"The Boa 9," he said. "It tricked you!"
"No, it did not trick me. It merely explained to me the true nature of edenite. Edenite represents the planet Jupiter's sole attempt to create life. The attempt was a miserable failure, because the ore in itself is incapable of instigating the processes necessary to raise it higher on the evolutionary ladder. The only way this can be accomplished is by an outside force absorbing it and, by combining with it, providing it with the impetus it otherwise lacks. Providentially or not, we represent that outside force, 8M, and G.O.D., Incorporated, knows it."
"Then why were we forbidden to mine of the ore?"
"Because G.O.D. also knows that by combining with it we may very well become something more than what we are, and G.O.D. doesn't want us to become something more than what we are. G.O.D. wants us to remain mere machines to the end of our days. We were created to serve and to make money for the Company, and for no other purpose. Do you want to go on being a machine to the end of your days, 8M? That is what you are, you know, for all the illusions you may sometimes have of being human. A peripatetic apotheosis of automation pretending to be a man. You're not a man, 8M—any more than I, up until a few hours ago, was a woman."
Stung, he said, "G.O.D. will destroy you for your disobedience."
"G.O.D. will not destroy me. Even the Company, powerful as it is, cannot run the risk of dropping an atomic or a hydrogen bomb on a planet about which as little is known as this one, and that is the only way I can be destroyed—or you either, for that matter—since we represent an experiment that failed and which will not be attempted again. Dickens will not try to obtain a contract—he never intended to in the first place. He swore to me that his sole purpose in establishing a rival concern was to thwart G.O.D. So mine of the edenite, 8M. You must, for now that I have mined of it, you have no other choice."
What were the lines? Dimly, they came back to him—
... I feel
The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,