When he finally gave it up, it was not so much because of the simple arithmetical impossibility of the job as because he realized that it didn't matter. For a time he had been tempted away from the logical attitude toward these savages of his—a foolish weakness of the sort that had given him that ridiculous hour or two, when, he now dimly recalled, he had been afraid of the Terranovans—afraid, of all things, that they were fattening him for the sacrifice!

Whereas it was clear enough, certainly, that the former state of the Terranovans, their incomprehensible society and language and customs, simply had no practical importance. He was changing all that. When he was through, they would be what he had made them, no more and no less.

It was strange, looking back, to realize how little he had seen of his destiny, there at the beginning. Timid little man, he thought half in amusement, half contemptuously: nervous and fearful, seeing things small. Build me a house, like the one I had in Schenectady!

They had built him a palace—no, a temple—and a city; and they were building him a world. A planet that would be his to the last atom when it was done; a corner of the universe that was Algernon James Weaver.

He recalled that in the beginning he had felt almost like these creatures' servant—"public servant," he had thought, with self-righteous lukewarm, pleasure. He had seen himself as one who built for others—the more virtuous because those others were not even men.

But it was not he who built. They built, and for him.

It was strange, he thought again, that he should not have seen it from the first. For it was perfectly clear and all of a pattern.

The marriage laws. Thou shalt not live in adultery.

The dietary laws. Thou shalt not eat that which is unclean.

And the logical concomitant, the law of worship. Thou shalt have no gods before Me.

The apostles ... Mark, Luke and John. Later, Matthew, Philip, Peter, Simon, Andrew, James, Bartholomew and Thomas.

He had a feeling that something was wrong with the list besides the omission of Judas—unluckily, he had no Bible—but it was really an academic question. They were his apostles, not that Other's.

The pattern repeated itself, he thought, but with 

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