“— Unto the Death gois all Estatis, Princis, Prelattis, and Potestatis, Baith rich and poor of all degree:— Timor mortis conturbat me.
“He takis the knichtis in to the field
Enarmit under helm and scheild;
Victor he is at all mellie: —Timor niortis conturbat me.
“That strong unmerciful tyrand Takis, on the motheris breast sowkand, The babe full of benignitie: —Timor mortis conturbat me.
“He takis the cam pion in the stour, The captain closit in the tour, The ladie in boor full of bewtie: —“
(There I must stop a miioment.)
“Timor mortis conturbat me.
“He spans no lord for his piscence, Na clerk for his intelligence; His awful straik may no man flee:— Timor mortis conturbat me.”
She breaks me off; clapping hands to ears amid half shrieking, “No!”
I, grown unmerciful, pursue Her: “You understand now, do You not? You are not eternal either. SUM isn’t. Not Earth, not sun, not stars. We hid from the truth. Every one of us. I too, umitil I lost the one thing which made everything make sense. Then I had nothing left to hose, and could look with clear eyes. And what I saw was Death.”
“Get out! Let Me alone!”
“I will not let the whole world alone, Queen, until I get her back. Give me her again, and I’ll believe in SUM agaimi. I’ll praise It till men dance for joy to hear Its name.”
She challenges me with wildcat eyes. “Do you think such matters to It?”
“Well,” I shrug, “songs could be useful. They could help achieve the great objective sooner. Whatever that is. ‘Optimization of total human activity’— wasn’t that the program? I don’t know if it still is. SUM has been adding to Itself so long. I doubt if You Yourself understand Its purpose, Lady of Ours.”
“Don’t speak as if It were alive,” She says harshly. “It is a computer-effector complex. Nothing more.”
“Are You certain?”
“I—yes. It thinks, more widely and deeply than any human ever did or could; but It is not alive, not aware, It has no consciousness. That is one reason why It decided It needed Me.”
“Be that as it may~ Lady,” I tell Her, “the ultimate result, whatever It finally does with us, lies far in the future. At present I care about that; I worry; I resent our loss of self-determ’nmnation. But that’s because only such abstractions are left to me. Give me back my Lightfoot, and she, not the distant future, will be my concern. I’ll be grateful, honestly grateful, and You Two will know it from the songs I then choose to sing. WInch, as I said, might be helpful to It.”
“You are unbelievably insolent,” She says without force.
“No, Lady, just desperate,” I say.
The ghost of a smile touches Her lips. She leans back, eyes hooded, and niurmurs, “Well, I’ll take you there. What happens then, you realize, lies outside My power. My observations, My recommendations, are nothing but a few items to take into account, among billions. However. . . we have a long way to travel this night. Give me what data you think will help you, Harper.”
I do not finish the Lament. Nor do I dwell in any other fashion on grief. Instead, as the hours pass, I call upon those who dealt with the joy (not the fun, Iiot the short delirium, but the joy) that man and woman might once have of each other.
Knowing where we are bound, I too need such comfort.
And the night deepens, and the leagues fall behind us, and finally we are beyond habitation, beyond wihdcountry, in the land where life never comes. By crooked moon and waning starlight I see the plain of concrete and iron, the missiles and energy projectors crouched hike beasts, the robot aircraft wheeling aloft: and the lines, the relay towers, the scuttling beetle-shaped carriers, that whole transcendent nerve-blood-sinew by which SUM knows and orders the world. For all the flitting about, for all the forces which seethe, here is altogether still. The wind itself seems to have frozen to death. Hoarfrost is gray on the steel shapes. Ahead of us, tiered and mountainous, begins to appear the castle of