He sensed or knew, for it was not seeing, his body stretched out on the ground, smashed and broken, twisted out of human shape. And although he knew it was his body and knew its every superficial function and the plan of its assembly, he felt a twinge of wonder at the thing which lay there and knew that here was a problem which would tax his utmost ingenuity.
For the body must be put together, must be straightened out and reintegrated and co-ordinated so that it would work and the life that had escaped it be returned to it again.
He thought of Humpty Dumpty and the thought was strange, as if the nursery rhyme were something new or something long forgotten.
Humpty Dumpty, said another part of him, supplies no answer, and he knew that it was right, for Humpty, he recalled, could not be put together.
He became aware there were two of him, for one part of him had answered the other part of him. The answerer and the other, and although they were one, they were also separate. There was a cleavage he could not understand.
I am your destiny, said the answerer. I was with you when you came to life and I stay with you till you die. I do not control you and I do not coerce you, but I try to guide you, although you do not know it.
Sutton, the small part of him that was Sutton, said, "I know it now."
He knew it as if he'd always known it and that was queer, for he had only learned it. Knowledge, he realized, was all tangled up, for there were two of him…he and destiny. He could not immediately distinguish between the things he knew as Sutton alone and those he knew as Sutton plus Sutton's destiny.
I cannot know, he thought. I could not know then and I cannot know now. For there still is deep within me the two facets of my being, the human that I am and the destiny that guides me to a greater glory and a greater life if I will only let it.
For it will not coerce me and it will not stop me. It will only give me hunches, it will only whisper to me. It is the thing called conscience and the thing called judgment and the thing called righteousness.