... _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.