He showed her the book from Mellon’s room.
“It doesn’t even require the assumption of a soul to make it foul up a robot’s works. He doesn’t have any emotions, either. And he can’t handle something that he can’t experiment with. It would have driven him insane, all right. But he isn’t insane.”
Leda looked puzzled. “But—”
“Do you know why?” Mike interrupted.
“No.”
“Because he found something that he could experiment with. He found a material basis for theological experimentation.”
She looked still more puzzled. “What could that be?”
“Me,” said Mike the Angel. “Me. Michael Raphael Gabriel. I’m an angel—an archangel. As a matter of fact, I’m three archangels. For all I know, Snookums has equated me with the Trinity.”
“But—how did he get that idea?”
“Mostly from the Book of Tobit,” said Mike. “That’s where an archangel takes the form of a human being and travels around with Tobit the Younger, remember? And, too, he probably got more information from the first part of Luke’s Gospel, where Gabriel tells the Blessed Virgin that she’s about to become a mother.”