His stones. How lovely they were. How could he have pushed them from his memory with such ease? He fingered them and smiled. Yes, these were true. A piece of mineral never betrays you. Each is unique, a world unto itself and harmless. His eyes filled with tears.
"I love you," he whispered, and one by one he counted them out and replaced them in the bag.
As he tied them again at his belt, he watched the movements of his hands. His fingers left moist smudges upon the material. But his hands were beautiful, she had told him. And she was correct, of course. He raised them near to his face and a surge of power swept through his body and settled within them. He knew that he was stronger now than any man or nation. Soon he would be stronger than any world.
He turned his attention once more to the bright whirlpool that sucked him toward its center: Summit.
He would be there in no time at all.
When the message arrived, his first reaction was a very loud "Damn! Why ask _me?_" But since he already knew the answer he restricted his subsequent reactions to the expletive.
Pacing, he paused to flip a toggle and postpone his lunch until further notice. After a time, he noted that he was in his rooftop garden and smoking a cigar, staring into the west.
"Racial discrimination, that's what it is," he muttered, then moved to a hidden plate, thumbed it open and flipped another toggle.
"Send me a light lunch in the manuscript library in about an hour," he ordered, not waiting for a reply.
He continued to pace, breathing in the smells of life and growth that surrounded him and ignoring them completely.
The day grew gray and he turned to the east where a cloud had covered his sun. He glared at it and after a few moments it began to dissipate.
The day brightened once more, but he growled, sighed and walked away from it.
"Always the fall guy," he said, as he entered the library, removed his jacket, hung it on a hook beside the door.
He moved his eyes along the rows of cases which contained the most complete collection of religious manuscripts in the galaxy. On shelves beneath each case were bound facsimiles of the originals. He passed into the next room and continued his search.
"Way up there by the ceiling," he sighed. "I might have known."
Setting the foot of the ladder within three feet of the Qumran scrolls, he adjusted its balance and climbed.
He lit a cigarette after he had seated himself in an easy chair with a fac-copy of _The Book of Life's Manifold Perils and Pleas for Continued Breathing_, in ancient Pei'an script, across his knees.
It seemed but moments later that he heard a click and a programmed cough at his right elbow. The robot had entered, rolled silently across the thick carpeting, come to rest beside him and lowered the covered tray to a comfortable eating level. It proceeded to uncover it.
He ate mechanically and continued reading. After a time, he noted that the robot had departed. He had no memory whatever of what it was that he had eaten for lunch.
He continued to read.
Dinner passed in the same fashion. Night occurred and the lights came on about him, brightening as the darkness deepened.
Sometime in the middle of the night he turned the final page and closed the book. He stretched, yawned, rose and staggered. He had not realized that his right foot had grown numb. He reseated himself and waited for the tingling to pass. When it did, he climbed the ladder and replaced the volume. He restored the ladder to its corner. He could have had robot-extensors and gray-lifts, but he preferred libraries of the old-fashioned sort.
He passed through sliding windows and walked to his bar on the west terrace. He seated himself before it and the light to its rear came on.
"Bourbon and water," he said. "Make it a double."
There was a ten-second pause, during which he could feel the faintest of vibrations through his fingertips resting on the bar. Then a six-by-six square opened before him and the drink slowly rose into sight, coming flush with the counter top. He raised it and sipped.
"... And a pack of cigarettes," he added, remembering that he had finished his some hours before.
These were delivered. He opened the pack and lit one with what was probably the last Zippo lighter outside of museums. Certainly the last functioning one. Every piece of it had been replaced, countless times, by custom-made duplicates turned out solely to repair _this_ lighter--so it was not, properly speaking, an antique; it was more in the nature of a direct descendant. His brother had given it to him-- When? He took another sip. He still had the original around somewhere, all the broken pieces reassembled within its scratched case. Probably in the bottom drawer of that old dresser .
He dragged on the cigarette and felt the drink grow hot in his stomach, then move its momentary warmth into regions beyond. An orange moon hung low on the horizon and a rapidly moving white one was pacing midheaven. He smiled faintly, listened to the toadingales in their wallows. They were doing something of Vivaldi's. Was it from _Summer?_ Yes. There it was. He took another swallow and swirled the remainder in hi's glass.
Yes, this was his job, he decided. He was really the only one of them with experience in the area. And of course the priest would rather send the inquiry to an alien than to one of his own people. Less of a chance for reprimand, for racial reasons; and if there was something dangerous involved .
Cynical, he decided, and you don't want to be cynical. Just practical. Whatever prompted the thing, it's yours now; and you know what happened the last time something like this occurred. It must be dealt with. The fact that there will be no element of control means that, ultimately, it will be aimed at everybody.
He finished his drink, ground out his cigarette. The glass dropped from sight. The panel slid closed.
"Give me another of the same," he said; and quickly, "Not the cigarettes," as he remembered the new servomech's program.
The drink was replaced and he took it with him into his study. There, he dropped into and semi-reclined his favorite chair. He dimmed the lights, caused the room temperature to drop to 62 degrees Fahrenheit, moved a control which brought about the ignition of real logs in the fireplace across the room from him, dropped a tri-dee night winter scene upon the room's one window (it would have taken him several hours to arrange for the real thing), extinguished all the lights now he saw that the fire was taking and settled back into his favorite thinking environment.
In the morning, he switched on his automatic Secretary and Files unit.
"First order of business," he dictated. "I want to talk with Dr. Matthews and my three best programmers immediately after breakfast--here in my study. I want breakfast, by the way, in twenty minutes. You estimate the eating time."
"Do you wish to speak with them singly or as a group?" came the voice from the hidden speaker.
"As a group. Now--"
"What would you like for breakfast?" S & F interrupted.
"Anything at all. Now--"
"Please be more specific. The last time you said 'Anything'--"
"All right. Hamandeggsandtoastandmarmaladeandcoffee. Now, the second thing I want is for someone high up on my staff to contact the Surgeon General or the Director of Health or whatever the hell his title is, in the SEL complex. I want full access to that Panopath computer of theirs no later than tomorrow afternoon, local time, via remote input from here on Homefree. Third, have the port hands start checking over the T for distance-jumping. Fourth, find out who it belongs to and get me the dossier. That's it."
Approximately an hour and a quarter later when they had assembled in his study, he waved them toward chairs and smiled.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I require your assistance in obtaining some information. I am not certain as to the specific nature of the information or the questions I must ask in order to come by it, though I do have some vague notions. It will concern people, places, events, probabilities and diseases. Some of the things I wish to know concern happenings fifteen or twenty years past, and some quite recent. It could take a long while to come up with sufficient information for me to act upon, but I do not have a long while. I want it in two or three days. Your job, therefore, will first be to assist me in formulating the appropriate questions, and then to place those questions on my behalf before a data source which I believe capable of providing what I need. That is the general situation. Now we shall discuss specifics."