For a Breath I Tarry

'Divcom will show you how a bridge should be built.'

'I will call you when I want you,' said Frost.

The laboratory was finished. Within it, Frost's workers began constructing the necessary equipment. The work did not proceed rapidly, as some of the materials were difficult to obtain.

'Frost?'

'Yes, Beta?'

'I understand the open-endedness of your problem. It disturbs my circuits to abandon problems without completing them. Therefore, transmit me more data.'

'Very well. I will give you the entire Library of Man for less than I paid for it.'

''Paid'? The Complete Unabridged Dictionary does not satisfact—'

'Principles of Economics is included in the collection. After you have processed it you will understand.'

He transmitted the data.

Finally, it was finished. Every piece of equipment stood ready to function. All the necessary chemicals were in stock. An independent power-source had been set up.

Only one ingredient was lacking.

He re-gridded and re-explored the polar icecap, this time extending his survey far beneath its surface.

It took him several decades to find what he wanted.

He uncovered twelve men and five women, frozen to death and encased in ice.

He placed the corpses in refrigeration units and shipped them to his laboratory.

That very day he received his first communication from Solcom since the Bright Defile incident.

'Frost,' said Solcom, 'repeat to me the directive concerning the disposition of dead humans.'

''Any dead human located shall be immediately interred in the nearest burial area, in a coffin built according to the following specifications—''

'That is sufficient.' The transmission had ended.

Frost departed for South Carolina that same day and personally oversaw the processes of cellular dissection.

Somewhere in those seventeen corpses he hoped to find living cells, or cells which could be shocked back into that state of motion classified as life. Each cell, the books had told him, was a microcosmic Man.

He was prepared to expand upon this potential.

Frost located the pinpoints of life within those people, who, for the ages of ages, had been monument and statue unto themselves.

Nurtured and maintained in the proper mediums, he kept these cells alive. He interred the rest of the remains in the nearest burial area, in coffins built according to specifications.

He caused the cells to divide, to differentiate.

'Frost?' came a transmission.

'Yes, Beta?'

'I have processed everything you have given me.'

'Yes?'

'I still do not know why you came to Bright Defile, or why you wish to comprehend the nature of Man. But I know what a 'price' is, and I know that you could not have obtained all this data from Solcom.'

'That is correct.'

'So I suspect that you bargained with Divcom for it.'

'That, too, is correct.'

'What is it that you seek, Frost?'

He paused in his examination of a foetus.

'I must be a Man,' he said.

'Frost! That is impossible!'

'Is it?' he asked, and then transmitted an image of the tank with which he was working and of that which was within it.

'Oh!' said Beta.

'That is me,' said Frost, 'waiting to be born.'

There was no answer.

Frost experimented with nervous systems.

After half a century, Mordel came to him.

'Frost, it is I, Mordel. Let me through your defenses.'

Frost did this thing.

'What have you been doing in this place?' he asked.

'I am growing human bodies,' said Frost. 'I am going to transfer the matrix of my awareness to a human nervous system. As you pointed out originally, the essentials of Manhood are predicated upon a human physiology. I am going to achieve one.'

'When?'

'Soon.'

'Do you have Men in here?'

'Human bodies, blank-brained. I am producing them under accelerated growth techniques which I have developed in my Man-factory.'

'May I see them?'

'Not yet. I will call you when I am ready, and this time I will succeed. Monitor me now and go away.'

Mordel did not reply, but in the days that followed many of Divcom's servants were seen patrolling the hills about the Man-factory.

Frost mapped the matrix of his awareness and prepared the transmitter which would place it within a human nervous system. Five minutes, he decided, should be sufficient for the first trial. At the end of that time, it would restore him to his own sealed, molecular circuits, to evaluate the experience.

He chose the body carefully from among the hundreds he had in stock. He tested it for defects and found none.

'Come now, Mordel,' he broadcasted, on what he called the darkband. 'Come now to witness my achievement.'

Then he waited, blowing up bridges and monitoring the tale of the Ancient Ore-Crusher over and over again, as it passed in the hills nearby, encountering his builders and maintainers who also patrolled there.

'Frost?' came a transmission.

'Yes, Beta?'

'You really intend to achieve Manhood?'

'Yes, I am about ready now, in fact.'

'What will you do if you succeed?'

Frost had not really considered this matter. The achievement had been paramount, a goal in itself, ever since he had articulated the problem and set himself to solving it.

'I do not know,' he replied. 'I will—just—be a Man.'

Then Beta, who had read the entire Library of Man, selected a human figure of speech: 'Good luck then, Frost. There will be many watchers.'

Divcom and Solcom both know, he decided.

What will they do? he wondered.

What do I care? he asked himself.

He did not answer that question. He wondered much, however, about being a Man.

Mordel arrived the following evening. He was not alone. At his back, there was a great phalanx of dark machines which towered into the twilight.

'Why do you bring retainers?' asked Frost.

'Mighty Frost,' said Mordel, 'my master feels that if you fail this time you will conclude that it cannot be done.'

'You still did not answer my question,' said Frost.