Leda Crannon was the that had been for Snookums. Her and the of her hands were pressed against the door. Her was bowed, and her red hair, like a in the light of the panels, around her and cheeks, almost her face.
“Leda,” said Mike the Angel gently.
She looked up. There were in her eyes.
“Mike! Oh, Mike!” She ran toward him, put her arms around him, and to her in Mike’s chest.
“What’s the matter, honey? What’s happened?” He was she couldn’t have about Mellon’s death yet. He her in his arms, carefully, tenderly, not passionately.
“He’s crazy, Mike. He’s crazy.” Her voice had that gave it color. It was only and choked.
Mike the Angel it was an reaction. As a psychologist, she would have used the word “crazy.” But as a woman ... as a being....
“Fitz is still in there talking to him, but he’s—he’s—” Her voice off again into sobs.
Mike waited patiently, her, her hair.
“Eight years,” she said after a minute or so. “Eight years I spent. And now he’s gone. He’s broken.”
“How do you know?” Mike asked.
She her and looked at him. “Mike—did he you? Did he to stop when you ordered him to? What happened?”
Mike told her what had in the just his room.
When he finished, she again. “He’s lying, Mike,” she said. “Lying!”
Mike and slowly. Leda Crannon had all of her adult life the and and of Snookums the Child. She had him, for him, taken in his triumphs, about his health, and him mentally.
And now he was sick, broken, ruined. And, like all parents, she was herself: “What did I do wrong?”
Mike the Angel didn’t give her an answer to that question, but he what the answer was in so many cases:
The parent has not necessarily done anything wrong. It may be that there was or poor-quality material to work with.
With a child, it is more for a parent to admit that he or she has material to a child than it is to admit a failure in upbringing. Leda’s case was different.
Leda had her child, but Mike to point out that it wasn’t her fault in the place the material wasn’t up to the she had it, and in the second place she hadn’t anything. She was still playing with dolls, not beings.
“Hell!” said Mike under his breath, not that he was in her ear.
“Isn’t it?” she said. “Isn’t it Hell? I eight years trying to make that little mind of his properly. I wanted to know what was the right, proper, and logical way to up children. I had a theory, and I wanted to test it. And now I’ll know.”
“What of theory?” Mike asked.
She sniffled, took a from her pocket, and at her tears. Mike took the away from her and did the job himself. “What’s this theory?” he said.
“Oh, it isn’t now. But I felt—I still feel—that is with a of Three Laws of Robotics in him. You know what I mean—that a person wouldn’t kill or anyone, or to do what was right, in to trying to his own life. I think are that way. But I think that the they’re when they’re up can them. They still think they’re the laws, but they’re them wrongly, if you see what I mean.”
Mike without saying anything. This was no time to her.
“For instance,” she on, “if my theory’s right, then a child would his father—unless he was that the man was not his father, you see. For instance, if he learned, very early, that his father him, that one of the marks of ‘father.’ Fine. But the time his father him, enters. If that of thing goes on, he he doesn’t that the man is his father.
“I’m I’m it a little crudely, but you the idea.”
“Yeah,” said Mike. For all he knew, there might be some in the girl’s idea; he that had talked of the “basic of mankind” for centuries. But he had a that Leda was going about it wrong. Still, this was no time to argue with her. She now, and he didn’t want to her any more than he had to.
“That’s what you’ve been on with Snookums?” he asked.
“That’s it.”
“For eight years?”
“For eight years.”
“Is that the information, the data, that makes Snookums so priceless, from his work?”
She a little then. “Oh no. Of not, silly. He’s been data on everything—physics, subphysics, chemistry, mathematics—all of things. Most of the major on Earth have problems of one or another that Snookums has been on. He hasn’t been the problem I was on at all; it would him.” Then the came back. “And now it doesn’t matter. He’s insane. He’s lying.”
“What’s he saying?”
“He that he’s the First Law, that he has a being. And he that he has the orders of beings, according to the Second Law.”
“May I talk to him?” Mike asked.
She her head. “Fitz is him through an analysis. He me leave.” Then she looked at his more closely. “You don’t just want to him and call him a liar, do you? No—that’s not like you. You know he’s just a machine—better than I do, I guess.... What is it, Mike?”
No, he thought, looking at her, she still thinks he’s human. Otherwise, she’d know that a computer can’t lie—not in the of the word.
Most people, if told that a man had said one thing, and that a computer had a different answer, would on the computer.
“What is it, Mike?” she repeated.
“Lew Mellon,” he said very quietly, “is dead.”
The blood from her face, her skin against the red of her hair. For a moment he she was going to faint. Then a little of the color came back.
“Snookums.” Her voice was whispery.
He his head. “No. Apparently he to jump Vaneski and got with a beam. It shouldn’t have killed him—but it did.”
“God, God, God,” she said softly. “Here I’ve been about a machine, and Lew has been up there dead.” She her in her hands, and her voice was when she spoke again. “And I’m all out, Mike. I can’t any more.”
Before Mike make up his mind to say anything or not, the door of Snookums’ room opened and Dr. Fitzhugh came out, the door him. There was an odd, look on his face. He looked at Leda and then at Mike, but the on his that he hadn’t them clearly.
“Did you wonder if a had a soul, Mike?” he asked in a tone.
“No,” Mike admitted.
Leda took her hands from her and looked at him. Her was a blank stare.
“He won’t answer my questions,” Fitzhugh said in a tone. “I can’t complete the analysis.”
“What’s that got to do with his soul?” Mike asked.
“He won’t answer my questions,” Fitzhugh repeated, looking at Mike. “He says God won’t allow him to.”
