were right, of
course. There was nothing else he could do.

"All right," Merrick's voice was low and tired. He felt the weight of
his years settling down on him. "I'll do as you suggest. I'll try to
lead him off the trail first--" that was his compromise with himself,
he knew, and he hated himself for it-- "and if I fail I'll tell him
the whole truth."

He flipped the telescreen toggle in time to see Sweyn Erikson detach
himself from his followers and disappear through the dilated outer
gate in the side of the Creche. A faint, almost futile stirring of
defiance shook him. He found himself in the anomalous position of
wanting to defend something that he had long felt was wrong in concept
from the beginning--and not being able to take an effective course of
action.

He reached into his desk drawer and took out an ancient automatic. It
was a family heirloom, heavy, black and deadly. He pulled back the
slide and watched one of the still-bright brass cartridges snap up
into the breech. He handled the weapon awkwardly, but as he slipped it
into his jumper pocket some of the weariness slipped from him and a
cold anger took its place. He looked calmly from his wife to Graves.

"I'll tell him the whole truth," he said, "And if he fails to react as
you two think he will, I shall kill him."

* * * * *

Sweyn Erikson, in a pre-Atom War culture, might have been a dictator.
But the devastation of the war had at long last resulted in a peaceful
world-state, and where no nations exist, politics becomes a sterile
business of direction and supervision. It is war or the threat of war
that gives a politician his power. Sweyn Erikson wanted power above
all else. And so he founded a religion.

He became the Prophet of the Fanatics. And since a cult must have an
object of group hate as a _raison-d'etre_, he chose the androids. With
efficiency and calculated sincerity, he beat the drums of prejudice
until his organization had spread its influence into the world's high
places and his word became the law of the land.

People who beheld his feral magnificence, and listened to the
spell-binding magic of his oratory--followed. His power sprang from
the masses--unthinking, emotional. He gave the mob a voice and a
purpose. He was like a Hitler or a Torquemada. Like a Long or a John
Brown. He was savage and rapacious, courageous and bitter. He was Man.

There were four cardinal precepts by which the membership