Imbry’s mouth jerked sideways, in the habitual gesture that was etching a deep groove in the skin of his face.
But he wouldn’t be happy while he was learning. It was good for him—but there was no way for him to know that until he’d learned.
“How many this time?” Lindenhoff asked. “Coogan tells me they could use a lot of new recruits in a hurry, in that city they’re building up north.”
“Just one canoe,” Imbry said, looking at the image on the scanner. “Small one, at that. Afraid it’s only one man, Lindy.” He moved the picture a little. “Yeah. Just one.” He focused the controls.
“It’s him! Tylus! We’ve got Tylus!”
There was a short pause on the other end of the intercom circuit. Then Lindenhoff said: “Okay, okay. You’ve finally got your pet one. Now, don’t muff things in the rush.” He chuckled softly and switched off.
Imbry bent closer to the scanner, though there was no real necessity for it. From here on, the process was automatic and as inevitable as an avalanche.
Lindenhoff had said it, that time last year when Imbry’d come back up from the planet: “Fred, there’s a price to be paid for everything you learn about what’s in the universe. It has to hurt, or it isn’t a real price. There aren’t any easy answers.”
Certainly, for any man who had to learn this particular answer, the price could go very^ high. It was, in essence, the same answer Imbry himself had learned. When he had joined the Corporation, he had expected Lindenhoff, Coogan and the others to be gods—of a sort. And of course they weren’t, any more than Imbry was. They were human, and had to do their job in human ways.
He had confused motive and method. Actually, the Corporation’s motives were not so different from his, even though they were stated realistically instead of idealistically. To look at it another way, the Corporation simply had a clearer—more sane—knowledge of what it was doing and why.
Imbry, finding himself considered a god by the natives, had realized his own gods were only men, after all. What better way, then, to get the same natives started on the road to true civilization than to put them in exactly the same position he had been in?
Imbry watched the protoplasmic robots on the island come hesitantly through the underbrush toward the beach.
On the island, Tylus stopped. There was a crackle in the shrubbery, and a small, diffident figure stepped out. Its expression was watchful but friendly. It looked rather much like a man, except for its small size and the shade of its skin. Its eyes were intelligent. It looked trustful.
“Hello,” Tylus said. “I’m Tylus.”
The little native came forward. Others followed it, some more timid than the first, some smiling cordially. They kept casting glances at the magic tree-pod which could carry a man over the sea.
“Hello,” the little native answered in a soft, liquid voice. “Are you an ancestor ghost or a god ghost?”
And Tylus began learning about Imbry.