In the barracks, Micah-IV listened with interest as Noah-I, one of the wisest of the synthetics, offered his views.
“It is a religious phenomenon,” declared Noah-I. “I have studied religion. These people feel an oceanic urge. They must return to the great mother.”
“And the monsters that devour?” asked Ezekiel-VII.
“Irrelevant. There are always risks in any relationship. The swimmers hope to elude the monsters and reach the depths of the sea. It is a spiritual yearning.”
“Where will it end?” Uzziah-III inquired.
“Perhaps the wall will be taken down,” suggested Noah-I. “Perhaps some new cult will arise. Or perhaps all the humans, one by one, will throw themselves into the sea.”
There were further deaths. Several hundred humans had perished, mow, and nearly every ten-sector overgroup had recorded its suicide. Now precautions were enforced. It was hoped that the onset of whiter would create a change in the prevailing psychological climate, but the pattern of self-destruction was not broken.
On a day when specks of snow dropped from a gray sky, Micah-IV prevented a suicide.
He had detected signs in advance: the bulge of a gravity chute beneath the clothing of a red-haired woman and a certain glossinees about her eyes. When he led his group of tourists out onto the seawall, he watched her closely.
“There,” he said, pointing, “is one of the enemies of mankind now. See the fluked tail? See the great spearlike tusks? See the clawed flippers?”
The red-haired woman broke from the group and bolted toward the retaining barrier.
Micah-IV, who had been expecting some such action, moved swiftly after her. She was crouching beside the barrier, activating the gravity chute. Lately, the barriers had been wired to give a mild electric shock, so that it was discouraging to try to climb one. Yet with a gravity chute it was no hard feat the leap completely over the barrier. As the woman coiled her muscles for the leap, Micah-IV closed his hand around her arm and held her in place.
“The rest of you!” he shouted. “Inside! Inside at once!”
The other two tourists rushed into the visitor center. Micah-IV grasped the would-be suicidc firmly.
“Let go of me,” she demanded.
“Why do you wish to jump?”
“None of your business! Let go! Let go!”
“You will die in the sea.”
“What’s that to you? You filthy robot, how can you defy a human being’s orders? Let go of me and let me jump!”
“I am a synthetic, not a robot,” Micah-IV reminded her gently. “I am not required to obey human orders except as they follow my programming. I forbid you to leave the seawall.” Efficiently he pulled the gravity chute from under her clothing and unsnapped its activator, without releasing his grip on the woman. She glowered at him.
“Tell me why you want to go to the sea,” he asked.
“You’d never understand. You’re just a machine.”
“Genetically I am nearly human. I can think and reflect and change my ideas. This is of great concern to me. Why do you want to go to the sea?”
“To belong to it,” said the woman.
“I do not understand.”
“I told you you wouldn’t. Don’t deprive me of it Let me jump!”
“I cannot do that,” Micah-IV informed her and dragged her toward safety. Her words cut him deeply. He had had little conversation with human beings in his lifetime, and he had never before been so blunty reminded of his nonhuman status. Perhaps he was a laboratory product, but he had feelings. She had wounded them. He gave way slightly to the emotion of self-pity.
As they neared the cubicle that was the visitor center, Micah-IV’s foot slipped in a patch of melting snow. Within an instant he recovered his balance, but that was just enough time for the red-haired woman to pull from his grasp and run to the seawall barrier. Micah followed her. She reached the electrified barrier and vaulted it, her hair momentarily standing on end like wire, and then she was gone, tumbling downward, drafting on the wind, smashing against the jagged rocks below. Scavengers gathered.
I will be severely reprimanded for this, Micah-IV told himself.
There were witnesses. Through my negligence I allowed her to destroy herself.
He stared at the gray, winter-churned sea. He saw dark, huge shapes beyond the poison belt.
Why do they kill themselves? What do they find in the sea? What drives them to do such things?
He did not know. I do not understand because I am not human, he thought.
Absently, Micah-IV climbed to the top of the barrier and walked along it. His nervous system absorbed the mild voltage without discomfort. Patrolling his sector from the unusual vantage-point, he marched a hundred meters south, to a place where there was no beach, no rocky shore, merely the sea lapping directly against the seawall.
I will do a human thing, Micah-IV decided, and perhaps it will give me an understanding of what it is to be human. In any case no one can reprimand me for this.
He faced the water and levered himself into space. As he fell, he pivoted and saw the glassy gray-green blocks of the seawall behind him. He hit the water at a sharp angle and sliced into it, gasping a bit at the impact. Then he bobbed to the surface.
Lithely, swiftly, inquiringly, Micah-IV swam outward toward the waiting beasts.