As he moved, Solcom spoke to him:

"Frost, why did you enter the southern hemisphere, which is not yourdomain?"

"Because I wished to visit Bright Defile," Frost replied.

"And why did you defy the Beta-Machine my appointed agent of the South?"

"Because I take my orders only from you yourself."

"You do not make sufficient answer," said Solcom.

"You have defied the decress of order - and in pursuit of what?"

"I came seeking knowledge of Man," said Frost. "Nothing I have donewas forbidden me by you."

"You have broken the traditions of order."

"I ahve violated no directive."

"Yet logic must have shown you that what you did was not a part of myplan."

"It did not. I have not acted against your plan."

"Your logic has become tainted, like that of your new associate, theAlternate."

"I have done nothing which was forbidden."

"The forbidden is implied in the imperative."

"It is not stated."

"Hear me, Frost. You are not a builder or a maintainer, but a Power.Among all my minions you are the most nearly irreplaceable. Return toyour hemisphere and your duties, but know that I am mightily displeased."

"I hear you, Solcom."

"...And go not again to the South."

Frost crossed the equator, continued northward.

He came to rest in the middle of a desert and sat silent for a day anda night.

Then he received a brief transmission from the South: "If it had notbeen ordered, I would not have bid you go."

Frost had read the entire surviving Library of Man. He decided thenupon a human reply:

"Thank you," he said.

THe following day he unearthed a great stone and began to cut at itwith tools which he had formulated. For six days he worked at itsshaping, and on the seventh he regarded it.

"When will you release me?" asked Mordel from within his compartment.