"It is necessary for us to find that child who came here with you.
What is her name, sir?
And where is she now?"
Forester smiled against his pain, for those questions told him that Jane Carter had not been caught beneath the falling dome.
She must have escaped to that dark, damp place underground, where water murmured and Mark White and her other friends still held out against the humanoids.
He whispered defiantly,
"I don't know."
"She is extremely dangerous," the machine said sweetly.
"Because she possesses supermechanical capacities, which she is using against the purpose of the Prime Directive.
We are now arranging a new service for such unhappy cases, because euphoride sometimes fails to control them, and we must find that child at once."
"I hope you never find her!" Giving way to a bitter wrath, because there was no more need for caution now, he shook his bruised fist at the circle of dark identical faces above him.
"I hope she goes straight to Wing IV, and uses her supermechanical gift to wreck that mechanical brain that runs you."
He caught a sobbing breath, and gasped, "Now I've told you - kill me if you want!"
"Clay Forester, you fail to understand the nature of our service," purred the machine.
"It is true that the extreme unhappiness revealed by your behavior will now require you to take euphoride shots as fast as you can tolerate the drug, but our function is never to punish, but merely to serve and obey.
You have displayed no supermechanical abilities yourself, and you need not fear destruction."
He lay silent, not even shivering.
Chapter EIGHTEEN
WATER SPLASHED again, and quiet dark machines knelt to lift him with deft warm hands.
Very gently, one unit examined his numb leg.
"You have been most reckless and unwise," it whined.
"This avoidable accident has fractured your right femur and patella, and damaged the ligaments of the knee.
You urgently need our care."
"You weren't quite so careful," he muttered bleakly, "when you chased me with that excavating machine."
"That child was with you then," the bright voice sang.
"Working under the Prime Directive for the greatest good of the greatest number, we must use every possible means to defeat the supermechanical abilities of such headstrong individuals."
They carried him on a stretcher back into the repaired elevator.
For all their gentle skill, the pain of his swollen leg dimmed his awareness again.
He knew when the sun struck his face, and he caught the musky reek of that sunken garden where those winged blooms of another life flitted and kissed and died, and then he lay on a cold table in a small white room.
Deft machines were stripping off the damp rags of his torn robe and sponging away the blood and grime.
A chemical odor took his breath, and something burned his lacerated skin.
He tensed, with a stifled gasp, when something touched his throbbing thigh.
"Your alarm is needless, sir," came the voice of a machine, "because your pain will soon be gone."
Soft plastic fingers lifted his arm.
He felt a cold swab, and the prick of a needle.
His dry lips moved to protest, but no sound came.
"Don't worry, sir," cooed the machine with the needle.
"This is your first shot of euphoride. It will help relax your injured body while we set the broken bones, and it will remove all your unhappiness and pain."
Too weak to struggle, he lay still in a vague submerged awareness.
The throb of his leg receded into dreamy unimportance, and time began to skip.
He was back in that great bedroom, with the luminous murals of dancing village boys and girls.
Once he wondered for a long time, dimly, if people had really been happier in that simpler age, before machines became supreme.
Once the vast crystal window was a screen of fine-veined jade against the desert day; and it was clear at some dusk; and again, when it was glowing dimly golden, he knew the time was night.
Gentle hands turned him on the bed, and sometimes needles stung his arm again, always pushing him deeper into forgetfulness. And always there were sleek black faces, steel eyes watching, unchangingly benign.
Once his wife came, guided by a solicitous machine.
She carried a furry toy, dangling by one bright wing, shaped like one of those great animate blooms.
Below the thin, sophisticated arch of her plucked brows, her eyes were wide and childish and dimly troubled.
Her perfume was first an exciting breath, stirring sleeping recollections, and then a choking wave of sweetness.
"This is Ruth," the machine said.
"She is your wife."