Ed stopped. He had an odd thought: his synthetic father had been created largely from his and his mother's memories, at a terrible time of grief, when his mother's reactions had turned against the groping toward the stars. Before that, Dad had been somewhat averse to mechanization. But now he was distinctly more so, as if that grief and aversion had marked him.
Jack Dukas was now medicating Granger's face with antiseptics while Granger preached, as if from some deep font of a new wisdom: "You see, Mr. Dukas, again, as in the past, danger is creeping up on us without receiving serious attention. Beings that are really robots are already controlling part of their own production. Their creation, everywhere, should be banned or stamped out. Existing androids should be converted to flesh or destroyed.... I'll go now. Thank you for your help. But I think I'll get in touch with your son occasionally. He needs guidance."
Ed nodded grimly. "Perhaps I do," he said. "Maybe everyone does. You watch me and I'll watch you, eh?"
During the succeeding months Ed did his best to spread his doctrine of calm and reason, working against the agitation which he knew was already well under way. Les Payten and Barbara Day were with him in this. All over the world there were others, mostly unknown to them, but with the same ideas: "Use your head.... Don't put fear before knowledge.... Do you know an android? What is his name? Maybe Miller or Johnson? You must know a few. And do they think so differently from yourself? Yes, there are problems and no doubt prejudice. It may even be justified. But the answers to our difficulties must be cool-minded. Everyone knows why."
Ed and his companions talked in this manner to their acquaintances, spoke on street corners, sent letters to newscast agencies. And they won many people over. The trouble was that they, and others like them, could not reach everybody.
Their Earth remained beautiful. There were hazy hills covered with trees; there were soaring spires. The unrest was an undercurrent.
This was a time of choosing of sides, and of buildup, while there was a sense of helpless slipping onward toward what few could truly want. Voices with another, harsher message were raised. Tom Granger was hardly alone there, either. Tracts were passed out as part of their method: What Is Our Heritage?; The Right to Be Human; Technology Versus Wisdom. Perhaps directly out of such a mixture of truth and crude thinking the assassinations began. There were thousands in scattered places.
One day Ed Dukas pushed into a knot of curious onlookers and saw the body of one of the first of these. There, in the same park where Ed had first met Abel Freeman, it had been found in the early morning. A Midas Touch blast had torn it in half.
"It's Howard Besser, a machinist who lives in the same building with me," a man in the crowd offered. "He died once in the lunar explosion. Now it happened again. That's no joke, even though he can be brought back."