Quamodian halted, shook himself, half turned, "Intention?" he repeated. "Why—why, I'm going to get her back!"
"In what way, Monitor Quamodian?" roared the robot.
"Why—" Andy Quam thought, then realized he had known the answer all along. "With the Reefer!" he cried. "We're going to hunt that thing down and destroy it!"
The robot's voice, volume somewhat reduced but still an uncomfortable shrill knife edge in the eardrums, trumpeted: "Violence, Monitor Quamodian. You are speaking of violence. The Companions of Almalik cannot support such an expedition!"
"I can!" cried Andy Quam. "I'm a Companion! Our organization exists for this very reason—that we are free to do things for the members of the multiple citizen Cygnus that they are not free to do for themselves."
The robot's black egg floated swiftly toward him. "In the past," it sang, volume reduced almost to normal, whining now, "this was true. But it is known that certain Companions have engaged in undue violence in the name of Almalik. This is a serious error, Monitor Quamodian! In consequence the status of the organization has been reviewed. Although certain freedoms of information and persuasion will remain to the Companions, all use of violence is herefrom prohibited."
Quamodian jumped back in dismay, knocking over a crystal ornament in the shape of a leaping flame; it shattered on the floor, and the robot licked out a flickering tongue of pale plasma to gather up the fragments. "That's impossible!" Quamodian gasped. "We have—we must have freedom to defend the members of the citizen!"
"We do not resist," the robot purred serenely. "That is the prime ethic of the Visitants. The Companions may no longer resist in our name."
Andy Quam hesitated, glanced down at the white, watching face of the boy, kicked a shard of crystal across the room, then abruptly turned and started down the ramp.
"Monitor Quamodian!" sang the robot. "Monitor Quamodian, you have been informed!"
Andy Quam growled wordlessly in his throat and continued. The robot raised its amplitude deafeningly again. "Monitor Quamodian! We demand to know! What is your intention?"
Andy Quam paused just long enough to turn. "What I said!" he shouted defiantly. "I'm going to destroy that thing—with your permission or without it!"
In the old Plan of Man cave under the Reefer's hill, the hot bright cloud of plasma had long since dissipated. The womb from which the rogue star had been born was quiet now, no longer fed by the driving energies Cliff Hawk had tapped. But the air still reeked of ionization and burned copper points; the autonomic lighting system flickered unreliably, and the shadows were dark.
Where the great bulk of the sleeth had dropped Molly Zaldivar, the pale cloud of stripped electrons that was the heart of the rogue hung meditatively over her. It had sent the sleeth away; Molly feared it, and something inside the rogue's stored systems recognized that fear. But the girl lay sobbing on the cold concrete of the floor, and some other "instinct" commanded the rogue to make her more comfortable.
Move her. Make her safe, thought the rogue, and hunted among its recently discovered options for a way to do it. At length (some dozens of picoseconds later) it opted for another of its toys, the rusty old handling machine that Hawk had sometimes employed. It was as easy to manipulate as Molly's old electrocar, and slowly and painfully the rogue caused it to crunch on its cleated tracks toward the cave entrance, to come in and approach the recumbent girl.
The operation of the handling machine, easy enough in principle, required a certain continuity of operation to which the rogue was not accustomed; its time-response was creepingly slow, its progress over the rock and rubble of the hillside and cave was intolerable. The rogue rested, drank mass from the air and strength from the stone, then rolled on again.
The girl scrambled to her hands and knees, staring wildly at the clanking machine.
The rogue paused, and tried again its exercises in human language. Speaking through the circuits of the machine's radio, it rasped: "Molly Zaldivar. How can I cause you to love me?"
Molly's eyes widened. "Nightmare!" she cried. "Monster! What are you?"
Painfully the rogue modulated the radio's circuits to reply. "Why am I—a nightmare? Why do you not love me? I—love you, Molly Zaldivar!"
Faintly, far away, it felt that watcher's growing fear.
Despairing, the girl rose, tried to flee; but it was easy for the rogue to reach out with the handling machine's effectors, catch her, and draw her back. She shrieked. The rogue paused, considering. It was difficult to comprehend the processes that affected organized matter. Yet the green radiance that flowed around her was suddenly shot with flashes of red which the rogue recognized as—not "pain," for it had not been able to relate those memories in Cliff Hawk's mind to anything in its own experience; but to a malfunction of some sort, and it was only a step to realize that the malfunction was caused by the harsh grasp of the handling machine on the girl's relatively weak body.
The rogue deposited her as gently as it could on the floor of its cab, and methodically analyzed its findings. It was a long process, requiring more than one microsecond; there was much that it had to deduce or interpolate. Even its own actions were not entirely clear to the rogue; it had no well-formed referent for the term "love," though it had felt quite strongly that this was the proper operator to describe its relationship to Molly Zaldivar. Casually and quickly it detached a section of itself and entered the brain and nervous system of Molly Zaldivar, studying as it went, attempting to sort out the damage that had been done. It seemed quite small, the rogue considered; only a few hundred thousand cells were damaged, and a relatively small proportion of them destroyed. It made a few adjustments which had the effect of stopping the efflux of circulatory fluid, rejoining some separated vessels and ligaments and, contented with its work, exited the girl's body and reassembled itself.
The girl, aware that something was happening but unable to know what, was very close to hysteria. She fumbled about the floor of the cab, pulled herself to the seat, hammered feebly against the windows; orange terror flashed through the radiance that surrounded her, and the sleeth tried to speak to her again:
"Why do you struggle, Molly Zaldivar? Why do you not love me?"
Molly threw herself back on the seat with a ragged laugh. "Love? You can't love!"
"I do love, Molly Zaldivar. Why am I a nightmare?"
She shuddered, forcing herself to speak. "Why? Because you don't have a right to exist, monster! You are a synthetic intellect. The transflection patterns of your mind were created in a cloud of plasma by Cliff Hawk and the Reefer. . ."
When she spoke of Cliff Hawk a golden glow lighted her mind's radiance.
The rogue said: "I am Cliff Hawk."
"You?" The girl caught her breath; she was shaking all over now, half in terror, half in utter uncomprehending bewilderment. "Cliff is dead! I saw him die."
"Yes. Dead. But I am that of Cliff Hawk which survives at all. Cliff Hawk is a member of me. And you must love me."
The girl abandoned herself to a storm of weeping. After some thought, the rogue re-entered her mind, sought for and found certain centers it had learned to recognize and caused her to go to sleep. It then paused and considered what it knew about the maintenance of organic masses of organized matter. This was, in truth, very little; but certain peremptory needs were clear. The girl would need protection against the elements and a place to rest. She would need air for combustion, the rogue thought, and observed that this was in adequate supply from the ambient atmosphere; she would need liquid H20, easily procured nearby. And she would also need metabolizable chemicals of the class it described by the vaguely comprehended label "food."