"You broke his arms?" "And he broke more than that. He drove me away, though promising again to let me go on with my work among the Sons. That was the task he gave me when I came to Washington, teaching the Sons, trying to make them seem like men, as you and I and Stephen Bryce remember men. Now I am trying to fulfill that task, but now I find that Stephen Bryce opposes it." Anstruther crossed the room and dropped upon a bunk. "Yet I shall fulfill it. With your help, O'Hara," he said quietly, "before I leave the Western Hemisphere, I shall fulfill that task." He did not move again. The sound of his breathing became the quiet sound of sleep. O'Hara's brain was staggering with fresh doubts. Surely the Father, whom he knew had heard all this, understood now that he could not reclaim Anstruther. Nor could O'Hara say with certainty that if the thing were possible he would attempt it now. This too the Father, who boasted of the equations of the mind that he could write, must know. Somewhere in this morass of unattainables and doubts must lie a deeper aim. "O'Hara?" "Yes, Father?" "O'Hara, you must not question me. You must not think that you can challenge me. You are wavering, O'Hara--despite the evidence of the translucent room, despite Emporia, despite the shifting of your body through the space of Washington, you are not yet convinced that what I wish to do within these continents will be done. You have permitted your reason to be shaken by emotion, and yet I know that in the end of this you will not fail me. You must leave that room now. You must walk into the corridor--" O'Hara leaped up. "You are taking me away from Anstruther?" "Yes," said the Father patiently, "I must take you away for a while, for there is much that you must learn. Go into the corridor at once, for I am sending an anesthetic into that little room, as I once sent it mercifully to you when Nedra bore her child. Keep walking, O'Hara--further--and further--and you must close your eyes, for this will be very swift--" O'Hara clenched his fists against a sudden rush of pressure. His knees were buckling and his mouth stretched wide and in the blackness that swirled over him his senses reeled. "You may approach my bed," the Father whispered. And it had been done. O'Hara was again inside the great hall of the Father, just below the dais. The Father's feeble hand was beckoning. "Just so far, O'Hara, and watch my hand upon this board--don't think that if I relax my touch upon this key you could save Nedra and the child. I do not like to threaten you, but you have permitted Anstruther to convert you, O'Hara. The absurdity of defying death for a mistaken altruism does impress a man your age. But do you really believe, O'Hara, that I am as wicked as he thinks?" "I saw the masses dying in Emporia. I saw my wife and baby sinking in that translucent room."