There were no birth memories in the android, but there were the vestiges of Sam's death memories: the endless torture under a machine so sensitive that, while it had no definition of a woman, it was able to discern—in the names thefted from Sam's memory and used as names for the ten androids—those which applied to males and those that did not.
But of all these traces of memories, those concerning women nagged the android most. And now, as it turned his empty gaze on Rhoda Kane, it was with a little more personal interest than before.
"What did Frank Corson tell you?"
"He said the man in the hospital with a broken leg was not a man. He was an android."
The term, grotesquely enough, meant nothing to the creature who called himself John Dennis. In the strange pattern of his consciousness there were no patterns of definitive difference. Though in many respects more able than the humans against whom he was pitted, he was no more aware of himself as different than a dog is aware of its differences from a man. The concept didn't take shape in the android's synthetic mind.
"Did he tell you where the man with the broken leg came from?"
"He said they thought it came from somewhere in outer space."
"There were others. Did he know of them?"
"No. He only told me about a man named Les King."
"What did he say about Les King?"