"He raised you out of it, up to the level where he stood, because he had to take that chance at last, to trust his life with you, O'Hara. Or possibly he knows you better than you know yourself. That was true with me, for I was not antagonistic when I stood beneath him in that pit. But he sensed the path I would choose, siding with the Sons. He has not let me come into the hall. Instead he comes into the Guild of the Sons, or in the corridors, appearing in some manner that I do not understand, emerging despite locked doors and seamless walls. It was in the Guild, upon the screen, that I first saw you and the woman, Nedra—"
"Yes?"
"—and knew that with your help I might at last destroy this tyranny. Soon after that, I tried to come to you. The Father intercepted me in the corridor. Do you know the rest?"
"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—"