CHAPTER XXVIt is just a year since we drove the usurpers out of England. (About the robots that they left behind, my hunch was right; for they are learning to take care of themselves, to walk and speak and act decently, and many have even begun to read and think again. When I consider this, I am inclined to go to my knees in thanks. What might have happened...!) For a while I could not realize that my wild bluff had actually worked. I kept expecting a trick, a wholesale re-invasion of our world by the ogres. Even yet it is hard to comprehend. I suppose the only explanation is that all created things hate and fear death: in their fashion, the usurpers were just as scared of dying as the humblest human, and must have decided that the vicarious pleasures of earth weren’t worth it. Selfish

