Years of watching and of waiting, parrying the counterespionage of the Revisionists, laying the groundwork for the day of action. And being careful…always careful. For the eightieth century must not know, must not even guess.
But there had been unseen factors.
Morgan had come back and warned Adams that Sutton must be killed.
Two humans had been planted on the asteroid.
Although those two factors could not account entirely for what had happened. There was another factor somewhere.
She stood at the window, looking out at the rising moon, and her brows knit into crinkling lines of thought. But she was too tired. No thought would come.
Except defeat.
Defeat would explain it all.
Sutton might be dead and that would be defeat, utter and complete defeat. Victory for an officialdom that was at once too timid and too vicious to take any active part in the struggle of the book. An officialdom that sought to keep the
Such a defeat, she knew, would be even worse than a defeat by the Revisionists, for if the Revisionists had won, there still would be a book, there still would be the teaching of Man's own destiny. And that, she told herself, was better than no inkling of destiny at all.
Behind her, the visaphone purred, and she spun around, hurried across the room.
A robot said, 'Mr. Sutton called. He asked about Wisconsin.'
'Wisconsin?'
'It's an old place name,' the robot said. 'He asked about a place called Bridgeport, Wisconsin.'
'As if he were going there?'
'As if he were going there,' the robot said.
'Quick,' said Eva, 'tell me. Where is this Bridgeport?'
'Five or six miles away,' said the robot, 'and at least four thousand years.'
She caught her breath. 'In time,' she said.
'Yes, miss, in time.'
'Tell me exactly,' Eva told him, but the robot shook his head.
'I don't know. I couldn't catch it. His mind was all roiled up. He'd just come through a trying experience.'
'Then you don't know.'
'I wouldn't bother if I were you,' the robot told her. 'He struck me as a man who knew what he was doing. He'll come out all right.'
'You're sure of that?'
'I'm sure of it,' the robot said.
Eva snapped the visor off and walked back to the window.
Ash, she thought. Ash, my love, you simply have to be all right. You must know what you're doing. You must come back to us and you must write the book and…
Not for me alone, she said. Not for me alone, for I, least of all of them, have a claim on you. But the galaxy has a claim on you, and maybe someday the universe. The little striving lives are waiting for your words and the hope and dignity they spell. And most of all the dignity, she said. Dignity ahead of hope. The dignity of equality — the dignity of the knowledge that all life is on an equal basis, that life is all that matters, that life is the badge of a greater brotherhood than anything the mind of Man has ever spelled out in all its theorizing.
And I, she thought. I have no right to think the way I do, to feel the way I do.
But I can't help it, Ash.
I can't help but love you, Ash.
Someday, she said. Someday.
She stood straight and lonely and the tears came in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks and she did not raise her hand to wipe them off.
Dreams, she said. Broken dreams are bad enough. But the dream that has no hope…the dream that is doomed long before it's broken, that's the worst of all.
XXXVI
A dry stick cracked under Sutton's feet and the man with the wrench slowly turned around. A swift, smooth smile spread upon his face and spread out in widening crinkles to hide the amazement that glittered in his eyes.
'Good afternoon,' said Sutton.
John H. Sutton was a speck that had almost climbed the hill. The sun had passed its zenith and was swinging toward the west. Down in the river's valley a half-dozen crows were cawing and it was as if the sound came from underneath their feet.
The man held out his hand. 'Mr. Sutton, isn't it?' he asked. 'The Mr. Sutton, of the eightieth.'
'Drop the wrench,' said Sutton.
The man pretended not to hear him. 'My name is Dean,' he said. 'Arnold Dean. I'm from the eighty- fourth.'
'Drop the wrench,' said Sutton and Dean dropped it. Sutton hooked it along the ground with a toe until it was out of reach.
'That is better,' he said. 'Now, let's sit down and talk.'
Dean gestured with a thumb. 'The old man will be coming back,' he said. 'He will get to wondering and he will come back. He had a lot of questions he forgot to ask.'
'Not for a while,' Sutton told him. 'Not until he's eaten and had an after-dinner nap.'
Dean grunted and eased himself to a sitting position, back against the ship.
'Random factors,' he said. 'That's what balls the detail up. You're a random factor, Sutton. It wasn't planned this way.'
Sutton sat down easily and picked up the wrench. He weighed it in his hand. Blood, he thought, talking to the wrench. You'll have blood upon one end before the day is out.
'Tell me,' said Dean. 'Now that you are here, what do you plan to do?'
'Easy,' said Sutton. 'You're going to talk to me. You're going to tell me something that I need to know.'
'Gladly,' Dean agreed.
'You said you came from the eighty-fourth. What year?'
'Eighty-three eighty-six,' said Dean. 'But if I were you, I'd go up a little ways. You'd find more to interest you.'
'But you figure I'll never get even so far as that,' said Sutton. 'You think that you will win.'
'Of course I do,' said Dean.
Sutton dug into the ground with the wrench.
'A while ago,' he said, 'I found a man who died very shortly after. He recognized me and he made a sign, with his fingers raised.'
Dean spat upon the ground.
'Android,' he said. 'They worship you, Sutton. They made a religion out of you. Because, you see, you gave them hope to cling to. You gave them something equal, something that made them, in one way, the equal of Man.'
'I take it,' Sutton said, 'you don't believe a thing I wrote.'
'Should I?'
'I do,' said Sutton.
Dean said nothing.
'You have taken the thing I wrote,' said Sutton, evenly, 'and you are trying to use it to fashion one more rung
