Because the chrysalids had done a magnificent job in all three of its subdivisions. They had kept the sleepers safe--and reproduced, and used their intelligence to survive. They had survived in spite of pestilence, famine, and flood--by learning enough to wipe out the first two, and control the third. It would seem that progress was not a special quality to be specially desired. Most of the chrysalids were consumed by a fierce longing for the Good Old Days, as a matter of fact. It was merely the inescapable accretion to sheer survival. And so came civilization. With civilization: recreation. In short, the San Francisco Giants, and--He reached over, suddenly irritated at the raspy-voiced and slightly frantic recapitulation of the lost ballgame, and changed the station. And Beethoven. He relaxed, smiling slightly at himself once again, and let the music sing to him. Chrysalids, eh? Well, they certainly weren't his kind of life, free to swing from star to star, riding the great flux of Creation from universe to universe. But whence Beethoven? Whence Rembrandt, Da Vinci, and Will Shakespeare, hunched over a mug of ale and dashing off genius on demand, with half an eye on the serving wench? He shook his head. What would happen to this people, when the sleepers woke? The snowball. Ah, yes, the snowball. That was a good part of it--and he and his kind were another. _If we had known_, he thought. _If we had known how it would be...?_ But, they hadn't known. It had been just a petty argument, at first. Nobody knew, now, who had started it. But there were two well-defined sides, now, and he was an Insurgent, for some reason. The winning side gives the names that stick. _They_ were Watchers--an honorable name, a name to conjure up trust, and duty, and loyalty. And he was an Insurgent. Well, let it stand. Accept the heritage of dishonor and hatred. Somewhere, sometime, a gage was flung, and he was heir to the challenge. The chrysalids solved the problem of survival, of course. But the problem of rescue had remained. For rescue, in the sense of help from an outside agency, would be disastrous. When the path shifted back, they had to learn of it themselves, and go on of their own accord--or go into slavery. For there is one currency that outlives document and token. Personal obligation. And, if they were so unlucky as to have an actual rescuer, the obligation would be high--prohibitively so. The solution had seemed simple, at first. In each generation of chrysalids, there would be one aware individual--one Watcher, to keep guard, and to waken the rest should the path drift back in the lifetime of his chrysalis. Then, when that particular chrysalis wore out, the Watcher would be free to return to sleep, while another took his place. His mouth twisted to one side as he took a sip of coffee.