"It is indeed Anstruther's hour," said Stephen Bryce, and the Sons pressed forward to the steps of the dais. Anstruther lowered his hand. "You have brought me here at last, Stephen Bryce," he said, "into this hall which is the symbol and the origin of your power. It was for this meeting that my craft was guided by a power more sublime than yours through the Atomic Curtain into Patagonia, and that the Sons then sent me northward through the Tube, that I might meet you here and take from you those keys and their control of the integrocalculators I might once again restore these people to the dignity of men--" "You hear, O'Hara?" said the Father. "None of this springs from Anstruther's will. This is the classic attitude of the Messiah. Avoid this attitude, never believe that what you do is not the fruit of your own thinking and your volition." Anstruther's own voice now again was audible, but he was looking past the Father and the keyboard now, toward Nedra. "--and to restore the dignity of woman's motherhood, the peopling of the earth, the sacred adoration of their sons--" "Worship comes from within," the Father said. "It does not need Messiahs to restore it. This is emotion speaking, blind emotion." "--deliver to me now the keyboard of the integrocalculators. The weapons of the Sons whom you debased are turned upon you now--" "You see, O'Hara, this violence will not be his. He has aroused the Sons, he led them in revolt, yet when the climax of it comes he shrinks from recognizing that the act is his. He blames the Sons, or pins it on a power beyond us all, and in this way he sheds responsibility for what he surely knows must end in death for all of us if I so will. This is the way of emotion, this is the weakling's way, O'Hara, this is the maddened posturing of a fool insensible to all except how he must seem just now in Nedra's eyes--the Chosen Male, the Dedicated Man. And she is seeing him that way! Don't you foresee how all of this must end, O'Hara? One moment more--" "Answer, Stephen Bryce," Anstruther cried. "Answer, or die. Give me the key!" The Father's voice broke coldly now into the sudden hush. "No, my son, I am sorry--the key is not for you, and I cannot now save you from yourself, as I had wished to do. For the worst of all human diseases is upon you, the one disease for which we never yet have found a palliative--your own vanity." "Give me the key!" Anstruther screamed out in hysteria. "Or by my own hand, I--" "Anstruther, stop!" O'Hara cried. The kneeling Sons rose up in sudden frenzy, leaping for the steps. And in that moment of confusion Anstruther struck wildly downward at the Father's skull. The sound of it was like the bursting of an egg, Anstruther rocked, as if it were himself that had received the blow, and then, his arms extending cataleptically, he gripped the keyboard and drew back with it.