"They will stick with us in the empire business," Dean told him, very confident. "They may fight us on this business of destiny, but they'll stay with us because they can't get along without us. They can't reproduce, you know. And they can't make themselves. They have to have humans to keep their race going, to replace the ones who get knocked off."
He chuckled. "Until one android can create another android, they will stick with us and they will work with us. For if they didn't, that would be racial suicide."
"What I can't understand," said Sutton, "is how you know which ones are fighting you and which are sticking with you."
"That," said Dean, "is the hell of it…we don't. If we did, we'd make short work of this lousy war. The android who fought you yesterday may shine your shoes tomorrow, and how are you to know? The answer is, you don't."
He picked up a tiny stone and flicked it out on the pasture grass.
"Sutton," he said, "it's enough to drive you nuts. No battles, really. Just guerrilla skirmishes here and there, when one small task force sent out to do a time-fixing job is ambushed by another task force sent out by the other side to intercept them."
"As I intercepted you," said Sutton.
"Huh…" said Dean, and then he brightened. "Why, sure," he said, "as you intercepted me."
One moment Dean was sitting with his back against the machine, talking as if he meant to keep on talking…and in the next moment his body was a fluid blaze of motion, jackknifing upward and forward in a lunge toward the wrench that Sutton held.
Sutton moved instinctively, toes tightening their grip upon the ground, leg muscles flexing to drive his body upward, arm starting to jerk the wrench away.