"Trouble?" Forester tried unsuccessfully to grin.
"What do you think I'm in right now?"
"Nothing you didn't ask for." A faint impatience edged Ironsmith's brisk voice.
"You're a scientist, Forester - or you used to be.
With all your experience, in finance and administration and practical engineering as well as pure research, you ought to be too mature to conjure up imaginary devils." As if with restrained exasperation, Ironsmith caught his arm.
"Can't you recognize the humanoids as nothing but machines, to be treated as machines and nothing more?"
Forester whispered uneasily,
"How do you mean?"
"When you make them into enemies, you imply something impossible to any machine." A sober frown had followed Ironsmith's flash of annoyance.
"You imply the moral choice of an evil purpose, reinforced with some emotion of anger or hate - when you ought to know that machines are equipped with neither morals nor emotions."
"I'll agree about the morals!"
Ignoring that feeble stab, Ironsmith stared past him at the sea.
"The humanoids, in fact, are the best machines men have ever made, because the more primitive devices always had the dangerous flaw that careless or wicked men could turn them to destructive ends.
The humanoids are protected from human manipulation.
That is their real perfection, Forester, and the ultimate reason that we must accept them."
Forester watched them silently, seeking in vain for whatever lay behind that disarming air of innocent candor.
"Get what I mean?
A can opener will cut your finger as willingly as it does a can.
A rifle will kill the hunter as quickly as the game.
Yet those devices aren't evil; the error arises in the user.
Old Warren Mansfield was merely solving the old problem of the imperfections and limitations of the human operator, when he designed a perfect mechanism to operate itself."
Lips tight, Forester shook his head.
"Anyhow," Ironsmith went on earnestly, "you ought to be too intelligent to try to fight the humanoids.
Let them serve and obey, and you don't need euphoride."
Forester rasped harshly,
"Obey me?"
"They will."
Ironsmith nodded persuasively,
"If you'll accept them - sincerely.
Do that, and you can have all I do.
If you don't, I see no hope for you but the drug."
"You don't, huh?" Forester felt his thin fists clenching.
"See here, Frank.
I don't quite follow all your phony arguments, and I don't want any sort of run-around.
I think there's something else - and pretty ugly - behind your immunity from these damned restrictions and your queer attitude toward these perfect machines."
Sarcasm lifted his breathless voice. "Let them serve and obey - I want the truth!"
Ironsmith seemed to hesitate.
Ruddy in the reddening western light, his smoothly youthful face showed no resentment, and he nodded solemnly at last, admitting,
"There are things I can't tell you."
"Why not?"
"If it were left to me, I'd tell you everything." He studied the remote, straight horizon. "I'd be willing to trust you with all the facts.
But the humanoids are also involved, and they were designed to take no chances."
"Frank - don't you see?" Forester's broken voice was hoarsely pleading.
"I've got to know!"
"Nothing more." Ironsmith turned to face him, smooth jaw firm. "Not until you actually accept the humanoids - and I had better warn you that they are expert in assaying human reactions.
They don't trick."
"That's why I'm so - so horribly afraid!"
"I'm sorry for you, Forester." Ironsmith turned reluctantly, as if to rejoin the humanoids.
"I had really hoped to help you - because your abilities are too brilliant to be killed by euphoride, and because I'm your friend."
"Are you?"