Part 4

"Been around these times three months. Scared stiff at first. Thought I was addled. Know somethin'? I can remember all the way back to 1870. It's a fake, sure. No, they didn't make me look young, or even give me all my teeth. Afraid of spoiling 'verisimilitude,' my great-great-great-something-grandson-supposed-to-be said. I'm a family brag. Look what I keep carrying around with me. One of the first editions of _Huck Finn_. They found this tintype of a feller inside it. Illinois farmer. And look at this here writing in the front of the book. 'Property of Abel Freeman.' So I'm supposed to be him, slouch hat and all--funny, I can't get used to anything else. So I write just like that. This tintype and the writing are the only solid clues about what the original Abel Freeman was really like. Up to there, I'm him. The rest is mostly storybook stuff, and the idea the family has that their ancestor was a kind of pixilated hellion--the sort some folks like to tell about. Some way for a man to be born, huh? Shucks, I can even remember the night I was supposed to have died. Drunk, and kicked in the belly by my own mule, because he didn't like my smell. Hell, I bet in real life that mule would of plum enjoyed whisky!"

Abel Freeman stopped talking. He turned pale gray eyes set in a face that looked like brown leather toward his audience with expectant amusement, as if he understood the eerie impression he'd made on them and was curious about their reactions.

Barbara took the lead. "We're surely glad to know you, Mr. Freeman," she said, shaking his big brown paw and unconsciously aping his manner of speech. "I'm sure you could tell us plum more. What's the world ever coming to?"

His grip, for an instant, was almost literally like that of a vise. But when Barbara winced with pain, his hand relaxed, and his look became honestly gentle and apologetic, though it retained a certain slyness of tricks being played or unprecedented power being demonstrated.

"Oh, excuse me, lady!" he drawled. "This first Abel Freeman--he was supposed to be a very strong and vigorous man. Me--naturally I'm even a lot stronger. Sometimes I just forget. But I try to be right courtly. There, I'll rub your fingers. Hope I didn't break no bones."

Barbara laughed a bit nervously. "No, Mr. Freeman--I'm fine," she assured him, nodding her dark head. "Now, if you'll tell us--"

"Oh, yes--about what the world and everything is coming to," Abel Freeman went on, his tone more languid than his eyes. "Well, matters could get mighty rough. I've been studying up--thinking. When I first got to these times, I didn't like them. Everything seemed addled. Guess I was homesick. I kind of resented being made the cheap way, too. But even way back in the years I remember, they used to say that maybe there'd be flying machines or even balloons to the Moon. So I perked up and got acclimated, and said to myself, 'Abel, my boy, take what's given to you and don't whine, even though you weren't asked if you wanted to come here. And with all that can be done now, why not bring your old woman and her chewing tobacco? And your four ornery sons? Nat was the worst. And Nancy, your daughter, who was an unholy terror? Of course this family that you recollect so good probably don't match historical fact so much, being just romanticized, mostly made-up memories put into your head. But they're plum real to you. Guess when they synthesized you, they should have left those recollections out. Because you love that family of yours, ornery or not, and would be happy to see its members again.' And I said to myself besides, 'Abel, bein' made the cheap way has got plenty of advantages. You're strong as a dozen regular men, and you won't need rejuvenation, because you'll never get any older. You'll heal even if you're hurt something terrible. Trouble is, your kind'll be some mighty stiff competition for the present holders of the land. Of course people want to get along peaceably--even your sort, Abel. But plenty of folks will wind up trusting your sort no more than they'd trust a billygoat under a line of wash. Yep, I'm afraid there's gonna be some mighty interesting days coming!'"

Abel Freeman ended his conversation almost dreamily. He'd hung his slouch hat on the corner of the bench back. In his iron-gray hair, the sun picked out reddish glints. His gaze, which might have been designed especially for precision squirrel-shooting, wandered down a path that curved along the park lake.

Ed Dukas found him a fascinating mixture of old romance and comedy, artfully concealing the most recent of wonders, the dark channels of which held the potentials of great centuries to come, or mindless silence after destruction. The treachery was not in Abel Freeman himself but in the fact of his being.

Ed's mouth was dry. "You're honest, Mr. Freeman," he said.

Abel Freeman answered this with a nod and a shrug. "Funny," he drawled. "Thought I saw a young feller I was sort of expecting. A congenial enemy, name of Tom Granger. Look, suppose you three sidekicks of mine get on your feet nice and easy, and walk the other way on that path. It would be safer. Not too far. Just a piece."

This might have been an armed robber's command, but Ed sensed that it was nothing like that. Without a word, he led Les and Barbara away.

There was a blinding, blue-white flash. The bench on which they had been sitting was gone--vaporized by fearful heat. Incandescent vapors rose from a big hole in the turf. When condensed and solidified, they would show little flecks of gold transmuted from soil. These were the effects of the familiar Midas Touch pistol. It used lighter atoms to form heavier ones, while it converted a little of the total mass into energy.

Freeman must have leaped away at just the right instant to avoid destruction. With astonishing agility, he was pursuing his intended murderer. As Freeman sprang to the youth's shoulders, they both fell in a heap on the walk and slid to a stop. Freeman's hand flicked, and the weapon flew into the bushes.

By then Ed and Barbara and Les were standing over the prone forms. Freeman was unruffled.

"Friends," he said, laughing, "meet up with a young one with a sharp viewpoint and lots of guts in his own way. Yep, Tom Granger."

Granger was panting heavily. His mass of black hair streamed down over his thin face. He looked scarcely older than Ed or Les, but these days that meant little. In repose, his large, dark eyes might have been limpid and idealistic; now they flashed fury. His shabbiness was affected. Certainly, in this era, there were no reasons for poverty.

Now he began to struggle again, in Freeman's grasp. Futilely, of course. "Yes, I have guts!" he declared. "I wanted to kill you, Freeman--with whatever means that are left that can still accomplish that with things like you! I wanted the incident to get into the newscast--yes, to give me public attention. And not for any stupid vanity, but for the best purpose there ever was. I wanted a chance to be listened to, while I tell what everyone must have begun to sense by now. Damn you, Freeman! Let me up!"

Abel Freeman smirked indulgently and obliged.

Granger rose lamely but gamely. "You seem to be impromptu acquaintances of this Abel Freeman," he said to Ed and his companions. "He has feelings, he thinks; he's even a good person. In some ways he's just an interesting rogue of the nineteenth century. But he's a device. And unless something is done, we'll be as obsolete as the dinosaur! Our science serves us no longer. It serves other masters, nearer to its meaning. Others than I have realized it. In every two houses this side of the world there is already an average of one of these creatures of vitaplasm. Is Earth to be kept for us, and for the joy of being human; or are we to become--basically, and no matter how humanized--mere synthetic mechanisms, trading our birthright for a few mechanical advantages?"

The shot from the Midas Touch pistol was drawing a crowd. An approaching police siren wailed.

Suddenly Granger fixed his eyes on Ed in surprise and recognition. "Dukas," he said. "Let me see--Edward Dukas. At a time when the world was more reasonably watchful, your house was under surveillance. As a possible means of contacting one Mitchell Prell--who had his hand in what once happened to us, and perhaps in what is happening now. How does it feel, Dukas, to be so close to such a celebrity? Ah, maybe you're shy!"

Flattening out Granger again would have been no useful answer to Ed's memories of bitter wrongs. He smiled briefly at him.

"Come see me some evening when you don't feel so much like making a monkey of someone, because someone has just made a monkey out of you," he said.

Then he hustled his companions away. "There's no good in getting involved in public confusion," he told them. "Anyhow not till we talk things out and get them straight."

Ten minutes later they were in a quiet restaurant.

"Abel Freeman," Les Payten said. "He was quite a surprise at that."

"Rather, more of a pointing out of facts we already knew," Barbara remarked.

"The old robot-peril come true," Less said pensively. "Humanity threatened to be replaced, not by clanking giants of metal, simple and melodramatic, but by beings much more refined--though they are perhaps much the same thing. My own father is one of them."

"There's truth in what Granger said," Ed pointed out. "There's that dread of being shouldered out of the way by something strange and tougher. I can feel it too. Granger can certainly make use of it, preaching. He's clever. But he's the worst kind of fool."

"Yeah, hammering on the detonator cap of the entire Earth," Les said, breathing softly.

The three friends, sitting around a table under soft lights and in pleasant surroundings, looked at one another. The food before them was good, the music was quiet and soothing. But at eye level, in the air where their glances passed, seemed to hang all the elements of the complex civilization to which they belonged: its luxury and beauty, its climbing technology that could conquer death and reach for other solar systems, but by the same or related forces could dissolve worlds, especially if mankind, at the top, lost control of itself.

"I thought things would go along smoothly and reasonably," Barbara offered. "There's certainly plenty of room for both people and androids. I took all of that more or less on faith. But I'm afraid I'm wrong. After all, how can human beings live beside beings that blend indistinguishably with the mass and yet are stronger, quicker?"

Ed remembered signs of friction that he'd heard about. A minor riot here or there. He remembered public statements by specialists like Schaeffer admitting that some confusion was on the way but declaring that in the end everything should be better for everyone. Those specialists had the calculators, the great electronic thought-machines, digesting trends, making profound predictions. But then there was another thought--had many of those scientists already converted their own bodies to a stronger medium?

Ed saw that Les Payten had a faint sweat of strain on his forehead, though he knew that Les was no nervous coward. His sullen poise just after the lunar explosion long ago had proved that.

"Maybe the worst of all," Les was saying, "is the sense of being carried along, swiftly and helplessly, by things that are too big and complicated. You wish you could find a ledge somewhere in the time-stream and stop for a while to get your bearings. Sometimes you feel that you are in a one-way tunnel where you have to keep moving. Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Maybe it's just a matter of personal adjustment--a taking of whatever comes."

"I feel as though we're at the threshold of some terrible danger, Ed," Barbara said. "What can we do about it?"

He saw how strong and earnest she looked, and it reassured him. He touched her hand briefly. "I don't know exactly," he said. "But I'm for holding course toward the bigger future that stirred me up with big dreams of the planets, of the stars. And I'm in favor of being _reasonable_. I've seen too much hate and fear and unreason in people. The way things are, it doesn't have to be a lot of people any more--just a few gone a little crazy. The Moon blew up by accident. A world was gone. But what happened by accident can certainly happen by design or with the aid of fury. So, everywhere we go we can talk against fury and panic, and _for_ reason. To our friends, and in the streets. Everywhere that we can, and to everyone. Small as that effort is, it might help."

Solemnly the three friends shook hands and agreed to work out the details of a plan.

III

That same night, at his home in the suburbs, Ed Dukas read an article that had especially attracted his attention. Could vitaplasm be grown into forms unknown before? Could it be shaped from a plan--a blueprint--like the metal and plastic forming a machine? Heart here, lungs there, nervous system arranged so? Scaly armor, long, creeping body? Or wings that fluttered through the air? The author saw no reason why this could not happen. Monstrous things. Ed Dukas chuckled at the melodramatic idea. But he suspected that it was far from impossible.

Young Dukas also had a caller that night.

"You said I should come to see you," Tom Granger told him when they were alone in Ed's room. Ed was on guard at once.

His visitor's mood seemed to have changed since the afternoon.

"Sorry if I seemed out of line today," Granger said. "My motives are good. And I didn't want to insult you."

"Thanks," Ed responded shortly. "But you didn't come here just to tell me that. How does it happen that you're not in jail?"

"Abel Freeman discreetly pressed no charges. I wish he had. But, like you, he just disappeared. There was only that hole in the ground--made by the Midas Touch pistol--a feeble thing to admit for a publicity showdown. So I kept still, and the police couldn't hold me. Fact is, most of them seem sympathetic to what I stand for--the venerable human privilege of walking on one's own green planet as a natural animal, loving one's wife and children in the ancient, simple manner."

Granger was a good orator. Mysteriously, Ed was faintly moved. Perhaps the gentle argument was too plain and clear. But Ed remained wary of the traps of language and feeling, and of perhaps impractical dreams.

His anger sharpened. Then, knowing the possibly deadly quality of anger in these times and wishing to counteract that everywhere, he yearned desperately to be a master psychologist, always calm and smiling and supremely persuasive. But he could not be like that. He was too human and limited. Maybe too primitive.

"You still haven't told me why you came here, Granger," he said coldly. "Why have you passed up a chance for public shouting to come and talk to me?"

Granger smiled. "You're clever enough, Dukas, to know that to win the nephew of Mitchell Prell over to my way of thinking could be to my advantage before that public. Or that, if I can't make friends with him, at least knowing him better might help. Even the latter circumstance could be like having a finger on a whole set of advantages when the showdown between human beings and androids finally comes. Oh, I admire Prell! A great man--if he _was_ a man when last seen! But his kind of greatness is poison, Dukas--though millions with short memories have foolishly forgiven him. But if he ever turns up again, you'll know it, and so, perhaps, will I--before he can do any further damage. You surely must realize that he bears a double guilt: for the blowup and for the development of vitaplasm!"

Granger's smile was savage and hopeful.

Ed laughed in his face. "You think that secretly I might hate Mitchell Prell, eh, Granger? But he was the idol of my childhood, a whimsical, friendly little man. So I'm stuck with loyalty. But even if I hated him blackly, I wouldn't come over to your side. I don't like the way you think. Until the blowup happened, it was bravo for science and empire. Afterward, your hysterical soul was free from blame and white as snow, and he was guilty. Maybe I judge you wrongly. I hope I do. But the way I add it up, it's not the androids or any other new and inevitable development that is the big danger; it's people like you, though maybe you don't realize it. Loudmouths who stir up confusion, animosity, hatred. Maybe I ought to kill you. Then there'd be one less spark in the powder barrel!"

"Why don't you?" Granger mocked. "There'd still be others. And I'd be brought back."

Ed nodded. "The benefits of our civilization," he said. "How would you like to be an android? Does the idea scare you? You know, Granger, some people say that, regardless of how you're returned to the living, you're not the same person you were but only a superficially exact duplicate."

"You know I'd always choose to be human, Dukas," Granger muttered, looking almost terrified.

"Sure, Granger," Ed taunted. "You're not afraid of death--the knowledge that science can restore you gives you courage. You can take the benefits of scientific advancement, can't you? But assuming its responsibilities is another thing."

"I'm not dodging responsibility! I'm grabbing it, Dukas! I'm striking out for sane control. I've done things already! While I worked in the vaults, where personal recordings are kept, certain of those little cylinders disappeared. They won't be found again! Some men don't deserve that much protection against mishap--among them your uncle! I'm proud of this, and I boast of it! No, don't accuse me! Even an official complaint would be challenged by many people and then buried in a heap of red tape. I can be a dirty fighter, Dukas; and I'll bite and kill and kick and holler my lungs out to keep this planet from going to the machines!"

The wild look in Granger's face was the thing that prompted Ed to action. The admission of the theft only emphasized the ghoulish determination that was there. The only hope seemed in smashing that ego out of existence--for a while at least.

Ed chuckled. "So you'd take even the essence of people's selves," he said.

Granger's gaze didn't waver. "If every last thing I hold dear--and which I believe most real human beings hold dear in like manner--were in danger, I'd do anything."

"So would I," Ed said grimly.

Then he struck and struck and struck again. Blood spurted from Granger's smashed lips and nose, as he crashed to the floor, struggled to his feet and fell again.

There was movement at the door of the room. From behind, Ed was gripped by a strength greater than his own. "Stop it, Ed," he was commanded quietly. It was his father.

Through bloodied lips, Granger was explaining hurriedly, "Your son and I disagree. He lost his temper. All I ask is that the good parts of science--medical and so forth--be kept and the rest banned. And that life become simple. A thing of fields and flowers, and wholesome physical work. And not a mechanized bedlam, full of constant danger and tension."

Granger sounded very earnest, Ed thought. Maybe he was earnest. Maybe he was a good actor.

"Ban this, ban that!" Ed shouted. "No one ever lived happily under the kind of artificial bans you mean, Granger! And what will you do with the billions of people who disagree with your pretty vision? Some of them will hate what you advocate as much as you hate existing circumstances! And if modern weapons are once used...."

"Quiet, Ed," his father said softly. "You've assaulted your guest--one who, as far as I can see, has the most reasonable of views. A beautiful picture. I agree with it myself--entirely."

"Look, Dad," Ed began. "This Granger here is trying to solve today's and tomorrow's problems with yesterday's poor answers."

Ed stopped. He had an odd thought: his synthetic father had been created largely from his and his mother's memories, at a terrible time of grief, when his mother's reactions had turned against the groping toward the stars. Before that, Dad had been somewhat averse to mechanization. But now he was distinctly more so, as if that grief and aversion had marked him.

Jack Dukas was now medicating Granger's face with antiseptics while Granger preached, as if from some deep font of a new wisdom: "You see, Mr. Dukas, again, as in the past, danger is creeping up on us without receiving serious attention. Beings that are really robots are already controlling part of their own production. Their creation, everywhere, should be banned or stamped out. Existing androids should be converted to flesh or destroyed.... I'll go now. Thank you for your help. But I think I'll get in touch with your son occasionally. He needs guidance."

Ed nodded grimly. "Perhaps I do," he said. "Maybe everyone does. You watch me and I'll watch you, eh?"

* * * * *

During the succeeding months Ed did his best to spread his doctrine of calm and reason, working against the agitation which he knew was already well under way. Les Payten and Barbara Day were with him in this. All over the world there were others, mostly unknown to them, but with the same ideas: "Use your head.... Don't put fear before knowledge.... Do you _know_ an android? What is his name? Maybe Miller or Johnson? You must know a few. And do they think so differently from yourself? Yes, there are problems and no doubt prejudice. It may even be justified. But the answers to our difficulties must be cool-minded. Everyone knows why."

Ed and his companions talked in this manner to their acquaintances, spoke on street corners, sent letters to newscast agencies. And they won many people over. The trouble was that they, and others like them, could not reach everybody.

Their Earth remained beautiful. There were hazy hills covered with trees; there were soaring spires. The unrest was an undercurrent.

This was a time of choosing of sides, and of buildup, while there was a sense of helpless slipping onward toward what few could truly want. Voices with another, harsher message were raised. Tom Granger was hardly alone there, either. Tracts were passed out as part of their method: _What Is Our Heritage?_; _The Right to Be Human_; _Technology Versus Wisdom_. Perhaps directly out of such a mixture of truth and crude thinking the assassinations began. There were thousands in scattered places.

One day Ed Dukas pushed into a knot of curious onlookers and saw the body of one of the first of these. There, in the same park where Ed had first met Abel Freeman, it had been found in the early morning. A Midas Touch blast had torn it in half.

"It's Howard Besser, a machinist who lives in the same building with me," a man in the crowd offered. "He died once in the lunar explosion. Now it happened again. That's no joke, even though he can be brought back."

Ed saw the victim's torn flesh. It _looked_ like flesh. But broken bones had little metallic glints in them. Could you avoid remembering that, mated to like, these beings of vitaplasm could even reproduce their kind, to help increase their number? Had persons like Tom Granger planned even this dramatization of a difference? Bits of this flesh still squirmed, hours after violence.

Granger had made progress. Growing public attention had won him the privilege of orating on the newscast. It was he who had first talked about vampires and androids--together, and to a world-wide audience. He also accomplished an important part in winning the legal suppression of labs creating human forms in vitaplasm.

"It was desecration," he declared in his speech. "It is a tragedy that we could not clamp down the lid sooner. There are an estimated seventy million of these 'improvements on nature' now in existence. And there are many hidden establishments still producing more. Can we ever destroy them all? It is criminal to lock a human soul in such substance. If, of course, the soul truly remains human, as it was meant to be...."