sun streaming through the window, was almost a physical shock.
He sat limp in his chair, thinking, remembering.
The man had come at twilight, stepping out of the shadows onto the patio and he had sat down in the darkness and talked like any other man. Except the things he said were crazy.
Crazy talk.
Unbelievable.
Impossible.
And, still, maybe I should have listened. Maybe I should have heard him out instead of flying off the handle.
Except that you don't kill a man who comes back after twenty years.
Especially a man like Sutton.
Sutton is a good man. One of the best the Bureau has. Slick as a whistle, well grounded in alien psychology, an authority on galactic politics. No other man could have done the Cygnian job as well.
If he did it.
I don't know that, of course. But he'll be in tomorrow and he'll tell me all about it.
A man is entitled to a day's rest after twenty years.
Slowly, Adams put away the mento-cap, reached out an almost reluctant hand and snapped up a tumbler.
Alice answered.
'Send me in the Asher Sutton file.'
'Yes, Mr. Adams.'
Adams settled back in his chair.
The warmth of the sun felt good across his shoulders. The ticking of the clock was comforting.
Commonplace and comforting after the ghost voices whispering out in space. Thoughts that one could not pin down, that one could not trace back and say, 'This one started here and then.'
Although we're trying, Adams thought. Man will try anything, take any sort of chance, gamble on no odds at all.
He chuckled to himself. Chuckled at the weirdness of the project.
Thousands of listeners listening in on the random thoughts of random time and space listening in for clues, for hints, for leads. Seeking a driblet of sense from the stream of gibberish…hunting the word or sentence or disassociated thought that might be translated into a new philosophy or a new technique or a new science…or a new something that the human race had never even dreamed of.
A new concept, said Adams, talking to himself. An entirely new concept.
Adams scowled to himself.
A new concept might be dangerous. This was not the time for anything that did not fit into the groove, that did not match the pattern of human thought and action.
There could be no confusion. There could be nothing but the sheer, bulldog determination to hang on, to sink in one's teeth and stay. To maintain the
Later, someday, many centuries from now, there would be a time and place and room for a new concept. When Man's grip was firmer, when the line was not too thin, when a mistake or two would not spell disaster.
Man, at the moment, controlled every factor. He held the edge at every point…a slight edge, admitted, but at least an edge. And it must stay that way. There must be nothing that would tip the scale in the wrong direction. Not a word or thought, not an action or a whisper.
VII
Apparently they had been waiting for him for some time and they intercepted him when he stepped out of the elevator on his way to the dining room for lunch.
There were three of them and they stood ranged in front of him, as if doggedly determined that he should not escape.
'Mr. Sutton?' one of them asked, and Sutton nodded.
The man was a somewhat seedy character. He might not actually have slept in his clothes, although the first impression was that he had. He clutched a threadbare cap with stubby, grimed fingers. The fingernails were rimmed with the blue of dirt.
'What may I do for you?' asked Sutton.
'We'd like to talk to you, sir, if you don't mind,' said the woman of the trio. 'You see, we're a sort of delegation.'
She folded fat hands over a plump stomach and did her best to beam at him. The effect of the beam was spoiled by the wispy hair that straggled out from beneath her dowdy hat.
'I was just on my way to lunch,' said Sutton, hesitantly, trying to make it sound as if he were in a hurry, trying to put some irritation into his voice while still staying within the bounds of civility.
The woman kept on beaming.
'I'm Mrs. Jellicoe,' she said, acting as if he must be glad to get the information. 'And this gentleman, the one who spoke to you, is Mr. Hamilton. The other one of us is Captain Stevens.'
Captain Stevens, Sutton noted, was a beefy individual, better dressed than the other two. His blue eyes twinkled at Sutton, as if he might be saying: I don't approve of these people any more than you do, Sutton, but I'm along with them and I'll do the best I can.
'Captain?' said Sutton. 'One of the star ships, I presume.'
Stevens nodded. 'Retired,' he said.
He cleared his throat. 'We hate to bother you, Sutton, but we tried to get through to your rooms and couldn't. We've waited several hours. I hope you'll not disappoint us.'
'It'll be just a little while,' pleaded Mrs. Jellicoe.
'We could sit over here,' said Hamilton, twirling the cap in his dirty fingers. 'We saved a chair for you.'
'As you wish,' said Sutton.
He followed them back to the corner from which they had advanced upon him and took the proffered chair.
'Now,' he said, 'tell me what this is all about.'
Mrs. Jellicoe took a deep breath. 'We're representing the Android Equality League,' she said.
Stevens broke in, successfully heading off the long speech that Mrs. Jellicoe seemed on the point of making. 'I am sure,' he said, 'that Mr. Sutton has heard of us at one time or another. The League has been in existence for these many years.'
'I have heard of the League,' said Sutton.
'Perhaps,' said Mrs. Jellicoe, 'you've read our literature.'
'No,' said Sutton, 'I can't say that I have.'
'Here's some of it, then,' said Hamilton. He dug with a grimy hand into an inside coat pocket, came out with a fistful of dog-eared leaflets and tracts. He held them out to Sutton and Sutton took them gingerly, laid them on the floor beside his chair.
'Briefly,' said Stevens, 'we represent the belief that androids should be granted equality with the human race. They are human, in actuality, in every characteristic except one.'
'They can't have babies,' Mrs. Jellicoe blurted out.
Stevens lifted his sandy eyebrows briefly and glanced at Sutton half apologetically.
He cleared his throat. 'That's quite right, sir,' he said, 'as you probably know. They are sterile, quite sterile. In other words, the human race can manufacture, chemically, a perfect human body, but it has been unable to solve the mystery of biological conception. Many attempts have been made to duplicate the chromosomes and genes, fertile eggs and sperm, but none has been successful.'
'Someday, perhaps,' said Sutton.
