"It isn't over yet, Consar. You're a victim of unchange like every other poor suicidal out there. The blood of millions who have died in your enslavement is on your hands. Your only excuse is that there never was hope for humanity anyway. But there is, Consar. And I'll prove it to you. You'll die, but I'll prove the truth to you before I kill you."
Consar laughingly waved a flabby white hand. "The magic shadow show still goes on. Join it. I'm not holding you here. See—the doors are opening for you. Without the rigid discipline of the Machine, System life will destroy itself. Every institution contains the seeds of its own destruction. Even the Machine. Blind tropisms, rabble, robots, cattle. Those are the stupid dolts you Cadmeans dedicated your lives to save, to set free. Freedom! Hah!" Consar broke into a rumbling laugh. But Cadmus didn't hear it.
Freedom.
FREEDOM!
Cadmus leaned against the coruscating wall. A thrill of returning memory flooded him.
Freedom! That was the key word. Zaleel had said that if the Machine were destroyed the word would be on millions of lips.
Ironic that Consar should have spoken the word unwittingly and set Cadmus' mental fountain of memory free. Behind closed eyes, in a brief flash of recollection, Cadmus' memory, his destiny, his potentiality, returned.
He knew why he was called Cadmus.
His father, the first Cadmus of the newer myth. The greatest hero of the System. For years, since the Machine had been placed in power, his father had worked toward its destruction. A shadow, a mystery in the starways. He had gotten scientists and had constructed secret arsenals. He had constructed small matter transmatters and installed a secret transmat underground between the three worlds and the asteroids.