"I think," said Dr. Raven, "that I might be as troubled by it as you are."
"We've lived by faith alone," said Sutton, "for eight thousand years at least and probably more than that. Certainly more than that. For it must have been faith, a glimmer of some sort of faith, that made the Neanderthaler paint the shinbones red and nest the skulls so they faced toward the east."
"Faith," said Dr. Raven gently, "is a powerful thing."
"Yes, powerful," Sutton agreed, "but even in its strength it is our own confession of weakness. Our own admission that we are not strong enough to stand alone, that we must have a staff to lean upon, the expressed hope and conviction that there is some greater power which will lend us aid and guidance."
"You haven't grown bitter, Ash? Something that you found."
"Not bitter," Sutton told him.
Somewhere a clock was ticking, loud in the sudden hush.
"Doctor," said Sutton, "what do you know of destiny?"
"It's strange to hear you talk of destiny," said Dr. Raven. "You always were a man who never was inclined to bow to destiny."
"I mean documentary destiny," Sutton explained. "Not the abstraction, but the actual thing, the actual belief in destiny. What do the records say?"