Time and Again

VII

Apparently they had been waiting for him for some time and they intercepted him when he stepped out of the elevator on his way to the dining room for lunch.

There were three of them and they stood ranged in front of him, as if doggedly determined that he should not escape.

"Mr. Sutton?" one of them asked, and Sutton nodded.

The man was a somewhat seedy character. He might not actually have slept in his clothes, although the first impression was that he had. He clutched a threadbare cap with stubby, grimed fingers. The fingernails were rimmed with the blue of dirt.

"What may I do for you?" asked Sutton.

"We'd like to talk to you, sir, if you don't mind," said the woman of the trio. "You see, we're a sort of delegation."

She folded fat hands over a plump stomach and did her best to beam at him. The effect of the beam was spoiled by the wispy hair that straggled out from beneath her dowdy hat.

"I was just on my way to lunch," said Sutton, hesitantly, trying to make it sound as if he were in a hurry, trying to put some irritation into his voice while still staying within the bounds of civility.

The woman kept on beaming.

"I'm Mrs. Jellicoe," she said, acting as if he must be glad to get the information. "And this gentleman, the one who spoke to you, is Mr. Hamilton. The other one of us is Captain Stevens."

Captain Stevens, Sutton noted, was a beefy individual, better dressed than the other two. His blue eyes twinkled at Sutton, as if he might be saying: I don't approve of these people any more than you do, Sutton, but I'm along with them and I'll do the best I can.

"Captain?" said Sutton. "One of the star ships, I presume."

Stevens nodded. "Retired," he said.

He cleared his throat. "We hate to bother you, Sutton, but we tried to get through to your rooms and couldn't. We've waited several hours. I hope you'll not disappoint us."

"It'll be just a little while," pleaded Mrs. Jellicoe.

"We could sit over here," said Hamilton, twirling the cap in his dirty fingers. "We saved a chair for you."

"As you wish," said Sutton.

He followed them back to the corner from which they had advanced upon him and took the proffered chair.

"Now," he said, "tell me what this is all about."

Mrs. Jellicoe took a deep breath. "We're representing the Android Equality League," she said.

Stevens broke in, successfully heading off the long speech that Mrs. Jellicoe seemed on the point of making. "I am sure," he said, "that Mr. Sutton has heard of us at one time or another. The League has been in existence for these many years."

"I have heard of the League," said Sutton.

"Perhaps," said Mrs. Jellicoe, "you've read our literature."

"No," said Sutton, "I can't say that I have."

"Here's some of it, then," said Hamilton. He dug with a grimy hand into an inside coat pocket, came out with a fistful of dog-eared leaflets and tracts. He held them out to Sutton and Sutton took them gingerly, laid them on the floor beside his chair.

"Briefly," said Stevens, "we represent the belief that androids should be granted equality with the human race. They are human, in actuality, in every characteristic except one."

"They can't have babies," Mrs. Jellicoe blurted out.

Stevens lifted his sandy eyebrows briefly and glanced at Sutton half apologetically.

He cleared his throat. "That's quite right, sir," he said, "as you probably know. They are sterile, quite sterile. In other words, the human race can manufacture, chemically, a perfect human body, but it has been unable to solve the mystery of biological conception. Many attempts have been made to duplicate the chromosomes and genes, fertile eggs and sperm, but none has been successful."

"Someday, perhaps," said Sutton.

Mrs. Jellicoe shook her head. "We aren't meant to know all things, Mr. Sutton," she declared sanctimoniously. "There is a Power that guards against our knowing everything. There is…"

Stevens interrupted her. "Briefly, sir, we are interested in bringing about an acceptance of equality between the biological human race, the born human race, and the chemically manufactured human race that we call the androids. We contend that they are basically the same, that both are human beings, that each is entitled to the common heritage of the human race.

"We, the original, biological human race, created the androids in order to bolster our population, in order that "there might be more humans to man the command posts and administration centers spread through the galaxy. You perhaps are well aware that the only reason we have not brought the galaxy more closely under our control is the lack of human supervision."

"I am well aware of that," said Sutton.

And he was thinking: no wonder. No wonder that this Equality League is regarded as a band of crackpots. A flighty old woman, a stumbling, dirty oaf, a retired space captain with time hanging heavy on his hands and nothing else to do.

Stevens was saying, "Thousands of years ago slavery was wiped out as between one biological human and another. But today we have a slavery as between the biological human and the manufactured human. For the androids are owned. They do not live as masters of their own fate, but serve at the direction of an identical form of life…identical in all things except that one is biologically fertile and the other one is sterile."

And that, thought Sutton, certainly is something that he learned by rote from out of a book. Like an insurance salesman or an agent for an encyclopedia.

He said aloud, "What do you want me to do about it?"

"We want you to sign a petition," said Mrs. Jellicoe.

"And make a contribution?"

"Indeed not," said Stevens. "Your signature will be enough. It is all we ask. We are always glad to get evidence that men of prestige are with us, that the thinking men and women of the galaxy see the justice of our claim."

Sutton scraped back his chair and rose.

"My name," he said, "would carry little prestige."

"But Mr. Sutton…"

"I approve of your aims," said Sutton, "but I am skeptical of your methods of carrying them forward."

He made a half bow to them, still sitting in their chairs.

"And now I must go to lunch," he said.

He was halfway across the lobby when someone caught him by the elbow. He whirled, half angrily. It was Hamilton, threadbare cap in hand.

"You forgot something," said Hamilton, holding out the leaflets Sutton had left lying on the floor.