Trevor stared at him, suddenly hard, suddenly suspicious.
"You…"
"We gave them inferiority," said Sutton. "We made them less than human. We supplied them with a reason to fight us. We denied them something they have to fight to get…equality. We furnished them with a motive Man lost long ago. Man no longer needs to prove he is as good as anyone else, that he is the greatest animal in his world or in his galaxy."
"They're equal now," said Trevor, bitterly. "The androids have been reproducing themselves…chemically, not biologically, for a long time now."
"We could have expected it," said Sutton. "We should have suspected it long ago."
"I suppose we should have," Trevor admitted. "We gave them the same brains we have ourselves. We gave them, or we tried to give them, a human perspective."
"And we put a mark upon their foreheads," Sutton told him.
Trevor made an angry motion with his hand.
"That little matter is being taken care of now," he said. "When the androids make another android they don't bother to put a mark upon his head."
Sutton started and then settled back as the thunder hit him…thunder that rolled and rumbled in his brain, a growing, painful, roaring thunder that shut out everything.