"Remember when one of your women killed one of us a long time ago, David? Hilda murdered the child of her likeness. We all shared that death, and we realized that each of you is alone. We're not like you, David. I think you know it, but now you must accept it." He stood up. "And we won't go back to what you are."

David stood up also, and his legs felt curiously weak. "What exactly do you mean?"

"Sexual reproduction isn't the only answer. Just because the higher organisms evolved to it doesn't mean it's the best. Each time a species has died out, there has been another higher one to replace it."

"Cloning is one of the worst ways for a higher species," David said slowly. "It stifles diversity, you know that." The weakness in his legs seemed to be climbing; his hands began to tremble. He gripped the edge of the desk.

"That's assuming diversity is beneficial. Perhaps it isn't," W-1 said. "You pay a high price for individuality."

"There is still the decline and extinction," David said. "Have you got around that?" He wanted to end this conversation, to hurry from the sterile office and the smooth unreadable face with the sharp eyes that seemed to know what he was feeling.

"Not yet," W-1 said. "But we have the fertile members to fall back on until we do." He moved around the desk and walked toward the door. "I have to check my patients," he said, and held the door open for David.

"Before I leave," David said, "will you tell me what is the matter with Walt?"

"Don't you know?" W-1 shook his head. "I keep forgetting, you don't tell each other things, do you? He has cancer. Inoperable. It metastasized. He's dying, David. I thought you knew that."

David walked blankly for an hour or more, and finally found himself in his room, exhausted, unwilling yet to go to bed. He sat at his window until it was dawn, and then he went to Walt's room. When Walt woke up he reported what W-1 had told him.

"They'll use the fertile ones only to replenish their supply of clones," he said. "The humans among them will be pariahs. They'll destroy what we worked so hard to create."

"Don't let them do it, David. For God's sake, don't let them do it!" Walt's color was bad, and he was too weak to sit up. "Vlasic's mad, so he'll be of no help. You have to stop them somehow." Bitterly he said, "They want to take the easy way out, give up now when we know everything will work."

David didn't know whether he was sorry or glad that he had told Walt. No more secrets, he thought. Never again. "I'll stop them somehow," he said. "I don't know how, or when. But soon."