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whenit arrived.

  "Very well, Sweyn Erikson," he said finally. "Please come with me."

  * * * * *

  Four hours later they were in Merrick's office. The preliminary stageof his plan had failed, just as he had known it would. He was almostglad. It had been a vacillating expediency, an attempt to hide thefacts and avoid the necessity of facing the challenge squarely. Stagetwo was about to begin, and this time there would be no temporizing.

  The Prophet glared angrily across the desk-top. "Do you take me for achild? You have shown me nothing. Where are the protoplasm vats? Thebrain machines? Where are the bodies assembled? I warned you againsttrickery, Han Merrick!"

  Merrick glanced across the room at his wife. She sat rigid in herchair, her face a pale mask. He would get no help from her.

  "You must realize, Erikson," he said, "That you are forcing me tojeopardize five centuries of work for the chimera of Human Supremacy.Let me warn you now that your life is of no importance to me whenbalanced against that. When the Board of Psychotechnicians appointedmy family custodians of the Creche centuries ago, they did so becausethey knew we would keep faith--"

  "The last member of the founding Board died more than two hundredyears ago," snapped the Prophet.

  "But the Creche is here, and I am here to guard it as my forefathersdid," Merrick said. Once again he was conscious of a strangeambivalence in his attitude. He must guard something he consideredwrong against the intrusion of a danger even more wrong. His handsought the scored grip of the old automatic in his pocket. Could heactually kill?

  "You speak of Human Supremacy as a chimera," Sweyn Erikson said, "Itis no such thing. It is the only vital force left in the world.Robotism is a menace more deadly, a blasphemy more foul than any BlackMass of history. You are making Man into an anachronism on the face ofhis own planet. This cannot be! _I_ will not let it be...."

  Merrick stared. Could it be that the man actually believed that thepoison he peddled was the food of the gods?

  "I will try one last attempt at reason, Erikson," Merrick saiddeliberately. "Look back with an unprejudiced mind, if you can, overthe centuries since the Atom War. What do you see?"

  "I see Man emasculated by the robot!"

  "No! You see atomic power harnessed and in use for the first timeafter almost a millenium of muddling. You see Man standing on the Moonand the habitable planets--and soon to reach out for the stars! A newGolden Age is dawning, Prophet! And why? Whence have come thetechniques?" Even as he spoke, Merrick knew he was ignoring theobvious, the all-too-apparent cracks in the social structure that noscientific miracles could cure. But were those cracks the fault ofrobotism or were they in fact a failing inherent in Man himself? Hewas not prepared to answer that. "From where are the techniquesdrawn?" he asked again.

  Erikson met his glance squarely. "Not from the mindless horrors youspawn here!"

  "Emotionless, Prophet," corrected Merrick pointedly, "Not mindless."

  "Soulless! Soulless and mindless, too. Never have these zombies beenable to think as men!"

  "They are not men."

  "Nor are they the architects of the future!"

  "I think you are wrong, Prophet," Merrick said softly.

  "Man is the ultimate," Erikson said.

  "You talk like a fool," snapped Merrick.

  "_Han!_" There was naked terror in his wife's voice, but he rushed on,ignoring it.

  "How dare you say that Man is the ultimate? What right have you toassume that nature has stopped experimenting?"

  Sweyn Erikson's lip curled scornfully. "Can you be implying that therobots--"

  Merrick leaned across the desk to shout full in the Prophet's face:"_You fool! They're not robots!_"

  The robed man was suddenly on his feet, face livid.

  "Han!" cried Virginia Merrick, "Not that way!"

  "This is my affair now, Virginia. I'll handle it in my own way!" theDirector said.

  "Remember the mob outside!"

  Merrick turned agate-hard eyes on his wife. Presently he looked awayand said to the Prophet. "Now I will show you the real Creche!"

  * * * * *

  There were robots everywhere--blank-eyed, like sleep walkers. Theyreacted to commands. They moved and breathed and fed themselves. Underrigid control they performed miracles of intuitive calculation. Butartificiality was stamped upon them like a brand. They were _not_human.

  In the lowest vaults of the Creche, Merrick showed the Prophet theinfants. He withheld nothing. He showed him the growing creatures. Heexplained to him the tests and signs that were looked for in thehospitals maintained by the World State and the Council of Ten. He lethim watch the young ones taking their Primary Conditioning. Courses ofhypnotic instruction. Rest, narcosynthesis. Semantics. Drugs and wordsand more words pounding on young brains like sledgehammer blows,shaping them into something acceptable in a sapient world.

  In other chambers, other age groups. Emotion and memory being mouldedinto something else by hypnopedia. Faces becoming blank andexpressionless.

  "Their minds are conditioned--enslaved," Merrick said bitterly. "Thenthey are primed with scientific facts. Those techniques we discussed._This_ is where they come from, Prophet. From the minds of yourdespised androids. Only will is suppressed, and emotion. They areshaped for the sociography of a sapient culture. They mature veryslowly. We keep them here for from ten to fifteen years. No humanbrain could stand it--but _theirs_ can."

  Truth dangled before his eyes, but Erikson's mind savagely rejectedit. The pillars upon which he had built his life were crumbling....

  The two men stood in a vast hall filled with an insidious, whisperingvoice. On low pallets, fully a score of physically mature androids laystaring vacuously at a spinning crystal high in the apex of the domedceiling.

  "--you had no life before you where created here to serve Man themaster you had no life before you were created here to serve Man themaster you had--" the voice whispered into the hypnotized brains.

  "Don't look up," Merrick warned. "The crystal can catch a human beingfaster than it can _them_. This is hypnotic engineering. The rhythm ofthe syllables and their proportion to the length of word and sentenceare computed to correspond to typed encephalographic curves. Nothingis left to chance. When they have reached this stage of conditioningthey are almost ready for release and purchase by human beings. Only asevere stimulation of the brain can break down the walls we have builtin their minds."

  Erikson made a gesture as though darkness were streaking his vision.He was shaken badly. "But where do they--where do they come from?"

  "The State maternity hospitals, of course," Merrick said, "Where else?The parents are then sterilized by the Health and Welfare Authority asan added safeguard. Births occur at a ratio of about one for every sixmillion normals." He smiled mirthlessly at the Prophet of HumanSupremacy. "Well? Little man, what now?"

  Honest realization still refused to come. It needed to be put intowords, and Sweyn Erikson had no such words. "I see only that you aretaking children of men and disfiguring--"

  "For the last time," gritted Merrick, "These are _not_ human beings.Genus homo, yes. _Homo chaos_, if you choose. But not homo sapiens. Ithink of them," he said with sudden calm, "As _Homo Supremus_. Thenext step on the evolutionary ladder...."

  At last the words had been spoken and the flood gates were down in thetortured brain of the Prophet. Like a sudden conflagration,realization came--and with it, blind terror.

  "No! Nonono! You cannot continue this devil's work! Think what itwould mean if these things should ever be loosed on the world of Man!"the Prophet's voice was a steadily rising shrill of fear.

  Han Merrick looked out across the rows of pallets, each with itsburden of a superman, bound like Prometheus to the rock, helpless inhypnotic chains. It struck him again that his life had not been wellspent. He looked from his charges to the ranting fear-crazedrabble-rouser. The contrast was too shocking, too complete. For the"androids" were, in
fact, worthy of a dignity even in slavery thathomo sapiens had never attained in overlordship. Merrick knew at lastwhat he must do.

  Racial loyalty stirred, but was quickly smothered in the humiliationof man's omnipresent thievery. For it _was_ thievery, Merrick thought.Man was keeping for himself the heritage that was the rightfulproperty of a newer, better race.

  He took the automatic from his jumper and leveled it at Erikson'schest. He felt very sure and right. Though he knew that he was sealingthe death warrant of his wife and his friends, the memory of theirvacillations anesthetized him against any feeling of loss. He waiteduntil Erikson screamed one word into the transmitter imbedded in hisflesh--

  The word was: "_Attack!_"

  --and in the next instant, Han Merrick shot him dead.

  * * * * *

  The fanatics on the ridges heard the Prophet's command and sprang tocomply. Energy swept out of the grids, through the coils of theprojectors and out over the blind cube of the Creche.

  Han Merrick felt the first radiations. He felt the beginnings ofcortical hypertrophy and screamed. Every synapse sagged under theincreasing load of sensitivity. The pressure of the air became anunbearable burden, the faintest sound became a shattering roar. Everymicroscopic pain, every cellular process became a rending, tearingagony. He screamed and the sound was a cataclysmic, planet-smashinghell of noise within his skull. He sagged to the floor and thinkingstopped. He contracted himself, pulling legs and arms inward in amassive convulsion until at last he had assumed the foetal position.After a long while, he died.

  Every human being within the Creche died so, but there was still life.The energy that killed the lesser creature freed the greater--just asMerrick had known it would. Unhuman matter pulsed under the caressingrain. A thousand beings shuddered at the sudden release of theirchains. The speakers ranted unheard. The crystals turned unwatched.The bonds forged by homo sapiens snapped and there came--

  _Maturity._

  * * * * *

  _This, now, is the Creche, Anno Domini 3000. A great mile-square blindcube topping a ragged mountain; bare escarpments falling away to aturbulent sea. For ten centuries the Creche has stood so, and theAndroids still come forth, now to lift their starships to theMagellanic Clouds and beyond. A Golden Age has come. But, of course,Man is no longer the Master._

  --_Quintus Bland, The Romance of Genus Homo._

  THE END

  * * * * *

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