Before Comstock could bother to tell the man that he was a little behind in his knowledge of what had been happening, the gun did its work.
Stunned, Comstock fell off the bench and crashed onto the floor. His head landed so hard that the result was instant unconsciousness. The effect of the gun's energy bolt would merely have been to immobilize his bodily functions. But the blow knocked him out.
When he opened his eyes and was again aware of life and its processes, he had been moved. He did not know it immediately but he had been transferred to The Grandfather's aerie.
The first thing that Comstock was aware of was the fact that he was seated in a chair unlike any he had ever seen before. It was big, and comfortable in a way, except that from the arms of it came metal bands that encompassed his forearms preventing the slightest movement. Around his legs, similar bands held his calves against the legs of the chair.
Directly in front of him was the most tremendous desk he had ever seen. Around the walls of the room which was completely circular were little holes, just big enough for the muzzles of stun-guns to project through. The port holes were no more than ten inches apart so that every inch of his body was being menaced at all times.
As intelligence returned to him, he looked dully at the too tall figure of The Grandfather who sat behind the desk. The long beard curved gracefully down the giant chest. More tired than he had ever been in his life, Comstock thought in woolly fashion of how nice it would be to curl up in The Grandfather's lap, as he had been taught by his mother, and forget all his cares.
Thinking of The Grandfather's lap made him remember, with a guilty start, that he had no idea of what had happened to Pat.
Before he could ask, The Grandfather said, "You have managed to do something that no one has done in more years than I like to think about. Why did you sneak away from the Board room, Comstock?"
The omnipresent muzzles of the circle of stun-guns preyed heavily on Comstock's muddled mind. He did not answer the question.
The Grandfather said, "I am not used to having to ask a question twice. Why did you leave when I was speaking? Did you not believe what I was saying?"
There was a curious expression, Comstock realized, on The Grandfather's face. Was it possible that what The Grandfather had said, down below, was not the truth? Could it be that Bowdler was as befuddled as the rest of them? Was some tremendous game, so complicated as not to be understood being played?
"I am waiting," The Grandfather said.
Comstock's slack face betrayed nothing. He was too tired, too confused, too upset to even hazard an opinion. Finally he croaked, "The only reason I left, was because I wanted to think."
"To think?" The tone was satirical. "Curious, most of my people are content to allowmeto do all the thinking."
How despairingly Comstock wished that he too could let The Grandfather do all his thinking, but it was much too late for that.
Hunching over his desk, The Grandfather leaned forward and said, "Speak up, man, don't force me to employ certain methods which I have used on occasion."
Speak up! When all he wanted to do was lay his weary head on that comforting beard and forget everything? Speak up when his tongue was thick with thirst and his stomach growling with hunger? Speak up when his sleepless head was involuntarily dropping from time to time from sheer fatigue?
Why didn't the old fool leave him alone? How far could a man be pushed? What did he have to lose now that he knew that membership on the Board of Fathers meant a lingering death by heart disease? A wave of adrenaline shot through his system as anger burned brightly.
He almost snarled as he asked, "Supposeyoudo some answering? SupposeIask the questions for a change?"
Leaning back in his chair The Grandfather's face reflected no emotion at all.
Comstock snapped. "Suppose you tell me how you've stayed in power so long! Some of those earth books I read in Bowdler's library made me wonder about a lot of things, Grandfather. And I'd like to know some of the answers!
"Tell me, how have you stayed in power so long?"
"Because," The Grandfather said, "since you ask, because of fear."
Of that emotion there was none in Comstock. He was beyond any ordinary feelings at all. They had all been washed away.
CHAPTER 14
"Fear?" Comstock hazarded, for at the moment the word meant nothing to him. Nothing at all.
"Fear," The Grandfather said, repeating the word again, "is my bulwark. Cowardice my armor. I am the most frightened man in our world. That is the reason I am The Grandfather. Until the day comes that a more frightened man, a more cowardly human being arises, I shall rule. No brave man can ever breach my defenses, because no brave man can ever know the things I fear. Since I am always fearful my mind is filled with ideas as to where and how I may be attacked. Since this is so, I spend all my waking hours building up my guard against any such attacks.
"The nights," he said thoughtfully, "I spend in nightmares in which all my defenses crumble."
Comstock sat across the room from The Grandfather, his arms enclosed in the cage like affair that immobilized him. Through apertures in the walls at shoulder height he could see the stock-still muzzles of the stun-guns that were trained on him. He brought his attention back to The Grandfather. The man's long, thin face was raddled with what seemed like fear. Tics jerked monstrously at the corners of his mouth and at his hag-ridden eyes.
"How," Comstock asked, "can you sit under the menace of the guns that surround us? Aren't you afraid that one of the gunners may shoot you?"
"You see," the lean, bearded face was full of envy, "You see, you think like a brave man and that is why you will never be able to overcome me. Only a brave man could sit under the guns ... unless, he had the foresight to have done what I have. Behind the gunners of which you are aware, there is another set of gunners, each of whom has a gun pointed at the head of the gunner who has been honored by being my guard."
Comstock thought of this for a while and then he said, "And do the secondary gunners have tertiary gunners menacing them?"
The Grandfather smiled delightedly, "There! You see, you are beginning to think like a coward. Fear like mine is infectious. Of course there are tertiary and quaternary and quinternary gunners!"
In the lengthening pause that followed this statement of The Grandfather's, Comstock wondered if this was right, was fear the thing that held him on the pinnacle he had made his own?
The Grandfather said, "I am not sure that I have convinced you. Observe my face, the way fear tears at it. Consider that I am so cowardly that my stomach digests itself rather than the food I force into it. Realize that the only pleasure my fear allows me to enjoy is that of power and then try to realize how helpless a brave man like you who spreads his pleasure between the table and the bed must be in the face of my one, all-consuming pleasure.
"You can eat for perhaps three hours a day," The Grandfather went on, "depending on your sexual appetite and your years, you can spend an hour, perhaps two in play at sex. But I can spend every waking minute of every day on my pleasure."
He smiled. "You are helpless, bound by your bravery, you fool!"
And Comstock, considering the matter wondered if The Grandfather was right. One Achilles heel alone remained to attack. Could a coward foresee rashness, foolhardy bravery? Or would a coward be unable to intuitively foresee such an action, to grapple with it; not that he, Comstock, was brave.
Only one other way occurred to Comstock in which the matter could be tested.
Leaning his upper trunk as far forward as his bonds would allow, he said slowly, throwing his words into the teeth of the bearded man who faced him, "You are a liar."
It is an understatement to say that The Grandfather was surprised. His face was absolutely blank as he repeated the word, "Liar?" questioningly.
Comstock was aware in the lengthening silence of the immobility of the single-eyed muzzles of the stun-guns which surrounded him. Not since he had opened his eyes in that singular room had one of the guns so much as twitched.
"Surely," Comstock said. "For instance, there is no one behind any of the guns that seem to menace me."
Lean fingers were busy caressing the silken hairs of the beard that cascaded down The Grandfather's chest. The gaunt face surrounded by the aureole of hair was intent. "How?" he asked, "could you tell that?"
"Because I amreallya coward." Comstock said almost boldly. "And I know that no coward could really take the chance that an involuntary tightening of a trigger finger, caused, perhaps by a sneeze, could and would mean death. And I know too that it takes courage of a sort to talk about one's own cowardice. For instance, I find this that I am saying very difficult. That little prepared speech you delivered convinced me of only one thing. You are not afraid of anything."
The Grandfather's hand reached out to his desk and his almost too long index finger darted out and pressed a button. Instantly the bonds that had held Comstock immobile in the chair loosened.
The Grandfather said slowly, "Bowdler chose wisely when he selected you as a rebel. Perhaps more wisely even than he knew."
Comstock moved his arms about in the chair, having no desire now that the bonds were no longer holding him, to get to his feet. He was afraid that his wobbling knees would fail to support him. Massaging his arms where the metallic bonds had bitten deep, he waited with some trepidation for what might happen. Whatever it was, he feared it would be highly unpleasant.
It was.
The Grandfather rose from behind the desk and looking down at Comstock from his not inconsiderable height of six feet ten inches, said, "Since, as you have so truly pointed out, the secret of my continued power is not fear, what then,ismy secret?"
Comstock had devoted a great deal of cerebration to just this point, but that did not make it any easier to say it aloud.
In the lengthening silence, The Grandfather bent down from his great height till his gaunt, strong face was on a level with Comstock's. "Well?"
"The secret," Comstock said, "is the exact opposite of what you claimed."
"Ahh?" The exclamation was almost jubilant.
"Yes," Comstock hurried on, fearing that if he didn't say it in a rush he never would get out the words, "You don't rule because you are afraid but because there is nothing that you fear."
"Come, come," The Grandfather smiled thinly, "each man, no matter how brave, has some secret fear. For instance fat people fear death."
The change of subject was so sudden that it thew Comstock off his mental stride. "Fat people?" he queried.
"Surely," The Grandfather said, "the thought must have occurred to you. Fat people are fat because they fear dying. Did you ever see a very thin person naked?"
To think, Comstock's veering brain thought, that the day would ever come when he'd hear The Grandfather of all people use a dirty word like n...d!
"If you've ever seen a thin person nude, you can realize that their skeleton is omnipresent. This, to a fat person, is detestable. They want to hide their ever presentmemento moridecently. They don't want always to be reminded of that which is hidden inside of all of us, waiting for us.... That's why they get fat. Padding. That's all it is, padding to hide the grisly skeleton who sits with us at every feast."
Struggling to get his attention on to this new vagary of The Grandfather, Comstock said, "But fat people die sooner than skinny ones."
"Certainly," The Grandfather nodded, "but what's that got to do with it? That's reality. The statistic that obesity shortens life is hard and true. But that reality only comes once, at the end of the line. To the fat person the important thing to hide from is the ever-present reminder that the day he is born he begins to die. That's the big trick they try to employ. To forget that fact. But I digress. You were saying?"
What had he been saying? This maundering of the Grandfather, could it be that like the Elders, The Grandfather was senile? Comstock looked down at his own beginning paunch and wondered if this was why the Grandfather had brought up the subject of fat, then he said, "I was saying that the reason you rule is because you have no fears."
"Yes. That was the subject under discussion, wasn't it?" Again The Grandfather stroked his beard. "Now then, just how did you arrive at that rather startling idea? Remember I don't agree with you, for as I said, every human being fears something."
"I am sure you are right," Comstock said tensely. "I am sure that every human being fears something ... or someone."
"I find your remarks contradictory."
"Not at all," Comstock felt a little bolder. Crossing his arms, he dared the thunderbolts of The Grandfather's wrath. "I don't think you are a human being, grandpa."
The silence that followed his pronouncement seemed to last for all the years of Comstock's life.
When The Grandfather spoke, his words came as a withering shock to Comstock.
"You are a very brave man, Comstock. The bravest this world of ours has produced in five centuries...."
It was, after all, one thing to have an hypothesis, it was an astrobat of a far different color to have that hypothesis substantiated. And right from the astrobat's mouth at that!
Looking down at his hands, Comstock was incuriously aware that they were trembling violently. He, brave? The idea was ludicrous. He was more badly scared than he had ever been in his whole life. Fear jumped and jolted through his body as he waited for The Grandfather to continue.
"But," The Grandfather said, "I can see that you are on the very brink of nervous exhaustion. I will speak to you more fully when you are fed and rested."
Comstock was too tired to do more than pick at the food that was provided for him in the bed-chamber to which an R.A. guided him. As a matter of fact, seated on the edge of the bed, his head whirling, he was barely aware of Pat's entrance. She had evidently been fed too, for her only concern was Comstock. Going to him, she forced him to lie down, then, as he closed his eyes blissfully at the feeling of ease that welled up in him, she gently spooned food into his mouth till his eyes closed completely.
She slept all that night right next to him, but so deep was his fatigue that it was not till the following night that he awoke and by that time Pat had been up and about for hours. She came out of the bath in a swirl of soft cloth. Comstock felt excitement well up in him and knew instantly that he was almost all recovered from the slings and arrows that had assailed him.
Drawing her to him, he was very much aware of her presence this time.
When they had finished making love she said, gently, "I almost forgot, and it's your fault," but her smile proved that she shared the fault if it could be called that, "The Grandfather wants to see you as soon as you rise."
Feeling prepared to tackle legions let alone The Grandfather, Comstock showered, shaved and dressed, whistling all the while. "Any chance of getting some food?" He had yelled through the pouring water so that when he finished dressing, a tray was all set up for him.
Wolfing down the food he listened intently to what Pat had learned during his sleep.
"And the most remarkable thing," Pat said, "is the artificial insemination laboratory downstairs!"
"Wait a minute," Comstock said through a mouthful of food, "what's a laboratory, what's insemination and what's artificial insemination?"
"Bowdler said that the funniest thing that happened when he was trying to make a rebel of you, was when you thought that the Fathers were really the fathers of all the children in the world."
"Wass so funny?" Comstock wanted to know, bread filling his mouth.
"Umm," Pat said. "I better backtrack a bit. As long as the scientists had a hand in running our world they were able to control the birth rate by mechanical means. But when they were killed, The Grandfather was left with the problem of trying to keep our world from being over-populated without using any mechanics."
Comstock was completely confused but waited patiently, shovelling food into his empty belly while he waited for clarification.
"The first thing that occurred to The Grandfather was to try to control completely the sex drive but ... that didn't work very well. Then he reasoned that if the sexual stereotype of women was changed to old women who could no longer bear children that he was then in a position to only have the proper number of women impregnated."
All the obscenity that Pat was mouthing would, a few days ago, have made Comstock faint, or aroused him, but it didn't even occur to him to find it odd.
She continued, "Then as soon as women who were past their menopause had become the love objects, The Grandfather set up a laboratory here in headquarters where the healthiest women in the population could come. Under hypnosis they were injected with live sperm, and lo and behold, the population curve was back under control again!"
Comstock was sure that what Pat was saying was important, but at the moment all he could really think about was his curious duel the night before with The Grandfather.
"With what little scientific gadgets were left after the last scientists were killed, The Grandfather set up a police force, which he called the Father's Right Arms, but not even the R.A.'s know how the radios they use, or the stun-guns, or the automobiles that they drive work, let alone knowing about the hypnosis that makes people see haloes around their heads.
"Between his control of the birth rate, his police force, and the little science at his command, he has kept our world running ... after a fashion. But the point at which we rebels enter the picture is this."
It was a sure thing that what Pat was saying was vital to her, to him, and to the whole world, but Comstock could not help remembering the outrageous things he had said, and thought about The Grandfather. What could it lead to? Why had the Grandfather called him the most courageous man....
Pat said, "But The Grandfather is only a man and therefore has made mistakes. He has frozen our culture at the same point for so long that humanity is in danger of drying up and dying out."
If, Comstock thought, The Grandfather had been only a man, then all this trouble would not have started, but there was no point in frightening Pat, she was too happy, too bubbling over with excitement, with the news of what a brave new world they were soon to have under the direction of Bowdler, Helen, Grundy, the philosopher, Pat and Comstock.
Comstock wondered vaguely what a philosopher was when Pat mentioned it, but that question too was made meaningless by the things he was worried about.
Leaning forward, Pat kissed Comstock, and said, "Isn't it wonderful, darling? I'm so excited I can hardly sit still." Then, remembering, she said, "But hurry up, sweetheart, you have to go see The Grandfather...."
"Yes." That was going to be his job.
He had been using it as a device when he had suggested that the Picaroon beard The Grandfather in his lair. But now it was obvious, he, Comstock, was going to have to do precisely that!
CHAPTER 15
Pausing at the door, Comstock turned around to blow a goodbye kiss to Pat. But she had turned with her back to him which may have been the reason that he at first failed to understand the meaning of what she said to him.
The words which baffled him were, "Darling, it's all going to be so worth while. It will mean that our child will be born in a world that is worth living in, not this sorry mess through which we have had to struggle."
One hand on the door knob, one foot raised, about to proceed out through the doorway, Comstock stood stock still. Then he said, and his voice was quite numb, "Child?"
Turning from the window, Pat smiled and said, "Oh, it's too soon to know, but one of the inevitable results of two people of opposite sexes making love is that a child is born, you know."
"Child?" he repeated.
"Imagine," Pat went on not noticing that her man looked as if he had been pole axed, "Our child will be the first love child born for centuries.... Isn't that exciting?"
"Child?" he said for the third time and then fainted.
When he came to, Pat said, "I'm sorry, dear, perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it all so abruptly."
"We're going to have a child. I'll be a father!" Beaming he took her in his arms and kissed her, for the first time the emotion he felt was a completely different kind of love, minus the lustful feelings that being near her generally engendered.
"That is," she said carefully, trying to avoid shocking him again, "we'll have a child if we are successful in what we have been doing."
"It's wonderful fun trying, isn't it?"
"Ummmm," she said, and kissed him with more fervor.
Neither knew how long an R.A. had been framed in the doorway, his shocked face alternately scarlet and then livid. The man croaked, "The Grandfather awaits your presence, Father Comstock."
Father with a capital F and father with a small f. Now, surely, Comstock thought, he would have the courage to face again the being whom he feared had to be overcome before their desire could come to fruition.
Facing The Grandfather was still difficult, Comstock found. Many things conspired to make it so. First was his training, but second was the terrible ego position of being so much smaller than the towering figure, who stood, beard foaming down his chest, his hands behind his back as he paced back and forth in his sanctum and said, "Just before I feared your imminent collapse last night you said that you did not think I was a human being. Would you care to amplify your statement at this time?"
Rather than stand before The Grandfather, his head tilted back like a child facing an irate parent, Comstock decided to sit down. That way he could stare at The Grandfather's belt and speak to it, instead of getting a crick in his neck.
"Before I go back to that line of thought," Comstock said rather pompously. "I would like to take this opportunity of saying that in some ways I feel you have acted like an egregious idiot."
"Oh?"
"If I understand what I was told, you set up this whole strict very moral world just so that disease could be cured by what our people considered to be sins. Correct?"
"Correct."
"I think you've got the whole thing wrong."
"I see."
"Of course you've been around a lot longer than I have, but if I may say so, I think you got the whole blasted thing turned around."
"You are being quite objectionable, Father Comstock."
"Objectionable, perhaps, but I notice that you do not say that I am incorrect in my assumption."
"I am waiting to see what your assumption may be."
"I think that disease is caused by sin."
"And you feel that this is different than saying that sin can cure disease?"
Was the old gent really an imbecile? Comstock wondered irritably. It seemed quite obvious to him that somewhere along the line the basic idea had been lost sight of, and the antithesis set up in its place.
"In one of the earth books I read there was a reference to what was called psychosomatic medicine. Now, if I understood what I read correctly, the theory of this kind of curing was that the person who was sick was punishing himself for some sin that he thought he had committed," Comstock said thoughtfully.
"Yes?"
"The cure then, was to assure the person that his sin was either non-existent or not heinous."
"I see."
"But the way you've run our world, you've made us commit real sins in order to be cured of non-existent diseases."
The Grandfather stared off into space. Then he snapped his fingers and said, "By golly, I bet you're right! Now that you say it out loud that does seem to be what the scientists were thinking about. Guess I got things a little mixed up."
"A little mixed up!" Comstock was incredulous. "You've had us living in a madhouse for five hundred years and all you can say is that you must have made a little mistake?"
Shrugging, The Grandfather said, "So I made a little mistake."
"Now," Comstock said, "now I know that my hypothesis is correct, how could you have listened to the things, the horrors that have gone on in our world for all these centuries and not been affected, not been chilled to the bone with a desire to do something concrete?"
The Grandfather seemed to consider the question carefully, then he shrugged and said, "Who listens?"
There was only one thing that remained for Comstock to do. Marshalling his forces, he suddenly leaped from his chair straight at The Grandfather.
His clutching hands were stretched out in front of him as the forward impetus of his movement carried him into The Grandfather's chest. He pulled at The Grandfather's beard.
Now he would know, once and for all.
And then he knew.
The beard came off in his hands.
CHAPTER 16
Stunned by his own temerity, Comstock stared at what had formerly been hidden by the hair of the beard.
"I knew it," Comstock said at last. "I knew no human being could live for five hundred years."
"That is why I have taunted you into action," The Grandfather said gravely, "I knew that only when you saw with your own eyes the evidence of what you suspected would you be able to proceed properly."
"This is why there is no record of your existence prior to five hundred years ago?"
"Yes."
Staring at the metallic surface that had been hidden under the beard, seeing for the first time the control panel that covered The Grandfather's whole chest, Comstock wondered what to do next.
"I hope," The Grandfather said, "that I have not been derelict to my trust. But somehow the whole thing became too much for the mechanisms that the scientists built into me."
If scientists could do things like this, Comstock thought with a wild surge of hope, if they could have built a thing like this that faced him, that was capable of living for half a thousand years, and had succeeded in behaving like a super-human being, then what other wonders was science capable of bringing about? What would the future hold, released from the dead hands that had held his world in sway for so long? The thought was enough to make his brain spin.
The beard lay across his hands, its very feel a challenge to the imagination for it was not made of hair but some substance unlike any that Comstock had ever seen before.
The Grandfather put his forefinger to a button on the board on his chest. It actuated a servo mechanism that allowed him to sit down. He said, "May I have my beard back?"
Witlessly, still astounded at what had come to pass, Comstock handed the object to the man? Thing? That sat across the desk from him.
When The Grandfather was in the act of replacing the beard, Comstock could see just under his chin, a series of rivets that held his head in place. One looked loose and Comstock pointed it out.
The Grandfather tightened the rivet and then sighed. "Yes, there can be no doubt I am beginning to wear out. That is why I have forced this series of actions into being. That is why I forced Bowdler to leave the Board to search for you rebels. I knew that my day was coming to an end.
"I cannot say that I will be sorry to be able to go to rust peacefully."
The idea of The Grandfather rusting, so bizarre as to have been unimaginable a few days earlier did not even cause Comstock to flinch.
Forcing himself to listen to what The Grandfather was saying instead of wondering wildly about the future, he heard, "You see it was my primary function to keep the culture frozen till someone, anyone, with intelligence and guts, came along and saw past the façade that had been erected.
"I must confess," The Grandfather said wryly, "that when I first heard about you, I did not thinkyouwould be the one to tear down that façade."
Since Comstock was as amazed as the robot, he did not find the words insulting. As a matter of fact he was too worried about the next step that had to be taken to think much about what the old machine was saying.
"Shall we join my friends?" Comstock asked and it was only then that he realized how long he had been sitting thinking, for he had not even heard The Grandfather ask for his help.
The machine was frozen in the same position it had assumed when it sat down at the desk. The Grandfather said almost plaintively. "I thought that perhaps you had become deaf."
"Huh?"
"One of my circuits is jammed. You'll have to help me. This has been happening more and more frequently lately, that's why I was so anxious for assistance."
"What can I do?"
"See if you can rotate the fourth dial on the left, on my chest."
But the dial moved with no result. There was no impulse being sent to motivate the big machine.
Lunatic thoughts raced through Comstock's now addled brain. He wondered what vice The Grandfather would have to adopt in order to be cured.
"Don't get panicky," The Grandfather said. "It's only my body mechanism that has been affected. In my top desk drawer there is a pair of pliers. Get them."
Obeying, Comstock saw, in the desk drawer next to some tools, a metal memorandum pad. Scrawled on it he read the idea that had held back his world for five centuries. It said, "All or most diseases can be cured, if the very moral people of a very moral civilization are forced to perform actions which they consider immoral." After this statement there were two more words. These, The Grandfather had evidently never considered objectively. The two words were, True? False?
But Comstock did not pause to think about the statement too much. Instead he grabbed the pliers and asked what he was to do with them.
"Unfasten the rivet that holds my head in place," the robot instructed.
Obeying the command was very difficult, Comstock found, for a variety of reasons. First, he had an ingrained feeling that what he was doing was the height of blasphemy, and then, when he controlled this conditioned reflex, he found that time and rust had almost frozen the rivets in place.
He was sweating by the time he had unfastened all the necklace of rivets.
The Grandfather said, "Now, very carefully, lift my head straight upwards."
There were many wires dangling down from the underside of the jaw. The Grandfather directed Comstock to cut them free.
Then and only then, with Comstock holding the head carefully between his blistered hands, The Grandfather said, "Now let us join the others."
In the Board room, The Fathers, Bowdler, the philosopher, Grundy, Pat and Helen sat beneath an inscribed metal plaque which read:
"Alcoholism cures heart trouble."
"Adultery cures arterio-sclerosis."
"Thieving cures insanity."
"Drug addiction cures cancer."
"Prostitution cures diabetes."
There were many such apothegms.
But no one even bothered to read them. As a matter of fact, Grundy had said that one of the first things that they had better do was remove the plaque. The others had agreed heartily.
A loudspeaker above the biggest door in the room said, "The Grandfather approaches."
The Fathers, in a body, forced their decrepit frames to rise.
The rebels decided that they too might as well rise out of respect.
It took a moment before everyone could see the object that Comstock was carrying under his arm.
Walking to the head of the table, Comstock said, "Sit down. Sit down. The Grandfather has a few words to say." Only then did he place the disembodied head he had been carrying onto the table in front of him.
Two of the oldest, sickest Fathers, died immediately.
When their bodies had been removed, Comstock said, "There's nothing to be afraid of. The Grandfather says that He is something that used to be called a robot."
Then rapping on the table with a gavel, he sat back and waited. Down at the far end of the table he could see Pat eyeing the head with awed fascination. The others were equally pop-eyed.
The philosopher, the man of words, could not be restrained. Before the Grandfather could speak, the philosopher asked incredulously, "Do you mean to say that we have been obeying the dictates of a machine?"
Nodding, Comstock said nonchalantly. "Yep."
Then The Grandfather spoke.
"I was made to be your servant, and it has been my sorry task to be your master. I have not enjoyed it and I must say that I am glad at long last to be rid of an onerous task."
Then he went on to describe the way he had tried, in his feeble, mechanical way to do that which he had been ordered to do. When he had finished his apologetic summary, he said, "But time grows ever shorter and I fear that even my carefully made cortex is beginning to go bad. Listen closely for I have no idea when I will cease to function.
"The mistakes I have made, have been errors of commission not omission. When I have failed it was because not even the scientists who made me could foretell what was to be, as no man can.
"I was told, just before the death of the scientist who finished me, that the reason all our people were driven from earth was because they were vestigial hangovers from what he called an inner-directed culture. An inner-directed culture is always the result of an historical period when the death rate is higher than the birth rate. This kind of culture possesses certain attributes which serve pioneers well, because these inner-directed people have a strong sense of right and wrong, they believe implicitly in black and white evils and virtues. But in our world the birth rate is now, because of my machinations, about equal to the death rate, our people live longer, few children are lost at birth, there is enough food to go around, and so it is time to evolve from an inner-directed culture to a more sophisticated one which has been called an other-directed culture.
"Such a culture is hesitant to make value judgments, it can no longer appraise the foibles of other human beings; the righteousness of the inner-directed person gives way to the more adult approach that right and wrong are after all purely subjective concepts.
"These people can be more objective and since they can, they must inevitably be less prone to throw the first stone.
"There are many concommittants of such a culture, but to you will be the wonder and the glory of discovering them. This is your next step.
"Take it wisely."
It was long before all that The Grandfather said made any sense to his hearers, but all of them remembered the words until the time came that they became understandable.
The last thing that The Grandfather said was, "In the old world from which we came, the earliest known culture was one called an ancestor-directed culture. This was understandable in a period when the death rate was so high and old age rare. Old age became magical since so few possessed it. Then as the elderliness alone ceased to be unique they ascended to the next culture pattern, the one I have described as the inner-directed culture. When your ancestors were sent away from earth almost all the earth people had become other-directed. What has happened in this long hiatus in which we've been out of touch with mother earth I cannot hazard an opinion.
"But if we are to proceed on the previous record we can be sure that they have now ascended to a still higher culture pattern. I would suggest that you not lift the force field that surrounds our planet till you have matured enough to be able to meet your earth cousins on an equal footing.
"An inner-directed culture places a terrific premium on fatherhood. That is why you have been raised with such a high opinion of fathers and why all your power symbols are in terms of fatherhood.
"In the next step which you are to take, fatherhood and motherhood will be equated properly and there will be no further emphasis on what has been called the battle of the sexes.
"The battle of the sexes will become not an armed truce, but an equal sharing of what is best in mankind.
"I have left directions as to how you may contact the inter-planetary economy but I suggest you wait till the time is ripe before taking that step.
"And now I am about to go out of phase. At last ... at long last ... I thought it would never come...."
The eyes closed and the robot was still.
It never spoke again.
Pat ran to Comstock's side. His waiting arms engulfed her as they stood, looking deeply into each other's eyes, savoring their moment of triumph, and thinking with delight of what the future held.
Comstock said, "I love you."
It was the first time in five hundred years that the air of that planet had heard those words said in a tone that meant by love—sharing and trust and hope and peace, and mutual sacrifice that something bigger and better might come from that love.
THE END