im, baptism is both unnecessary and
undesirable."

"Why 'undesirable'?" Mike asked.

"Since he is free from sin--either original or actual--he is therefore
filled with the plenitude of God's grace. The purpose of a sacrament is
to give grace to the recipient; it follows that it would be useless to
give the Sacrament to Snookums. To perform a sacrament or to receive it
when one knows that it will be useless is sacrilege. And sacrilege is
undesirable."

"Brother! But I still don't see how that makes him dangerous."

"The operation of the First Law," Leda said. "For a man to sin involves
endangering his immortal soul. Snookums, therefore, must prevent men
from sinning. But sin includes thought--intention. Snookums is trying to
figure that one out now; if he ever does, he's going to be a thought
policeman, and a strict one."

"You mean he's working on _telepathy_?"

She laughed humorlessly. "No. But he's trying to dope out a system
whereby he can tell what a man is going to do a few seconds before he
does it--muscular and nervous preparation, that sort of thing. He hasn't
enough data yet, but he will have it soon enough.

"There's another thing: Snookums is fouling up the Second Law's
operation. He won't take orders that interfere in any way with his
religious beliefs--since that automatically conflicts with the First
Law. He, himself, cannot sin. But neither can he do anything which would
make him the tool of an intent to sin. He refuses to do anything at all
on Sunday, for instance, and he won't let either Fitz or I do anything
that even vaguely resembles menial labor. Slowly, he's coming to the
notion that human beings aren't human--that only God is human, in
relation to the First and Second Laws. There's nothing we can do with
him."

"What will you do if he becomes completely uncontrollable?"

She sighed. "We'll have to shut him off, drain his memory banks, and
start all over again."

Mike closed his eyes. "Eighteen billions down the drain just because a
robot was taught theology. What price glory?"

22

Captain Sir Henry Quill scowled and rubbed his finger tips over the top
of his shiny pink pate. "Your evidence isn't enough to convict, Golden
Wings."

"I know it isn't, Captain," admitted Mike the Angel. "That's why I want
to round everybody up and do it this way. If he can be convinced that we
_do_ have the evidence, he may crack and give us a confession."

"What about Lieutenant Mellon's pe