Free Logan's Run by William F Nolan, George Clayton Johnson

bells. And the deep grottoes whisper my name: Box…Box… Bahhhhhxxxsss. ” His voice sobbed into silence.
    “Birds, fish, animals.” said Jess, with a note of wonder. “They’re all here.”
    “Yes, all the creatures. Except Man.” Box scowled. “They chase me. They want my metal. How they’d love to pry me apart and build a stove from my heart! My legs would make fine knives, fishhooks, spears. But they are blind moles who trip and stumble. I’ve seen their stiffening bodies on the ice. Worthless. Ugly. Wind-warped. But now—I have found you. New ones. Fresh ones. Lovely ones. Suitable models for my masterwork. You will pose for me!”
    “If we pose, do we get food?” asked Logan.
    “I have no food.”
    “Then why should we do it?”
    “ Why? Do you know how long this temple will last? Not twenty-one years, or twenty-one thousand years—but twenty-one thousand thousand years! And you’ll be a part of it, the crown jewel in my collection. Ages will roll. Milleniums. And you’ll be here—the two of you—eternally frozen in a lovers’ embrace.”
    Logan turned away.
    Box became apprehensive; his voice took on a wheedling tone. “What can I give you?”
    “Nothing,” said Logan. “We need two things, food and a way out. You have no food, and there’s no way out.”
    “Ah, but there is,” tempted Box.
    “Then why are you still here? Why don’t you escape?”
    “And leave my white wonderland, leave the singing winds and the silence, the purity, the flowing skies…For what? For your squabble and smoke, your jamming and rushing? No. But I could. I could leave if I wished to do so.”
    “How?” asked Logan.
    “How indeed,” silked Box. “First you pose, then I tell you.” 
    “First you tell us, then we pose.”
    Box hesitated. Gears seemed to click in him. He moved his metal hand in a gesture of surrender. “I suppose I must trust you,” he said.
    Will he do it? Logan wondered. Can he do it? Can he really provide an escape route?
    Box put his hand to the metal of his head and closed his human eye. He spoke of visions: “I am a humming in blackness. Far away. I am ten billion, billion neurons in a mighty brain. A brain of steel. I am the force that rules the maze.”
    The Thinker! It tied in; being half machine, Box was, in a very real sense, part of the great machine brain.
    “Above me—a great warrior astride the world. A sweep of black mountain below, great birds on my granite shoulders, a vastness beneath me. I am part of Tashunca-uitco.” 
    Crazy Horse!
    “I am brother to the Thinker,” went on Box. “I know its circuits and its ways. I share its great wisdom. I can thread the force field labyrinth. I can leave Hell…”
    And he told them the way.
    Box opened his eye, advanced. “Now, you shall keep your bargain.”
     ”How do you want us?” asked Logan. 
    “Nude,” said the Box.
    “Take off your clothes,” Logan told Jess, beginning to strip off his own.
    The girl looked at him.
    “It’ll be all right,” he assured her.
    Jess pushed back the cowl of her parka and began to unknot the leather ties. She dropped the rank fur at her feet. Averting her eyes from Logan, she touched the magnetic closure on her blouse. It opened under her fingers and she removed the blouse, then quickly peeled away the clear cosmetic supports from her full breasts. Her skirt was added to the clothing on the fur-rich floor. She unzipped her shoes and stepped out of them.
    “Enchanting,” said Box.
    He waved them to a dais covered with deep white polar furs. “Up there,” he said. 
    “Shall we—just stand? ” asked Jess. “Or should we…” 
    “Take her in your arms,” Box said.
    Logan looked at Jessica. Lamplight played along the creamed curves and valleys of her body. Her skin was glowing ivory in the light of the flame.
    “Stop wasting my time,” Box said. He stood poised at a tall monolith of sparkling ice. Logan took the girl clumsily into his arms.
    “No, no, no,”