“You’re losing control, father. You’re getting excited.”

“You’re with them. You’re part of it. This was deliberate, eh, Manuel? Oh, get out of here! Back to your alpha friend! And you can tell her for me, tell all of them, that—” Krug caught himself. He waited a moment for the pounding of his heart to subside. This was the wrong way to handle it, he knew; he must not erupt, he must not explode, he must move cautiously and with full command of the facts if he hoped to disengage himself from the situation. More calmly he said, “I need to think more about this, Manuel. I don’t mean to be shouting at you. You understand, when you come in here telling me I’m now a god, you show me the Krug bible, it can unsettle me some. Let me think it over. Let me reflect, eh? Don’t say anything to anybody. I have to come to grips with this thing. Yes? Yes?” Krug stood up. He reached across the desk and seized Manuel’s shoulder. “The old man yells too much,” he said. “He blows up too fast. That’s nothing new, is it? Look, forget what I was yelling. You know me, you know I talk too fast sometimes. Leave this bible with me. I’m glad you brought it in. Sometimes I’m rough with you, boy, but I don’t mean to be.” Krug laughed. “It can’t be easy being Krug’s son. The Son of God, eh? You better be careful. You know what they did to the last one of those.”

Smiling, Manuel said, “I’ve already thought of that one.”

“Yes. Good. Well, look, you go now. I’ll be in touch.”

Manuel started toward the door.

Krug said, “Give my love to Clissa. Look, you be fair to her a little, will you? You want to lay alpha girls, lay alpha girls, but remember you’ve got a wife. Remember the old man wants to see those grandchildren. Eh? Eh?”

“I’m not neglecting Clissa,” Manuel said. “I’ll tell her you asked after her.”

He left. Krug touched the cube’s cool skin to his blazing cheek.In the beginning there was Krug, and He said, Let there be Vats, and there were Vats. And Krug looked upon the Vats and found them good. I should have foreseen it, he thought.

There was a terrible throbbing in his skull.

He rang for Leon Spaulding. “Tell Thor I want him here right away,” Krug said.

With the tower nearing the 1200-meter level, Thor Watchman found himself entering the most difficult part of the project. At this height there could be only minimal tolerance of error in the placing of each block, and the molecule-to-molecule bonding of the blocks had to be executed perfectly. No weak spots could be allowed if the tower’s upper level were to maintain its tensile strength in the face of the Arctic gales. Watchman now spent hours every day jacked into the computer, receiving direct override readings from the interface scanners that monitored the building’s structural integrity; and whenever he detected the slightest lapse of placement he ordered the erring block ripped out and replaced. Several times an hour he went to the top of the tower himself to supervise the installation of repositioning of some critical block. The beauty of the tower depended on the absence of an inner structural framework throughout all its immense height; but erecting such a building called for total command of detail. It was jarring to be called away from the work in the middle of his shift. But he could not refuse a summons from Krug.

As he entered Krug’s office after the transmat hop, Krug said, “Thor, how long have I been your god?”

Watchman was jolted. He struggled silently to regain his balance; seeing the cube on Krug’s desk, he realize what must have happened. Lilith — Manuel — yes, that was it. Krug seemed so calm. It was impossible for the alpha to decipher his expression.

Cautiously Watchman said, “What other creator should we have worshipped?”

“Why worship anyone at all?”

“When one is in deep distress, sir, one wished to turn to someone who is more powerful than oneself for comfort and aid.”

“Is that what a god is for?” Krug asked. “To get favors from?”

“To receive mercy from, yes, perhaps.”

“And you think I can give you what you’re after?”

“So we pray,” said Watchman.

Tense, uncertain, he studied Krug. Krug fondled the data cube. He activated it, searching it at random, reading a few lines here, a few there, nodding, smiling, finally switching it off. The android had never before felt so thoroughly uncertain of himself: not even when Lilith had been luring him with her body. The fate of all his kind, he realized, might depend on the outcome of this conversation.

Krug said, “You know, I find this very difficult to comprehend. This bible. Your chapels. Your whole religion. I wonder if any other man ever discovered like this that millions of people considered him a god.”

“Perhaps not.”

“And I wonder about the depth of your feeling. The pull of this religion, Thor. You talk to me like I’m a man — your employer, not your god. You’ve never given me the slightest clue of what’s been in your head about me, except a sort of respect, maybe a little fear. And all this time you were standing at God’s elbow, eh?” Krug laughed. “Looking at the freckles on God’s bald head? Seeing the pimple of God’s chin? Smelling the garlic God had in his salad? What was going through your head all this time, Thor?”

“Must I answer that, sir?”

“No. No. Never mind.” Krug stared into the cube again. Watchman stood rigidly before him, trying to repress a sudden quivering in the muscles of his right thigh. Why was Krug toying with him like this? And what was happening at that tower? Euclid Planner would not come on shift for some hours yet; was the delicate placement of the blocks proceeding properly in the absence of a foreman? Abruptly Krug said, “Thor, have you ever been in a shunt room?”

“Sir?”

“An ego shift. You know. Into the stasis net with somebody. Changing identities for a day or two. Eh?”

Watchman shook his head. “This is not an android pastime.”

“I thought not. Well, come shunting with me today.” Krug nudged his data terminal and said, “Leon, get me an appointment at any available shunt room. For two. Within the next fifteen minutes.”

Aghast, Watchman said, “Sir, are you serious? You and I—”

“Why not? Afraid to swap souls with God, is that it? By damn, Thor, youwill! I have to know things, and I have to know them straight. We’re shunting. Can you believe that I’ve never shunted before either? But today we will.”

It seemed perilously close to sacrilege to the alpha. But he could hardly refuse. Deny the Will of Krug? If it cost him his life, he would still obey.

Spaulding’s image hovered in the air. “I have an appointment at New Orleans,” he announced. “They’ll take you immediately — it involved some fast rearranging of the wait-list — but there’ll be a ninety-minute interval for programming the stasis net.”

“Impossible. We’ll go into the net right away.”

Spaulding registered horror. “That isn’t done, Mr. Krug!”

“I’ll do it. Let them ride gain carefully while we’re shunting, that’s all.”

“I doubt that they’ll agree to—”

“Do they know who their client is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, tell them that I insist! And if they still mumble to you, tell them that I’ll buy their damned shunt room and run it to please myself if they won’t cooperate.”

“Yes, sir,” Spaulding said.

His image vanished. Krug, muttering to himself, began to tap the keyboard of his data terminal, while ignoring Watchman completely. The alpha stood rooted, chilled, clotted with dismay. Absently he made the Krug-preserve-us sign several times. He longed to be released from the situation he had created for himself.

Spaulding again flickered in the air. “They yield,” he said, “but only on the condition that you sign an absolute waiver.”

“I’ll sign,” Krug snapped.