"Nothing I can say, nothing I've done since, can possibly atone for that," said O'Hara. "For that was the ugly revulsion of a man who strikes his misshapen son, loathing the tortured image of himself. All men are capable of it, as I was capable of it. And even as it was done, while the palm of my hand was aching from the blow I'd struck, the abysmal shame of doing it was squeezing chilling fingers on my heart. And something was changed, something was dead—passion perhaps was dead. She was more to me than passion could possibly encompass after that. A man must get down from the high horse of his masculinity to know what I knew then, at last—I loved her. She was my bride at last. My wife."
He stooped, placing one arm gently beneath her knees and then lifting her unresisting body, and with his head bowed above her, he climbed the steps that led out of the cylinder.
The Son who had been waiting now turned his back upon them, saying, "You must follow me." He began at once, moving with the clumsy gait of the Degraded along the vast magnesium-walled corridor. And O'Hara with Nedra in his arms went after him.
The corridor was deserted. The Son, going in front, was without the tubelike atomic weapon that the Sons had carried in Emporia, the only quick way of distinguishing them from the masses. Yet here, in Washington, the city of the Father, there seemed to be no masses, nor in this long corridor were there any of the bunks or feeding cauldrons of Emporia. The endless procession with the bare feet of the Son soundless upon the metal flooring while O'Hara's heels echoed and re-echoed made it seem as if he were walking alone in the most horrible of nightmares—empty space. It continued undeviating, past the point of bearing, with O'Hara's arms losing any sense of feeling from the dead weight of Nedra's body, until abruptly, without explanation, the Son wheeled toward the wall and waited until O'Hara reached his shoulder. The wall was suddenly slid up before them, revealing a narrow flight of countless small metal steps, disappearing in distance infinitely far above the level of O'Hara's vision.
These steps they now continued to ascend, going very slowly, for O'Hara's iron strength was ebbing, until at last they reached a second level of the city, an immense hall, circular in design and with its walls fashioned of the same glaring magnesium that reflected the green lights recessed into the ceiling—a light that magnified the sensation of astronomical space and emptiness, as if this were an edifice beyond the earth, and not beneath it. Exhausted as he was, O'Hara still was able to conclude that this vastness was calculated, its purpose to awe, for it could not have had another use. Even the masses of Emporia, the teeming naked hundred thousands swirling in that satellite city's halls, would have been lost in this tremendous glittering void.
At the center of this enormous hall was a cylindrical shaft, and upon reaching this the Son again halted. A second panel shot open and the Son silently indicated that O'Hara was to enter.
"With you," O'Hara insisted.
"I cannot go further," said the Son. "It is forbidden."
"The Father forbids you to go further?"
"Yes."