'I wonder-' began Larry. 'I wonder what really happened there. She- Claire, I mean-seems so different. It's not just her looks-though, frankly, I'm amazed.' He laughed nervously. 'It's her! She's not my wife, really-I can't explain it.'
'Why try? Are you disappointed with any part of the change?'
'On the contrary. But it's a little frightening, too, you see-'
'I wouldn't worry, Mr. Belmont. Your wife has handled herself very well. Frankly, I never expected to have the experiment yield such a thorough and complete test. We know exactly what corrections must be made in the TN model, and the credit belongs entirely to Mrs. Belmont. If you want me to be very honest, I think your wife deserves your promotion more than you do.'
Larry flinched visibly at that. 'As long as it's in the family,' he murmured unconvincingly and left.
Susan Calvin looked after him, 'I think that hurt-I hope. . . . Have you read Tony's report, Peter?'
'Thoroughly,' said Bogert. 'And won't the TN-3 model need changes?'
'Oh, you think so, too?' questioned Calvin sharply. 'What's your reasoning?'
Bogert frowned. 'I don't need any. It's obvious on the face of it that we can't have a robot loose which makes love to his mistress, if you don't mind the pun.'
'Love! Peter, you sicken me. You really don't understand? That machine had to obey the First Law. He couldn't allow harm to come to a human being, and harm was coming to Claire Belmont through her own sense of inadequacy. So he made love to her, since what woman would fail to appreciate the compliment of being able to stir passion in a machine-in a cold, soulless machine. And he opened the curtains that night deliberately, that the others might see and envy-without any risk possible to Claire's marriage. I think it was clever of Tony-'
'Do you? What's the difference whether it was pretense or not, Susan? It still has its horrifying effect. Read the report again. She avoided him. She screamed when he held her. She didn't sleep that last night-in hysterics. We can't have that.'
'Peter, you're blind. You're as blind as I was. The TN model will be rebuilt entirely, but not for your reason. Quite otherwise; quite otherwise.
Strange that I overlooked it in the first place,' her eyes were opaquely thoughtful, 'but perhaps it reflects a shortcoming in myself. You see, Peter, machines can't fall in love, but-even when it's hopeless and horrifying- women can!'
Hell-Fire
There was a stir as of a very polite first-night audience. Only a handful of scientists were present, a sprinkling of high brass, some Congressmen, a few newsmen.
Alvin Homer of the Washington Bureau of the Continental Press found himself next to Joseph Vincenzo of Los Alamos, and said, 'Now we ought to leam something.'
Vincenzo stared at him through bifocals and said, 'Not the important thing.'
Homer frowned. This was to be the first super-slow-motion films of an atomic explosion. With trick lenses changing directional polarization in flickers, the moment of explosion would be divided into billionth-second snaps. Yesterday, an A-bomb had exploded. Today, those snaps would show the explosion in incredible detail.
Horner said, 'You think this won't work?'
Vincenzo looked tormented. 'It will work. We've run pilot tests. But the important thing-'
'Which is?'
'That these bombs are man's death sentence. We don't seem to be able to learn that.' Vincenzo nodded. 'Look at them here. They're excited and thrilled, but not afraid.'
The newsman said, 'They know the danger. They're afraid, too.'
'Not enough,' said the scientist. 'I've seen men watch an H-bomb blow an island into a hole and then go home and sleep. That's the way men are.
Copyright (c) 1956 by King-Size Publications, Inc.
For thousands of years, hell-fire has been preached to them, and it's made no real impression.'
'Hell-fire: Are you religious, sir?'
'What you saw yesterday was hell-fire. An exploding atom bomb is hell-fire. Literally.'
That was enough for Homer. He got up and changed his seat, but watched the audience uneasily. Were any afraid? Did any worry about hell-fire? It didn't seem so to him.
The lights went out, the projector started. On the screen, the firing tower stood gaunt. The audience grew tensely quiet.
Then a dot of light appeared at the apex of the tower, a brilliant, burning point, slowly budding in a lazy, outward elbowing, this way and that, taking on uneven shapes of light and shadow, growing oval.
A man cried out chokingly, then others. A hoarse babble of noise, followed by thick silence. Horner could smell fear, taste terror in his own mouth, feel his blood freeze.
The oval fireball had sprouted projections, then paused a moment in stasis, before expanding rapidly into a bright and featureless sphere.
That moment of stasis-the fireball had shown dark spots for eyes, with dark lines for thin, flaring eyebrows, a hairline coming down V-shaped, a mouth twisted upward, laughing wildly in the hell-fire-and horns.
The Last Trump
The Archangel Gabriel was quite casual about the whole thing. Idly, he let the tip of one wing graze the planet Mars, which, being of mere matter, was unaffected by the contact.
He said, 'It's a settled matter, Etheriel. There's nothing to be done about it now. The Day of Resurrection is due.'
Etheriel, a very junior seraph who had been created not quite a thousand years earlier as men counted time, quivered so that distinct vortices appeared in the continuum. Ever since his creation, he had been in immediate charge of Earth and environs. As a job, it was a sinecure, a cubbyhole, a dead end, but through the centuries he had come to take a perverse pride in the world.
'But you'll be disrupting my world without notice.'
'Not at all. Not at all. Certain passages occur in the Book of Daniel and in the Apocalypse of St. John which are clear enough.'
'They are? Having been copied from scribe to scribe? I wonder if two words in a row are left unchanged.'
'There are hints in the Rig-Veda, in the Confucian Analects-'
'Which are the property of isolated cultural groups which exist as a thin aristocracy-'
'The Gilgamesh Chronicle speaks out plainly.'
'Much of the Gilgamesh Chronicle was destroyed with the library of Ashurbanipal sixteen hundred years, Earth-style, before my creation.'
Copyright (c) 1955 by King-Size Publications, Inc.
!j 'There are certain features of the Great Pyramid and a pattern in the inlaid jewels of the Taj Mahal-'
'Which are so subtle that no man has ever rightly interpreted them.' j Gabriel said wearily, 'If you're going to object to everything, there's no fiSe discussing the matter. In any case, you ought to know about it. In matters concerning Earth, you're omniscient.'
$ 'Yes, if I choose to be. I've had much to concern me here and investigating the possibilities of Resurrection did not, I confess, occur to me.'
'Well, it should have. All the papers involved are in the files of the Council of Ascendants. You could have availed yourself of them at any time.'
'I tell you all my time was needed here. You have no idea of the deadly efficiency of the Adversary on this planet. It took all my efforts to curb him, and even so-'
'Why, yes'-Gabriel stroked a comet as it passed-'he does seem to have won his little victories. I note as I let the interlocking factual pattern of this miserable little world flow through me that this is one of those setups with matter-energy equivalence.' i i 'So it is,' said Etheriel. J 'And they are playing with it.' s 'I'm afraid so.' ji 'Then what better time for ending the matter?'
'I'll be able to handle it, I assure you. Their nuclear bombs will not destroy them.'
'I wonder. Well, now suppose you let me continue, Etheriel. The appointed moment approaches.'
The seraph said stubbornly, 'I would like to see the documents in the case.'
'If you insist.' The wording of an Act of Ascendancy appeared in glittering symbols against the deep black of the airless firmament.
Etheriel read aloud: 'It is hereby directed by order of Council that the Archangel Gabriel, Serial number etcetera, etcetera (well, that's you, at any rate), will approach Planet, Class A, number G753990, hereinafter known as Earth, and on January 1, 1957, at 12:01 P.M., using local time values-' He finished reading in gloomy silence.
'Satisfied?'
'No, but I'm helpless.'
Gabriel smiled. A trumpet appeared in space, in shape like an earthly trumpet, but its burnished gold extended from Earth to sun. It was raised to Gabriel's glittering beautiful lips.
'Can't you let me have a little time to take this up with the Council?' asked Etheriel desperately.
'What good would it do you? The act is countersigned by the Chief, and you know that an act countersigned by the Chief is absolutely irrevocable.
And now, if you don't mind, it is almost the stipulated second and I want to be done with this as I have other matters of much greater moment on my mind. Would you step out of my way a little? Thank you.'
Gabriel blew, and a clean, thin sound of perfect pitch and crystalline delicacy filled all the universe to the furthest star. As it sounded, there was a tiny moment of stasis as thin as the line separating past from future, and then the fabric of worlds collapsed upon itself and matter was gathered back into the primeval chaos from
