"Hands out of your pockets," rasped the voice from the television. "Hands in front of you at all times."

The anger grew to rage, crowding out some of the fear. He pulled his hands out and began to strike his right fist into his left palm, over and over.

"Keep your hands still!"

Taggart gritted his teeth and glared up at the screen. "Shut up!" he growled.

"Silence!" rapped the voice. "No talking in the cells."

Letting his rage take control, Taggart stood up slowly and walked across the cell.

"Sit down!" the voice barked.

"Shut up!" he barked back. Examining the controls under the screen, Taggart looked for an off-switch. Finding nothing obvious, he began punching buttons and turning dials at random. The picture wavered, the volume rose and fell, sometimes even the scene changed to something else, but always it would instantly readjust itself.

"Do not touch the controls! Sit down!"

Ignoring the voice, Taggart realized that there was no way to shut the television off or even turn its sound down. In a sudden flash of perception, he understood that this was probably universal. The State most likely used television as the sole means of delivering news and entertainment to the people; most likely they were designed never to be shut off.

"Leave the controls alone! Sit down! Sit down!"

Something snapped in Taggart. "Shut up! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" he screamed, taking a step or two back. Then, with all his strength he kicked his heel into the center of the screen. The shock of the impact numbed his foot but the heavy, shatterproof glass cracked in a spiderweb pattern under the force of the blow. Taggart kicked again and the glass plate cracked still more, sagging slightly inward. At the third kick his foot burst completely through and smashed into the brittle, thin glass of the picture tube. . . .

The tube exploded. Taggart sprawled backward to the floor as a fine rain of glass particles showered the cell. He felt stinging lancets, like tattooing needles, pierce the skin of his neck and the forearm he had instinctively raised to shield his eyes. Then he stood up and stared down at his numb and bleeding right foot, realizing what he had done.

The rage retreated and gave way to fear. Now the guards would come. They would beat him with their short clubs like they had done in the interrogation room. . . .

His foot was cut and bleeding badly. He sat down on the bench, tore off a short length of one trouser leg, and bound it tightly around his right ankle as a tourniquet, knotting it as firmly as he could.

Then he heard the heavy tread of booted feet in the corridor, hurried and purposeful. They were coming. He had to fight them somehow -- but he couldn't. He had no weapon -- unless. . . .

The footsteps were nearer. Frantically Taggart raked together a pile of the thin, brittle glass from the shattered picture-tube, then began to stamp on it with his right foot, crushing it to a coarse grit beneath his numbed heel. What did any physical damage matter from now on? He was doomed -- but perhaps he could take one or two of his tormentors to Hell with him. . . .

Now the footsteps were outside the door. Taggart bent hastily and scooped up a fistful of the bloody glass in his hand.

The door clanged open and two guards strode in -- black-uniformed, brutal-faced, and carrying short clubs of metal. The first came for Taggart with his club held low for a gut-thrust. Without warning Taggart hurled the ground glass into the man's face with all his force. The guard staggered back and dropped his club, howling and clawing at his eyes, colliding with the second guard and knocking him briefly off balance. . . .

Taggart snatched up the fallen club and charged. The second guard recovered quickly and swung his club; Taggart ducked, but the blow landed heavily on his shoulder, numbing his left arm. He struck back blindly, with all his strength, and heard the snapping of bone as his club connected solidly with the guard's forearm. The man screamed. Taggart swung again and his heavy truncheon bashed into the side of the guard's face, crunching tooth and bone.

Then both guards were down and howling on the floor, one spitting out blood and broken teeth while the other clawed frantically at the glass particles in his blinded eyes. Taggart circled them and staggered out into the hall. Gone was all fear, all caution -- all that remained was rage, a knowledge of imminent death, and a desire to kill and kill and kill.

He limped hurriedly down the long corridor, his right foot leaving a red stain at every step. A door opened not far ahead of him and a man stepped out. It was the lean, corrupt-visaged psychologist, white-smocked and holding a glittering hypodermic in one skeleton-like hand. Taggart lurched straight at him. The man's lined face had barely registered a startled fear before Taggart's club swung and crunched into his throat, crumpling the thyroid like stiff cardboard, and he sprawled to the floor, gasping and strangling. Taggart hurried on, one thought uppermost in his mind: to find the Great Father and kill him.

Rounding the corner at the end of the hall, he suddenly saw a half-dozen black-uniformed guards running to meet him. In their midst was Father, surrounded by a sphere of nebulous blue light and gripping a Zarrian blaster.

Taggart spun instinctively and raced back the way he had come, heedless of his injured foot. A moment later shots rang out as his pursuers turned the corner; bullets whined past him and chipped plaster from the walls.

He reached a right-angle bend in the corridor and frantically dashed around it. For another moment, at least, he was safe. . . .

He was halfway down the long hall when, suddenly, the floor shook as if an earthquake had struck. The shock sent him sprawling and rolling against the wall. A long crack appeared down the center of the ceiling, like a streak of jagged black lightning, and chunks of plaster fell and shattered against the floor. Yells rang out behind him. He scrambled to his feet and raced on.

At the end of the corridor he glanced back -- and saw his pursuers rounding the corner at the opposite end. Their number had tripled, while guards and white-robbed attendants were issuing from doors and side-passages to join in the chase. In their midst, surrounded by his protective Zarrian force-screen, was Father.

Taggart ducked around the corner and raced on, frantic now to throw off his pursuers. A wild hope had sprung up within him. If that earthquake-shock was what he thought it was. . . .

Suddenly he saw two men blocking the far end of the hall -- black-uniformed guards with submachine-guns. Taggart flattened himself into the recess of a doorway just in time as the hall echoed with staccato thunder; plaster chipped around him like spattering hail and the air was full of whining bullets. . . .

Then a roaring explosion rolled down the corridor. The shooting ceased.

Cautiously Taggart peered from his recess and saw that the guards were gone. Where they had stood were now two sprawling, mangled forms that twitched and smoldered horribly in a spreading pool of sooty crimson. Beyond them, near the end of the hall, a figure appeared -- a human figure surrounded by a blue haze of light and clutching a Zarrian blaster. As that figure stepped over the two mangled guards and came running down the corridor toward him, Taggart suddenly realized who it was.

"Judy!" he shouted. "Judy!"

The girl stopped. Taggart darted from his niche and ran toward her. Behind him, he heard his pursuers clattering into the other end of the hall.

"Judy -- get down!" he yelled.

The girl's eyes were bright, exhalant. She flashed a smile that was fierce and unholy, almost a snarl.

"Get out of my way," she cried, "so I can kill them!"

Taggart rushed to her side. He suddenly realized that this was no longer the meek, fearful, tormented girl that the State had created, but now the Biblical Amazon she shared her name with.

Breathlessly he said, "Father's got a blaster -- your force-belt can't protect you --"

Shots rang out. A slug smacked into Taggart's right thigh, knocking him to the floor. He heard Judith fire her blaster and screams reverberating from the far end of the corridor. Sitting up, he saw the girl running down the hall toward the crowd of guards and white-coated attendants. Two or three blackened figures lay writhing and steaming on the floor. Father was in the forefront of the crowd, his face grim and hard.

"Judy -- look out!" cried Taggart.

There was a searing flash of violet light and a roaring concussion like muffled thunder. For an instant Judith seemed engulfed in a burst of flame; her scream filled the hall as the gun spun from her grasp and fell outside the circle of force that surrounded her. Taggart scrambled forward frantically; he dove for the blaster, grabbed it, raised it, and fired. His wild shot seared some plaster from the ceiling above the charging group and hurt no one. Then Father, perhaps realizing fully for the first time that he faced a weapon as powerful as his own, darted aside into a branch corridor, followed by two or three of his white-clad psychologists. . . .

But the rest came on. There were over a score of them, guards and attendants together, the foremost of them firing pistols. Bullets whined and chipped plaster from the walls. Taggart shoved the regulator on the Zarrian blaster up to full power, gripped the handle with both hands, and fired.

A wave of violet flame swept the hall with a roar like that of a blast-furnace. Bodies burst into charred, bloody tatters that plastered walls, floor, and ceiling with a sooty, reddish gore. Thunder rolled and roared along the corridor. . . .

Taggart released the trigger. An oily smoke billowed and roiled, filling the corridor with a ghastly stench. As it slowly cleared, Taggart saw that not one of his pursuers was alive or intact. The walls and ceiling dripped a sluggish ooze like the red-tinted, charcoal-crusted walls of a barbecue-pit, while the floor to the far end of the hall was littered ankle-deep with a viscous tangle of charred limbs, viscera, bone-fragments and shattered, brain-oozing skulls.

Taggart rose slowly, cautiously -- but no enemy was in sight. He limped to Judith's side, horrified to see the extent of her injuries. She was still alive, but her legs were gone almost to the hips. She hung suspended in mid-air about three feet above the floor, supported by the dim, blue sphere of force that surrounded her. Her hands moved feebly as she dangled from the glowing circle of her belt; her breath came in short, frantic gasps.

"Judy," said Taggart hoarsely, "turn off your force-belt." The girl's hands fumbled at her belt-clasp; the radiance about her faded, and her mangled body sank slowly into the pool of blood beneath her. Taggart knelt down beside her, cringing at the sight of the charred stumps of her legs. She was very white—and he noticed, once again, how the freckles stood out on her face.

"We won!" breathed Judith, her brown eyes wide and strangely bright. "We killed them all, didn't we!"

Taggart nodded, unable to speak.

"They thought they'd crushed me forever," whispered the girl, "but I won after all. I can hate them -- I can still hate them. Oh, how I hate them!"

"Judith . . ." Somehow Taggart knew that "Judy" was no longer appropriate.

"Yes -- they couldn't crush that. They thought they'd tortured it out of me, but they didn't. They can't. I'll always hate them. That means I'm free, doesn't it? That means I'm free from them. . . ."

"Yes, Judith," said Taggart. "You are free. We've killed them all -- but they're not done dying. They shall die forever!"

Tears stung his eyes. The girl's face grew whiter and whiter. Then her brown eyes closed and she sighed; her head rolled to one side, and she lay still. Taggart rose wearily and stood in the middle of the hall, the blaster limp in his hand.

Footsteps sounded in the passage. Taggart bent quickly, unclasped the force-belt that circled the dead girl's waist, slid it from under her, and buckled it on. Then he turned to face the sound -- and saw a group of strange beings approaching him. Some of them were dwarfish, spiky-headed Titanians, the rest lobster-like creatures with multi-hued, fungoid, spindle-shaped heads. All wore force-belts like his own and clutched a variety of strange weapons.

As they drew close he saw Pitts walking in their midst. The man glanced down at Judith's body and asked:

"What happened to her?"

"The Great Father has my blaster," Taggart muttered. "She saved my life -- but her belt couldn't protect her. . . ."

"Remarkable woman," Pitts commented idly. Taggart stared at him, surprised to hear what sounded like an expression of some small feeling. But instead all he saw was the usual look of ruthless dispassion in the man's hard, cold eyes. Nonetheless, he knew just how rare it was for Pitts to show any kind of respect for another human being, so his words still bolstered Taggart's flagging spirits.

"'Great Father'?" Pitts then said, glancing around cautiously. "Someone has your blaster? Where is he?"

"Somewhere in this building. I've got to find him --"

"I was afraid we'd never find you," Pitts said. "I can see you've been through the mill. Come on -- we'll get you back to the ship and patch you up."

"I've got to find Father first," said Taggart. "Then I'll go back."

"That won't be hard -- but let's not hang around here if he's got a blaster. We can take care of him from a distance."

"Alive," Taggart said evenly. "He's got to be alive."

"Don't worry. The Yuggoth-spawn want everyone in this building alive -- it's evidently the nerve-center for a third of the world. Or was, rather. Come on -- we'll pump this place full of gas, then come back and pick up whoever's lying around. No sense in fighting fair and getting killed."

Taggart did not argue. The red rage had left him and had been replaced by something calm and deadly. He knew that no amount of killing could ever alleviate that feeling. His leg pained him greatly as he hobbled down the hall with Pitts and the aliens, but there was something within him that was far worse than pain.

As they traversed several corridors, and descended three or four flights of stairs, Taggart saw places where whole sections of the walls and ceilings had fallen away. Once they passed down a corridor where every room was labeled "Reeducation," with a letter beneath each sign. They saw no living thing but occasionally passed charred corpses sprawled in pools of sooty gore on the concrete.

At last they emerged from the building through a shattered steel gate, and Taggart gazed out at a panorama of destruction -- the wreckage of what had been a city. As far as he could see sprawled a broken jumble of concrete and brick and steel. Everywhere lay the fragments of civilization: splintered telephone poles, broken glass, tangles of wire, pipes, and cables. In the distance a huge metal bridge sagged in twisted ruin against the sky; nearer at hand a crumpled water-tower sprawled on its side. All around rose jagged stubs of walls that had once been buildings. The sky was of a strange, saffron-gray hue such as Taggart had never seen before, and the air seemed charged with an electric tension as if a great storm had just passed. Distant thunder rolled upon the air and far away, along the horizon, a band of black, boiling, lightning-shot clouds was slowly receding. At each flash of lightning Taggart thought he could glimpse ranks of great, pointed metal towers arranged along the base of that beetling cloud-band.

"The Zarr did this?" said Taggart.

"Yes -- by generating tornadoes over the city."

"Just that simple?" Taggart asked wearily. "Didn't the State even fight back?"

"Oh, they sent a few nuclear missiles up at us, but we deflected them all into outer space by remote control."

Taggart felt no elation at Pitts's statement of victory. His body pained him but his emotions were numb.

Then he noticed groups of the Yuggoth-spawn emerging from the mangled steel gate, dragging the stiff bodies of men behind them. There were no signs of injury on any of the bodies. The lobster-like creatures were stacking them in low piles like cord-wood -- one pile of uniformed guards, another of white-smocked technicians, a third of black-coveralled Nazirites.

"What are they doing?" said Taggart.

"Collecting specimens. Those men aren't dead -- just paralyzed. Their brains will be sealed alive in canisters and sent to the archives on Yuggoth."

More and more of the creatures were emerging from the huge, pyramidal building, each pair of them carrying a human burden to add to the piles. They seemed like great stalky crayfish carrying prey to their nests. Some of them gripped slender, silvery, pistol-like objects in their delicately-jointed claws.

Taggart asked, "What will happen when the Galactics find out about this?"

"The Galactics know," said Pitts.

"You mean -- they agreed to this? . . ."

"They didn't agree -- they decided for themselves. They suddenly realized the human race isn't fit to live."

"But why? Why?"

"One of them looked into Judith's mind," said Pitts.

Taggart sighed and sat down on a fallen telephone pole. His leg was throbbing painfully. "What about the rest of the world?" he asked.

"Finished!" Pitts grinned tightly and rubbed his thin fingers together. "For the last few hours tornadoes have been raging over the entire surface of the planet. Every city is like this. Civilization has been destroyed."

A sudden chill swept through Taggart's entire body. When it had passed, he cried out:

"But that's impossible! You couldn't have killed everyone -- you didn't. There must be a city left somewhere --"

"Not a chance."

"Was London destroyed?"

"Yes," said Pitts. "That was one of the first cities we hit."

"What about Paris?"

"Churned to rubble -- like this place."

"Chicago? New York?"

"They're gone, too."

"Washington D.C.?"

"Gone."

"San Francisco? Los Angeles? Phoenix?"

"Gone -- all gone. On all the earth I doubt there's a city left with a population over ten thousand. And this is only the beginning. We'll destroy the survivors, too. And then --"

"Yes -- what then?" cried Taggart, trying to rise. "What will we do then, you crazy fool? What will we do -- just you and me and maybe a half-dozen other favored, pet specimens of the Zarr? Yes, you've finally achieved what you always dreamed of -- the destruction of the human race -- but what do we have to live for now -- ?"

"I told you this was only the beginning." Pitts's face was hard and grim. "The Zarr are learning the secrets of time as well as of space, and will soon be extending their conquests along that dimension, also. Yes, the human race has just about reached its end -- but there are still many thousands of years of human history to attend to!"

Taggart felt the chill return, stronger than before. "You can't be serious --"

"But I am. The human race is gone, but it should never have been in the first place -- and, if it is ever in my power, I shall correct that situation, also."

"But why? . . ."

Taggart stopped even as the question formed in his mind. A hundred times he had asked Pitts why he hated the human race so fanatically. Now, as he glanced up at the looming, bomb-proof ziggurat of the Department of Persuasion, he felt that he could understand. Once again he read the words set deep in the concrete above the steel door:

"But why must they all die?" he asked. "Why not just the State? Why not just the tyrants, the despots, the bullies who are in power and use that power to inflict pain and slavery on others -- ?"

"Because they are all the same," said Pitts. "No matter who is in power, it is always the same. Six thousand years of recorded history have proven that."

Taggart looked at the ground in silence. He could think of no answer. He was wounded and tired and he had not slept for days. Yet, he had to think. Pitts was partly right -- history was full of men who had used power to crush and debase others in every way imaginable, and their influence down the centuries had finally culminated in the Pan-Occidentia state. But had it really been as inevitable as Pitts claimed? And if the Zarr were actually to master time as well as space, why could not the history of the human race be changed to avoid this fate rather than wiped out utterly? . . .

His weariness suddenly increased tenfold as he realized the magnitude of the task he faced -- the greatest task, perhaps, that had ever confronted any human being. If the human race was to be saved now, he would have to do it.

"Pitts," he said, "there is a better way."

Pitts shook his head. "It's no good -- I've thought of it, too. We can rearrange history all we want, but the outcome is inevitable."

"I can't accept that. History isn't predetermined; it's course is contingent, determined by choices and events which have multiple outcomes. It's just a matter of going back and making choices or influencing events so that they produce the right outcomes."

"How?" Pitts asked quietly. "There are nearly an infinite number of possible outcomes, most of which would produce the same results. How could you possibly find the vanishing few rare outcomes that would make even a tiny difference?"

"There's got to be a way we can do it," Taggart replied stubbornly, "no matter how fantastically hopeless it is. This world cannot be inevitable."

"You don't understand," Pitts replied with grim patience. "The Pan-Occidental Christian Empire isn't inevitable, but some despotic government is. This world could just as easily have been a neo-Nazi state, or a Bolshevik state, or even one patterned after Orwell's Oceania in 1984."

"But if the outcomes are nearly infinite, then a just and free society must be possible."

Again, Pitts shook his head. "You still don't understand. The laws of the universe would never permit it, as long as even the possibility of certain things remains inherent within those laws. As long as the universe is the way it is, despotism will be the rule, not the exception. Because of that no time stream leading to an 'enlightened' world would be viable; because of that we would need to destroy every time stream that leads to the human race, not just this one. Perhaps, ultimately, even the universe and the laws that govern it shall have to be destroyed!"

"You must be insane to even talk of such possibilities -- unless you know far more of the Zarr and their potentialities than I can even suspect. What you're saying is that you'll slay God if you can! Don't you see, Pitts, that if you succeed in destroying human history, you will destroy yourself as well?"

"What of that?" For an instant Taggart sensed behind Pitts' tense features a weariness even greater than his own. "If the laws of the universe cannot be changed, then better to have never lived in it. Better that there be no universe at all! Yes, you are right -- I have told you little about the Zarr, for they themselves are only the pawns of tremendously more powerful beings whose ultimate goals they can but dimly understand. As the Zarr grow in power, their masters give them more and more knowledge. Next it will be time-travel, so that they can better fight the Galactics, who have already been given this knowledge by their masters. Already I have learned things about the ultimate source of all power, and that it is possible to move closer and closer to that source. . . ."

"So you would be God, then," said Taggart, "and re-establish this world with laws of your own, with every being living or dying by those laws! What will your world be like, Pitts? Do you really think you can make it fundamentally better than this one? Can you have pleasure without pain, joy without sorrow, good without evil? . . ."

"If ever I am God," said Pitts, his eyes suddenly flaming with a mad light, "my first words shall be: Let there be Darkness!"

Taggart rose unsteadily, feeling weak and dizzy. He could talk no more -- his thoughts were blurring. He needed medical attention -- he must not die, for he had a tremendous task ahead of him.

"You'd better get back to the ship so we can patch you up," said Pitts, his features once more rigid and emotionless.

"No." Taggart shook his head. "Not till they get Father."

"They will -- they'll use gas."

"He's got to be alive," said Taggart.

"Don't worry --"

Even as Pitts spoke a group of the Yuggoth-spawn emerged from the wide portal. They were pushing a nebulous sphere of transparent blue in front of them, and in the center of this sphere there hung, stiff and awkwardly posed, the body of a man. The creatures rolled the whole thing before them like a huge ball six feet in diameter.

"They got him without the gas," said Pitts.

Taggart started forward anxiously. "He's not dead -- ?"

"No -- just paralyzed. The needle-ray got him. His force-screen couldn't block out radiant energy, just kinetic."

Taggart hobbled over to the sphere and peered in at the man who called himself Our Father. The narrow eyes were open and staring sightlessly.

"You will kill him personally, I assume," said Pitts.

"No." Taggart's voice was low and even. "He's the last person I want to see die -- the very last!"

John Taggart stood in thoughtful silence, his hands clasped behind him, and gazed out at the stars. They seemed much brighter than ever they had from earth. Beneath the wide, steel-hard, yet perfectly transparent window blinked the myriad lights of the instrument panel as automatic controls brought the Zarrian flyer into a carefully calculated orbit around the sun.

The forward jets thundered briefly for the last time, then ceased. One by one the lights across the panel blinked out, while the whirrings and clickings from within grew fainter, till at last the panel was altogether dark and the ship utterly silent. Yet, for some time Taggart remained standing before the great curved window and continued to gaze out into space at the untwinkling stars.

He was alone in the small craft. All was now silent within -- and without there was nothing but the vastness of unbounded space. The stars hung in bright profusion before him -- not the few scattered points of light that could be glimpsed through the earth's atmosphere, but a veritable cloud of luminescence, as if someone had spilled a box of glittering salt-crystals across a velvet curtain. Millions upon millions of tiny pinpoints of light, each one of them a sun, gleamed from the bottomless blackness of space -- distance without measure, worlds without end.

At length he glanced at his wristwatch, then limped across the small control room to a metal door. His leg still pained him, but electrostatic surgery had removed even the tiniest slivers of glass from his foot and the pain was mingled with a healing warmth. Opening the door, he entered a larger room. In its center, on a metal platform, rested a machine of curious intricacy whose main part consisted of a mirror-bright sphere about two feet in diameter inset with several glassy lenses and a short, antenna-like projection. Attached to this sphere was a small solar battery, and a complex, clicking device that seemed to be reeling in a fine filament of wire. The other end of the gleaming filament was coming from a second intricate machine, to which a squat cylinder of bright metal was attached.

For several moments Taggart stood in silence as the wire clicked softly from one machine to the other, shimmering like a silver cobweb. At last the machines clicked off; the end of the filament slithered silently into the sphere, as if being wound on a hidden spool, and vanished.

Taggart stirred. He removed the squat metal cylinder from its cradle and began to work at it with a small, glittering tool, till presently the top sprang off. Within lay a human brain submerged in a transparent fluid, its convolutions dark with the hue of death. He reached in and pulled the thing forth with a snapping of fine fibers and, for a moment, held it in his hand and contemplated it quietly. Then, abruptly, he crushed it like a rotten sponge and dropped it back into its container.

Next he dried his hands and began to don a bulky spacesuit. It took some time, but at last he clamped down the heavy plexiglas helmet and heard the air hissing in from the tanks on his back. Finally, he picked up the large sphere and entered the airlock that was the antechamber to outer space.

The inner door clanged shut behind him, the outer one hissed open -- and the black emptiness of space confronted him. He fastened his lifeline to a cleat on the floor and clipped the other end to his pressure-suit. Then he kicked himself away from the ship. It cost him a great mental effort to do so, as the artificial gravity gave him the illusion that he would fall toward the stars beneath his feet; yet, once away from the spacecraft, he floated freely till the lifeline drew taut. Before him burned the sun, a fiery hole in the black fabric of space. Though it was over a hundred million miles away, even the treated glassite of Taggart's helmet did not permit him to look at it directly.

He switched on the solar battery attached to the sphere, and a red lens set into the metal began to blink slowly. Taggart's features tensed in a grim, mirthless smile.

"Father," he said, "can you hear me?"

The red light began to blink faster, and then a faint electronic voice spoke from the speakers in Taggart's helmet.

"Where am I?" it said. "What have you done to me?"

"Everything," said Taggart. "I have made you perfect, Father."

"What . . . what do you mean? . . ."

"I mean that I have taken away your humanity, and that I have made you immortal. There is no longer a single cell of your biological self left alive—but that does not matter, for your thoughts and perceptions live on and they will not pass the way of mortal flesh."

"My eyes!" rasped the voice in his ears. "That light—it's so bright—turn it off! . . ."

"My arm is not long enough for that, Father; this is the place where there is no darkness. Look around you, and you will know why. Look around, and tell me what you see."

The speaker was silent for a space. The red light on the sphere blinked more urgently.

"I see the stars," said the voice at last.

"And that is not all," said Taggart. "You see Reeducation."

"No!" exclaimed the voice. "It's not possible. . . ."

"Yes, it's more than possible; it is. You once told me that the most horrible thing in the world is in Reeducation. Well, this is your Reeducation, Father -- this is reality. This is the universe, where two plus two equals four and where the past has an unchanging existence, no matter what the State says -- and where the future has reality, too. And you shall experience the reality of that future, Father. For ten billion years you shall circle the sun out here in airless space, always conscious, always unchanging, always aware."

"No! . . ." The voice was an electronic shriek in his ear.

"Yes, Father. You once told me that the State is immortal, that it would never die. That's not quite true, but it's as true as I can make it -- for you are all that is left of the State, and in you the State shall live on until the universe dies the heat death and the sun fades out of the sky like a dying spark. As long as there is light enough to operate your solar battery you will float out here, alone with the planets, and think, and dream of the power you once had which is now gone forever.

"Nor is it for your crimes alone that you will suffer, Father. Your power was the heritage left by a hundred thousand despots who came before you. You would never have existed, Father, if decades ago the Communists had not crushed a Hungarian revolt for freedom -- if over a century and a half ago the Nazis had not marched six million people to the gas chambers -- if six hundred years ago the Popes had not chained men to the stake to die in flames -- if two thousand years ago the Caesars had not nailed men to the cross to die in the sun -- and if four thousand years ago the Pharaohs had not, for their own glory, forced countless thousands into slavery to build their useless monuments. No, Father, you are not responsible for what they did -- but they are responsible for you. Because of their actions, you came to be. You are their ultimate product, and you shall suffer for them all. For ten billion years you shall circle out here in the gulfs of space with nothing but your own thoughts, and you shall atone for your crimes and for the crimes of all who made you possible. For ten billion years is a long time, Father -- it is ten times as long as life has existed on the earth. You will have time to atone for all the crimes of mankind, and to suffer all the torments that you and your predecessors have ever inflicted on the body and mind and soul of the human race."

He flicked the switch that activated the orbit-controlling mechanism -- the delicate, temperature-regulated mechanism that would keep the sphere's spiral path at just the right distance from the sun for as long as heat and light should continue to radiate from it. Then he turned and hauled his way back to the ship. Just before he entered the airlock he looked back and regarded the sphere once more. The voice was silent now but the red lens was blinking frantically. The thing seemed very tiny hanging there in emptiness against the backdrop of countless stars; and even as Taggart watched, it drifted slowly away, farther and farther, while the blinking red light grew dimmer and dimmer, until at last it was lost from sight amid the black infinities of space.

Created: October 28, 2006