Frost was silent. Mordel waited.

Then Frost spoke again.

"Principles of Economics talks of contracts, bargains, agreements," he said. "If I accept your offer, when would you want your price?"

Then Mordel was silent. Frost waited.

Finally, Mordel spoke.

"A reasonable period of time," he said. "Say, a cen- tury?"

"No," said Frost.

"Two centuries?"

"No."

"Three? Four?"

"No, and no."

"A millenium, then? That should be more than suffi- cient time for anything you may want which I can give you."

"No," said Frost.

"How much time do you want?"

"If is not a matter of time," said Frost.

"What, then?"

"I will not bargain on a temporal basis."

"On what basis will you bargain?"

"A functional one."

"What do you mean? What function?"

, "You, little machine, have told me, Frost, that I can- not be a Man," he said, "and I, Frost, told you, little machine, that you were wrong. I told you that given suf- ficient data, I could be a Man."

"Yes?"

"Therefore, let this achievement be a condition of the bargain."

220 .

"In what way?"

"Do for me all those things which you have stated you can do. I will evaluate all the data and achieve Manhood, or admit that it cannot be done. If I admit that it cannot be done. then I will go away with you from here, far be- neath the Earth, to employ all my powers in the service of Divcom. If I succeed, of course, you have no claims on Man, nor power over Him."

Mordel emitted a high-pitched whine as he considered the terms.

"You wish to base it upon your admission of failure, rather than upon failure itself," he said. "There can be no such escape clause. You could fail and refuse to admit it, thereby not fulfilling your end of the bargain."

"Not so." stated Frost. "My own knowledge of failure would constitute such an admission. You may monitor me periodically-say, every half-century-to see whether it is present, to see whether I have arrived at the con- clusion that it cannot be done. I cannot prevent the function of logic within me, and I operate at full capacity at all times. If I conclude that I have failed, it will be ap- parent."

High overhead, Soicom did not respond to any of Frost's transmissions, which meant that Frost was free to act as he chose. So as Soicom-like a falling sapphire- sped above the rainbow banners of the Northern Lights, over the snow that was white, containing all colors, and through the sky that was black among the stars. Frost concluded his pact with Divcom, transcribed it within a plate of atomically-collapsed copper, and gave it into the turret of Mordel, who departed to deliver it to Divcom far below the Earth, leaving behind the sheer, peace-like silence of the Pole, rolling.

Mordel brought the books, rimed them, took them back.

Load by load, the surviving Library of Man passed beneath Frost's scanner. Frost was eager to have them all.

and he complained because Divcom would not transmit their content?, directly to him. Mordel explained that it was because Divcom chose to do it that way. Frost de- cided it was so that he could not obtain a precise fix on Divcom's location.

Still, at the rate of one hundred to one hundred-fifty

221.

volumes a week, it took Frost only a little over a century to exhaust Divcom's supply of books.

At the end of the half-century, he laid himself open to monitoring and there was no conclusion of failure.

During this time, Soicom made no comment upon the course of affairs. Frost decided this was not a matter of unawareness, but one of waiting. For what? He was not certain.

There was the day Mordel closed his turret and said to him, "Those were the last. You have scanned all the existing books of Man."

"So few?" asked Frost. "Many of them contained bib- liographies of books I have not yet scanned."

'Then those books no longer exist," said Mordel. "It is only by accident that my master succeeded in preserv- ing as many as there are."

"Then there is nothing more to be learned of Man from His books. What else have you?"

"There were some films and tapes," said Mordel, "which my master transferred 'to solid-state record. I could bring you those for viewing."

"Bring them," said Frost.

Mordel departed and returned with the Complete Drama Critics' Living Library. This could not be speeded-up beyond twice natural lime, so it took Frost a little over six months to view it in its entirety.

Then, "What else have you?" he asked.

"Some artifacts," said Mordel.

"Bring them."

He returned with pots and pans, gameboards and hand tools. He brought hairbrushes, combs, eyeglasses, human clothing. He showed Frost facsimiles of blueprints, paint- ings, newspapers, magazines, letters, and the scores of several pieces of music. He displayed a football, a base- ball, a Browning automatic rifle, a doorknob, a chain of keys, the tops to several Mason jars, a model beehive.

He played him recorded music.

Then he returned with nothing.