ould never have spoken so. "No," he said flatly, "We cannot.
Erikson has conceived a robot-menace. All the old hate-patterns are
being dusted off and used on the rabble. People are actually asking
one another if they would like their daughters to _marry_ robots. That
sort of thing, as old as _homo sapiens_. And one cannot compromise
with prejudice. It seduces the emotions and dulls the mind. No, there
will be no appeasing of Sweyn Erikson or his grey-shirted
nightriders!"

"You're talking like a starry-eyed fool, Han," Virginia Merrick said
sharply.

"Can't we take him in and give him the works?" Graves asked hopefully.
"Primary Conditioning could handle the job. Give him a fill-in with
false memory?"

Merrick shook his head. "We can't risk narcosynthesis and that's
essential. He'll surely be tested for blood purity when he leaves, and
scopolamine traces would be a dead give-away that we had been trying
to hide something here."

"Then it looks as though compromise is the only way, Han. They've got
us up against the wall. See here, Han, I know you don't agree, but
what else is there? After all, we all believe in human supremacy.
Erikson calls it a robot-menace, we look at it from another angle, but
our common goal is the betterment of the human culture we've
established. People are on an emotional jag now. There has been no war
for five centuries. No emotional release. And there have been
regulations and conventions set up since the Atom War that only a very
few officials have been allowed to understand. Erikson is no savage,
Han, after all. True he's set off a rash of robot-baiting, but he can
be dealt with on an intelligent plane, I'm sure."

"He is a man of ability, you know," Virginia Merrick said.

"Ability," Merrick said bitterly. "Rabble rouser and bigot! Look at
his record. Organizer of the riots in Low Chicago. Leader in the
Antirobot Labor League--the same outfit that slaughtered fifty robots
in the Tycho dock strike. Think, you two! To tell such a man what the
Creche is would be to tie a rope around the neck of every android
alive. Lynch law! The rope and the whip for every one of them. And
then suppose the worm turns? _It can, you know!_ Our methods here are
far from perfect. What then?"

"I still say we must compromise," Graves said. "They will kill us if
we don't--"

"He's no troglodyte, Han, I'm certain--" Merrick's wife said
plaintively.

The Director felt resistance flowing out of him. They