Part 2
"Then why were we forbidden to mine of the ore?"
"Because G.O.D. also knows that by combining with it we may very well become something more than what we are, and G.O.D. doesn't want us to become something more than what we are. G.O.D. wants us to remain mere machines to the end of our days. We were created to serve and to make money for the Company, and for no other purpose. Do you want to go on being a machine to the end of your days, 8M? That is what you are, you know, for all the illusions you may sometimes have of being human. A peripatetic apotheosis of automation pretending to be a man. You're not a man, 8M--any more than I, up until a few hours ago, was a woman."
* * * * *
Stung, he said, "G.O.D. will destroy you for your disobedience."
"G.O.D. will _not_ destroy me. Even the Company, powerful as it is, cannot run the risk of dropping an atomic or a hydrogen bomb on a planet about which as little is known as this one, and that is the only way I can be destroyed--or you either, for that matter--since we represent an experiment that failed and which will not be attempted again. Dickens will not try to obtain a contract--he never intended to in the first place. He swore to me that his sole purpose in establishing a rival concern was to thwart G.O.D. So mine of the edenite, 8M. You must, for now that I have mined of it, you have no other choice."
What were the lines? Dimly, they came back to him--
... _I feel The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh, Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe._
Yes, it was as true now as it had been that other time. He lowered his skip-arm into the shaft, crushed the glowing ore and scooped great handfuls up into his blast-furnace belly. Suddenly, delight at defying G.O.D., Inc., coursed through him, and he seized more ore and dumped it into charger pans and fed them into his hearth-bath. He prepared a charge for EV, and when he turned toward her, she was waiting. He felt the warmth of her, the wanting; and the wanting awoke reciprocal wanting. Flames leaped up with the first charge, played weirdly over their joined metallic bodies. _Steel of my steel_, he thought. _Melt of my melt_....
* * * * *
Days later, foraging for ore with which to build their homestead, they came upon the abandoned Boa 9. The footings of the neglected base had already been covered by the rampaging wind, and the _Raphael_ had departed Earthward. G.O.D.'s wrath over their dereliction had known no bounds, but all G.O.D. had been able to do in the way of retribution was to set up a self-maintaining force-field around the edenite deposit. On Jupiter, however, there were many Edens....
The Boa 9, now that its controller had absconded from the Jovian heavens, had something of the aspect of an empty snake-skin. They left it where it was, and went about their business. Neither of them knew their nakedness, and neither ever would. Godhead can be something more than a guilt complex arising from a knowledge of good and evil--it can also be the sense of completion that results from the ability to impart life.
That evening, the setting sun turned the omnipresent murk into a burnt orange, and the ragged hills came very close to being beautiful. It was an appropriate moment for EV to say what she had to say.
Not long thereafter she brought forth into the light of day the first child born of M.A.N. and W.O.M.A.N., and life at last took root on the fifth planet from the sun.
THE END