Birch smiled happily. 'Oh, yes,' she said. 'My Master wants some statistics collated. All about concrete pouring. It's very important work, and I finished it a week ahead of time.'
Moray hesitated, then, as though he didn't care, asked : `How are you and your Master getting along?'
`Very well indeed. She called me yesterday to see if I needed an extension of time for the collation. She was very pleased to find I'd finished it already.'
`You're lucky,' said Moray shortly. And inside himself, bursting with grief, he wondered what was wrong between his own Master and himself. Three weeks; not a single call. It was dreadful. 'Oh, Birch, I think I'm going mad!' he cried.
He saw that she was about to try to soothe him. 'Don't interrupt,' he said. 'The last time I saw my Master I – made him unhappy. I was sure he would want me again in a few days, but he seems to have abandoned me completely. Birch, does that ever happen?'
She looked frightened. The thought was appalling. 'Maybe,' she said hastily. 'I don't know. But he wouldn't do that to you, Moray. You're too clever. Why, he needs you just as much as you need him!'
Moray sighed and stared blankly. 'I wish I could believe that.' He took out the little pill-bottle again, but Birch laid a hand on his.
`Don't take any more, please, Moray,' she whispered, trying desperately to ease his sorrow. 'Moray – a while ago you wanted to ask me something. Will you ask me now?' `I wanted to ask you to marry me – is that what you mean?' `Yes. To both questions, Moray. I will.'
He laughed harshly. `Me! How can you marry me? For all I know I've lost my Master. If I have, I – I'm no longer a person. You don't know what it's like, Birch, losing half your mind, and your will, and all the ambition you ever had. I'm no good now, Birch.' He rose suddenly and paced up and down the floor. 'You can't marry me!' he burst out. 'I think I'll be insane within a week! I'm going now. Maybe you'd better forget you ever knew me.' He slammed out of the room and raced down the stairs, not waiting for an elevator.
The street-lights were out; it was the hour before dawn. Obeying a vagrant impulse, he boarded a moving strip of sidewalk and was carried slowly out to one of the suburbs of the metropolis. At the end of the line, where the strip turned back on itself and began the long journey back to Central Square, he got off and walked into the half-cultivated land.
He had often wondered – fearfully – of the fate of those of his people who had been abandoned by their Masters. Where did they go? Into the outlands, as he was?
He stared at the darkness of the trees and shrubs, suddenly realizing that he had never known the dark before. Wherever his people had gone there had been light – light in the streets, light in their cars and planes, light even at night when they slept.
He felt the hair on his head prickle and rise. How did one go wild? he wondered confusedly. Took off their clothes, he supposed.
He felt in his pockets and drew out, one by one, the symbols of civilization. A few slot-machine tokens, with which one got the little white pills. Jingling keys to his home, office, car, locker, and closet. Wallet of flexible steel, containing all his personal records. A full bottle of the pills – and another, nearly empty.
Mechanically he swallowed two tablets of the drug and threw the bottle away. A little plastic case ... and as he stared at it, a diamond-hard lump in his throat, a fine, thin whistle shrilled from its depths.
Master's call! He was wanted!
Moray climbed from the plane under the frowning Andes and almost floated into the corridor of his Master's dwelling. The oppressive heat smote him in the face, but he was near laughing for joy when he opened the door and saw his Master sitting naked in the gloom.
`You are slow, Moray,' said the Master, without inflection.
Moray experienced a sudden chill. He had not expected this. Confusedly he had pictured a warm reconciliation, but there was no mistaking the tone of the Master's voice. Moray felt very tired and discouraged. 'Yes,' he said. 'You called me when I was out at the fields.'
The Master did not frown, nor did he smile. Moray knew these moods of the cold, bleak intellect that gave him the greater part of his own intelligence and personality. Yet there was no greater tragedy in the world of his people than to be deserted – or, rather, to lose rapport with this intelligence. It was not insanity, and yet it was worse.
`Moray,' said the Master, 'you are a most competent laboratory technician. And you have an ability for archaeology. You are assigned to a task which involves both these divisions. I wish you to investigate the researches of Carter Hawkes, time, about the Fifteenth Century Anno Cubriensis. Determine his conclusions and develop, on them, a complete solution to what he attempted to resolve.'
`Yes,' said Moray dully. Normally he would have been elated at the thought that he had been chosen, and he consciously realized that it was his duty to be elated, but the chilly voice of his conscience told him that this was no affectionate assignment, but merely the use of a capable tool.
`What is the purpose of this research?' he asked formally, his voice husky with fatigue and indulgence in the stimulant drug.
`It is of great importance. The researches of Hawkes, as you know, were concerned with explosives. It was his barbarous intention to develop an explosive of such potency that one charge would be capable of destroying an enemy nation. Hawkes, of course, died before his ambition was realized, but we have historical evidence that he was on the right track.'
`Chief among which,' interrupted Moray – deferentially –'is the manner of his death.'
There was no approval in the Master's voice as he answered, `You know of the explosion in which he perished. Now, at this moment, the world is faced with a crisis more terrible than any ancient war could have been. It involves a shifting of the continental blocks of North America. The world now needs the Hawkes explosive, to provide the power for re-stabilizing the continent. All evidence has been assembled for your examination in the workroom. Speed is essential if catastrophe is to be averted.'
Moray was appalled. The fate of a continent in his hands! `I shall do my best,' he said nervelessly, and walked from the room.
Moray straightened his aching body and turned on the lights. He set the last of a string of symbols down on paper and leaned back to stare at them. The formula – complete!
Moray was convinced that he had the right answer, through the lightning-like short cuts of reasoning, which humans called `canine intuition.' Moray might have felt pride in that ability –but, he realized, it was a mirage. The consecutivity of thought of the Masters – not Moray nor any of his people could really concentrate on a single line of reasoning for more than a few seconds. In the synthesis of thought Moray's people were superb. In its analysis ...
A check-up on the formula was essential. Repeating the formula aloud, Moray's hands grasped half a dozen ingredients from the shelves of the lab, and precisely compounded them in the field of a micro-inspection device. Actually, Moray was dealing with units measured in single molecules, and yet his touch was as sure as though he were handling beakers-full.
Finally titrated, the infinitesimal compound was set over a cherry-red electric grid to complete its chain of reactions and dry. Then it would explode, Moray realized – assuming he had the formula correct. But, with such a tiny quantity, what would be the difference?
Perhaps – at utmost – the room would be wrecked. But there was no time to take the stuff to the firing-chambers that were suspended high over the crater of the extinct volcano on flexible steel masts, bent and supported to handle almost any shock.
Moray swallowed two more pellets of the drug. He had to wait for its effect upon him, now, but he dared not take a larger dose.