Chapter 2
"Don't look up," Merrick warned. "The crystal can catch a human being faster than it can _them_. This is hypnotic engineering. The rhythm of the syllables and their proportion to the length of word and sentence are computed to correspond to typed encephalographic curves. Nothing is left to chance. When they have reached this stage of conditioning they are almost ready for release and purchase by human beings. Only a severe stimulation of the brain can break down the walls we have built in their minds."
Erikson made a gesture as though darkness were streaking his vision. He was shaken badly. "But where do they--where do they come from?"
"The State maternity hospitals, of course," Merrick said, "Where else? The parents are then sterilized by the Health and Welfare Authority as an added safeguard. Births occur at a ratio of about one for every six million normals." He smiled mirthlessly at the Prophet of Human Supremacy. "Well? Little man, what now?"
Honest realization still refused to come. It needed to be put into words, and Sweyn Erikson had no such words. "I see only that you are taking children of men and disfiguring--"
"For the last time," gritted Merrick, "These are _not_ human beings. Genus homo, yes. _Homo chaos_, if you choose. But not homo sapiens. I think of them," he said with sudden calm, "As _Homo Supremus_. The next step on the evolutionary ladder...."
At last the words had been spoken and the flood gates were down in the tortured brain of the Prophet. Like a sudden conflagration, realization came--and with it, blind terror.
"No! Nonono! You cannot continue this devil's work! Think what it would mean if these things should ever be loosed on the world of Man!" the Prophet's voice was a steadily rising shrill of fear.
Han Merrick looked out across the rows of pallets, each with its burden of a superman, bound like Prometheus to the rock, helpless in hypnotic chains. It struck him again that his life had not been well spent. He looked from his charges to the ranting fear-crazed rabble-rouser. The contrast was too shocking, too complete. For the "androids" were, in fact, worthy of a dignity even in slavery that homo sapiens had never attained in overlordship. Merrick knew at last what he must do.
Racial loyalty stirred, but was quickly smothered in the humiliation of man's omnipresent thievery. For it _was_ thievery, Merrick thought. Man was keeping for himself the heritage that was the rightful property of a newer, better race.
He took the automatic from his jumper and leveled it at Erikson's chest. He felt very sure and right. Though he knew that he was sealing the death warrant of his wife and his friends, the memory of their vacillations anesthetized him against any feeling of loss. He waited until Erikson screamed one word into the transmitter imbedded in his flesh--
The word was: "_Attack!_"
--and in the next instant, Han Merrick shot him dead.
* * * * *
The fanatics on the ridges heard the Prophet's command and sprang to comply. Energy swept out of the grids, through the coils of the projectors and out over the blind cube of the Creche.
Han Merrick felt the first radiations. He felt the beginnings of cortical hypertrophy and screamed. Every synapse sagged under the increasing load of sensitivity. The pressure of the air became an unbearable burden, the faintest sound became a shattering roar. Every microscopic pain, every cellular process became a rending, tearing agony. He screamed and the sound was a cataclysmic, planet-smashing hell of noise within his skull. He sagged to the floor and thinking stopped. He contracted himself, pulling legs and arms inward in a massive convulsion until at last he had assumed the foetal position. After a long while, he died.
Every human being within the Creche died so, but there was still life. The energy that killed the lesser creature freed the greater--just as Merrick had known it would. Unhuman matter pulsed under the caressing rain. A thousand beings shuddered at the sudden release of their chains. The speakers ranted unheard. The crystals turned unwatched. The bonds forged by homo sapiens snapped and there came--
_Maturity._
* * * * *
_This, now, is the Creche, Anno Domini 3000. A great mile-square blind cube topping a ragged mountain; bare escarpments falling away to a turbulent sea. For ten centuries the Creche has stood so, and the Androids still come forth, now to lift their starships to the Magellanic Clouds and beyond. A Golden Age has come. But, of course, Man is no longer the Master._
--_Quintus Bland, The Romance of Genus Homo._
THE END
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