"And so I think I can write the equation of your being, O'Hara--an equation in terms of the years you have existed and the times you have faced death and love--I must include love, however ephemerally your poets think of it. Yes, love, O'Hara, for there as you undoubtedly have suspected is a complex thing, mystical beyond the caress of a woman's arms or a baby's breath, intellectual beyond the tables of multiplication that you studied as a youth--the soul of man in fact. Surely you've recognized it as that. Your woman of the mountains, Nedra, lacks your capacity for love, which after all is tenderness, and so you do not understand her always, do you, O'Hara? The soul--you would dispute this with me? Then take the next gradation below Nedra that we have within this hemisphere, the people of the masses. What essentially have they lost? Yes, you do know that! Their souls, the capacity for love, decreasing in direct proportion to their retrogression. If they possessed it there might be some hope for them--but they do not. Oh, yes, O'Hara, I can write that equation--physical and mental strength, and the capacity for love--or soul--these are the algebraic terms of man. I bore you?" "My wife and my baby, Father?" "Safe with me. You see, I even ape the attributes of a god--the things you love forever are attainable by keeping faith with me. Hostages, shall I say? As the pledge of immortality keeps your kind in hostage. Yes, they will be here with me, awaiting you, when you have finished the task I set for you." "The task?" "Ultimately your task will be as I have outlined it for you, the return to the Eastern Hemisphere to obtain those sires of future generations of Americans. But now, before that can be possible, you must salvage Anstruther for me." "But you yourself, Father, told me Anstruther was mad." "Demented, yes, by the vision of the woman Nedra. But he can be salvaged. He must be salvaged. For if I lose you, O'Hara--should something go wrong during your flight back into the Eastern Hemisphere--I will have at least Anstruther. And I have no time now to depend on the chance again that some adventurous or befuddled pilot of the International Patrol will crash through the Curtain." "You'd risk a madman with the task you set for me?" "Only if I must. I don't belittle that risk. But for that matter, how sure am I of you? Once beyond the Curtain, what pledges your return except the woman you love? And that reed is too thin to be my sole reliance. You must reclaim Anstruther for me, you must bring him to me, where I can get at him." "I am to be his Judas, is that it?" The Father's voice, a silken whisper in that glittering corridor, lashed out, "Your posturings annoy me. We are not discussing morals, we are discussing what you will do. Have you so soon forgotten the months you spent alone in that magnificent little room? And Nedra and your baby?" "Whom you dare not harm! They are your only hold on me."