They gave that drug to Ruth, you know." He couldn't keep a tremor from his voice. "And she almost - didn't recognize me."
"A useful drug, sometimes."
Ironsmith himself seemed to feel no terror of euphoride.
"It's good to see you back at Starmont," he went on genially.
"The hill seems a little lonely, now.
Won't you come on to my rooms, and tell me what you think of the humanoids?"
Forester was still afraid to say what he thought about them, but he accepted instantly.
Shaken and uncertain from that dark moment of unutterable suspicion, he still had a monstrous problem to face. If Frank Ironsmith wasn't a machine - what was he?
Chapter THIRTEEN
THEY WALKED up the path to the old wooden building together, Ironsmith pushing his cycle unaided, Forester stalking silently ahead of his keepers.
When they came to the door, Forester saw with a mounting bitterness that it still had a common brass knob, made for a man to work.
He paused in the doorway, staring into Ironsmith's front room with a chagrined bewilderment.
For the old, book-lined walls enclosed a comfortable oasis of casual human disorder, in the midst of all this sterile desert of ordered, shining newness the humanoids had made.
The shabby pieces of man-made furniture needed dusting.
Tobacco crumbs were spilled on the floor.
At the big desk, amid a clutter of such deadly implements as heavy paperweights and a sharp letter opener and a long pair of shears, a slide rule lay across an untidy stack of papers, as if Ironsmith were still allowed to work.
"Smoke?" The smiling mathematician opened a new silver humidor.
"You know I couldn't afford cigars before the humanoids came, but now they keep me supplied with very good ones."
"Thanks." Forester glanced resentfully at the two machines behind him.
"But they won't let me smoke."
"They know best."
Apologetically, Ironsmith closed the humidor, but the mellow fragrance from it had filled Forester with a hungry craving.
He sat down stiffly, looking uncomfortably away from his guards.
He wanted desperately to ask Ironsmith's aid, to help him smash Wing IV and set men free, but he couldn't speak of that.
He was afraid to ask even the secret of the other's special privileges, but he nodded at the desk, inquiring indirectly:
"Still working?"
"Not really working." Lazily, the younger man sprawled his awkward-seeming length into a big, worn chair, beside a small table where chessmen were set up in an unfinished game. "Just playing around with a few ideas that I never had time to develop before.
The humanoids do all the routine math - though they let me keep the old machines in the computing section, for any work I want to do myself."
"How do you manage that?" Forester gulped at a bitter lump of jealousy.
"They tell me that research is too dangerous, and useful work no longer necessary."
"But thinking isn't outlawed," Ironsmith murmured gravely.
"And I believe men still need to think."
He picked up the queen of the black chessmen, absently.
"In the old world, we had no time for thought.
We were all too busy running machines, until machines that ran themselves came along to set us free."
"Free?"
Forester stared bleakly up at his keepers. "Free to do what?"
"To live, I believe," Ironsmith said softly.
"Take my own experience. I used to be a kind of human calculating machine.
The best of my energy went into setting up problems for those clumsy old electronic devices.
Now I have time to look for the real meanings of mathematics.
Time to follow ideas-"
His honest gray eyes were looking far beyond the black queen, and his low voice quickened.
"Sorry, Forester, but I've another engagement coming up." He straightened, replacing the queen on the board.
"But I think you'll be all right, if you'll just learn to trust the humanoids.
Remember their Prime Directive - To Serve and Obey, and Guard Men from Harm.
They can't hurt anybody."
"It's that drug!" Forester stood up reluctantly, trying not to look at his guards.
"I can't stand the thought of that. It's almost - murder!" He gulped convulsively. "That's what it is - murder of the mind!"
"You're just overwrought."