Time and Again

XLIV

Sutton opened his eyes to strangeness and lay quietly on the bed. A breeze came through an open window and the room, decorated with fantastic life-murals, was splashed with brilliant sunlight. The breeze brought in the scent of blooming flowers and in a tree outside a bird was chirping contentedly.

Slowly Sutton let his senses reach out and gather in the facts of the room, the facts of strangeness…the unfamiliar furniture, the contour of the room itself, the green and purple monkeys that chased one another along the wavy vine that ran around the border of the walls.

Quietly his mind moved back along the track of time to his final conscious moment. There had been guns flickering in the night and there had been a hand that reached out and cupped his nose.

Drugged, Sutton told himself. Drugged and dragged away.

Before that there had been a cricket and the frogs singing in the marsh and the talking brook that babbled down the hill, hurrying to get wherever it was going.

And before that a man who had sat across a desk from him and told him about a corporation and a dream and plan the corporation held.

Fantastic, Sutton thought. And in the bright light of the room, the very idea was one of utter fantasy…that Man should go out, not only to the stars, but to the galaxies.

But there was greatness in it, a very human greatness. There had been a time when it had been fantasy to think that Man could ever lift himself from the bosom of the planet of his birth. And another time when it had been fantasy to think that Man would go beyond the Solar system, out into the dread reaches of nothingness that stretched between the stars.

But there had been strength in Trevor, and conviction as well as strength. A man who knew where he was going and why he was going and what it took to get there.

Manifest destiny, Trevor had said. That is what it takes. That is what it needs.

Man would be great and he'd be a god. The concepts of life and thought that had been born on the Earth would be the basic concepts of the entire universe, of the fragile bubble of space and time that bobbed along on a sea of mystery beyond which no mind could penetrate. And yet, by the time that Man got where he was headed for, he might well be able to penetrate that, too.

A mirror stood in one corner of the room and in it he saw the reflection of the lower half of his body, lying on the bed, naked except for a pair of shorts. He wiggled his toes and watched them in the glass.

And you're the only one who is stopping us, Trevor had told him. You're the one man standing in the way of Man. You're the stumbling block. You are keeping men from being gods.

But all men did not think as Trevor did. All men were not tangled in the blind chauvinism of the human race.

The delegates from the Android Equality League had talked to him one noon, had caught him as he stepped off the elevator on his way to lunch, and had stood ranged before him as if they expected him to attempt escape and were set to cut him off.

One of them had twisted a threadbare cap in his dirty fingers and the woman's hair had dangled and she had folded her hands across her stomach, as determined, stolid women do.

They had been crackpots, certainly. They were fervent crusaders in a cause that held them up to a quiet and devastating scorn. Even the androids were not sympathetic to them, even the androids for whom they were working saw through the human ineffectiveness and the gaudy exhibitionism of their efforts.

For the human race, thought Sutton, cannot even for a moment forget that it is human, cannot achieve the greatness of humility that will unquestioningly accord equality. Even while the League fought for the equality of androids, they could not help but patronize the very ones that they would make equal.

What was it Herkimer had said? Equality not by special dispensation, not by human tolerance. But that was the only way the human race would ever accord equality…by dispensation or by overweening tolerance.

And yet that pitiful handful of patronizers had been the only humans he might have turned to for help.

A man who twisted his cap in grimy fingers, an old, officious woman and another man with time heavy on his hands and nothing else to do.

And yet, thought Sutton…and yet, there is Eva Armour.

There may be others like her. Somewhere, working with the androids even now, there may be others like her.

He swung his feet out of bed and sat on the bed's edge. A pair of slippers stood on the floor and he worked his feet into them, stood up and walked to the mirror.

A strange face stared back at him, a face he'd never seen before, and for a moment muddy panic surged within his brain.

Then, sudden suspicion blossoming, his hand went up to his forehead and rubbed at the smudge that was there, set obliquely across his brow.

Bending low, with his face close to the mirror, he verified the thought.

The smudge upon his brow was an android identification mark! An identification key and a serial number!

With his fingers he carefully explored his face, located the plastic overcoats that had changed its contours until he was unrecognizable.

He turned around, made his way back to the bed, sat down upon it cautiously and gripped the edge of the mattress with his hands.

Disguised, he told himself. Made into an android. Kidnapped a human, and an android when he woke.

The door clicked and Herkimer said, "Good morning, sir. I trust that you are comfortable."

Sutton jerked erect. "So it was you," he said.

Herkimer nodded happily. "At your service, sir. Is there anything you wish?"

"You didn't have to knock me out," said Sutton.

"We had to work fast, sir," said Herkimer. "We couldn't have you messing up things, stumbling around and asking questions and wanting to know what it was all about. We just drugged you and hauled you off. It was, believe me, sir, much simpler that way."

"There was some shooting," Sutton said. "I heard the guns."

"It seems," Herkimer told him, "that there were a few Revisionists lurking about, and it gets a little complicated, sir, when one tries to tell about it."

"You tangle with those Revisionists?"

"Well, to tell the truth," said Herkimer, "some of them were so rash as to draw their guns. It was most unwise of them, sir. They got the worst of it."

"It won't do us a bit of good," said Sutton, "if the idea was to get me out of the clutches of Trevor's mob. Trevor will have a psych-tracer on me. He knows where I am and this place will be watched three deep."

Herkimer grinned. "It is, sir. His men are practically falling over one another all around the place."

"Then why this get-up?" Sutton demanded angrily. "Why disguise me?"

"Well, sir," explained Herkimer, "it's like this. We figured no human in his right mind ever would want to be taken for an android. So we turned you into one. They'll be looking for a human. It would never occur to them to take a second look at an android when they were looking for a human."

Sutton grunted. "Smart," he said. "I hope it doesn't…"

"Oh, they'll get on to it after a while, sir," Herkimer admitted, cheerfully. "But it will give us some time. Time to work out some plans."

He moved swiftly around the room, opening chest drawers and taking out clothing.

"It's very nice, sir," he said, "to have you back again. We tried to find you, but it was no dice. We figured the Revisionists had you cooped up somewhere, so we redoubled our security here and kept a close watch on everything that happened. For the past five weeks we've known every move that Trevor and his gang have made."

"Five weeks!" gasped Sutton. "Did you say five weeks?"

"Certainly, sir. Five weeks. You disappeared just seven weeks ago."

"By my calendar," said Sutton, "it was ten years."

Herkimer wagged his head sagely, unstartled. "Time is the funniest thing, sir. It ties a man in knots."

He laid clothing on the bed. "If you'll get into these, sir, we'll go down for breakfast. Eva is waiting for us. She'll be glad to see you, sir."