ecome conscious the human organism must perform
an immediate act of self-destruction._

Now he saw why his conquest of Earth had been so easy; it was because he
had conquered nothing. Earth needed no security forces, for the
policeman and the executioner were implanted in every man's mind.
Beneath the surface of Earth's mild and pleasant culture was a
self-perpetuating robot civilization. An awareness of that civilization
was punishable by death.

And here, at this moment, the real struggle for Earth began.

Learned behavior patterns intertwined with basic life drives forced
Barrent to raise the needlebeam, to point it toward his head. This was
what the robot-confessor had tried to warn him about, and what the
mutant girl had skrenned. The younger Barrent, conditioned to absolute
and mindless conformity, had to kill himself.

The older Barrent who had spent time on Omega fought that blind urge. A
schizophrenic Barrent fought himself. The two parts of him battled for
possession of the weapon, for control of the body, for ownership of the
mind.

The needlebeam's movement stopped inches from his head. The muzzle
wavered. Then slowly, the new Omegan Barrent, Barrent-2, forced the
weapon away.

His victory was short-lived. For now the lessons of the closed classroom
took over, forcing Barrent-2 into a contrasurvival struggle with the
implacable and death-desiring Barrent-1.

Chapter Thirty

Conditioning took over and flung the fighting Barrents backward through
subjective time, to those stress points in the past where death had been
near, where the temporal life fabric had been weakened, where a
predisposition toward death had already been established. Conditioning
forced Barrent-2 to re-experience those moments. But this time, the
danger was augmented by the full force of the malignant half of his
personality--by the murderous informer, Barrent-1.

* * * * *

Barrent-2 stood under glaring lights on the blood-stained sands of the
Arena, a sword in his hand. It was the time of the Omegan Games. Coming
at him was the Saunus, a heavily armored reptile with the leering face
of Barrent-1. Barrent-2 severed the creature's tail, and it changed
into three trichomotreds, rat-sized, Barrent-faced, with the
dispositions of rabid wolverines. He killed two, and the third grinned
and bit his left hand to the bone. He killed it, and watched
Barrent-1's blood leak into the soggy sand....