Some would be women and to the mutants-found would be added mutants-born and in twenty years or so there would be a mutant organization of, say, several hundred persons, pooling their talents.

From the information they gathered from the stars, plus the mutant abilities of certain others of them, they would invent and market certain gadgets that would bring in the necessary money for them to continue with their work. How many of the now common, workaday, almost prosaic gadgets used in the world today, Vickers wondered, were the products of this mutant race?

But the time would come when the mutant organization and the work they did would become too prominent to pass unnoticed and they would seek a place to hide — a safe place where they could continue the work that they were doing. And what safer place could there be than one of the other earths?

Vickers lay on the corn shuck mattress and stared into the darkness and wondered at the glibness of his imagination, with the nagging feeling that it was not imagination — that it was something that he knew. But how could he know it?

Conditioning, perhaps, of his android mind. Or an actual knowledge gained in some period of his life that had been blotted out, as the time he had gone into fairyland at the age of eight had been blotted out — a knowledge that now was coming back again, as the remembrance of the visit to fairyland had come back again.

Or ancestral memory, perhaps, actual specific memory passed to child from parent as instinct was passed — but the catch was that, as an android, he didn't have a parent.

He was parentless and raceless and a mockery of a man, created for a purpose he did not even know.

What purpose could the mutants have for him? What talent did he possess that made him useful to them? What would they use him for?

That was the thing that hurt — that he should be _used_ and not know, that Ann should have some purpose she did not even guess.

The work of the mutants was greater than the mere gadgetry they would like it to appear, something greater than Forever cars and everlasting razor blades and synthetic carbohydrates. Their work was the rescue and the re-establishment of the race — the starting over again of a badly muddled race. It was the development of a world or worlds where war would not be merely outlawed, but impossible, where fear would never raise its head, where progress would have a different value than it had in mankind's world today.

And into a program of this sort, where did Jay Vickers fit?

In this house in which he lay there was a new beginning and it was a crude beginning, but a solid one. In another two or three generations the people of this family would be ready for the gadgets and the progress that was due them, and when they were ready the progress would be waiting for them.

The mutants would take from the human race the deadly playthings and keep them in trust until the child of Man was old enough to use them without hurting himself or injuring his neighbor. They would take from the three-year-old the twelve-year-old toy he was using dangerously and when he was twelve years old would give it back again, probably with refinements.

And the culture of the future, under mutant guidance, would be not merely a mechanistic culture, but a social and an economic and an artistic and spiritual culture as well as mechanical. The mutants would take lopsided Man and mold him into balance and the years that were lost in the remolding would pay interest in humanity in the years to come.

But that was speculation, that was day-dreaming, that was getting nothing done. The thing that counted now was what he, Jay Vickers, android, meant to do about it.

Before he could do anything, he'd have to know more of what was happening, would have to get some solid fact. He needed information and he couldn't get it here, lying on a corn shuck mattress in the loft above the kitchen of a neo-pioneer home.

There was only one place where he could get that information, He slid noiselessly out of bed and fumbled in the dark to find his ragged clothes.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

THE house was dark, sleeping in the moonlight, with the tall shadows of the trees cast against its front. He stood in the shadow just outside the front gate and looked at it, remembering how he had seen it in the moonlight once before, when a road ran past the gate, but now there was no road. He recalled how the moonlight had fallen on the whiteness of the pillars and had turned them to ghostly beauty and of the words the two of them had said as they stood and watched the moonlight shattered on the pillars.

But that was dead and done, that was gone and buried and all that was left was the bitterness of knowing that he was not a man, but the imitation of a man.

He opened the gate and went up the walk and climbed the steps that led to the porch. He crossed the porch and his footsteps rang so loudly in the stillness of the moonlight that he felt certain those in the house would hear him.

He found the bell and put his thumb upon it and pressed, then stood waiting, as he had waited once before. But this time there would be no Kathleen to come to the door to greet him.

He waited and a light sprang into life in the central hall and through the glass he saw a man-like figure fumbling at the door. The door came open and he stepped inside and the gleaming robot bowed a little stiffly and said, "Good evening, sir."

"Hezekiah, I presume," said Vickers.

"Hezekiah, sir," the robot confirmed. "You met me this morning."

"I went for a walk," said Vickers.

"And now perhaps, I could show you to your room."

The robot turned and went up the winding staircase, with Vickers following him.

"It's a nice night, sir," the robot said.

"Very nice."

"You have eaten, sir?"

"Yes, thank you."

"I could bring you up a snack, if you haven't eaten," Hezekiah offered. "I believe there is some chicken left."

"No," said Vickers. "Thank you just the same."

Hezekiah shoved open a door and turned on a light, then stepped aside for Vickers to go in.

"Perhaps," said Hezekiah, "you would like a nightcap."

"That's a good idea, Hezekiah. Scotch, if you have it handy."

"In just a moment, sir. You will find some pajamas in the third drawer from the top. They may be a little large, but probably you can manage."

He found the pajamas and they were fairly new and very loud and they seemed quite a bit too big, but they were better than nothing

The room was pleasant, with a huge bed covered by a white, stitched counterpane and the white curtains at the windows blew in on the nighttime breeze,

He sat down in a chair to wait for Hezekiah and the drink and for the first time in many days he knew how tired he was. He'd have the drink and climb into bed and when morning came he'd go stomping down the stairs, looking for a showdown.

The door opened.

It wasn't Hezekiah; it was Horton Flanders, in a crimson dressing robe fastened tight about his neck and slippers on his feet that slapped against the floor as he crossed the room.

He crossed the room and sat down in another chair and looked at Vickers, with a half smile on his face.

"So you came back," he said.

"I came back to listen," Vickers told him. "You can start talking right away."

"Why, certainly," said Flanders. "That's why I got up. As soon as Hezekiah told me you had arrived, I knew you'd want to talk."

"I don't want to talk. I want you to talk."

"Oh, yes, certainly. I am the one to talk."

"And not about the reservoirs of knowledge, of which you talk most beautifully. But certain practical, rather mundane things."

"Like what?"

"Like why I am an android and why Ann Carter is an android. And whether there ever was a person named Kathleen Preston or is that just a story that was conditioned in my mind? And if there ever was a person named Kathleen Preston, where is she now? And, finally, where do I fit in and what do you intend to do?"