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. Only a gagging sound.
"I think we may be going about this wrong," I said. "Can you just have
her speak normally, rather than this question-and-answer business?"
"You heard him," Mandor said. "It is my will, also."
She gasped, then said, "My hands. . . . Please free them."
"Go ahead," I said.
"They are freed," Mandor stated.
She flexed her fingers.
"A handkerchief, a towel . . . ," she said softly.
I drew open a drawer in a nearby dresser, took out a handkerchief. As I
moved to pass it to her, Mandor seized my wrist and took it from me. He
tossed it to her and she caught it.
"Don't reach within my sphere," he told me.
"I wouldn't hurt him," she said, as she wiped her eyes, her cheeks, her
chin. "I told you, I mean only to protect him. "
"We require more information than that," Mandor said, as he reached for
the sphere again.
"Wait," I said. Then, to her, "Can you at least tell me why you can't
tell me?"
"No," she answered. "It would amount to the same thing."
Suddenly I saw it as a strange sort of programming problem; and I
decided to try a different tack.
"You must protect me at all costs?" I said. "That is ;your primary
function?"
"Yes. "
"And you are not supposed to tell me who set you this task, or why?"
"Yes."
"Supposing the only way you could protect me would be by telling me
these things?"
Her brow furrowed
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