “What is wrong?” asked Sutton. For there was something wrong, something that was terribly wrong. The whole atmosphere of the place had grown harsh. The friendliness was gone . . . the trust and friendliness and the oneness of their purpose. Shattered by an android who had run across the patio and talked about a thing that he called a Cradle and died, seconds later, with a knife blade through his throat.
Instinctively Sutton’s mind reached out for Herkimer and then he drew it back. It was not an ability, he told himself, that one used upon a friend. It was an ability that one must keep in trust, not to be used curiously or idly, but only where the end result would justify its use.
“What’s gone sour?” he asked. “What is the matter?”
“Sir,” said Herkimer, “you are a human being and this is ah android matter.”
For a moment Sutton stood stiff and straight, his mind absorbing the shock of the words that Herkimer had spoken, the black fury boiling ice cold inside his body.
Then, deliberately, as if he had planned to do it, as if it was an action he had decided upon after long consideration, he made a tight fist and swung his arm.
It was a vicious blow, with all his weight and all his strength and anger back of it, and Herkimer went down like an ox beneath a hammer.
“Ash!” cried Eva.
She clutched at his arm, but he shook her off.
HERKIMER was sitting up, his hands covering his face, blood dripping down between his fingers.
Sutton spoke to him. “I have not sold destiny, nor do I intend to sell it. Although, God knows, if I did, it would be no more than the lot of you deserve.”
“Ash,” said Eva softly. “Ash, we must be sure.”
“How can I make you sure?” he asked. “I can only tell you.”
“They are your people, Ash,” she said. “Your race. Their greatness is your greatness, too. You can’t blame Herkimer for thinking . . .”
“They’re your people, too,” said Sutton. “The taint that applies to me applies to you as well.”
She shook her head.
“I’m a special case,” she said. “I was orphaned when I was only a few weeks old. The family androids took me over. They raised me. Herkimer was one of them. I’m much more an android, Ash, than I am a human being.”
Herkimer was still sitting on the grass, beside the sprawled, dead body of Trevor’s agent. He did not take his hands from his face. He made no sign that he was going to. The blood still dripped down between his finger and trickled down his arms.
Sutton said to Eva: “It was very nice to see you again. And thank you for the breakfast.”
He turned on his heel and walked away, across the patio and over the low wall and out into the path that led down to the road.
He heard Eva cry out for him to stop, but he pretended not to hear her.
I was raised by androids, she had said. And he had been raised by Buster, a robot, not even an android. By Buster, who had taught him how to fight when the kid down the road had given him a licking. Buster, who had whaled him good and proper for eating green apples. By Buster, who had gone out, five hundred years before, to homestead a planet.
Sutton walked with the icy fury still running in his blood. They didn’t trust me, he said. They thought I might sell out. After all the years of waiting, after all the years of planning and of thinking. “Johnny,” he said.
“What is it, Ash?”
“What’s going on, Johnny? What about all this?”
“You’re a stinker, Ash.”
“To hell with you,” said Sutton. “You and all the rest of them.” Trevor’s men, he knew, must be around the house, watching and waiting. He expected to be stopped. But he wasn’t stopped. He didn’t see a soul.
XLVI
SUTTON stepped into the visor booth and closed the door behind him. From the rack along the wall, he took out the directory and hunted up the number. He dialed and snapped the toggle and there was a robot on the screen.
“Information,” said the robot, his eyes seeking out the forehead of the man who called. Since it was an android, he dropped the customary sir.
“Information. Records. What can I do for you?”
“Is there any possibility,” asked Sutton, “that this call could be tipped?”
“None,” said the robot. “Absolutely none. You see . . .”
“I want to see the homestead filings for the year 7990.”
“Earth filings?”
Sutton nodded.
“Just a moment,” said the robot.
Sutton waited, watching the robot select the proper spool and mount it on the viewer.
“They are arranged alphabetically,” said the robot. “What name did you wish?”
“The name begins with “S”,” said Sutton. “Let me see the ‘S’s.”
The unwinding spool was a blur on the screen. It slowed momentarily at the “M”s, spun to the “P”s, then went more slowly.
The “S” list dragged by.
“Toward the end,” said Sutton, and, finally, “Hold it.”
For there was the entry that he sought.
Sutton, Buster . . .
He read the planet description three times to make sure he had it firmly in his mind.
“That’s all,” he said. “Thank you very much.”
The robot grumbled at him and shut off the screen.
Outside again, Sutton ambled easily across the foyer of the office building he had selected to place his call. On the road outside, he walked up the road, branched off onto a path and found a bench with a pleasant view.
He sat down on the bench and forced himself to relax.
He was being watch
ed, he knew. Kept under observation, for by this time, certainly, Trevor would know that the android who had walked out of Eva Armour’s house was actually Asher Sutton. The psych tracer long ago would have told the story, would have traced his movements and pin-pointed him for Trevor’s men to watch.
Take it easy, he told himself. Dawdle. Loaf. Act as if you didn’t have a thing to do, as if you didn’t have a thought in mind.
You can’t fool them, but you can at least catch them unguarded when you have to move.
And there were many things to do, many things left to think about, although he was satisfied that the course of action he had planned was the course to take.
He took them up, step by step, checking them over for any chance of slip-up.
FIRST, back to Eva’s house to get the manuscript notes he had left on the hunting asteroid, notes that either Eva or Herkimer must have kept through all the years . . . or was it only weeks?
That would be a ticklish and embarrassing business at the best. But they were his notes, he told himself. They were his to claim. He had no commitments in this conflict.
“I have come to get my notes. I suppose you still have them somewhere.”
Or—“Remember the attache case I had? I wonder if you took care of it for me.”
Or—“I’m going on a trip. I’d appreciate my notes if you can lay your hands on them.”
Or—
But it was no use. However he might say it, whatever he might do, the first step would be to reclaim the notes.
Dawdle up till then, he told himself. Work your way back toward the house until it’s almost dark. Then get the notes and after that move fast—so fast that Trevor’s gang can’t catch up with you.
Second was the ship, the ship that he must steal.
He had spotted it earlier in the day while loafing at the area spaceport. Sleek and small, it would be a fast job, and the stiff, military bearing of the officer who had been directing the provisioning and refueling had been the final tip-off that it was the ship he wanted.
Loafing outside the barrier fence, playing the part of an idly curious, no-good android, he had carefully entered the officer’s mind. Ten minutes later, he was on his way, with the information that he needed.
The ship did carry a time-warp unit.
It was not taking off until the next morning.
It would be guarded during the night.
Without a doubt, Sutton told himself, one of Trevor’s ships, one of the fighting warships of the Revisionists.
It would take nerve, he knew, to steal the ship. Nerve and fast footwork and a readiness and the ability to kill.
Saunter out onto the field, as if he were waiting for an incoming ship, mingling with the crowd. Slip out of the crowd and walk across the field, acting-as if he had a right to be there. Not run . . . walk. Run only if someone challenged him and made the challenge stick. Run then. Fight. Kill, if necessary. But get the ship.
Get the ship and pile on the speed to the limit of endurance, heading in a direction away from his destination, driving the ship with everything that was in it.
Two years out, or sooner if necessary, he would throw in the time unit, roll himself and the ship a couple of centuries into the past.
Once in the past, he would have to ditch the motors, for undoubtedly they would have built-in recognition signals which could be traced. Unship them and let them travel in the direction he had been going.
THEN take over the empty hull with his non-human body, swing around and head toward Buster’s planet, still piling on the speed, building it up to that fantastic figure that was necessary to jump great interstellar spaces.
Vaguely he wondered how his body, how the drive of his energy-intake body, would compare with the actual motors in the long haul. Better, he decided. Better than the motors. Faster and stronger.
But it would take years—many years of time, for Buster was far out.
He listed the moves:
Unshipping the engines would throw off pursuit. The pursuers would follow the recognition-signals in the motors, would spend long days in overhauling them before they discovered their mistake.
Check.
The time roll would unhook the contact of Trevor’s psych tracers, for they could not operate through time.
Check.
By the time other tracers could be set in other times to find him, he would be so far out that the tracers would go insane trying to catch up on the time-lag of his whereabouts—if, in fact, they could ever find it in the vastness of the outer reaches of the galaxy.;
Check.
If it works, he thought. If it only works. If there isn’t some sort of slip-up, some kind of unseen factor.
A squirrel skipped across the grass, sat up on its haunches and took a long look at him. Then, deciding that he was not dangerous, it started a busy search in the grass for imaginary buried treasure.
Cut loose, thought Sutton. Cut loose from everything that holds me. Cut loose and get the job done. Forget Trevor and his Revisionists, forget Herkimer and the androids. Forget Eva. Get the book written.
Trevor wants to buy me. Eva wants to use me; I’m nothing to her as a man. And the androids do not trust me. And Morgan, if he had the chance, would kill me.
The androids do not trust me.
That’s foolish, he told himself.
Childish.
And yet they did not trust him. You are a human, Eva had told him. The humans are your people. I’m much more an android, Ash, than I am a human being.
He shook his head, bewildered by the situation.
There was one thing that stood out clearly. One thing he had to do. One obligation that was his and one that must be fulfilled or all else would be with utterly no meaning.
There is a thing called destiny.
The knowledge of that destiny has been granted me. Not as a human being, not as a member of the human race, but as an instrument to transmit that knowledge to all other thinking life.
I must write a book to do it.
I must make that book as clear and forceful and as honest as I can.
Having done that, I shall have discharged my responsibility.
Having done that, it does not matter what may happen to me.
Having done that, there is no further claim upon me.
A footstep sounded on the path back of the bench and Sutton turned around.
“Mr. Sutton, isn’t it?” said the man.
Sutton nodded.
“Sit down, Trevor,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you.”
XLVII
“YOU didn’t stay long with your friends,” said Trevor.
Sutton shook his head. “We had a disagreement.”
“Something about this Cradle business?”
“You might call it that,” said Sutton. “It goes a good deal deeper. The fundamental prejudices rooted between androids and humans.”
“Herkimer killed an android who brought him a message about the Cradle,” Trevor said.
“He thought it was someone that you sent. Someone masquerading as an android. That is why he killed him.”
Trevor pursed his mouth sanctimoniously. “Too bad,” he said. “Too bad. Mind telling me how he recognized the . . . might we call it the deception?”
“That is something,” Sutton said, “that you will have to figure out without my help.”
Trevor labored at acting unconcerned. “The main point is,” he said, “that it didn’t work.”
“You mean the androids didn’t run helter-skelter for the Cradle and show you where it was.”
Trevor nodded. “There was another angle to it, too. They might have pulled some of their guards off the crisis points. That would have helped us some.”
“Double-barreled,” said Sutton. “Very shrewd.”
“Oh, most assuredly,” agreed Trevor. “Nothing like getting the other fellow square behind the eight-ball.”
He squinted at Sutton’s face.
“Since when,” h
e asked, “and why did you desert the human race?”
Sutton put his hand up to his face, felt the resilience of the plastic that had remodeled his features into those of another person.
“It was Herkimer’s idea,” he declared. “He thought it would make me hard to spot. You wouldn’t be looking for an android, you know.”
Trevor nodded agreement. “It might have helped,” he said. “It would have fooled us for a while, but when you walked away and the tracer followed you, we knew who you were.”
The squirrel came hopping across the grass and looked them over.
“Sutton,” Trevor asked, “how much do you know about this Cradle business?”
“Nothing,” Sutton replied. “They told me I was a human and it was an android matter.”
“You can see from that how important it must be.”
“I think I can,” said Sutton. “You can guess, just from the name, what it might be.”
“That’s not too hard to do.”
“Because we needed a greater force of humans,” said Trevor, “we made the first androids a thousand years ago. We needed them to fill out the too-thin ranks of Mankind. We made them as close to humans as we could. They could do everything the humans could except one thing.”
“They can’t reproduce,” said Sutton. “I wonder, Trevor, assuming it had been possible, whether we would have given that power to them, too. If we had, they would have been true humans. There would have been no difference whatever between men whose ancestors were made in a laboratory and those whose ancestors stemmed back to the primal ocean. The androids would have been a self-continuing race, and they wouldn’t have been androids. They would have been humans. We would have been adding to our population by biological as well as chemical means.”
“I DON’T know,” said Trevor. “Honestly, I don’t. Of course, the wonder is that we could make them at all, that we could produce life in the laboratory. Think of the sheer intellectual ability and the technical skill that went into it.
For centuries men had tried to find out what life was, had run down one blind alley after another, getting nowhere near the secret at all. Failing in a scientific answer, many of them turned back to a divine source, to a mythical answer, to the belief that it was a matter of supernatural intervention. The idea is perfectly expressed by du Nouy, who wrote back in the twentieth century.”
The Complete Serials Page 36