"Yes, almost the words of the Father. And if you link them with the words I found in that magnesium book--the words I forgot in my extreme concentration upon the matter of the ten seconds in which the Curtain would not be before me--if you recall those words--" "Only you can do it," I quoted. "--then you know why I am here tonight," he said. "Do you think I'd desert them?" "Desert whom, O'Hara? Your son?" "Yes," he said, "my son--and the Son who remembered a woman of the masses who had fought to keep her child, that Son who had died for thinking it was beautiful and the tens of thousands of others now shambling dully through those subterranean corridors, their bellies full, without anxiety as we know it, yet haunted--dimly haunted by the memory of love. For Stephen Bryce told me that tyranny is in essence not the existence of a tyrant, but the debased minds of the people, and it is their lost faculty of love that most debases them. Of course I'm going back to them. Do you know a comparable challenge?" "We have a challenge here," I insisted. "The deserts of China and Africa, the hunger of our billions. What you have learned--and what you know of guiding us--can end all that." "Are you trying to convince me?" he smiled, and took my hand. "Listen carefully, Arthur Blair--tonight I am returning through the Curtain. Don't ask me how, for I have told you, the words in that magnesium book, the moment when the Father died in Washington--I am going back! I know I am going back despite all that the Twelve Old Men and their Security Bureau may attempt. I shall be there in Washington tomorrow. I will have much to do, and for the next three months you will not hear from me. But when those three months end my voice will come to you, not on a screen that blinds you with its incandescence--by wireless, Arthur Blair. I shall be speaking for the Western Hemisphere to you and all these billions. For you need us. And we so desperately need you. My voice will come through the Curtain, and when I am finished speaking there will be no Curtain. I will have lifted it forever. "We can save our two worlds, Arthur, but it won't be easy. The Twelve Old Men, those timid guardians of the past, are going to fight you. You must fight back, and fast--inform the peoples. Give them the facts, the dangers most of all. Don't raise false dreams, for nothing is accomplished without sweating. Yes, you have got your work cut out for you, Arthur--and only you can do it!" He freed my hand. He stooped, and when he rose again, he held the ceremonial club tight in his hand. "I'm going to open that door," he said, "and for just one instant you'll see the most magnificent woman on this earth. Then out you go, old boy! Stand back--stand back!"