Consar's mountain of flesh trembled in a rumbling laugh. "So many
unpredictable games the jester Chance plays, eh. It doesn't matter now
what you did or didn't expect."
Cadmus started. He knew that Consar was mad with power. He knew nothing
else about Consar III, except that Zaleel was to have killed him with a
lithium capsule, and that she had failed.
"We tapped your mind, Cadmus. I know a great deal about you, but so
little, too. You submitted a problem to the Machine--we shall refer
to it as a Machine as neither of us are quite convinced that it's
a god--and your purpose was that the Machine was to have destroyed
itself."
Consar laughed. "It was a ridiculous purpose. You rebels with your
high ideals of progress and change! Progress and change are the great
errors of entropy, Cadmus. But it's too late to discuss that now. You
submitted the problem but the Machine still functions."