"For innocent machines!" Forester broke in harshly.
"They can't be bad, I know, because they aren't wired for freedom of the will.
They were built to save man from his own inborn badness, and that's what they're busy about, and they won't hurt us if we just treat them like our jolly little helpers."
"That's all true." Ironsmith looked regretful.
"I was hoping you might accept it."
"But I don't," Forester rapped.
"Because the damned mechanicals are too expert, and they always go too far.
Where are they going to stop?
Being born can't be a completely happy experience - I suppose they'd like to keep us all nice and cozy in the womb?"
"I believe they're really experimenting with ectogenesis, to avoid the discomforts of childbirth," Ironsmith admitted smoothly.
"But that's not what I came to talk about.
I came to make a bargain with you."
"So?"
"We need information which I think you can supply.
We need it so badly that I have induced the humanoids to let me offer you a second chance - if you will only prove your good faith by helping us trap Mark White."
Forester leaned wearily back in the chair.
"The advantages to you are considerable," Ironsmith urged.
"You can keep your memory - I'll see that you find congenial scientific employment on some project the humanoids approve.
You can soon earn any other privileges you wish.
Isn't that better than euphoride?"
Forester sat up again, warily alert.
"I don't want any more of that," he muttered huskily.
"But I can't tell you anything. Not unless-" He bit his lip, and blurted, "Who else is with you?"
Smiling, Ironsmith shook his head.
"At least I must know one thing." Forester searched his open face, shivering inwardly.
"Did you - or any of these mysterious associates who play chess with you - remove any military equipment from the vicinity of the old military installation here?"
"That doesn't matter." Ironsmith's amiable smile had widened slightly, but now his blue eyes lit with a cool, unspoken speculation from which Forester flinched.
"What's your answer?"
"Send back your damned machines!" Watching Ironsmith drawing calmly on the pipe, he stifled an unruly pang of desire for that forbidden indulgence.
"I don't know what sort of man you are - or even if you are a man!"
Feeling a tingle at the back of his neck, he tried to lower his voice. "But I'm not turning against mankind."
"I had hoped for something a little more sane." Almost sadly, Ironsmith shook his sandy head.
"I had hoped you had learned enough by now to face reality, Forester, because we're offering you quite an unusual opportunity.
But we've other ways of getting at White."
His tweedy shoulders lifted carelessly. "Because the man's more fool than philosopher, and his own folly will some time give him up - I hope before he has done too much harm."
His mild voice fell, hopefully urgent. "But I don't like to abandon you, Forester.
I still wish you would reconsider, because we can show you a width and breadth and depth of living you never even dreamed of, and a creative splendor of life you never imagined.
Won't you trust me - even if you won't the humanoids - and come along?"
"Trust you?" Gulping painfully, Forester tried to laugh.
"Get out!"
And Ironsmith turned to the door, which slid open as promptly as if he had been another mechanical.
He glanced back, with an odd little grin as if of baffled sympathy, and stepped quickly out.
Three humanoids came in, one of them carrying a hypodermic needle.
"Service, Clay Forester," it said.
"We are acting under the Prime Directive, to make you happy again."
The other two moved with their incredible agility to catch him before he could scramble out of the chair.
He tried to flinch from the one with the needle, but the black hands held him, gentle and invincible.
He watched the flashing stroke of the needle, waiting - but it didn't reach his arm.
Chapter NINETEEN
FOR THAT first staggered instant, Forester thought that his own frantic squirming had somehow broken the unbreakable grasp of the machines.