"Why should not the scientist use the past without being burdened by it? Why should not the lawyer and the judge use the hard-won laws of justice without being the slave of dusty law books?"
Walhfred Anderson accepted the rebuke without wincing. The rebuke for all the hours he had wasted because he had been too stubborn to use a Cyber clerk, or consult Cyber V. The old should not resist the new, nor the new destroy the old. There was the letter of the law, and there was the spirit, and the spirit was the dream. What was old Hammurabi's dream? Holmes had quoted it once, "... to establish justice on the earth ... to hold back the strong from oppressing the feeble ... to shine like the sun-god upon the blackheaded men, and to illumine the land...." Holmes had dreamed the dream, all right. He had dreamed it grandly. But maybe there was room for small dreams, too, and still time for dreams when the years were so few and lonely.
The Professor suddenly opened his eyes, and his voice took on the twang of steel under tension.
"You are already wondering," he told the cameras accusingly, "whether I have not disproved my own words by defeating Cyber IX.
"That is not true.
"I defeated Cyber IX because I have wasted a man's life—my own! You all know that as a child I was a mnemonic freak, a prodigy, if you prefer. My mind was a filing cabinet, a fire-proof cabinet neatly filled with facts that could never kindle into dreams. All my life I have stuffed my filing cabinet. For sixty years I have filed and filed.
"And then I dreamed one dream—my first, last and only dream.
"I dreamed that man would mis-use another gift of science, as he has mis-used so many.... I dreamed of the Cybers replacing and enslaving man, instead of freeing man to dream.... And I dreamed that the golden hour would come when a man would have to prove that he could replace a Cyber—and thereby prove that neither man nor Cybers should ever replace each other."
Professor Neustadt turned to Judge Anderson, and his voice dropped almost to a whisper.
"Your Honor, I move that this case be dismissed."