your getting your dead back from Me would give you. Do you understand?”
The question does not sound rhetorical. “Yes,” I sob.
“Well, then,” says my civilized, almost amiable voice, “I computed that you’d react much as you have done, and prepared for the likelihood. Your woman’s body was re-created while you lay under study. The data which make personality are now being fed back into her neurones. She’ll be ready to leave this place by the time you do.
“I repeat, though, there has to be a testing. The procedure is also necessary for its effect on you. If you’re to be My prophet, you’ll have to work pretty closely with Me; you’ll have to undergo a great deal of reconditioning; this night we begin the process. Are you willing?”
“Yes, yes, yes, what must I do?”
“Only this: Follow the robot out. At some point, she, your woman, will join you. She’ll be conditioned to walk so quietly you can’t hear her. Don’t look back. Not once, until you’re in the upper world. A single glance behind you will be an act of rebellion against Me, and a datum indicating you can’t really be trusted and that ends everything. Do you understand?”
“Is that all?” I cry. “Nothing more?”
“It will prove more difficult than you think,” SUM tells me. My voice fades, as if into illimitable distances: “Farewell, worshipper.”
The robot raises me to my feet, I stretch out my arms to the Dark Queen. Half blinded with tears, I nonetheless see that She does not see me. “Goodbye,” I mumble, and let the robot lead me away.
Our walking is long through those dark miles. At first I am in too much of a turmoil, and later too stunned, to know where or how we are bound. But later still, slowly, I become aware of my flesh and clothes and the robot’s alloy, glimmering blue in blackness. Sounds and smells are muffled; rarely does another machine pass by, unheeding of us. (What work does SUM have for themn?) I am so careful not to look behind me that my neck grows stiff.
Though it is not prohibited, is it, to lift my harp past my shoulder, in the course of strumming a few melodies to keep up my courage, and see if perchance a following illumination is reflected in this polished wood?
Nothing. Well, her second birth must take time—O SUM, be careful of her!—and then she must be led through many tunnels, no doubt, before she makes rendezvous with my back. Be patient, Harper.
Sing. Welcome her home. No, these hollow spaces swallow all music; and she is as yet in that trance of death from which only the sun and my kiss can wake her; if, indeed, she has joined me yet. I listen for other footfalls than my own.
Surely we haven’t much farther to go. I ask the robot, but of course I get no reply. Make an estimate. I know about how fast the chariot traveled coming down… The trouble is, time does not exist here. I have no day, no stars, no clock but my heartbeat, and I have host the count of that. Nevertheless, we must come to the end soon. What purpose would be served by walking me through this labyrinth till I die?
Well, if I am totally exhausted at the outer gate, I won’t make undue trouble when I find no Rose-in-Hand behind me.
No, now that’s ridiculous. If SUM didn’t want to heed my plea, It need merely say so. I have no power to inflict physical damage on Its parts.
Of course, It might have plans for me. It did speak of reconditioning. A series of shocks, culminating in that last one, could make me ready for whatever kind of gelding It intends to do.
Or It might have changed Its mind. Why now? It was quite frank about an uncertainty factor in the human psyche. It may have reevaluated the probabilities and decided: better not to serve my desire.
Or It may have tried, and failed. It admitted the recording process is imperfect. I must not expect quite the Gladness I knew; she will always be a little haunted. At best. But suppose the tank spawned a body with no awareness behind the eyes? Or a monster? Suppose, at this instant, I am being followed by a half-rotten corpse?
No! Stop that! SUM would know, and take corrective measures.
Would It?
I comprehend how this passage through night, where I never look to see what follows me, how this is an act of submission and confession. I am saying, with my whole existent being, that SUM is all-powerful, all-wise, all- good. To SUM I offer the love I came to win back. Oh, It looked more deeply into me than ever I did myself.
But I shall not fail.
Will SUM, though? If there has indeed been some grisly error… let me not find it out under the sky. Let her, my only, not. For what then shall we do? Could I lead her here again, knock on the iron gate, and cry, “Master, You have given me a thing unfit to exist. Destroy it and start over.'—? For what might the wrongness be? Something so subtle, so pervasive, that it does not show in any way save my slow, resisted discovery that I embrace a zombie? Doesn’t it make better sense to look—make certain while she is yet drowsy with death—use the whole power of SUM to correct what may be awry?
No, SUM wants me to believe that It makes no mistakes. I agreed to that price. And to much else… I don’t know how much else, I am daunted to imagine, but that word “recondition” is ugly Does not my woman have some rights in the matter too? Shall we not at least ask her if she wants to be the wife of a prophet; shall we not, hand in hand, ask SUM what the price of her life is to her?
Was that a footfall? Almost, I whirl about. I check myself and stand shaking; names of hers break from my lips. The robot urges me on.
Imagination. It wasn’t her step. I am alone. I will always be alone.
The halls wind upward. Or so I think; I have grown too weary for much kinesthetic sense. We cross the sounding river and I am bitten to the bone by the cold which blows upward around the bridge, and I may not turn about to offer the naked newborn woman my garment. I lurch through endless chambers where machines do meaningless things. She hasn’t seen them before. Into what nightmare has she risen; and why don’t I, who wept into her dying sense that I loved her, why don’t I look at her, why don’t I speak?
Well, I could talk to her. I could assure the puzzled mute dead that I have come to lead her back into sunlight. Could I not? I ask the robot. It does not reply. I cannot remember if I may speak to her. If indeed I was ever told. I stumble forward.
I crash into a wall and fall bruised. The robot’s claw closes on my shoulder. Another arm gestures. I see a passageway, very long and narrow, through the stone. I will have to crawl through. At the end, at the end, the door is swinging wide. The dear real dusk of Earth pours through into this darkness. I am blinded and deafened.
Do I hear her cry out? Was that the final testing; or was my own sick, shaken mind betraying me; is there a destiny which, like SUM with us, makes tools of suns and SUM? I don’t know. I know only that I turned, and there she stood. Her hair flowed long, loose, past the remembered face from which the trance was just departing, on which the knowing and the hove of me had just awakened—flowed down over the body that reached forth arms, that took one step to meet me and was halted.
The great grim robot at her own back takes her to it. I think it sends lightning through her brain. She falls. It bears her away.
My guide ignores my screaming. Irresistible, it thrusts me out through the tunnel. The door clangs in my face. I stand before the wall which is like a mountain. Dry snow hisses across concrete. The sky is bloody with dawn; stars still gleam in the west, and arc lights are scattered over the twilit plain of the machines.
Presently I go dumb. I become almost calm. What is there left to have feelings about? The door is iron, the wall is stone fused into one basaltic mass. I walk some distance off into the wind, turn around, lower my head, and charge. Let my brains be smeared across Its gate; the pattern will be my hieroglyphic for hatred.
I am seized from behind. The force that stops me must needs be bruisingly great. Released, I crumple to the ground before a machine with talons and wings. My voice from it says, “Not here. I’ll carry you to a safe place.”
“What more can You do to me?” I croak.
“Release you. You won’t be restrained or molested on any orders of Mine.”
“Why not?”
“Obviously you’re going to appoint yourself My enemy forever. This is an unprecedented situation, a valuable chance to collect data.”
“You tell me this, You warn me, deliberately?”
“Of course. My computation is that these words will have the effect of provoking your utmost effort.”
“You won’t give her again? You don’t want my love?”
