“It won’t do us a bit of good,” said Sutton, “if the idea was to get me out of the clutches of Trevor’s mob. Trevor will have a psych-tracer on me. He knows where I am and this place will be watched three deep.”
Herkimer grinned. “It is, sir. His men are practically falling over one another all around the place.”
“Then why this get-up?” Sutton demanded angrily. “Why disguise me?”
“Well, sir,” explained Herkimer, “it’s like this. We figured no human in his right mind ever would want to be taken for an android. So we turned you into one. They’ll be looking for a human. It would never occur to them to take a second look at an android when they were looking for a human.”
Sutton grunted. “Smart,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t …”
“Oh, they’ll get on to it after a while, sir,” Herkimer admitted, cheerfully. “But it will give us some time. Time to work out some plans.”
He moved swiftly around the room, opening chest drawers and taking out clothing.
“It’s very nice, sir,” he said, “to have you back again. We tried to find you, but it was no dice. We figured the Revisionists had you cooped up somewhere, so we redoubled our security here and kept a close watch on everything that happened. For the past five weeks we’ve known every move that Trevor and his gang have made.”
“Five weeks!” gasped Sutton. “Did you say five weeks?”
“Certainly, sir. Five weeks. You disappeared just seven weeks ago.”
“By my calendar,” said Sutton, “it was ten years.”
Herkimer wagged his head sagely, unstartled. “Time is the funniest thing, sir. It ties a man in knots.”
He laid clothing on the bed. “If you’ll get into these, sir, we’ll go down for breakfast. Eva is waiting for us. She’ll be glad to see you, sir.”
XLV
Trevor missed with three clips in a row. He shook his head sadly.
“You’re sure of this?” he asked the man across the desk.
The man nodded, tight-lipped.
“It might be android propaganda, you know,” said Trevor. “They’re clever. That’s a thing you never must forget. An android, for all his bowing and his scraping, is just as smart as we are.”
“Do you realize what it means?” the man demanded. “It means …”
“I can tell you what it means,” said Trevor. “From now on we can’t be sure which of us are human. There’ll be no sure way of knowing who’s human and who’s an android. You could be an android. I could be …”
“Exactly,” said the man.
“That’s why Sutton was so smug yesterday afternoon,” said Trevor. “He sat there, where you are sitting, and I had the impression that he was laughing at me all the time.…”
“I don’t think Sutton knows,” said the man. “It’s an android secret. Only a few of them know it. They certainly wouldn’t take a chance on any human knowing it.”
“Not even Sutton?”
“Not even Sutton,” said the man.
“Cradle,” said Trevor. “Nice sense of fitness that they have.”
“You’re going to do something about it, certainly,” said the man impatiently.
Trevor put his elbows on the desk and matched careful fingertips.
“Of course I am,” he said. “Now listen carefully. This is what we’ll do …”
XLVI
Eva Armour rose from the table on the patio and held out both her hands in greeting. Sutton pulled her close to him, planted a kiss on her upturned face.
“That,” he said, “is for the million times I have thought of you.”
She laughed at him, suddenly gay and happy.
“But, Ash, a million times!”
“Tangled time,” said Herkimer. “He’s been away ten years.”
“Oh,” said Eva. “Oh, Ash, how horrible!”
He grinned at her. “Not too horrible. I had ten years of rest. Ten years of peace and quiet. Working on a farm, you know. It was a little rough at first, but I was actually sorry when I had to leave.”
He held a chair for her, took one for himself between her and Herkimer.
They ate … ham and eggs, toast and marmalade, strong, black coffee. It was pleasant on the patio. In the trees above them birds quarreled amiably. In the clover at the edge of the bricks and stones that formed the paving, bees hummed among the blossoms.
“How do you like my place, Ash?” asked Eva.
“It’s wonderful,” he said, and then, as if the two ideas might be connected in some way, he said, “I saw Trevor yesterday. He took me to the mountaintop and showed me the universe.”
Eva drew in her breath sharply, and Sutton looked up quickly from his plate. Herkimer was waiting, with drawn face, with fork poised in midair, halfway to his mouth.
“What’s the matter with you two?” he asked. “Don’t you trust me?”
And even as he asked the question, he answered it for himself. Of course, they wouldn’t trust him. For he was human and he could betray them. He could twist destiny so that it was a thing for the human race alone. And there was no way in which they could be sure that he would not do this.
“Ash,” said Eva, “you refused to …”
“I left Trevor with an idea that I would be back to talk it over. Nothing that I said or did. He just believes I will. Told me to go out and beat my head against the wall some more.”
“You have thought about it, sir?” asked Herkimer.
Sutton shook his head. “No. Not too much. I haven’t sat down and mulled it over, if that is what you mean. It would have its points if you were merely human. Sometimes I frankly wonder how much of the human there may be left in me.”
“How much of it do you know, Ash?” Eva asked, speaking softly.
Sutton scrubbed a hand across his forehead. “Most of it, I think. I know about the war in time and how and why it’s being fought. I know about myself. I have two bodies and two minds, or at least substitute bodies and minds. I know some of the things that I can do. There may be other abilities I do not know about. One grows into them. Each new thing comes hard.”
“We couldn’t tell you,” Eva said. “It would have been so simple if we could have told you. But, to start with, you would not have believed the things we told you. And, when dealing with time, one interferes as little as possible. Just enough to turn an event in the right direction.
“I tried to warn you. Remember, Ash? As near as I could come to warning.”
He nodded. “After I killed Benton in the Zag House. You told me you had studied me for twenty years.”
“And remember, I was the little girl in the checkered apron. When you were fishing …”
He looked at her in surprise. “You knew about that? It wasn’t just part of the Zag dream?”
“Identification,” said Herkimer. “So that you could identify her as a friend, as someone you had known before and who was close to you. So that you would accept her as a friend.”
“But it was a dream.”
“A Zag dream” said Herkimer. “The Zag is one of us. His race will benefit if destiny can stand for everyone and not the human race alone.”
Sutton said, “Trevor is too confident. Not just pretending to be confident, but really confident. I keep coming back to that crack he made. ‘Go out,’ he said, ‘and butt your head some more’”
“He’s counting on you as a human being,” Eva said.
Sutton shook his head. “I can’t think that’s it. He must have some scheme up his sleeve, some maneuver that we won’t be able to check.”
Herkimer spoke slowly. “I don’t like that, sir. The war’s not going too well as it is. If we had to win, we’d be lost right now.”
“If we had to win? I don’t understand …”
“We don’t have to win, sir,” said Herkimer. “All we have to do is fight a holding action, prevent the Revisionists from destroying the book as you will write it. From the very first we have not tried to change a thing. We’ve tr
ied to keep them from being changed.”
Sutton nodded. “On his part, Trevor has to win decisively. He must smash the original text, either prevent it from being written as I mean to write it or discredit it so thoroughly that not even an android will believe it.”
“You’re right, sir,” Herkimer told him. “Unless he can do that the humans cannot claim destiny for their own, cannot make other life believe that destiny is reserved for the human race alone.”
“And that is all he wants,” said Eva. “Not the destiny itself, for no human can have the faith in destiny that, say, for example, an android can. To Trevor it is merely a matter of propaganda … to make the human race believe so completely that it is destined that it will not rest until it holds the universe.”
“So long,” said Herkimer, “as we can keep him from doing that we claim that we are winning. But the issue is so finely balanced that a new approach by either side would score heavily. A new weapon could be a factor that would mean victory or defeat.”
“I have a weapon,” Sutton said. “A made-to-order weapon that would beat them … but there’s no way that it can be used.”
Neither of them asked the question, but he saw it on their faces and he answered it.
“There’s only one such weapon. Only one gun. You can’t fight a war with just one gun.”
Feet pounded around the corner of the house and when they turned they saw an android running toward them across the patio. Dust stained his clothing and his face was red from running. He came to a stop and faced them, clutching at the table’s edge. “They tried to stop me,” he panted, the words coming out in gushes. “The place is surrounded.…”
“Andrew, you fool,” snapped Herkimer. “What do you mean by coming running in like this? They will know …”
“They’ve found out about the cradle,” Andrew gasped. “They …”
Herkimer came erect in one swift motion. The chair on which he had been sitting tipped over with the violence of his rising and his face was suddenly so white that the identification tattoo on his forehead stood out with a startling clearness.
“They know where …”
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,” gasped Eva. “That’s exactly what they 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 to face 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.
XLVII
“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,” he said.
Herkimer nodded “Impersonating one of our men. Sent to smoke us out. Sent to start us running, pell-mell, 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 was wrong. 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 with …”
“Sir,” said Herkimer, “you are a human being and this is an 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 were an action he had decided upon after long consideration, he balled his 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. “Ash!”
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 fingers 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. 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 the eating of green apples. By Buster, who had gone out, five hundred years before, to homestead a planet.
He 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.
“What is it, Ash?”
“What’s going on, Johnny? What about this?”
“You’re a stinker, Ash.”
“To h
ell 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.
XLVIII
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 in 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 tapped?”
“None,” said the robot. “Absolutely none. You see …”
“I want to see the homestead filings for the year 7990,” said Sutton.
“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.
The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Two Page 54