back the information about the effect of the Fanatic weapon on robot tissue. The vague notion that knowing, Jon Graves might cast his lot with Erikson, restrained him.

"Of course, Erikson will come in wearing an energy shield," Graves said.

"He will. And we have none," Virginia Merrick said softly.

"Can we compromise with him?" Graves asked.

There it was again, Merrick thought, the weasel-word 'compromise.' There was a moral decay setting in everywhere—the founders of the Creche would 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 

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