Drugged with the poisons of fatigue and pain and defeat, he tried heavily to understand.
"You imagined you were fighting for the public good," the old man said.
"That creative purpose - however mistaken - explains what you did accomplish.
Didn't you have the most of your success with projects entirely creative?"
"That's true." Forester peered up dully.
"And I think you've answered the most amazing riddle.
When we escaped from Wing IV, you see, we somehow got to a planet outside the galaxy.
Somehow I built a shelter for us there - or Jane says I did."
Wonderment haunted his voice. "I could never remember."
"A creative project." The gaunt man smiled briskly.
"Therefore, no internal division existed. Imagined danger to the child was your stimulus.
The unconscious function made successful use of your conscious knowledge.
But your murderous attempt had to fail, just now, because it was destructive - the utmost folly."
Forester shivered, and sneezed again.
He could feel the trembling fear of the child, and he put out his stringy arm to draw her to him.
Apathetic, yet still defiant, he peered enviously down at Ironsmith and Ruth, below him on the silver stair.
"So you can't hurt us, Forester." He drew back stiffly from Ironsmith's suave assurances.
"Because psychophysical energy creates, as surely as masses gravitate.
I might have taught you that long ago - if you had been a little less absorbed in machines for smashing planets, and more willing to trust the humanoids."
Too cold and ill to answer, Forester merely drew Jane a little closer.
Her tiny fingers came up to touch his twitching cheek, sympathetically.
That small act of compassion blurred his eyes with tears.
Wiping at them angrily with the thin gray sleeve, he sat staring at the tall stranger who had been his wife.
"Please, Clay - try not to hate us so!" Her pity cut him with a thin blade of pain.
"Because your mind is sick, and hate is most of the sickness, and you can't get well until your hate is cured. Until you learn the meaning of love."
Heavily, he shook his head.
He didn't really hate her now, because all the past was lost.
He thought he was glad to see the bright happiness binding her and Ironsmith, because the past was gone.
But he didn't want to hear her voice again, or smell the musky scent of Sweet Delirium, or think again of her beside him in the bed.
"Sure, Ruth," he muttered bleakly. "I understand."
"I knew you would." Her quick little smile hurt him with too many memories.
He looked away, trying not to hear the tenderness in her voice, because he wanted nothing from her now. "And we can help you, Clay," she was saying softly.
"With Frank's new grid."
"Huh?" Taut with protest, he came painfully to his feet on the silver steps. "What do you mean?"
"Yes, Forester, we'll take care of you." Ironsmith answered, still absently swinging the woman's hand, watching him with amicably candid eyes.
"We designed that installation just to handle such troublesome cases as yours, where partial knowledge and inadequate power and mistaken resentments become too difficult for the humanoids to manage."
And the serene gray eyes of the younger man looked unseeingly away, as if to examine something far beyond the silver pillars and the vast crystal windows of the war museum with another sort of vision.
Shrinking from him, Forester was washed with a sudden chilling tide of dreadful recollection.
He remembered four human machines he had seen marching too swiftly and too gracefully through that dark laboratory on Wing IV.
He wanted no help from that monstrous platinum brain, and he shivered when Ironsmith's far gaze came back to him.
"We'll be ready for you soon," Ironsmith nodded, smiling pleasantly.
"The installation is mechanically complete, but it will take us just a little longer to build the psychophysical potentials up to operating levels-"
Convulsively, Forester broke free of his terror.
Picking up the frightened child, he fled with her up the silver steps, toward the open doorway and a crystal case beyond.
"Listen, Jane!" he whispered hoarsely as he ran.
"I want you to go away - back to our shelter.
I think you'll be safe - because I'm going to blow this planet up - with the detonator in that case!"
"Please - don't!" She squirmed protestingly in his arms. "
'Cause - don't you see - even Mr. Ironsmith isn't really bad."
He almost paused. But he didn't want to be a flesh machine, surely run by any infallible platinum brain.