"You see, the thought is in your mind!"
"If I were," continued Anstruther, "I could not possibly do worse by them than Stephen Bryce has done. But I will never be the Father, O'Hara. Didn't Stephen Bryce tell you that?"
"He is listening to you now," O'Hara warned.
"I'm sure he is. He knows every word I've said, perhaps he knows every thought that I have had, since I came through the Curtain. That is why he does not dare to use me unless he must. But there's another reason why I cannot waste my days in dreaming that I might become the Father in his stead—a reason that dispels the curse of vanity that all men are prey to. I can live for two years only with the amazing medications that Stephen Bryce and his fellow scientists of the early days developed, and then my illness, a cancer of the brain, will destroy me as surely as the tyranny of Stephen Bryce has destroyed these men. Do you think that a man with a destiny of death could think only of ambition?"
"All men have a destiny of death."
"That is true enough. All men have it, but with most men the time is not fixed. How long have you been in Washington, O'Hara?"
"Eleven months."
"And has it seemed so long?"
"Incredibly long—and incredibly short, too, like a nightmare of the instant before awakening."
"A nightmare of the instant before awakening—that is how you sum up these eleven months. And I have only twice that long to live, and to me too a year seems like a nightmarish instant—two instants of life before me, O'Hara! That makes ambition an impossible mockery. Would you dispute it?"