from time to time.'
'Wait a minute,' Sutton told him. 'Is there a corporation or are you just posing fables?'
'There is a corporation,' Trevor told him, 'and I am the man who heads it. Varied interests pooling their resources…and there will be more and more of them as time goes on. As soon as we can show something tangible.'
'By tangible, you mean destiny for the human race, for the human race alone?'
Trevor nodded. 'Then we'll have something to talk about. A commodity to sell. Something to back up our sales talk.'
Sutton shook his head. 'I can't see what you expect to gain.'
'Three things,' Trevor told him. 'Wealth and power and knowledge. The wealth and power and knowledge of the universe. For Man alone, you understand. For a single race. For people like you and me. And of the three, knowledge perhaps would be the greatest prize of all, for knowledge, added to and compounded, correlated and co-ordinated, would lead to even greater wealth and power…and to greater knowledge.'
'It is madness,' said Sutton. 'You and I, Trevor, will be drifting dust, and not only ourselves, but the very era in which we live out this moment will be forgotten before the job is done.'
'Remember the corporation.'
'I'm remembering the corporation,' Sutton said, 'but I can't help but think in terms of people. You and I and the other people like us.'
'Let's think in terms of people, then,' said Trevor, smoothly. 'One day the life that runs in you will run in the brain and blood and muscle of a man who shall be part owner of the universe. There will be trillions upon trillions of life forms to serve him, there will be wealth that he cannot count, there will be knowledge of which you and I cannot even dream.'
Sutton sat quietly, slumped in his chair.
'You're the only man,' said Trevor, 'who is standing in the way. You're the man who is blocking the project for a million years.'
'You need destiny,' said Sutton, 'and destiny is not mine to give away.'
'You are a human being, Sutton,' Trevor told him, talking evenly. 'You are a man. It is the people of your own race that I'm talking to you about.'
'Destiny,' said Sutton, 'belongs to everything that lives. Not to Man alone, but to every form of life.'
'It needn't,' Trevor told him. 'You are the only man who knows. You are the man who can tell the facts. You can make it a manifest destiny for the human race instead of a personal destiny for every crawling, cackling, sniveling thing that has the gift of life.'
Sutton didn't answer.
'One word from you,' said Trevor, 'and the thing is done.'
'It can't be done,' said Sutton, 'this scheme of yours. Think of the sheer time, the thousands of years, even at the rate of speed of the starships of today, to cross intergalactic space. Only from this galaxy to the next…not from this galaxy to the ultimate galaxy.'
Trevor sighed. 'You forget what I said about the compounding of knowledge. Two and two won't make four, my friend. It will make much more than four. In some instances thousands of times more than four.'
Sutton shook his head, wearily.
But Trevor was right, he knew. Knowledge and technique would pyramid exactly as he said. Even, once Man had the time to do it, the knowledge in one galaxy alone…
'One word from you,' Trevor said, 'and the time war is at an end. One word and the security of the human race is guaranteed forever. For all the race will need is the knowledge that you can give it.'
'It wouldn't be the truth,' said Sutton.
'That,' said Trevor, 'doesn't have a thing to do with it.'
'You don't need manifest destiny,' said Sutton, 'to carry out your project.'
'We have to have the human race behind us,' Trevor said. 'We have to have something that is big enough to capture their imagination. Something important enough to make them pay attention. And manifest destiny, manifest destiny as it applies to the universe, is the thing to turn the trick.'
'Twenty years ago,' said Sutton, 'I would have thrown in with you.'
'And now?' asked Trevor.
Sutton shook his head. 'Not now. I know more than I did twenty years ago. Twenty years ago I was a human, Trevor. I'm not too sure I'm entirely human any longer.'
'I hadn't mentioned the matter of reward,' said Trevor. 'That goes without saying.'
'No, thanks,' said Sutton. 'I'd like to keep on living.'
Trevor flipped a clip at the inkwell and it missed.
'You're slipping,' Sutton said. 'Your percentage is way off.'
Trevor picked up another clip.
'All right,' he said. 'Go ahead and have your fun. There's a war on and we'll win that war. It's a hellish way to fight, but we're doing it the best we can. No war anywhere, no surface indication of war, for you understand the galaxy is in utter and absolute peace under the rule of benevolent Earthmen. We can win without you, Sutton, but it would be easier with you.'
'You're going to turn me loose?' Sutton asked, in mock surprise.
'Why, sure,' Trevor told him. 'Go on out and beat your head against a stone wall a little longer. In the end, you'll get tired of it. Eventually you'll give up out of sheer exhaustion. You'll come back then and give us the thing we want.'
Sutton rose to his feet.
He stood for a moment, indecisive.
'What are you waiting for?' asked Trevor.
'One thing has me puzzled,' Sutton told him. 'The book, somehow, somewhere, already has been written. It has been a fact for almost five hundred years. How are you going to change that? If I write it now the way you want it written, it will change the human setup…'
Trevor laughed. 'We got that one figured out. Let us say that finally, after all of these years, the original of your manuscript is discovered. It can be readily and indisputably identified by certain characteristcs which you will very carefully incorporate into it when you write it.. It will be found and proclaimed, and what is more, proved…and the human race will have its destiny.
'We'll explain the past unpleasantness by very convincing historic evidence of earlier tampering with the manuscript. Even your friends, the androids, will have to believe what we say once we get through with it.'
'Clever,' Sutton said.
'I think so, too,' said Trevor.
XLIII
At the building's entrance a man was waiting for him. He raised his hand in what might have been a brief salute.
'Just a minute, Mr. Sutton.'
'Yes, what is it?'
'There'll be a few of us following you, sir. Orders, you know.'
'But…'
'Nothing personal, sir. We won't interfere with anything you want to do. Just guarding you, sir.'
'Guarding me?'
'Certainly, sir. Morgan's crowd, you know. Can't let them pop you off.'
'You can't know,' Sutton told him, 'how deeply I appreciate your interest.'
'It's nothing sir,' the man told him. 'Just part of the day's work. Glad to do it. Don't mention it at all.'
He stepped back again and Sutton wheeled and walked down the steps and followed the cinder walk that flanked the avenue.
