"Anstruther always has been that close to me, but men who live by their
emotions never quite achieve their goals. He feels. I think. That is
our difference."
"Ah, Father, there is more than that."
"So you believe, O'Hara. Emotion is contagious, and you have caught
the fever of it--but few men ever catch the fire of thought. You will,
you will! But until I have rid you of this delusion you are useless to
me. When you are here with Anstruther we shall then see how altruistic
tyranny can be, when it is based on thought. And how completely
senseless and destructive pure emotion is."
"I will not betray Anstruther to you."
"Do you forget your wife and child?"
"I will not betray him."
"You saw her agony when she was struggling to keep the child afloat?"
"I see that agony now, Father. It is my agony. But I will not betray
Anstruther. Do as you will, but quickly, Father--in this final cruelty
be merciful."
"My hand is on the key, O'Hara. Must I?"
"Quick!"
"I commend your resolution," said the Father quietly. "Now I promise
you that I will not destroy Anstruther, or will I detain him from the
fate he wishes for himself. Is this enough?"
"You promise this?"
"You can enforce it. I cannot work through you unless you wish."
The Father's voice sank to a whisper now. "Open your eyes. For you
are in that small point in infinity--the room that seemed forever
unattainable, the end of these long corridors of Washington. Anstruther
and the Sons are sleeping there with you. Awaken them and do as I have
said."
O'Hara was now conscious of opening his eyes. The illusion that the
Father's voice was audible only to himself was overpowering at this
time, for had he not been violently in argument with the Father in this
room, where Anstruther and the Sons still were sleeping? Anstruther had
not moved from the bunk across the room, or had the Sons stirred from
the grotesque line upon the floor where they had fallen. Or, it seemed,
had O'Hara himself moved since he first had sat there on the bunk,
discussing with Anstruther the Father's tyranny. And all that seemed
to have intervened since then--his return to the Father, his weeks of
study in the library behind the dais, his strangely visual life with
Nedra by means of the screen, his descent down to the unattainable
integrocalculators, his journey through the Tube to the three cities
of New York, and his surprising colloquy with the Son who first had
guarded him there, the Son who had remembered that a female once had
fought to keep her child and who had thought that it was somehow
beautiful, and who had died for thinking that--none of these events
that had transpired since he first left this little point that was
infinity now seemed a portion of his conscious life. They were only
dreams, he told himself.
"Yes, they were dreams, only the product of disordered sleep," he told
himself.
Then his hand touched something sharp within his jacket. It was the
metal book--the way out that as yet he did not need.
And so it was no dream. O'Hara returned the book to his jacket. He
crossed the room and bent over Anstruther. Would it be a betrayal now
to awaken him and lead him as the remembered voice of the Father had
commanded? Yet it was true, his reason told him, that he himself could
enforce the Father's promise neither to destroy Anstruther nor to
detain him from the fate he wished for himself.
"Anstruther," he whispered.
The Sons stirred sluggishly upon the floor. One of them hunched himself
up to his feet. Another fumbled for the shining tube of his authority.
"Anstruther," said O'Hara, shaking him.
The Sons were focusing upon him now with their weak eyes, and moving
toward him silently, their faces blank, seeming malignant in their
utter lack of expression.
"Anstruther!" cried O'Hara, whirling toward the Sons. "Wake up,
Anstruther!"
And Anstruther leaped up. The pale blue of his eyes was swallowing the
pupils. "Yes--yes, now!" he cried. "The hour!"
The Sons fell back, as silently as they had advanced, their hands loose
on the shining tubes they swept in little arcs.