Books in the Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Robots and Aliens™ series

BOOK 1: CHANGELING by Stephen Leigh

BOOK 2: RENEGADE by Cordell Scotten

BOOK 3: INTRUDER by Robert Thurston

BOOK 4: ALLIANCE by Jerry Oltion

BOOK 5: MAVERICK by Bruce Bethke

BOOK 6: HUMANITY by Jerry Oltion

ISAAC ASIMOV’S

ROBOT CITY

ROBOTS

^AND ALIENS

Renegade by Cordell Scotten

Copyright © 1989

NOTABLE ROBOTS

BY ISAAC ASIMOV

My robot stories and novels seem to have become classics in their own right, and, with the advent of the “Robot City” series of novels, to have become the wider literary universe of other writers as well. Under those circumstances, it might be useful to go over my robot stories and describe some of those which I think are particularly significant and to explain why I think they are.

1. “Robbie”— This is the first robot story I wrote. I turned it out between May 10 and May 22 of 1939, when I was 19 years old and was just about to graduate college. I had a little trouble placing it, for John Campbell rejected it and so did Amazing Stories. However, Fred Pohl accepted it on March 25, 1940 and it appeared in the September 1940 issue of Super Science Stories, which he edited. Fred Pohl, being Fred Pohl, changed the title to “Strange Playfellow” but I changed it back when I included it in my book I, Robot and it has appeared as “Robbie” in every subsequent incarnation.

Aside from being my first robot story, “Robbie” is significant because in it George Weston says to his wife in defense of a robot that is fulfilling the role of nursemaid, “He just can't help being faithful and loving and kind. He's a machine—made so.” This is the first indication, in my first story, of what eventually became the “First Law of Robotics” and of the basic fact that robots were made with built-in safety rules.

2. “Reason”—”Robbie” would have meant nothing in itself, if I had written no more robot stories, particularly since it appeared in one of the minor magazines. However, I wrote a second robot story, “Reason,” and that one, John Campbell liked. After a bit of revision, it appeared in the April 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and there it attracted notice. Readers became aware that there was such a thing as the “positronic robots,” and so did Campbell. That made everything afterward possible.

3. “Liar!”—In the very next issue of Astounding, that of May 1941, my third robot story, “Liar!” appeared. The importance of this story was that it introduced Susan Calvin, who became the central character in my early robot stories. This story was originally rather clumsily done, largely because it dealt with the relationship between the sexes at a time when I had not yet had my first date with a young lady. Fortunately, I'm a quick learner and it is one story in which I made significant changes before allowing it to appear in I, Robot.

4. “Runaround”—The next important robot story appeared in the March 1942 issue of Astounding. It was the first story in which I listed the Three Laws of Robotics explicitly instead of making them implicit. In it, I have one character, Gregory Powell, say to another, Michael Donovan, “Now, look, let's start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics—the three rules that are built most deeply into a robot's positronic brain.” He then recites them.

Later on, I called them the Laws of Robotics, and their importance to me is three-fold.

a—They guided me in forming my plots and made it possible to write many short stories, and several novels in addition, based on robots. In these, I constantly studied the consequences of the Three Laws;

b—It was by all odds my most famous literary invention, quoted in season and out by others. If all I have written is someday to be forgotten, the Three Laws of Robotics will surely be the last to go;

c— The passage in “Runaround” quoted above happens to be the very first time the word “robotics” was used in print in the English language. I am therefore credited with the invention of the word (and also “robotic,”

“positronic” and “psychohistory”) by the Oxford English Dictionary, which takes the trouble—and the space—to quote the Three Laws. (All these things were created by my 22nd birthday and I seem to have created nothing since, which gives rise to grievous thoughts within me.)

5. “Evidence”—This was the one and only story I wrote while I spent 8 months and 26 days in the army. At one point I persuaded a kindly librarian to let me remain in the locked library over lunch so that I could work on the story. It is the first story in which I made use of a humanoid robot. Stephen Byerley, the humanoid robot in question (though in the story I don't make it absolutely clear whether he is a robot or not) represents my first approach toward R. Daneel Olivaw, the humaniform robot who appears in a number of my novels. “Evidence” appeared in the September 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

6. “Little Lost Robot”—My robots tend to be benign entities. In fact, as the stories progressed they gradually gained in moral and ethical qualities until they far surpassed human beings and, in the case of Daneel, approached the god-like. Nevertheless, I had no intention of limiting myself to robots as saviors. I followed wherever the wild winds of my imagination led me and I was quite capable of seeing the uncomfortable sides of the robot phenomena.

It was only a few weeks ago (as I write this) that I received a letter from a reader that scolded me because, in a robot story of mine that had just been published, I showed the dangerous side of robots. He accused me of a failure of nerve.

That he was wrong is shown by “Little Lost Robot,” in which a robot is the villain, even though it appeared nearly half a century ago. The seamy side of robots is not the result of a failure in nerve that comes of my advancing age and decrepitude. It has been a constant concern of mine all through my career.

7. “The Evitable Conflict”—This was a sequel to “Evidence” and appeared in the June 1950 issue of Astounding. It was the first story I wrote that dealt primarily with computers (1 called them “Machines” in the story) rather than with robots per se. The difference is not a great one. You might define a robot as a “computerized machine” or as a “mobile computer.” You might consider a computer as an “immobile robot.” In any case, I clearly did not distinguish between the two, and although the Machines, which don't make an actual physical appearance in the story, are clearly computers, I included the story, without hesitation, in my robot collection, I, Robot, and neither the publisher nor the readers objected. To be sure, Stephen Byerley is in the story but the question of his roboticity plays no role.

8. “Franchise”—This was the first story in which I dealt with computers as computers, and had no thought in mind of their being robots. It appeared in the August 1955 issue of If: Worlds of Science Fiction, and by that time I had grown familiar with the existence of computers. My computer is “Multivac,” designed as an obviously larger and more complex version of the actually existing “Univac.” In this story, and in some others of the period that dealt with Multivac, I described it as an enormously large machine, missing the chance of predicting the miniaturization and etherealization of computers.

9. “The Last Question”—My imagination didn't betray me for long, however. In “The Last Question,” which appeared first in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly, I discussed the miniaturization and etherealization of computers and followed it through a trillion years of evolution (of both computer and man) to a logical conclusion that you will have to read the story to find. It is, beyond question, my favorite among all the stories I have written in my career.

10. “The Feeling of Power”—The miniaturization of computers played a small role as a side issue in this story. It appeared in the February 1958 issue of If, and is also one of my favorites. In this story I dealt with pocket computers, which were not to make their appearance in the marketplace until ten to fifteen years after the story appeared. Moreover, it was one of the stories in which I foresaw accurately a social implication of technological advance rather than the technological advance itself.

The story deals with the possible loss of ability to do simple arithmetic through the perpetual use of computers.I wrote it as a satire that combined humor with passages of bitter irony, but I wrote more truly than I knew. These days I have a pocket computer and I begrudge the time and effort it would take me to subtract 182 from 854. I use the darned computer. “The Feeling of Power” is one of the most frequently anthologized of my stories.

In a way, this story shows the negative side of computers, and in this period I also wrote stories that showed the possible vengeful reactions of computers or robots that are mistreated. For computers, there is “Someday,” which appeared in the August 1956 issue of Infinity Science Fiction, and for robots (in automobile form) see “Sally,” which appeared in the May-June 1953 issue of Fantastic.

11. “Feminine Intuition”—My robots are almost always masculine, though not necessarily in an actual sense of gender. After all, I give them masculine names and refer to them as “he.” At the suggestion of a female editor, Judy-Lynn del Rey, I wrote “Feminine Intuition,” which appeared in the October 1969 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It showed, for one thing, that I could do a feminine robot, too. She was still metal, but she had a narrower waistline than my usual robots and had a feminine voice, too. Later on, in my book Robots and Empire, there was a chapter in which a humanoid female robot made her appearance. She played a villainous role, which might surprise those who know of my frequently displayed admiration of the female half of humanity.

12. “The Bicentennial Man”—This story, which first appeared in 1976 in a paperback anthology of original science fiction, stellar #2, edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey, was my most thoughtful exposition of the development of robots. It followed them in an entirely different direction from that in “The Last Question.” What it dealt with was the desire of a robot to become a man and the way in which he carried out that desire, step by step. Again, I carried the plot all the way to its logical conclusion. I had no intention of writing this story when I started it. It wrote itself, and turned and twisted in the typewriter. It ended as the third favorite of mine among all my stories. Ahead of it come only “The Last Question,” mentioned above, and “The Ugly Little Boy,” which is not a robot story.

13. The Caves of Steel—Meanwhile, at the suggestion of Horace L. Gold, editor of Galaxy, I had written a robot novel. I had resisted doing so at first for I felt that my robot ideas only fit the short story length. Gold, however, suggested I write a murder mystery dealing with a robot detective. I followed it partway. My detective was a thoroughly human Elijah Baley (perhaps the most attractive character I ever invented, in my opinion) but he had a robot sidekick, R. Daneel Olivaw. The book, I felt, was the perfect fusion of mystery and science fiction. It appeared as a three-part serial in the October, November, and December 1953 issues of Galaxy and Doubleday published it as a novel in 1954.

What surprised me about the book was the reaction of the readers. While they approved of Lije Baley, their obvious interest was entirely with Daneel, whom I had viewed as a mere subsidiary character. The approval was particularly intense in the case of the women who wrote to me. (Thirteen years after I had invented Daneel, the television series Star Trek came out, with Mr. Spock resembling Daneel quite closely in character—something which did not bother me—and I noticed that women viewers were particularly interested in him, too. I won't pretend to analyze this.)

14. The Naked Sun—the popularity of Lije and Daneel led me to write a sequel, “The Naked Sun,” which appeared as a three-part serial in the October, November, and December 1956 issues of Astounding and was published as a novel by Doubleday in 1957. Naturally, the repetition of the success made a third novel seem the logical thing to do. I even started writing it in 1958, but things got in the way and, what with one thing and another, it didn't get written till 1983.

15. The Robots of Dawn—This, the third novel of the Lije Baley/R. Daneel series, was published by Doubleday in 1983. In it, I introduced a second robot, R. Giskard Reventlov, and this time I was not surprised when he turned out to be as popular as Daneel.

16. Robots and Empire—When it was necessary to allow Lije Baley to die (of old age), I felt I would have no problem in doing a fourth book in the series provided I allowed Daneel to live. The fourth book, Robots and Empire, was published by Doubleday in 1985. Lije's death brought some reaction, but nothing at all compared to the storm of regretful letters I received when the exigencies of the plot made it necessary for R. Giskard to die.

So it turns out that my robot stories have been almost as successful as my Foundation books, and if you want to know the truth (in a whisper, of course, and please keep this confidential), I like my robot stories better.

Here, in Renegade, Cordell Scot ten has written an excellent example of why I like the robot stories. A simple question arising from the Laws—”What is good for humans?”—is developed into a complex and intriguing story.

CHAPTER 1

THE CEREMYONS

Gently soaring—basking under the sun—the two blackbodies circled far above the shimmering atmospheric irregularity that was nearing completion on the planet's surface. As high as a small mountain, the iridescent transparency, viewed from outside, covered a smooth hemispherical excavation in the planet's surface two kilometers in diameter, except for an open pie cut, a not-yet-covered sector ten degrees wide. Looking into the open sector, structures—built on ground not excavated, paradoxically —covered the entire inner area. The most striking of these structures was a tall, stepped pyramid centered under the dome.

The blackbodies floated a wingspread apart, five times the armspread of an Avery robot. Those beings—the Avery robots—were even then streaming out of the incomplete sector, evacuating the dome. The blackbodies had learned the name “Avery robot,” but the name lacked meaning beyond its intonation.

“The construction was slowed by your absence yesterday, Sarco,” one blackbody said to the other, “and I thank you for that. You needed the day off. Unfortunately, the effort was only slowed. It would have benefited by a complete interruption.”

“You are a rascal,” the other said, his red eyes gleaming like bumming embers set deep in a black demonic body. “I'll bet you arranged for an Avery to cut me loose during tether last night. At least they've learned not to blow us up.”

The blackbodies appeared identical in form: a large white hook protruding from above deep-set, luminous red eyes; a lacy silver frond languidly waving at the other end; but bodies otherwise devoid of visible detail except as flying winged silhouettes. Wrinkles in the skin, if any, and other possible lines of demarcation were lost in the soft blackness.

“You were cut loose?” the first said.

“Don't play the innocent, Synapo. Someone cut my tether last night, and by the time I drifted into sunrise, I was over Barneup. It took me all day to get back. Have you ever tried to grow a new hook while underway?”

“You do look a little beat. But then so am I. Trying to make sense of Wohler-9 is exhausting, and so far he's the best of the Averies. I learned very little today. We could both do with early tether. I'll see you in the morning, Sarco.”

“Wait up! You're not getting off that easy.”

But Synapo had already balled and was dropping, if not like a rock, still at an appreciable rate that put him out of earshot in a trice. Sarco sighed—a soft gentle emission of pure oxygen with a faint trace of unreacted ammonia—but did not follow immediately.

As Synapo approached the surface of the planet, he began braking, unfurling from his collar the tough filmy hide of his reflector, letting it flap and rattle in his wake as it dragged at him like a sea anchor. As he neared the trees on the side of the domed transparency away from the open sector, he sealed the gores of the thin, shiny reflector, sealing all but his head inside, leaving his hook and eyes protruding from the underside.

With gentle bursts of compressed hydrogen, he began to inflate the reflector, dissipating his momentum and slowing his descent until he was barely drifting downward. Ten meters above the top of a tall conifer, he let go his chitinous hook, letting out the tether of tough, stringy hide until the hook was dangling below a sturdy limb. A final burst of hydrogen filled the reflector, erasing the last crease to leave a smooth, unblemished, mirrorlike surface. The tether twanged taut, caught between the now buoyant silvery balloon and the hooked limb of the tree.

Synapo began the luxurious process of uncoiling his tense fibers, drifting into deep tether as he lay suspended within his own skin. His storage cells were not sated with a day's thermoelectric output from the sun's radiant heat as they normally would have been if the aliens had not been disturbing the atmosphere; but little of the radiation he had been exposed to that day had escaped the nearly perfect blackbody absorption of his other skin. That energy was all there, save only the small expenditure for intense thought and languid motion, and the large expenditure for electrolyzing water and compressing hydrogen; and the unusual expenditure that day to converse—if it could be called that—with Wohler-9. Still, he had a sufficient reserve of juice left in his cells. It would take little to get him through the night, just that amount needed to maintain body temperature, to make up for the minuscule amount of energy lost by radiation from his silvery hide.

Sarco stayed aloft until Synapo tethered. Then he balled and dropped and tethered nearby so as to confront Synapo the next morning, first thing.

The Avery robots continued to stream from the open sector of the dome like ants abandoning an anthill. Dusk was coming on rapidly, but night would not hamper their operations.

Wohler-9 stood just outside the open sector. He had watched Synapo and Sarco drop, but had not distinguished them from the rest of the blackbodies which, a half-hour later, began to fall from the sky like the gentle descent of a black snow that melted to bright raindrops as it neared the surface, raindrops inversely and miraculously suspended above the trees in defiance of gravity.

When the tiny amount of absorbed sunshine began to warm Synapo's reflector the next morning, he awoke and began to deflate. When his hook dangled free, he sucked in his tether and drifted to the ground, gently bouncing off the outer foliage of the tree.

When he reached the ground, he unsealed the front seam of his reflector and pulled it around him like a bathrobe to preserve his body heat. On his two short legs, he waddled through the forest to a small brook. Sarco was already there, having breakfast and waiting for him. His hook was turned to the back in nonaggressive posture, which was a good sign. Still, he was having breakfast. You could hardly expect anything else. Anger cannot abide alongside intense creature satisfactions.

During the night, the feathery cold-junction that protruded from Synapo's rump had warmed, and the millions of hot junctions distributed throughout his lampblack hide had cooled, so that both cold and hot junctions were now at the same median temperature; and he had fasted throughout the night. Now as he backed up to the brook beside Sarco, drew his reflector tight across his back to bunch it in front of him, and squatted to dip his cold junction into the icy water, he sighed contentedly as the fresh juice flowed into his storage cells. That fresh shot each morning was the best juice to be had all day.

Neither spoke, which was the custom at breakfast, nor would they speak until they were again on the wing. Speaking, unless forced by exigencies—such as the discussion with Wohler-9—was strictly a waste process, using the oxygen discarded from the electrolytic production of vital hydrogen. Electrolyzing when their hydrogen sacs were full, merely to generate oxygen for speaking, was a luxury they seldom permitted themselves and a necessity only under the rarest of circumstances.

That morning, however, Synapo again planned to allow himself only an hour on the wing before he resumed his discussion with Wohler-9. He timed it so that he could watch the Myostrians at work, as he had for the past several days. He was depleting his cells to well below what he found comfortable—he went around continually hungry—but at least he would be generating hydrogen during the discussion and not wasting juice as he would be otherwise. That was small comfort as his store of vital energy dropped lower and lower. But Synapo felt that discussion was vital, not for what it had revealed so far, but for what it promised to reveal in the future.

With breakfast over and the gores of their reflectors tightly rolled into black ruffled collars, they began the long climb to charge altitude. Synapo, with Sarco following, slowly circled upward with languid but powerful strokes of his great wings. He kept the hemispherical iridescence centered below, so that when he finished his short charge, he could drop rapidly to the open sector where he could see Wohler-9 still standing vigil, right where he had been as Synapo dropped to tether the evening before.

When they reached a comfortable altitude, Synapo slowed his flapping and rolled onto his back, a wingspread below Sarco, giving the other the dominant position as was his right as interrogator. That had been the status of their conversation the afternoon before when Synapo had terminated it unilaterally.

“Now, Sarco, you were saying?”

“Forget that,” Sarco said. “My tether was cut, and I was fuming yesterday evening, but it's no big deal. A new hook and a night's rest and it's the same as forgotten.”

Good, Synapo thought, but it wasn't an Avery, it was my own burning breath which sent you into far sunrise. He wouldn't have stooped to such a childish trick if the situation hadn't warranted it. The thought of that piece of unstatesmanship lingered, unsettling his conscience.

“What is important,” Sarco continued, “is getting the weather back under control and stopping the godawful screeching of those tin aliens on hyperwave. The weather I'll have under control as soon as my people finish neutralizing that node below. I figure to have the compensator complete day after tomorrow.

“But the hyperwave noise is about to drive us all nuts, Synapo. Haven't those metal morons heard of continuous modulation?”

“Of course. That's the way they arrived,” Synapo said. “But their discrete modulation of hyperwave and our small discomfort with the crosstalk on our continuous channels is a minor problem. The real problem is your construction of the node compensator. It's a mistake, Sarco. You'll have deactivated the aliens only temporarily. And if I'm right, as I am more and more sure I am, you'll have succeeded merely in deactivating a bunch of servants, and probably not for long, but you will have irritated their masters sure as the Great Petero is our guide.”

“And the Cerebrons, what have they come up with? The Myostrians are at least taking action.”

(In some contexts, the plural Myostrian tribal name is better translated as Myostria, and the racial name Ceremyon is better translated as Myoceron to reflect the Myostrian point of view.)

“We had a caucus yesterday afternoon,” Synapo said. “All agree I'm close to a breakthrough with Wohler-9. Whatever you do, don't close the compensator. You've already achieved better than 95% compensation. Meteorologically, you've already won.”

“You've got until sunpeak day after tomorrow to achieve your breakthrough, Synapo.”

There was no point in arguing further. Synapo rolled out from under Sarco and drifted off to the left while climbing a temperature gradient to a slightly cooler stratum. That inverted gradient so early in the day was a measure of the meteorological disturbance—the residual effects of the alien creations—the completed dome would eliminate.

After an hour of charge, he was still quite hungry, but nonetheless he balled and dropped, wind whistling through the feathery frond of his cold-junction, until he neared the top of the dome. Then he slowly spread his wings, braking in a swoop that carried him on a complete circular inspection of the dome.

He made one more pass around the dome, lower now, looking for any sign of spacetime instability. Why did he care? The dome could nave leaked like Nimbar and it wouldn't have mattered to him. It was a habit, though, a matter of professional pride, pride in his race, pride in Sarco's people and the technology they shared with the Cerebrons.

As he rounded again toward the open sector, he braked to a slow gentle glide and, stirring hardly a wisp of dust, came to rest beside the Avery robot who called himself Wohler-9.

He now had a fairly good idea what an Avery robot was. He had a modest grasp of the language called Galactic Standard, and even though it was certainly not standard in their part of the galaxy, they had become aware of it from the occasional bursts of discrete hyperwave that had reached them beginning centuries before. Translation of the language had been slow and incomplete, lacking anything that might have served as a Rosetta stone, but they had acquired a feeling for the language, in terms of the mathematical development of the species, and then with Wohler-9 on hand—not quite an analogue of the Rosetta stone—their fluency had progressed to the modest state Synapo now claimed.

“Good morning, Wohler-9,” Synapo said.

The robot slowly swiveled his head until the eyes bore intently on Synapo, but otherwise he gave no sign of recognition. That did not distress Synapo. In fact he expected it. He now knew that the robot did not consider him a master, and so he was not worthy of attention unless he somehow violated the robot's basic programming: a prime directive and three guiding principles.

The prime directive was to erect the monstrosities that had played such havoc with their weather by energy and particulate emissions, and which were now covered and almost neutralized by the compensator. The disturbance had been almost as great as that caused by the impact of a giant meteor a quarter-century before.

The function of the monstrosities was still not clear, other than being creations for the masters. With their benign weather—brought under control eons before—the notion of shelter and buildings, if it had ever existed, had long since disappeared from the racial memory of the blackbodies, lost in prehistory.

“You properly informed your masters of our interference and asked for assistance more than a hand of days ago, if we translated your message correctly. Each day I have asked if you have received further instructions among the numerous messages that we have monitored in both directions. Your responses thus far have not been reassuring. But now we have reason to suspect that you have received some clarification of the situation, if we understand a message you received yesterday morning. I informed you of that message yesterday afternoon. I now ask again. Have you received further instructions?”

Still the robot did not answer. He had swiveled his head back to watch the procession of robots and vehicles passing out of the dome, heading north across the plain bordered by the forest.

“We will complete the compensator—the dome—tomorrow, thwarting your prime directive,” Synapo added.

That brought a response. Wohler-9 turned to face Synapo.

“Miss Ariel Welsh will deal with you when she arrives this afternoon,” Wohler-9 said, and swiveled back to watch the evacuation.

There was no point in attempting further dialogue. Synapo took off and headed for charge altitude and a Cerebron caucus.

CHAPTER 2

THE DOMED PIT

Ariel Welsh, in her typical fashion, came in too fast on a trajectory that was accordingly too flat, and she skipped off the planet's atmosphere like a flat stone hitting the surface of a millpond.

“Darn,” she said, which seemed to understate the situation somewhat. She turned the controls over to Jacob Winterson, saying, “Here, you do it.”

“You should have asked me earlier, Miss Ariel,” the robot said. “You must save yourself for the negotiations with the aliens. But I do have a few suggestions with regard to your approach trajectories in general, which should benefit...”

“Put a lid on it, Jake!” Ariel said impatiently. Nonetheless she watched the robot closely and with a great deal of admiration, not only for his style of piloting but for his superb appearance as well. She particularly liked to watch his biceps flex.

She had acquired the robot only months before, the whim of a spoiled rich girl, teasing a jealous boyfriend and rebelling against the mores of a bigoted Auroran society.

Robots like R. Jacob Winterson were not popular on the planet of Aurora. Neither the men nor the women of Aurora wanted to be upstaged by the perfect comeliness and superhuman strength of a humaniform robot. Humaniform was the term their creator, Dr. Han Fastolfe, had used to describe them, searching for a better term than humanoid, which hardly sufficed to describe Jacob. The Avery robots, like the one she had once known as Wohler on the planet Robot City, could also be described as humanoid, but they were a far cry from Jacob.

The simulation of a well-muscled body that was Jacob Winterson was a reflection of that era when bodybuilding was the vogue of a stagnant Auroran society.

She watched him now as he plugged himself into the ship, a small two-man jumper with a cockpit just big enough for the two of them. She should have used the ship's computer to set up the proper approach trajectory, just as he was about to do, instead of coming in cowboy fashion, hands on.

She watched the thick muscles at work in his bull-like neck, watched the flexing of biceps the size of piano legs, corded by thick veins reaching across his powerful forearms.

She had prevailed upon the ancient Vasilia Fastolfe, the estranged daughter of the famed Or. Ran, to delve deep into the catacombs below Aurora's Robotics Institute and bring out Jacob from among the thirteen humaniforms left over from the aborted campaign to sell them to a recalcitrant Auroran public.

She had never seen Jacob naked, though Derec didn't know that. Vasilia had brought him up from the depths fully clothed. And then he seemed so real—so alive in the human sense—that Ariel had never explored beneath the surface of the ample wardrobe she had provided him. It seemed too much an invasion of privacy.

The idea appealed to her, she had to admit, but not so strongly as to overcome her loyalty to Derec. In her mind, her teasing was not a form of disloyalty, no matter how miserable it made Derec. Like the myriads of young women who preceded her, she had no idea how miserable it really made him or she wouldn't have teased him.

On their third orbit, Jacob located their destination: the beleaguered robot city Wohler-9 had described by radio after they had jumped into the system. Derec was apparently not in the city at the time. Ariel had counted on hearing Derec's voice.

Their destination was the second-largest iridescent domed pit they had seen on the planet, and the only one with a pie-cut of city buildings that extended to the center of the shimmering pit.

Jacob laid in a trajectory that would bring them through the atmosphere to a landing on the open plain half a kilometer north of the dome and near the path of evacuation of the Avery robots; and then, with the help of the jumper's computer, he executed the maneuver flawlessly. They disembarked less than fifty meters from the line of evacuation and commandeered a large courier robot carrying two packages.

“Return to the city;' Ariel said as she sat down on one of the packages and motioned Jacob to sit down on the other one. She would like to have said, “Take me to Wohler,” but the non-positronic brain of the courier would not have been capable of interpreting and executing that command.

As they neared the open sector of the dome, towering a kilometer above them, Ariel said, “Can you raise Wohler on the radio, Jacob?”

“I have, Miss Ariel,” Jacob replied. “He is standing over to the right of the opening in the dome.” The robot pointed and said, “There by that large open lorry.”

Up close, the paradoxical nature of the huge iridescent bubble became more dramatic as Ariel looked down through the flickering wall of the dome into a pit that seemed to underlie a city built on solid ground. Looking through the wall and the opening at the same time, the city seemed to float above the excavation. It left her feeling decidedly uneasy.

“Take us to Wohler,” she said to the courier. They disembarked at the lorry and walked up to Wohler-9, an imposing gold machine standing at the front of the lorry and facing the stream of evacuating robots.

“I am Ariel Welsh,” she said.

“I know,” said Wohler-9.

“What is going on here?” Ariel asked.

“We are moving the necessary materiel for construction of a second Compass Tower and city on the other side of the plain, five kilometers away.”

“Why?”

“This dome will soon be closed by the aliens, blocking all traffic into and out of the city.”

“Why?”

“That is not clear.”

“Where is Derec Avery?”

“I do not know, since he is not on this planet.”

Ariel took a moment to absorb that. “When did he leave?”

“He has never been here,” the golden robot replied.

Now she felt slightly ill. She had misunderstood that weak relay from a central computer, which had led her to believe Derec would be here. She had to keep talking, or scream. She had thought she would see him so soon.

“Are all the supervisors here ninth generation?” she asked.

“No. I am the only ninth. All others are eighth generation.”

“How did that come about?”

“Wohler-l sacrificed himself to rescue you from the side of Robot City's Compass tower during a life-threatening thunderstorm, Miss Welsh.”

The Burundi's Fever Dr. Avery had exposed her to—amnemonic plague, so-called—had robbed her of the links to her memory. The memory had still been there, but she had lost the connections to it. Derec had helped restore those links by providing clues from their mutual experiences. That particular experience involving Wohler-l must have been exceptionally potent, for now her mind orchestrated that clue into an unnerving symphony of emotion as the experience condensed into consciousness. The guilt of causing the termination of that magnificent golden robot, laid on top of her misunderstanding of the relayed message from this planet, left her momentarily faint.

She swallowed hard to regain her composure and then said brusquely, “What is the nature of the dome? Why not simply destroy it?”

“A simple demonstration will suffice to answer your question, Miss Welsh,” Wohler-9 replied.

He unclipped a meter-long, chrome-plated crowbar from the side of the lorry and started walking toward the edge that bordered the right side of the opening in the dome's glimmer.

Ariel and Jacob followed him, and as Ariel approached the interior of the dome, getting a little ahead of Wohler-9 in her impetuous fashion, she could see up close the soft blackness of the lining, a blackness that demarcated the end of the ground and the beginning of what seemed open space. Looking down at it sent her into a dizzying subjective vertigo. She seemed to spin in that black space as it drew her down, sucking at her mind.

“Under no circumstances come closer than half a meter, Miss Welsh,” Wohler-9 said as he casually moved his arm in front of her. With that warning she seemed to come to her senses, and she moved back out so that she was facing the edge from a distance of a few meters; her head cleared, and from that position she could now see along both the inside and outside walls.

Wohler-9 then approached the edge of the wall to almost that half-meter limit himself. He stopped then, facing the inner wall, and said; “And don't become confused. The wall may seem deceptively far away. “

He took a baseball batter's stance then, and with a lusty swing that brought the crowbar around in a horizontal arc perpendicular to the wall, he struck the edge of the dome with the middle of the crowbar. Without a sound, the edge of the dome, like the edge of a supersharp tool, cut the crowbar neatly in half. The far end of the crowbar sailed off. The near end stayed firmly in Wohler-9's hands as he completed his swing.

Then he casually tossed the remnant toward the inside wall.

Ariel's eyes had naturally followed the flight of the far end of the crowbar until it hit the ground and stopped skidding. She looked back just as Wohler-9 tossed the piece left in his hand toward the interior blackness.

That piece seemed to curve in toward the blackness a fraction of the distance it would have traveled if he had tossed it straight up in the air with the same force, and then it came shooting back out on a parabolic course obviously calculated to hit no one. It landed behind him a distance equal to the distance it would have traveled in front of him if the wall had not been there.

“Now, a second demonstration will point up and clarify the dome's external characteristics,” Wohler-9 said.

He picked up the half-crowbar that had just sailed back out of the blackness, walked over, tossed it into the lorry, and then unclipped two sections of a tubular pole from the side of the vehicle. When he fitted the two sections together, he had a pole about five meters long. From a locker he took a large piece of white cloth that he unfolded and tied to the pole to form a square flag a little less than four meters on a side. With the flagpole in hand, he walked along the outside of the dome until he was three or four meters from the edge of the opening. Ariel followed him.

They were walking along the edge of a deep, shimmering hemispherical pit two kilometers across and a kilometer deep. From that viewpoint there was no evidence of the city that they knew existed inside the shimmer.

“Under no circumstances let any part of your body touch or project into the transparent dome,” Wohler-9 said. “That part of you would go through and never be the same again. Now observe the flag.”

He pushed the flag through the dome's glimmer. It seemed to disappear.

“Perhaps it appears to be gone,” he said, waving the pole, “but look carefully at the far side of the pit.”

At first Ariel could see nothing unusual on the other side, but after a moment, after looking more carefully, she finally saw a tiny white flag waving, far away, two kilometers away, on the other side of the pit.

Wohler-9 laid down the pole so that it still projected into the dome. It did not lie flat on the ground. The near end hung suspended, slanting into the dome at the ground. The tiny flag on the other side of the pit had disappeared into the grass.

“Two further observations,” Wohler-9 said, “for which we'll use the lorry.”

He left the pole projecting into the dome, retrieved the other half of the crowbar from the deep grass, tossed it into the lorry beside the first half, and stepped in to stand at the driver's station. Ariel took a seat immediately behind the golden robot and Jacob stepped up to stand beside Wohler-9, who immediately took off down the west side of the dome, staying well away from the edge of the pit.

They were almost halfway around the dome before Wohler-9 spoke again.

“We should be coming to it now,” he said.

And then Ariel saw the white flag lying in the grass with the pole sticking out of the dome a few centimeters above the ground.

Wohler-9 stopped the lorry.

“You don't need to get out.”

He stepped down from the lorry, picked up the pole carefully, as though it were a fragile memento, walked back, and offered the flag end to Ariel.

“Take hold of the end,” he said.

When she did, he moved his end as though to bend it in her grip, and it snapped in two.

“Passing through the dome distorts the crystal structure, setting up fault lines with very little strength. Now one last observation, this time inside the dome.”

He drove back the way they had come and then drove through the opening, close to the right side. The traffic pouring out of the dome gave way smoothly, shifting to its right to accommodate the lorry, as though a computer were directing all the traffic—which it was, of course: the city central computer.

“We'll take the perimeter route to avoid bucking the traffic coming down Main Street,” Wohler-9 said, “even though it will be a little longer this way, half-pi-times longer.”

Wohler-9 drove rapidly to a point half-way around the perimeter of the dome. He stopped at the same wide street: Main Street, which approached the dome as close as any. Ariel looked back down the street and saw the Compass Tower framed in the opening of the dome.

Wohler-9 led them now to the dome wall opposite the end of the street and handed Ariel a pair of binoculars as he pointed to a small bright object in the soft darkness of the inner wall.

Ariel put the binoculars to her eyes, and with the focus wheel at the infinite setting, she could just barely make out a shape that had the appearance of a small two-man flier headed toward them with its landing lights on.

“This is our final test of the dome, which we began earlier this afternoon,” Wohler-9 said. “Right now the flier is held by the gravity of the black concavity at a virtual distance of four kilometers. It is headed toward us, but held motionless by the black concavity with the flier's impulse engines throttled back to 75% capacity, equivalent to an acceleration of ten gees. We plan to bring it in now. Its fuel is almost depleted.”

Ariel had a hard time taking the binoculars away from her eyes. She turned to hand them to Jacob.

“Here, I want you to record this,” she said. “I want you as a witness. Derec ' s not apt to believe any of this. “

“Thank you, Miss Ariel,” Jacob said, “but with my 50-power binocular vision I have already recorded the unusual operation of this flier.”

Ariel was tired. It had been a long day already. Altogether too much for one day. Too much sensory stimulation, too many strange ideas, too much emotion. She missed Derec and felt inadequate to the challenge presented by this alien world.

“Unless you have further exhibits and demonstrations, Wohler,” Ariel said, “I would like to shower and freshen up. Later, after some dinner, you can give me a detailed report.”

“I have just ordered in the flier, Miss Welsh,” Wohler-9 said. “We shall now proceed immediately to your apartment.”

As they drove down the broad street toward the Compass Tower, the faint sound of the flier grew louder. Ariel turned to watch its lights growing brighter now in the soft darkness surrounding the city. She had a hard time taking in everything she had seen in the short time she had known Wohler-9.

Then she could see the flier growing larger with her naked eye, until it came hurtling out of the wall and screamed by overhead, spiraling up over the Compass Tower and out the opening in the dome.

CHAPTER 3

WOHLER-9'S STORY

THE LAWS OF ROBOTICS

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Han Fastolfe, An Introduction to Robotics,

Chapter 1, Ancient Technology.

“Now, Wohler, I would like to hear this from the very beginning,” Ariel said.

She had just sat down to eat dinner. They had arrived at the apartment an hour before—a small two-bedroom flat on the second and top floor of a small building on Main Street, halfway toward the opening in the dome from the Compass Tower.

Jacob stood quietly in a wall niche near the entrance to the apartment. Wohler-9 was standing attentively on the other side of the table from Ariel.

“I was the seventh and last of the supervisors to arrive by Key teleportation on the morning of...” Wohler intoned when Ariel interrupted him.

“No, Wohler, not in quite that much detail,” she said.

“You do not want it from the very beginning, Miss Welsh? You would like more of a summary?”

“Yes. And confine the summary to your interactions with the aliens and their erection of the dome.”

“Very well. We began cityforming the planetary surface with construction of the Compass Tower on the open plain one-point-zero-two kilometers from the nearest forest vegetation.

“We had progressed to the third floor of the Compass Tower when an unusual incident involving a witness occurred at the edge of the forest.”

Ariel interrupted him. “A witness robot?”

“Yes, Miss Welsh. To alert us to the migration of planetary life into the construction arena, we had established a rapid circular patrol of twelve witnesses on a perimeter two kilometers in diameter centered on the Compass Tower.

“The unusual incident involved destructive bisection of a witness as it passed near the forest.”

“Bisection, Wohler?”

“Yes, Miss Welsh. The witness was cut in half. Just before the incident, that same witness had been observing the flight of several of the aliens we now call blackbodies to a point near the forest about twenty meters above where the incident occurred.

“Those observations by the witness constitute its last transmissions to core memory over the comlink.”

“Switch to memory detail, Wohler,” Ariel said quietly.

“The blackbody flight pattern began just after the preceding witness had passed by. A blackbody would fly to a point about twenty meters above the incident point, stall out, collapse into a ball, and drop to five meters above the ground. At that point it would spread its wings and resume flight, swooping down and back up into the air, narrowly missing a collision with the ground.

“A careful inspection of the witness's transmission shows a faint shimmering in the air coincident with the blackbody's resumption of flight. The shimmering progressed rapidly toward the ground from the point of flight resumption. The performance was repeated by a succession of blackbodies, and as the witness approached closer, it became apparent that on each cycle, the shimmering proceeded not only to the ground, but also back up, traversing the perimeter of a thin vertical area that grew taller with each successive pass. The pattern was repeated rapidly by twenty-one blackbodies before the witness arrived. The blackness we see from the inside was not visible to the witness as he approached. He was looking at the blackbody construction almost edge-on, but slightly outside, moving in for a close-up view.”

“The record ended at that point, of course,” Ariel said.

“Yes. Since that time, witness records show that to be the pattern of blackbody operation in constructing the dome. As the construction progressed, the intersecting arcs traversed by the shimmer, and the point to which the blackbodies flew to begin each pass, rose in the air until it reached its present location. That operation now begins at midmorning at a height of a little more than a kilometer directly over the Compass Tower and lasts for one hundred twenty passes of the blackbodies, which generally takes a little over an hour.”

“Hour?”

“An ancient term from the vocabulary file. It means one-twenty-fourth part. The blackbody I conversed with used my access to central's files to search for an exact translation of their terminology, one-twenty-fourth part of the period of planetary rotation.”

“And do they divide that further, as we do with our centads?”

“Yes. Their next division, into sixty parts, can be labeled 'minutes' according to central. The conversion of those units into our decads and centads gives, for the hour...”

“I am quite capable of making that conversion, Wohler.”

“Thus construction of the dome begins each day at ten AM, and...”

“Ten AM?”

“At ten hours antemidday, or more exactly in the ancient terminology, ante meridiem, being before noon. Their day is divided into two twelve-hour parts: AM, before noon, and PM for post midday or after noon.”

“Didn't it seem odd to your alien that he could find terms that seem to describe their technology in our ancient history files?”

“No. By my recording, specifically in that regard, he remarked, 'How satisfying to find our own circadian rhythms—the metabolic divisions of our natural clocks—so faithfully reproduced in another species. ' “

“It seems darn odd to me,” Ariel said. “But to get on with this, at the time of the incident, the witness robot was sliced in half by the first elements of the present dome as its momentum carried it past the edge, just as the crowbar was cut in half earlier today.”

“Yes,” Wohler replied.

“You had had no interaction with the blackbodies until then,” Ariel said.

“That is correct.”

“But then you began a dialogue.”

“No. Not immediately.”

“But not to do so was to violate the Third Law, Wohler.”

“On the contrary, Miss Welsh, we chose to comply with the Third Law by retaliation.”

“But, Wohler, that violated the First Law, which protects intelligent life.”

“No, Miss Welsh, it does not. It protects humans.”

“It protects Wolruf. “

Wolruf was a dog-like alien, a friend of both Ariel and Derec. They had been through several unpleasant experiences together, starting with an alien pirate by the name of Aranimus who had held all three of them prisoner at one time. That was when they had first met Wolruf.

“But only because Master Derec chose to make an exception,” Wohler-9 said. “Dr. Avery's original programming made no such exceptions. The first law now protects humans and Wolruf. But our definition of a human being is quite narrow. It certainly does not include the blackbodies.”

Dr. Avery was Derec Avery's father and the erratic, egocentric scientist who had created the original planetary Robot City. He had suppressed his teenage son's memory and subjected him to irrational experiments in bizarre situations on and off the Robot City planet. Derec had learned a great deal about himself, but Avery left Robot City without restoring Derec's memory.

“Proceed, Wohler,” Ariel said. “How did you retaliate?”

“We attempted to stop construction of the dome by intercepting the flight path of the aliens, ramming them with a one-man flier, but it was not entirely successful. The alien was destroyed, but so was the flier and the robot pilot. Spectrographic and flame temperature records support a hydrogen explosion as the cause of failure.”

“So then you started a dialogue,” Ariel said.

“No. Logic dictated that we determine why a hydrogen explosion caused the failure, so we decided to trap and examine an alien.

“At night, the blackbodies convert into silver balloons which they anchor to the tops of trees. We successfully captured one which had anchored to a tree on the very edge of the forest five kilometers away. We easily unhooked its anchor line after cutting the tree down.

“However, in order to examine the alien, it was necessary to first remove the balloon which surrounded it. Again a hydrogen explosion destroyed the alien and the surgeon when he attempted to cut the balloon away with a laser scalpel.”

“It figures,” Ariel said with a sigh. “So then you initiated a dialogue. Surely.”

“No. One or more of the aliens had been confronting robots all around the Compass Tower construction site for three and a half days, but our programming did not require us to grant recognition, and we were, of course, quite busy erecting the Compass Tower, which had to be completed before work on the general city could begin. Understandably, we paid no attention to their confrontations, until I personally was confronted by one of the blackbodies. That happened immediately after we lost the surgeon and his laser scalpel. It then occurred to me, when I was confronted, that by conversing with the alien, I might find out what the surgeon was seeking, and I was then compelled by the Third Law to do so. The Third Law says...”

“I know, I know,” Ariel said. “So then you initiated the dialogue.”

“No. Surely it is clear by now, Miss Welsh, that the alien initiated the dialogue.”

“So it seems,” Ariel said with resignation coloring her voice. “I wouldn't want it any other way.”

“On the contrary. It is now quite apparent that if I had initiated the dialogue earlier...”

“You're quite right, Wohler. But you need not feel bad for all that.”

“I understand technically that you can be affected in that manner, but I am incapable of experiencing such an emotion, Miss Welsh.”

“Clearly,” Ariel said. “Clearly. Now what has your dialogue with this alien revealed?”

“Not a great deal, Miss Welsh. I have spent most of the time teaching him Galactic Standard, since I have no linguistic capacity for understanding his language. And teaching him has been most difficult because of that lack of linguistic knowledge. But he seems now to have a rudimentary knowledge of our language, which should prove useful in your dialogue with him.”

“I take it you are speaking of a male alien, then?”

“I loosely ascribe that gender, but it is more a description of his manner and conduct, a similarity to the attributes of a male human, which I perceive by the behavioral differences between the males and females of the human species.”

“Male chauvinism in a robot? Is that what I am detecting, Wohler?”

“Not at all, Miss Welsh. My analysis is quite objective.”

“On the contrary, Wohler. I would say it is quite programmed, and of the Dr. Avery variety. But let's get on. What else did you learn?”

“In reviewing my records,” Wohler replied, “I found that I taught the alien our language and much about humans, but learned little about them, other than the fact that the construction of our city is disturbing their equilibrium. He used the terms inversions and puncture nodes and abnormal thermoclines, but the terms have little meaning for me, and so little meaning for me to pass on to you.”

“The terms do not help me a great deal, either,” Ariel said. “Do they mean anything to you, Jacob?”

Up to that point, Jacob in his niche had not entered into the conversation, nor moved at all. He had appeared frozen in position. Now his head gave a little twitch. A glimmer came into his eyes.

“They are meteorological terms, Miss Ariel,” Jacob said. “Like in weather?”

“Yes.”

“We're disturbing their weather!” she exclaimed.

“It would seem so, Miss Ariel,” Jacob confirmed.

“Wohler, I must speak to this alien—now, tonight.”

“That will not be possible, Miss Welsh,” Wohler said. “He has already retired to his balloon.”

“What to do, Jacob?” she said in exasperation, as much to herself as to Jacob. “What to do?”

“It appears you can do nothing until morning, Miss Ariel,” Jacob said.

“How do we contact him in the morning, Wohler?” Ariel asked.

“I know of no way to contact him, Miss Welsh, nor to lead you to him. I can't tell one of the blackbodies from another. And even if I could, they are seldom on the ground except at night, and then they are isolated in a hydrogen-filled balloon.”

“So what do we do?” Ariel asked.

“We must wait for him to come to us.”

“And when will that be?”

“He generally comes to the west side of the opening in the dome each morning.”

“That reminds me, Wohler, pass the word over the comlink that all future references to time of day and passage of time in general are to be expressed in alien terminology. I want to become accustomed to their way of thinking. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

“So when will this blackbody come to the dome?”

There was a pause before Wohler replied.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Welsh, but the encyclopedic file shows nothing regarding behavior under either Rome or Romans. “

“Forget that, Wohler. Just an old saying. I wouldn't know a Roman if I saw one. Answer my question please.”

“He comes to the dome near ten AM each morning, just before the aliens begin their construction work. He seems to be inspecting that effort. “

“A good supervisor,” Ariel said.

“No. I have the impression that he does not approve of the construction; that it is being performed by a tribe to which he does not belong. His terse comments seem to be more a critique of their work in an artistic sense.”

Ariel did not sleep well that night. She longed for Derec to be there beside her, and she was homesick as well. Compared to this alien planet with its insidious dome and its blackbody creatures straight out of hell, Aurora seemed the most desirable of places: comfortable and quiet, typical of Spacer worlds. She longed for its cultivated farms and green fields, its open, hardly discernible cities with their manicured lawns and gardens, its junk food shops and underground malls where she and Derec had had such fun with their friends. It startled her then to realize she had had fun. She had ignored the old friends who had ostracized her, but the new ones—though they might still covet her wealth as much as those old ones—had been genuine fun.

And fun with Derec. She yearned to see him intensely; she missed him so.

She had become quite fond of Jacob and didn't think of him as a robot with her fun mind, for he was fun to be with. He had a wry way of saying things that was quite amusing, and Ariel suspected he had cultivated it for that very reason, but of course, he would never admit that he had the faintest conception of human humor. Yes, she had become quite fond of Jacob.

But it was Derec she longed for: his pinched face, his skinny frame. Typically male, his rapid teen growth had sacrificed meat and breadth to bones and height. Yet she could still look down on him by several centimeters. But she had stopped growing, while he would probably reach and pass her as he filled out. For the time she had, she was going to enjoy being taller than he and use it to advantage whenever that seemed appropriate. She loved teasing him. He was so loveable.

And she slipped off into a lonely, scary dream.

CHAPTER 4

DIALOGUE

Synapo had never drained himself quite so low before. The musculature of the legs particularly seemed weak as he walked toward the brook that morning. He had exhausted the fat juice cells for long-term storage around his chest and waist and buttocks and now he was drawing on the prompt supply cells that fed his muscles. And those in his legs were nowhere near as plentiful as those that supplied the large pectoral muscles that powered the downbeat of his wings. The legs were always the first to go. That was an old Myostrian saying that Sarco and his ilk were fond of iterating for some reason beyond the fact that it was true.

And the truth of that adage was never more apparent than when he had started for the brook that morning. He had actually felt sort of faint after the long inactivity of a night's tether.

Sarco had already left. That became apparent after breakfast as Synapo climbed to optimum charge altitude. Sarco was already on station in Synapo's favorite space immediately over the center of the compensator. Naturally, Sarco would be the only one of both tribes not to recognize that and defer to him. It was the first time he had violated that space without permission.

Yet, the times were unusual; old, little-used protocols were easier to violate than those reinforced by continual use. The concept of preferred location was not a natural one with the Cerebrons as it was with the Myostrians, who tended to stay in one location for long periods in the process of constructing and destroying weather node compensators like the domed glimmer below. The Cerebrons did not normally spend the night on the ground, but instead tethered their reflectors together in large drifting nightpacks by interlacing their hooks. They were normally nomads, continually roaming allover the world in the state of deep cogitation that had brought their race to the intellectual heights it now enjoyed.

The last time they had anchored for any significant period of time was when both tribes were battling the weather effects of the great meteor fall a quarter-century before the aliens arrived.

Thus, preferred space was the Cerebron equivalent to the Myostrian preferred location. The preferred space was naturally toward the center of the pack, and the most exalted was dead center where the less taxing audio communication reached the greatest number of Cerebrons—and the surrounding elite first—and where the more taxing radio communication reached all the Cerebrons with the least expenditure of energy.

When the two tribes interacted—as they were doing now, and as they had during the meteor incident—the dominant tribe tended to be the Cerebrons unless the Myostrians had an unusually aggressive leader, and up until that morning, Synapo had been the more aggressive in their interaction despite the fact that it was Sarco and his Myostrians who were aggressively building the compensator. That was to be expected. Synapo would have been a little alarmed—contrary to the tenor of his words—if the Myostrians had performed otherwise.

So in the context of past behavior, it was surprising to find Sarco—with his hook pointed aggressively forward—on station in Synapo's space. The natural disposition of both tribes was peaceful, so Synapo meekly left his hook pointed aft and took up his station two wingspreads to the right of Sarco as Sarco circled around the center of the dome far below.

“You are on the wing a tad early, Sarco,” Synapo said.

“I watched the alien land last night,” Sarco said. “And monitored its jump into our zone two days before. That, perhaps, explains their discrete modulation of hyperwave. But not entirely. The metal monsters phased in with continuous modulation. How do you explain the jump? Do we have two different sets of aliens?”

“No. Not if I understand what Wohler-9 was telling me. This new being is clearly a master of the metal ones.”

“Well, this morning, I'm joining you. I'll be able to observe the construction almost as well from your station as from mine. And though I care not a whit for either set of aliens, it would be a shame to destroy life unnecessarily. I want to see for myself how you handle them.”

Synapo said nothing further for the rest of the short charge. He was already exhausted by the endless days of talk and the surfeit of poisonous oxygen that he felt compelled to hold in his sacs. But he continued to carry his hook aft so that Sarco would know that his silence was not intended as an affront. He could afford to allow Sarco to dominate this brief morning charge. But that was all he could allow him.

They balled and dropped as Sarco's people were forming up for construction. Synapo had not intended for Sarco to get ahead of him, but from habit set by the short time the aliens had been on their world, Synapo opened on glide path in his usual manner, which took him on a high circular pass around the dome.

Sarco chose to go in directly. By the time Synapo realized that Sarco was not following, it was too late to correct his error, but he circled tight, high up, and began to dive well before he had completed half the circle. Synapo watched him through the transparent dome as Sarco made a fast, powered approach and an aggressive landing: a powered stall a half-meter above the ground with his wings spread to their full ten-meter breadth as he came to rest only two meters from the aliens.

Synapo mentally cursed Sarco, but restrained himself and did not radiate his feelings as he might well have had he known the aliens could not receive his broadcast. A cloud of dust obscured Sarco and the aliens as Synapo came in on a flat gentle glide path and settled to the ground well inside the cloud. He knew he was more majestic in the air, but he also knew his approach would be obscured by Sarco's dust, so he chose to come in closer even than Sarco. Still, his approach was executed so adroitly he added not a whit to the ball of dust that was already rapidly dissipating.

There were three aliens: Wohler-9, a nonmetallic being a head shorter, and a third being as tall as Wohler-9 that Synapo took to be nonmetallic until he detected the neutrino radiation that characterized Wohler-9 and microfusion in general. He had to conclude that despite the deceptive appearance, the third alien must be of the servant tribe, although he knew that quick generalization might be diplomatically embarrassing if it proved wrong.

Sarco at least had the good sense not to open his oxygen vent prematurely. And it was apparent that Wohler-9 was confused and not able to distinguish between Synapo and Sarco. The robot's eyes kept flicking back and forth between the two of them.

“Good morning, Wohler-9,” Synapo said.

There was no hesitation, no ignoring Synapo this morning. Wohler-9 swiveled his head and rolled his eyes around ahead of that motion so that they came to rest on Synapo well before the head caught up.

“This is Miss Ariel Welsh,” the robot said as he gestured with a rather grand motion toward the diminutive alien, who stood hardly as high as Synapo's shoulder joints.

And with a nod, Wohler-9 dismissed the other alien as a servant beneath consideration, a fact confirmed by his words.

“And this is the humaniform Jacob Winterson, Miss Welsh's personal robot.”

The validity of Synapo's generalization was reassuring as was his initial reaction to the small alien's unimpressive appearance. But Wohler-9 had failed to introduce Synapo, a breach of etiquette not easily forgiven, which was not reassuring.

Still, the robot was only a servant and perhaps not as well schooled in diplomacy as the small master, who was a she, a member of the subordinate clan of the dominant tribe. Synapo had guessed she would be from his earlier conversations with Wohler-9.

Yet that was also disappointing since he would still not know, after all the interminable discussion that would surely take place, how dominant that other clan was and whether that other clan would also dominate the tribes of his world if this Miss Welsh did not prove to do so. She was certainly not very imposing.

But her personal robot was imposing, and he was only a servant. That left Synapo with nothing to go on at that point but superficial appearances, which he knew from long experience to be untrustworthy.

And then, to Synapo's astonishment, Sarco was talking.

“Welcome to our world, Miss Ariel Welsh,” Sarco said. “My name is Sarco, which is as close as we can come to a translation into your language. I am leader of the Myostria.”

That caught Synapo by surprise. He had not really expected Sarco to be fluent in the language. Sarco had a better command of the language than Synapo would have thought possible from the brief radiated lessons he had given the Cerebrons. Sarco had obviously monitored those lessons, but he could only have picked up the audio patterns by special tutoring from one of the Cerebron elite.

And that, too, disturbed Synapo. Someone of the elite must be striking for dominance, and hard enough to risk undercutting Synapo in his rivalry with Sarco.

Synapo was so caught by surprise that before he could say anything, Sarco, with a gesture every bit as grand as Wohler-9's, said, “And this is Synapo, leader of the Cerebrons. “

Sarco's introduction could be taken two ways. Synapo hoped the small alien placed Sarco's relationship to him in the same pattern as Wohler-9 to her. Had Sarco intended that to be the case? Had he misjudged Sarco's behavior during charge that morning?

“Yes, Miss Ariel Welsh. Welcome to our world,” Synapo said.

The small alien turned away, shaking allover, after suddenly putting her hand over her primary and secondary vents. She was obviously caught in a fit of ague.

Wohler-9 studiously ignored her condition. The only reaction of the other, the humaniform, was a slight upward curvature at the corners of the robot's primary vent. Her behavior and theirs confused Synapo and led him to wonder about the efficacy of the robots as suitable servants. Surely one of them should have done something to ease her paroxysm.

She recovered quickly, however, and turned and said, “I am pleased to meet both of you,” and then she put one hand to her front, the other to her back, and doubled over at the waist, which led Synapo to wonder if she had now suddenly been caught by a cramp like that which sometimes caught him when he was carrying too large an inventory of oxygen, as he was at that moment. But unlike her, if a cramp hit him in this situation he would suffer through and ignore it. That gave him a nice feeling of superiority.

CHAPTER 5

IMPASSE

Ariel finally got control of herself and with a sober face, turned back to face the aliens. Their frightening appearance had almost paralyzed her until that first one, Sarco, had spoken.

Wohler-9 had pointed them out before they began their drop, while they were still lazily circling above the center of the dome.

And then that first one had landed, coming in so fast it seemed like he could not possibly stop in time, and then unexpectedly spreading his wings so wide he engulfed them all in a jet black space absolutely devoid of any detail, as though they were suddenly and inexplicably thrown into the featureless black concavity of the dome.

When he retracted his wings, they seemed to melt into his sides and disappear in the soft blackness. The contrasts of color —or lack of it—heightened the disturbing appearance of the alien: the vicious white hook that could obviously disembowel a human in one neat stroke, and the disconcerting red glow of the sunken eyes that gave her the feeling she was peering deep into the bowels of hell.

Then the other one arrived, much more decorously than the first, and when he opened his mouth, she was immediately transported back to Earth, to Webster Groves, one of the caves of steel that she and Derec had once visited. And then the first one so confirmed that impression, she could hardly contain herself.

And when the second one, the one called Synapo, had said, “Yas, wekkom to ah wuld, Miz Ahyahl Wilsh,” she had to turn away to suppress her laughter and an incipient sneeze caused by the tingling in her nose from the faint odor of ammonia they exuded.

She could hardly contain the delightful relief that came with the knowledge that these demons had a comic side. They were just naturally provincials of a Webster Grove persuasion. Wohler99 could not possibly have given them that accent.

She recovered quickly, however, and without sneezing, she turned and said, “I am pleased to meet you both,” and then she bowed. “This is an historic occasion, which we shall surely carry with us always. It saddens me that such an important meeting must be marred by discussion of the discordant incidents that have occurred before we can explore the great potential for harmony in the future relations of our two species.”

She steeled herself to put his reply in the framework he surely intended, and she found she could quite easily ignore the thick accent and concentrate on only the meaning.

“We are equally saddened,” Synapo replied.

“The protocol of my species in this situation suggests that you should select the first topic for discussion,” she said.

Immediately Synapo said, “Explain the square root of minus one.”

His reply seemed completely at odds with the discussion she thought was going to take place. She was not schooled in mathematics and was expecting more diplomatic double-talk. She hesitated for just a moment, and then turned toward Jacob and said, “Jacob?”

Immediately Jacob said, “The square root of minus one is a member of a class of numbers that cannot be given substance except in a specific context. In this case, one such context is the interrelationship of space and time, in which the measurements of time must be multiplied by the square root of minus one in order to properly relate them to the measurements of space.”

“Or the reverse,” Synapo said. “A quite satisfactory answer to a simple question, but then one must start simple and work toward the complex. And now what is your pleasure, Miss Ariel Welsh?”

That sort of drivel isn't going to get us anywhere, Ariel thought. Let's get right to it.

“Why have you isolated our city, enclosed it under this big dome?”

And as she gestured toward the dome, the first shimmer that morning—the first pass of the Myostrian construction—shot down the edge of the wall with a faint crackling and disappeared into the ground.

Ariel jumped, startled. With the edge of the dome off to her left and to the rear, she had turned slightly as she gestured and had caught the shimmer at the corner of her eye before the sound reached her ears. Being to her back, though, it had startled her more than if she had been facing the edge.

Sarco said, “Ah, my people have started work.”

Synapo said, “My colleague Sarco informed me yesterday that the node compensator—this dome—will be completed tomorrow, so that leaves us little time for negotiation. He further informs me that the dome is necessary in order to properly control meterological conditions. The particulate emissions and the radiation and convection of thermal energy from your creations are seriously disrupting the weather of our planet, and thereby disturbing our mental processes and our emotional equanimity.”

The source of Synapo's linguistic training came sharply into focus. He talked exactly like a Robot City supervisor. Only Wohler-9 could have downloaded all those big words.

What had he said about work on the dome? It escaped her as she zeroed in on his last sentence.

Jacob was right. The aliens were concerned about the weather and talked as though they were actually controlling it. Spacers and Settlers also talked about the weather a great deal, but so far had not been able to do much about it.

“You control the weather?” she said.

“Of course. It is essential that unruly airflow not disturb our cerebrations. How can one think when he is being bounced about in a turbulence? Your creations generate a puncture node of the worst sort.

“But now I believe it is our turn. And I suppose we must dispense with going methodically from the simple to the complex, as I had intended.

“What vital purpose do your creations serve? What ends justify the killing of two of our people—first, a Myostrian in legitimate pursuit of an assigned task, and then a Cerebron who was peacefully tethered and surely in no way interfering with your obscure endeavor?”

Ariel knew that, on balance, the destruction of a witness robot was hardly equal to the death of two intelligent beings. But she had heard that a good offense was the best defense.

“And in the pursuit of that task of questionable legitimacy,” Ariel replied, “your Myostrians created something that sliced one of my people in half.”

She didn't really think of a witness robot as people but the black bats—or as Wohler-9 termed them, the blackbodies—didn't need to know that.

“I respectfully remind you that it was your creations that caused the Myostrians to start construction of the compensator,” Synapo said. “I ask again: what purpose do those creations serve? What further threat to our equilibrium lies beyond the disturbance of our weather?”

It was a legitimate point, which caused her to reevaluate what was serious and what was not, who had provoked whom, and when, and how. Perhaps the weather was of equal importance to sentient life in their minds—perhaps the weather was their life.

That thought, coupled with the observation that, while he was talking, he had slued his hook around so that it pointed forward, like that of his companion, caused Ariel to reconsider the gravity of the situation. Even though she didn't know for sure what that rotation meant, it didn't seem to bode any good and might even be considered somewhat ominous, taken with the quiet way he had made his last pronouncement.

She had let their provincial accent distract her, which may have caused her to consider this confrontation less serious than it really was. She had known how serious the situation was well before the meeting, and her anxiety had steadily increased until the moment of confrontation. How had she let the circumstances of their meeting so distract and deceive her?

The shimmer at the corner of her eye at that moment and the crackling sound that accompanied it marked the pass of a Myostrian far above and brought her attention back to the construction of the dome. She noticed then that, while they had been talking, the edge of the dome had progressed toward the center of Main Street, closing the opening by at least two more meters on that one side, probably four meters considering both sides.

The city robots had extended Main Street into a road across the plain to facilitate their exodus. The two edges of the wall were not far from the edge of the road itself, four lanes wide where it exited the dome.

It was then Synapo's earlier comment came to the front of her mind: My colleague Sarco informed me yesterday that the node compensator—this dome—will be completed tomorrow, so that leaves us little time for negotiation.

She had not forgotten it. It had simply been overlaid by a surfeit of sensory stimuli. It was difficult to take in all the data and digest it in proper order. But clearly they were in the midst of a negotiation in which she had reasoned herself into a corner, a fact that she must honorably acknowledge in the presence of these aliens; and time was running out.

Perhaps that acknowledgement alone would buy her some time. A diplomat might have been duplicitous at that point, but Ariel had recognized earlier that she was no diplomat. You take in the data, you analyze it, and you proceed accordingly.

“Your argument is sound,” Ariel said. “It takes only a brief moment—having now all the facts—to recognize that we are the offenders and you are the offended. We ask for your patience. We ask that you stop construction of the dome while we consider how we may resolve this dilemma, leaving neither of our peoples with further injury and with harmonious relations restored.”

She recognized that wasn't quite right. Their relations had never been harmonious. That was her minor concession to the duplicity of diplomacy.

Neither of the aliens said anything, but Ariel knew something was going on. Standing side by side, they had turned their top sections so that their hooks and eyes confronted one another briefly. Then they turned back to confront Ariel.

“We agree to a one-day delay in the construction of the compensator following completion of today's effort. We will meet again tomorrow as we met today.”

Ariel felt a touch on her elbow and half turned as Jacob bent over to say softly, “Would it be helpful to know the present stability of their weather?”

“I don't understand,” she said, just as softly.

“How effective is the dome in its present state?” Jacob asked. “That data will enter into our reckoning of possibilities for resolution of the dilemma.”

“Ninety-nine-point-two percent compensation including the improvement allowed by consideration of both positive edge effects,” Sarco said before Ariel could ask.

Ariel understood then why Jacob had asked the question.

“Could you live with that if we caused no further deleterious effects?” she asked.

“Yes,” Synapo said.

As though not to be outdone by Ariel's lieutenant, Sarco asked, “Why do you discrete or jump modulate hyperwave when the signal fidelity and freedom from noise is so much better with continuous modulation?”

That time Ariel didn't hesitate a second. She looked at Jacob and said simply, “Jacob?”

The reply by Jacob was delayed by a distraction at that point. A small, tight, luminous green flame, no more than ten centimeters long, bloomed in the blackness a few centimeters below Synapo's eyes. But he said nothing.

Jacob was distracted only momentarily—just long enough to register the spectrum and flame temperature of pure hydrogen co-blended with pure oxygen and a trace of ammonia.

“We are not familiar with continuous modulation,” Jacob said.

“Strange. You teleport with both types of transition,” Sarco said. He seemed not to be disturbed by fire from Synapo. “You yourself jumped here in discrete mode, and Wohler-9 phase condensed here in continuous mode. Do you not recognize the parallel with hyperwave?”

“I am not an expert in these technologies,” Jacob replied. “We can only take your question under advisement.”

As though to avoid further discussion, Synapo turned abruptly, and with a short wobbling run and an awkward hop, he flapped into the air and started gracefully into a great climbing turn. Sarco hesitated only a moment and then turned, wobbled, and with an even more awkward hop, quickly followed him. They were soon far above the dome.

At the end of the dome construction activity that day, the edges of the dome had just started cutting into the four-lane road.

CHAPTER 6

INTRIGUE

Immediately after the meeting, Synapo climbed more rapidly than usual to charge altitude. He kept his hook aggressively forward—something he almost never did when he was climbing to charge, and he paid no attention to Sarco, who was climbing in his wake—again something neither a Cerebron nor a Myostrian did when there was the least possibility of someone sharing the climb.

In short, he was exceedingly irritated with Sarco, and he wanted Sarco to know it. As he climbed, he radioed the local Myostrian weather station for the optimum altitude in the compensator's zone, the corresponding stability quotient, and the forecast for the afternoon. He had some deep cogitation to do, and he wanted optimum conditions in which to do it.

First, there was the matter of internal tribal dominance. That took precedence over Sarco's unsettling behavior—he would get to that—and the assurance he had given the aliens that he could live with a compensator efficiency of 99.2%. Sarco had not questioned his conclusion—by Nimbar, he better not have—but Synapo wasn't all that sure in his own mind how the Cerebrons might react to it. They were much more sensitive to small disturbances in the weather than were the Myostria.

The weather was important, but in the short term, it was the possibility of one of the elite striking for tribal dominance that had him most concerned. There was a definite hierarchy throughout the Cerebron pack, but it was exceptionally rigid among the members of the elite, who currently numbered eleven. If one of them were striking and involved him now, it could seriously undermine his relations with Sarco and his negotiations with the aliens. That was his primary concern. He thought of himself more as a statesman than as a mere politician. By the time Synapo had climbed to charge altitude, he knew how to proceed.

When he leveled off on station, he radioed Neuronius, his second in command, and as he summoned him for conference, he noted with satisfaction that Sarco had taken up his customary station: fifty meters below in a fifty-percent-tighter circle. Sarco had called to him only once on the way up, and Synapo had ignored him.

Now as Neuronius approached, did Synapo note a more casual, less deferential stroking of his wings? The striker would surely be his second in command. Yet, unlikely as it might be, it could be anyone in the pack. Once, a hand of centuries ago, a young, midpack rabble-rouser had struck successfully, destroying the elite—that is, the elite structure—and generally upsetting the entire hierarchy as he brought in his own lieutenants from up and down the pack. He had proved to be one of the better administrators. And Synapo was in his egg line, twice removed.

Neuronius rolled into conference beneath him, hook properly reversed. Synapo's hook was still set aggressively. It would stay that way the rest of the day. There would be no more meek, deferential conferences with Sarco or anyone else until these affronts and possible strikes were resolved.

Synapo got right to work on Neuronius.

“It comes to me on a zephyr that someone is trying to supplant you in the hierarchy, Neuronius.” He put it casually as though he were an unconcerned, indifferent observer.

He was looking for Neuronius's immediate reaction, a slight tremble-twitch in the hook, a faint flicker in the redness of the eyes, an ever-so-slight fanning of the cold-junction, the uncontrollable body language that one displays before one can steel himself to the shock of the unexpected.

And there it was: a slight wave in the silhouette on the right, a bunching of the right deltoid muscle—the one that pulled up the right wing and readied it for the power downbeat. That was a typical guilt reaction. Not a reaction in response to fear, the fear that someone was trying to supplant himself, Neuronius; but instead a response to guilt concerning his own ambitious plans. That guilt could lead to fear later as Neuronius pondered what Synapo's remarkable intuition might lead to; but at the moment it was only a symptom of guilt.

Synapo knew then the shape of things within and without his tribe. He could scheme up suitable responses. Anticipation of the cerebral exercise involved, the challenge, filled him with keen anticipation. Nowhere was there room for fear, for anticipation that he might fail.

Neuronius was a threat he could meet head on. And Sarco was an excellent engineer and an able administrator, but not the political animal that he faced in a tussle with Neuronius.

Synapo listened keenly to Neuronius's answer to the needling remark.

“I do not fear such a change if that Cerebron can serve you as ably as I,” Neuronius replied.

Ah, suitably servile. He was not yet ready, not quite sure of himself. That called for a less aggressive response, at least for the moment.

“We meet again with the aliens tomorrow morning,” Synapo said. “I want you and Axonius to accompany me.”

Axonius was third in the elite hierarchy, next in command after Neuronius. It was essential that Axonius witness the ineptitude of Neuronius and discredit him with the elite. Exactly how that would come about Synapo was not sure, but he did not lack confidence in his ability to carry it out in some fashion during their meeting with the aliens or later. Neuronius was not yet ready for command decisions and might never be. Synapo had merely to show that to Axonius and simultaneously educate Axonius in the difficulty of command.

Further, it would not hurt to condition Neuronius in the direction that would encourage ineptitude; that was not statesmanlike, perhaps, but certainly the political thing to do. Synapo had only to enhance what was already natural. Neuronius was by nature a haughty beast who acted as though he were infinitely superior to all those below him in the Cerebron pecking order. Synapo had only to encourage and assure him that the aliens were also to be included in that inferior category.

He made it seem as though he were asking Neuronius 's advice, confiding in him, passing confidential information to him beyond that which he had provided the Cerebrons in caucus, and by bits and pieces he led Neuronius to the conclusion that the aliens were weak and ready to capitulate and leave the planet. He was careful, however, never to say that directly but merely to imply it by innuendo.

Synapo was ready then for the next meeting with the aliens.

CHAPTER 7

CRISIS

“How do we stand right now, Wohler?” Ariel asked.

She and the two robots had just left the meeting with the aliens and were traveling down Main Street in the lorry, heading for the apartment. The street lights stretched ahead toward the Compass Tower like a string of illuminated pearls in the dim light of a late dusk, the permanent dusk created by the dome.

“In what respect, Miss Ariel?” Wohler asked.

“With respect to the city, Wohler. The dome will be closed day after tomorrow unless we can get through to those monsters. What are you doing about it?”

“We are moving the necessary materiel for construction of a second Compass Tower and city on the other side of the plain, five kilometers away.”

“Yes, I believe those were the very words you used earlier,” she said. How could she be irritated by a machine that, given the same stimulus, came up with the same answer? “So your grand plan is to hop allover the planet, a jump ahead of the aliens, constructing Compass Towers and cities—weather nodes—while they follow along behind neutralizing them with their domes?”

Was she still feeling guilty about Wohler-1 and taking it out on this poor machine that wouldn't know it even if she were?

“We tried first to neutralize them and lost a pilot robot and flier,” Wohler-9 said, “and then we tried to learn more about them and lost a surgeon and laser scalpel.”

“You could have learned a lot more about them by just talking to them.”

“That has not proved to be true, Miss Ariel, and did not seem to be necessary at first since they destroyed only that one witness. They did not interfere with our endeavor once we enlarged the patrol circle to avoid construction of the dome. It did not appear they were violating our governing laws nor interfering with the Prime Directive until their construction work began to circle inward—to close the dome. Then we did begin to talk, and they succeeded in learning our language, but we learned very little except specialized terminology which you have now determined to be meteorological in nature.”

“What about the central core?” Ariel said. “You'll surely not leave that behind.”

“No, Miss Ariel. Our control computer's mainframe is mobile. When the blackbodies begin construction on the last day, we'll move it out to serve the new city.”

“Which will then shortly be covered by a dome.”

“Yes. That was why we hyperwaved Robot City for help.”

“Come upstairs with us, Wohler,” Ariel said as Wohler-9 pulled to the curb in front of the apartment building.

When they walked into the apartment, both Jacob and Wohler-9 headed for wall storage niches.,

“Jacob,” Ariel said, “would you rassle up some lunch for me? See if you can get a crisp garden salad out of that thing. And then sit down at the table. I'll freshen up and be right out.”

When she came out, the salad and a glass of milk were waiting on the table; Jacob sat across the table from where he had set her place, and Wohler-9 was standing in his niche.

She felt uncomfortable when the humaniform, Jacob, stood in a niche. Her Auroran upbringing made it seem natural for Wohler-9 to do so. That was where he was supposed to be when he wasn't doing some task for her. And she should have felt exactly the same way about Jacob, but his appearance didn't allow it.

“Now,” she said as she began eating, “our most pressing problem is how to carry out the objective of making this planet suitable for human life and at the same time avoid disrupting the weather. The weather does seem to be the main concern of the aliens.

“However, that's too tough to handle during lunch. It will ruin my appetite and upset my digestion.

“Let's talk instead about the hyperwave noise, the other way we're apparently disturbing them. I can understand the weather problem, sort of, and even have a glimmer of what a puncture node is—hot air punching up through a cold air layer, I suppose —but I've got no idea what they mean by discrete and continuous modulation. What's that all about, Jacob?”

“I'm not sure myself, Miss Ariel,” Jacob said. “I am aware of only one type of modulation of hyperwave: that which the alien called discrete. Nor had I drawn the connection of hyperwave modulation with jump technology, which permits us to travel through hyperspace. Were you aware of such a connection, Wohler?”

“No,” Wohler-9 replied, “but I was aware that teleportation using a Key to Perihelion is technologically different from jump teleportation.”

“This seems to me a minor problem involving new technology that we obviously should have been aware of,” Ariel said in true managerial style. “Get to work on it, Jacob.”

“Very well, Miss Ariel,” Jacob said. “Where would you suggest I start?”

For a moment Ariel thought that perhaps Jacob was being sarcastic, and then she realized that could not be the case. He was just a robot. Still, could the Robotics Institute have included an optional sarcastic module for the positronic brain of their humaniforms? Not likely. But it was an interesting thought that diverted her from these pesky engineering problems. They were more Derec's forte than hers. Social problems, people problems, sarcastic positronic modules; all those. she doted on. Not pesky problems with meteorology and hyperwave.

She was quiet for awhile. Jacob at the table, and Wohler-9 in his niche, said nothing.

Then she said, “Wohler, is there a Keymo on the planet?”

“Yes,” Wohler-9 said. “Keymo, eighth generation, is in charge of Key control.”

“There's your lead then, Jacob,” she said. It was merely a people problem—robot problem—after all. “We want to develop continuous hyperwave modulation. Synapo said there was a connection between continuous hyperwave modulation and Key teleportation. Keymo on Robot City manufactured the Keys. Keymo here, in charge of Key control, of all those here, should be most familiar with Key teleportation and the one most likely to fathom continuous modulation. See if the two of you can't cobble up some equipment to implement it.”

“Very well, Miss Ariel,” Jacob replied.

“Wohler,” Ariel said, “find Jacob a comlink cartridge, plug it into him so he can find Keymo on his own, and then come back and help me. With your knowledge of the aliens, we've got to figure out a solution to this dome problem.”

Jacob and Wohler-9, when not conversing audibly, close at hand, had been communicating with their cumbersome, long-distance, radio frequency systems. The comlink cartridge would hook Jacob into their more sophisticated, short-range, microwave telephone network.

“Very well, Miss Welsh,” Wohler-9 said.

Ariel did not hold out much hope that Keymo and Jacob would come up with anything significant. In her experience, ordinary robots just weren't creative. Yet there was that extraordinary exception: that brief period on Robot City when Shakespeare's Hamlet had lived again, supported by robot actors, and the robot Lucius had created his artistic masterpiece, the dynamically chromatic edifice called Circuit Breaker.

A half-hour later Wohler-9 returned.

“Did Jacob locate Keymo?” Ariel asked.

“I believe so,” Wohler-9 said. “He had contacted Keymo over the comlink before I left.”

“Good. Does this apartment have a memory projector?”

“Yes. The niches are equipped with sockets, and that wall serves as the screen.”

“Just what we need. How many times did you meet with the alien Synapo?”

“Thirty-four.”

“How long each time?”

When Wohler-9 began reciting the list that contained the time for each meeting, Ariel interrupted him.

“On the average!” she said.

“Forty-two minutes,” Wohler said.

“I'll not have time to go over all that before tomorrow morning. Yet I desperately need some clue as to how we may resolve this dilemma.

“Wohler, while I'm thinking how to screen that material rapidly, download to central core just the dialogue of your meetings with Synapo, and get a printout back to me as soon as possible.”

“Download in progress,” Wohler-9 said.

A fraction of a minute later, while Ariel was still pondering her problem, Wohler-9 said, “Download complete.”

A couple of minutes later, she said, “I really don't know what I'm looking for, but I do know what I'm not looking for. Wohler, delete all sections of the meetings dealing with linguistics and play back the rest at double speed.”

She could understand neither Wohler-9 nor the alien at that speed. Then when she slowed it down so she could understand Wohler-9, she still couldn't understand Synapo's Webster Grove accent. She finally slowed it down to normal and could understand most of what Synapo said, but not all. She refused to slow it any further.

Just as she didn't hope for much from Keymo and Jacob, she really didn't expect to get anything much out of listening to Wohler-9 and Synapo. But it did keep her conscious mind actively on the problem and left her subconscious mind to freewheel on all the correlated branches of the main subject.

Neither her conscious mind nor her subconscious mind contributed anything of significance during an inquiry that became dull and dragging after the novelty of watching and listening to a giant bat wore off.

The courier from central core arrived with the printout of the dialogue late in the afternoon, and with that interruption, Ariel decided to take a break and eat an early dinner. She had heard nothing from Jacob and realized she had been expecting him to return for dinner, when there was really no reason why he should, since he didn't eat and merely kept her company when she did. Still, it was a habit she had become accustomed to, and she missed him now that she was deprived of that pleasure.

Was it Jacob she missed, or really Derec? She had only to ask herself that question, and the longing to see Derec and the flood of homesickness for the beautiful estates and green farmlands of Aurora overwhelmed her.

She tried to put it out of her mind as she ate a lonely dinner, but it was not possible. Her mind rebelled from the magnitude of the problem that faced her on this alien world, and while she ate, she wallowed in her loneliness and homesickness, and before she finished eating, tears of self pity were trickling down her face.

As she finished eating, Wohler-9 asked, “Are you in pain, Miss Welsh?”

Ariel wiped her tears away with a napkin. “No, Wohler. Just lonely. “

“Does my presence relieve your loneliness to any degree?”

“No.”

“To what degree did my assistance this afternoon serve in the preservation of the city, Miss Welsh?”

“Very little, I'm sorry to say,” Ariel said. “Why do you ask? Did you expect otherwise?”

“Certainly I had hoped otherwise, Miss Welsh. I proceed at all times in the direction that best serves the Prime Directive, if that does not violate the more compelling laws that govern my behavior.

“I have been neglecting my supervisory duties in the construction and operation of the city, Miss Welsh, for I concluded that your imperative best served the Prime Directive. If that seems no longer to be the case, I must return to my duties, which are currently spread among the other six supervisors.”

“Very well, Wohler. Return to duty.”

“I will clear the dinner table, request a maid to serve you in the future, and then take my leave.”

“I'll clear the table, Wohler. And a maid won't be necessary. Jacob will suffice. “

“But he is on another assignment, Miss Welsh.”

“We'll handle it, Wohler. Just raise Jacob on the comlink, tell him to get back here no later than ten PM, and then leave.”

She was anxious to be alone. Wohler had begun to get on her nerves, Wohler and that alien she had felt compelled to watch and listen to all afternoon.

“Will you be needing me at the meeting tomorrow morning?” Wohler asked.

“No. Did you get hold of Jacob while you were chattering there?”

“Yes, Miss Welsh. He will be here by ten PM.”

“Then leave, Wohler.”

Despite her warm feelings for Wohler-l, she was fed up with this Wohler-9. Yet in his dialogue with the alien, she felt there had to be some clue to the aliens, to their behavior, to their needs, to their culture, a clue to something that would make the aliens and humans compatible so that this desirable planet did not have to be abandoned and bypassed in the future.

She turned to the printout the courier had delivered before dinner.

Strange how that archaic form of transmitting information—the printed word—had stayed around so long. Yet was it so strange when that marvelous instrument, the human brain, was taken into account: the speed with which she could assimilate the words and conjure related images, the speed with which she could scan the pages?

She quickly thumbed to where Wohler had left off in his projection that afternoon and scanned through the rest of the dialogue—ten times the volume they had covered that afternoon—and she did it in less than two hours. And got more out of it, by being able to easily and quickly replay, fast forward, skip, and ponder over the significance of a phrase, a word.

It was true that central core had eliminated the alien's accent —and certainly that had speeded things up—but the true efficiency came with the printed word itself: the strange archaic telepathy that extracted alien ideas from an alien mind and moved them into hers.

Yet despite the ancient beauty of the printout, nothing of significance came from its perusal, no more than had come from the boring afternoon with Wohler and the memory projector.

Still, her intuition told her there had to be a solution. She just wasn't looking at it right, or with the proper frame of mind, or in the proper place. If not the dome, where on this weird world was she supposed to look? The city was the problem, a weather node the aliens had termed it, an aggravating, uncontrollable irritant, like a grain of sand in an oyster.

And the aliens were coating it, smoothing it, to relieve the abrasion, like an oyster coats the sharp edges of a grain of sand with iridescent nacre, mother-of-pearl. Now she was even beginning to think like an alien. This world is an oyster and the city and its dome are a pearl. Oyster World. Pearl City. She had christened a world and a city.

And she had gotten no further by the time Jacob returned at ten PM.

“Well, you're finally back,” she said when he came in. “What did Keymo have to offer on the hyperwave problem?”

“Very little, Miss Ariel,” Jacob said. “Neither of us could see how Key teleportation technology could be applied to modulation of hyperwave signals.”

“Did you examine the parallel dichotomy of hyperspace jump technology and discrete modulation of hyperwave? That parallel connection should provide clues to the connection between the Key and continuous modulation. Right?”

Ariel had first heard the word dichotomy on the way to Oyster World, when Jacob had used it; and she had been wanting to use it ever since. It had such a ring of erudition. Now she had played it back to him.

“You suggested only that we look for a connection between continuous modulation and Key teleportation. Neither of us could see any during a lengthy discussion which concluded only a half hour ago.”

You dummy, she thought, the creative process is primarily a matter of drawing correlations. If there is a connection between discrete modulation and jump technology, as the aliens claim, you must first ferret out and understand that connection. Then maybe you can deduce what continuous modulation is by examining Key teleportation for the parallel connection the aliens say exists there. She thought she had made that clear before he left. He, too, had heard everything the alien had said.

“Tonight, while I'm sleeping,” Ariel said, “examine everything in your memory concerning jump technology and discrete modulation of hyperwave. Go back and forth comparing the two at every point. Look for similarities. Correlate one with the other. And give me a report in the morning of all instances where you see a similarity between the two.”

“Very well, Miss Ariel.”

She retired to bed then and thought how she would like to see the full musculature of Jacob without his clothes on. And that made her feel guilty, and her longing for Derec came rushing in, the longing she had been pushing from her mind all evening that had probably brought on the unmaidenly notions concerning Jacob.

She went to sleep, and sometime during the long night, she dreamt of playing in a verdant Auroran cornfield with her personal robot as she had when she was a child, and then the robot became Jacob, and they were running and laughing as he chased her down the rows of tall green plants waving in the gentle breeze, and gradually he was no longer chasing her but waiting for her at the end of the long row, far away; yet it was not Jacob; and then she realized that Derec had come to Oyster World, and he was standing there with his arms outstretched, waiting for her. Joyfully, she ran toward him down the long rows of waving green.

She awoke, and it was morning, and she was indeed on Oyster World. But Derec was not there.

CHAPTER 8

THE WOLF PLANET

“I'm grateful you took the time to come,” Derec said.

He glanced at his companion sitting next to him in the runabout.

“Wouldn't 'ave, 'cept 'u sounded urgent,” Wolruf said.

They were heading east on Main Street toward Derec's apartment. He had just picked up Wolruf at the wolf planet's primitive spaceport at the west edge of the robot city.

Wolruf had arrived in the Xerborodezees, a Minneapolis-class hyperspace jumper that the wealthy Ariel had given the small alien the year before to speed her return home. The Xerborodezees could accommodate ten passengers, and as it turned out, it was the only way that Derec and his robotic companions were going to get off the planet. He had accidentally demolished his means of transportation when he arrived.

Wolruf was the size of a large dog with sleek, well-groomed, brown and gold fur; and she was shaped like a dog except for the fat-fingered hands and the flat face which, despite its flatness, bore unmistakable lupine characteristics.

Farther east on Main Street, a half-kilometer beyond Derec's apartment, a large pyramidal edifice—the Compass Tower—was at that moment strikingly displayed in a glowing frame, redshafted by the morning sun still hidden behind it.

“You mean Ariel,” Derec said. “I sent my call for help through Ariel.”

“'u signed it. Not Ariel. Wouldn't 'ave come if 'u 'adn't signed it, 'Situation desperate, Derec.' Goin' call 'u 'Desperate Derec' from now on.”

She gave a funny gargling bark, not a growl, more a sharp rattling gargle, as though her throat were laden with phlegm.

Derec had become so accustomed to her in times past he had forgotten that extraordinary chuckle and her uncommon treatment of Galactic Standard. The imperfections in her pronunciation of Standard had regressed somewhat during the past year on her home planet, but her rolling of the letter “r” had been almost entirely eliminated after prolonged exposure to Ariel and Derec, and that improvement seemed to be still largely in place except for a trailing burr. The left-out and chopped-off pronouns, the missing aitches, and the sibilant hiss for the “zee” sound were still evident. And the “ 'u” pronunciation of “you”—not at all an “ooh” sound, but a sort of choked and swallowed bark that masked off the initial “y”—could only come from the throat of a lupine alien, something a human was unlikely ever to match.

“I'd never label this situation desperate,” Derec said. “That's not the message I sent. I contacted Robot City on my internal monitor link, and they hyperwaved our house computer on Aurora. At least that's the routing I set up. I expected Ariel to relay my message to you, but that doesn't sound like Ariel, either. Sounds more like someone with a vital interest in this planet, which is nobody I know of.”

“Doessn't matter 'ow I 'eard. 'u succeeded, I'm 'ere. Now what's so desperate 'u've got to call 'alf across the galaxy?”

“I've got a rogue robot on my hands, Wolruf.”

“Doessn't follow the Lawss of Robotics?”

“Yes and no. It's got the laws but doesn't seem to know for sure what a human is. It's like a dam chameleon. The way I've got it figured, it changes itself to match as best it can whoever it thinks might be human at the moment.”

“Like Mandelbrot's arm?”

“Yes and no. The stuff it's made of isn't as coarse as the Robot City material. Its cells are a lot smaller than the variety in Mandelbrot's arm.

“I've got the feeling we're seeing micromolecular robotics here; and I've got no way to reprogram it. It's self-programmed and seems to imprint like a newly hatched chicken at the drop of a hat, and on anything it takes a mind to.”

“So 'ow can I 'elp?” Wolruf asked.

“It had a wolf form when I first arrived. It was the leader of a pack of intelligent wolf-like creatures which it must have thought were human. They were attacking the city's Avery robots. The wolf robot gutted one of the Averies. Robot City relayed their call for help over my internal monitor.

“When I got here, it imprinted on me, after giving me a really hard time—and I mean a really hard time. It was still humanoid when I left it this morning, and soaking up information from the city library like a second-generation Settler on a mission to Earth.”

“What iss it 'u think I can do?” Wolruf asked.

“It was wolf-like when it came into the city, after I arrived, and then it imprinted on me. Now it's coming along a little too fast, too much personality change too quickly. With your wolfish characteristics, you make a natural model for imprinting, a nice compromise between wolves and humans.”

“Amazing! Why do 'u 'umans persist in thinking of us ass wolves? There'ss a species on my world—the dongeedows—that arrr a great deal like the gorillas in 'urn ssoos, but I don't think of 'u...now wait a minute. I take that back. 'u arrr beginning to resemble a dongeedow a great deal. “

She gave that phlegm-rattling gargle again. And yes, the trailing burr was definitely still part of the pattern.

“You can joke all you want, Wolruf, but I don't regard this situation as very humorous.”

Derec was not in the best of spirits. It was good to see Wolruf again, and that had cheered him momentarily. They had known each other for a long time, ever since she had been more or less a slave—an indentured servant—of the alien pirate Aranimas. Derec had freed her with the help of Mandelbrot, the robot he had put together from the pirate's supply of spare parts.

But Wolruf was hardly a stand-in for Ariel. Just seeing a good friend like Wolruf made him yearn for Ariel even more. If it had just been her and not Wolruf who had run down the ramp of the Xerborodezees, life wouldn't seem so grim right now.

He shouldn't have reacted adversely to Wolruf's weak attempt at humor. He should at least give her credit for trying. But he missed Ariel, and he wasn't about to let anything cheer him up.

“'u arrr in a foul mood,” Wolruf said. “A rogue robot couldn't make 'u feel that bad. Why issn't Ariel with 'u?”

It was eerie the way Wolruf could sense his mood, interpret it, and put her finger on what was bothering him.

“Let's not go into that. Let's just say she wasn't too pleased with me when I left her on Aurora. So she's probably pouting back there in a snit.”

And he added as a bitter afterthought, “With her playboy Winterson. You've never met him. Jacob Winterson. As revolting a bundle of simulated muscle as you'll ever see.”

“A cyborg? Like Leong?”

Wolruf was referring to Jeff Leong, a young man whose brain had spent a rather unpleasant period in a mechanical robotic body while the Avery robots on Robot City had repaired and healed his damaged human body.

“No, a humaniform robot,” Derec said. “Looks exactly like a human. Almost impossible to tell from the real thing.”

“'u're jealous of a robot?”

Wolruf gave that phlegm gargle again.

Derec said nothing. The conversation was veering in an unpleasant direction.

“Ah, a sorrr point,” Wolruf said. “My apologies.”

“We're here,” Derec said as he pulled the runabout to the curb in front of the apartment.

He looked up anxiously to the second floor.

“ 'u're expecting trouble?” Wolruf said.

She was reading his mind again.

“No. Mandelbrot would have phoned me,” Derec said, not quite truthfully, for he did feel just a shade anxious as he got out of the small vehicle. Mandelbrot and SilverSide didn't seem to understand one another. Perhaps he should not have left a robot to babysit another robot.

But everything seemed normal when they walked into the small two-bedroom apartment on the second floor. Mandelbrot was standing in his storage niche in the wall near the door. SilverSide was plugged into Derec's terminal and didn't even turn around when they came in.

“Impressive,” Wolruf said, her eyes going wide as she stared at the robot at the terminal. “ 'e's certainly got 'urrr scrawny shape.”

SilverSide's lustrous silvery exterior only approximated the details of Derec's appearance, but in size and proportions, it was, indeed, an excellent approximation.

Wolruf was exaggerating, of course. Derec was not scrawny. He was thin, but well endowed with sinewy biceps and with the hard plates of muscle across chest and abdomen typical of an older teen's torso.

But with that humorous barb, Wolruf had hit that sensitive nerve again. Derec did feel inadequate whenever he thought of Jacob Winterson.

“Everything under control, Mandelbrot?” Derec asked. He had walked to the center of the room, hesitated when SilverSide did not respond to their entrance, and then turned to address Mandelbrot.

He got no answer from the robot in the niche.

“Mandelbrot!” he repeated.

“Oh, yes, Master Derec.” SilverSide unplugged and turned to face them. “Everything is under control.”

Derec glanced at SilverSide and then turned to walk toward the niche as he said again, “Mandelbrot, you okay?”

“He's fine,” SilverSide said. “I deactivated him.”

“You what?” Derec's voice reflected his astonishment that SilverSide would have had the temerity to shut down Mandelbrot's microfusion reactor, risking partial loss of positronic memory.

“When you're not around, he tends to give me unwanted advice,” SilverSide explained. “Here, I'll bring him back up, since it apparently displeases you to have him down.”

“It does a lot more than displease me.” Derec's voice shook with anger. “And stand back, I'll reactivate him myself.”

SilverSide stopped. He had started walking toward Mandelbrot's niche.

“Don't you ever—I repeat—” and now Derec's voice was strident, grating, “don't you ever deactivate Mandelbrot again.”

“Certainly not,” SilverSide said, “if that is your wish, Master Derec.”

“That is most certainly my wish.”

“Very well, Master Derec.”

Derec had walked to the niche, and now reached around to swing open a plate set flush in Mandelbrot's back that covered a switch panel. Carefully, watching for Mandelbrot's reactions at each step, he reactivated the robot by flicking switches in a definite sequence.

Stabilizing the microfusion reactor was the most delicate part of the activation procedure and took the most time—almost half an hour. The robot's eyes were designed to guide that operation, changing color in the spectral sequence whenever it was safe to move on to the next phase—from black through purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and finally back to colorless black—Mandelbrot's switch—induced standby state.

Completely ignoring Wolruf, SilverSide had gone back to the terminal and plugged himself in again after his exchange with Derec.

Wolruf had curled up on the davenport and was fast asleep when Derec finished.

Battery backup should have provided the low power needed to protect Mandelbrot's positronic brain from serious harm, but there was always the possibility of a loss of long-term memory during the nanoseconds required to effect the switch from one power source to the other. Derec would never know until the gap revealed itself, perhaps at some juncture when that particular memory would be urgently needed.

As he pressed the power-reset button, he cursed himself for having left the two robots alone together. Mandelbrot's eyes lit up with a red glow that pulsed rhythmically.

“How do you feel now, Mandelbrot?” Derec asked.

“Normal. The wild one deactivated me. I didn't realize what he was doing until too late.”

The robot gave a small shudder.

“Was that a Third Law reaction just now?” Derec asked.

“I believe so, Master. I didn't protect myself properly as the Third Law directs. I felt a momentary disturbance upon reaching that conclusion, which must have sent an associated potential wave through my motor control system. Is that the way it appeared?”

“Yes. I just wanted to be sure that it was not some damage from deactivation,” Derec said. “Ah, Wolruf, you're awake.”

Wolruf yawned and stretched. “Mandelbrot okay?”

“It would appear so, except for a normal Third Law reaction,” Derec replied.

“It looks ass though anotherrr imprinting may not be ass likely ass 'u 'ad thought,” Wolruf observed.

The small hairy alien was looking at SilverSide, who was hunched over the terminal and seemingly absorbed in the information that was flowing into his brain.

“SilverSide has apparently put you down as an inferior,” Derec replied, “a variation on this planet's wolf species.”

“That was my conclusion,” SilverSide said as he unplugged and swung around in the swivel chair to face them, “and I have been unable to find any 'Wolruf' biographical file or anything to contradict that conclusion.

“Would you tell me all about yourself, Mistress Wolruf?” SilverSide requested.

“No!” Derec said emphatically. “Not now. Plug back into the library. The rest of us have got some things we must take care of now.”

SilverSide turned back to the terminal, and Derec motioned for the other two to follow him outside.

When they were standing by the runabout at street level, Derec explained.

“As I suggested to you earlier, Wolruf, he's coming along too fast now. Deactivating Mandelbrot confirmed that in my mind. 1'd consider that a violation of a sort of corollary to the Third Law. How does a robot view that, Mandelbrot?”

“The Laws are not infinitely rigid,” Mandelbrot said. “They are surrounded by side potentials that create what I can only call soft boundaries, foothill potentials that lead to the ultimate peak. The First Law has the hardest and sharpest boundaries of all, but even so, those boundaries are not absolutely and infinitely sharp.”

“Are you saying he violated the Third Law?” Derec asked.

“No, but he did something I would never do except to protect a human or myself.”

“Maybe 'e was protecting 'imself from 'urn ideass, Mandelbrot,” Wolruf said.

“Not likely,” Mandelbrot said. “I do not consider words and ideas to be a source of injury to a robot.”

“But he is in a very sensitive and impressionable state right now,” Derec said. “And that's another reason I want to get him out of the city and back to the forest where I found him, where he's apt to be more comfortable and less perturbed by strange stimuli.

“We'll take the runabout to the east exit and walk the rest of the way. It's only a couple of miles to the place I have in mind; there's a small grassy clearing in the forest near a clear pebbly brook—very peaceful and quiet. You and the wild one can trot along behind until we get to the east exit, Mandelbrot. Then we'll all walk.”

“Very well, Master Derec. Shall I get the tent and other Survival gear from the storage locker?”

“Yes.”

Derec could not remember his childhood. He knew that somehow it must have been different from that of other children on Aurora, for he did not have the natural feel and easy, confident way of handling robots that was so much a part of a normal Spacer's personality, something acquired beginning in earliest childhood. In all the nurseries and homes, robots were the only nannies to be found. On Aurora, for instance, the closest any adult ever got to a child was the human who supervised the nursery nannies.

Had he been raised by a human nanny, maybe even his own mother? Had that been a still earlier experiment of his eccentric father, Dr. Avery? Derec knew in intimate technical detail how robots worked—he was an expert roboticist—but he did not have that natural insight into the positronic brain that almost all Auroran children had by the age of five.

The only robot Derec felt really close to was Mandelbrot. It wasn't a matter of trust or distrust. Robots were what they were programmed to be. You could trust even the Avery robots that built Robot City and the other robot cities, like the one here on the wolf planet, if you knew who had last worked with their insides. The only time you couldn't trust them was when someone like the irrational Dr. Avery deliberately altered their programming. He had, for instance, excluded Wolruf from protection when he revised the programming of the Robot City robots.

But Derec seemed to lack the upbringing to deal naturally with robots—Mandelbrot being a possible exception, or as much of an exception as to make it a rule—and now he was confronted with SilverSide, a being he had concluded from behavior and appearance must be a robot, yet a robot as unpredictable and unsettling as any he had ever dealt with.

Like the Avery robots—and like Mandelbrot's control of his arm—SilverSide had the ability to change shape by changing the orientation of his cells, which themselves appeared to be tiny robots—microbots—even smaller than the cells of Avery material. Derec had pretty well established that those microbots, during a metamorphosis, were being reprogrammed by SilverSide's positronic brain, much like some living organisms—lizards and amphibians—seem to reprogram their own cells in order to grow a new limb or a new tail.

Yes, he was quite uncomfortable with SilverSide, and as he went around gathering up supplies for their outing, he realized for the first time that he had begun to consider SilverSide actually dangerous. He had never felt that way about any robot before, not on Aurora or anywhere else.

The fact that Mandelbrot's remarks had distracted SilverSide and reduced his efficiency did not seem to be a reasonable cause, logically arrived at, for the quite serious offense of deactivating another robot. Robots could not go around knocking one another out—seriously risking amnesia in the victim—simply because the victim had been a source of distraction, no more than people could. SilverSide had done something Mandelbrot “would never do,” to use Mandelbrot's own words.

SilverSide was an alarming phenomenon, yet exceedingly fascinating. Derec knew the robot should probably be deactivated, but that was a step Derec could no more take than could many other scientists who were on the cutting edge of their disciplines and involved in experiments dangerous to the society they lived in.

CHAPTER 9

INSIGHT

While she was eating breakfast, Ariel queried Jacob on the results of his nightlong cogitations.

“I have made a list,” Jacob said, “of the technical features that jump technology and discrete modulation of hyperwave have in common. Would you like me to project it on the screen?”

“Heavens, no,” Ariel said. “I don't understand that stuff. Transmit your list to Keymo over the comlink; see if he can deduce a parallel list that allows him to predict the characteristics of continuous modulation from the characteristics of Key technology, features they would likely share.

“And tell him I'd like an answer well before we go to the meeting with the aliens.”

She finished breakfast and stepped out onto the small open balcony to sample the fresh smells of morning. And she was assailed instead by the sterile, leftover smells from night in a brand new city; not even the yeasty smell of baking bread that characterized the city of Webster Grove at any time of day and was certainly to be preferred to the ozone and machine oil of Pearl City.

Until that moment she had not really come to grips with how much she disliked cities. She had put up with Robot City, and with Earth's caves of steel, and now with this city, just to please Derec, disliking it all the time but kidding herself into thinking she was having a great time.

She disliked cities, any city, and she disliked them most in the morning. Without thinking, she had expected to sample the new-mown hay of Aurora. Instead she was oppressed by the smells of a city she disliked intensely and yet was compelled to try to save. The thought of that negotiation, less than two hours away, lay—in its anticipation—not like an idea in her mind, but like a brick in her stomach.

With her nose wrinkled and breakfast roiling her gut, she turned and went back inside to dress for the meeting.

An hour later, she was dressed and sitting in the living room, still groping for some solution to the dome problem. Jacob was standing in his niche. She even preferred that in her present mood. She wanted no distractions this morning.

Quite edgy, she decided she could wait no longer for Keymo to communicate with her. She needed a solution to take to the meeting, any solution, even one for a minor problem.

“Jacob, raise Keymo on the comlink,” she said. “See if he's come up with anything on the hyperwave bit.”

“Keymo reports some limited success,” Jacob said. “He can now see certain features of Key teleportation that he had not seen before, features that might potentially serve as a method of instantaneous communication quite unlike current hyperwave communication.”

“Good. Could it be called continuous modulation?”

“Yes. But it modulates a sort of hybrid wave, not hyperwaves as we know them.”

“Good. That seems like a small distinction.” Particularly since she didn't know what any of it meant. “That must be what the aliens are talking about.

“Let's go,” she said.

“We're well ahead of time,” Jacob said.

“Drive slow,” she said as she walked out of the apartment with Jacob trailing closely behind.

He had requisitioned a small nonautomated runabout the night before, but not without some difficulty. With the evacuation at its peak, transport vehicles were in short supply.

Main Street was bumper-to-bumper with traffic, but it was all moving briskly so that Jacob, following her instructions to drive slowly, parted the traffic like a rock in a turbulent river. All eight lanes were flowing northbound to expedite the transfer of materiel.

Still, they arrived at the dome opening at 9:40 AM, more than twenty minutes ahead of time. At the dome opening, the street narrowed to four lanes and then turned into a dirt road a few meters north of the dome.

Wohler-9 was already standing vigil on the west side of the opening where the meeting with the aliens would again take place. This time she did not plan to make Wohler-9 a participant.

“Drive on north, Jacob,” Ariel said. “I don't want to appear anxious.”

She knew she must sound inconsistent, edgy to leave one moment, reluctant to arrive the next. She had to remind herself that he was just a robot and couldn't care, and so didn't judge her one way or the other. It was a good thing. She already felt inadequate enough.

Ten minutes later, Jacob said, “We are at the halfway turnaround point, Miss Ariel.”

She had been deep in her dome problem, still unable to think of anything that could serve to stall the aliens further. The closure of the dome seemed inevitable.

“Fine,” she said and glanced at him. “Let's turn around.”

For just a second, a quick thrill of affection for Jacob coursed through her mind. He was such a handsome hulk and so thoughtful and caring.

He was clad in an attractive, short-sleeve top of loose weave that she had picked out. She had selected it for this occasion because of its casualness. She was clad informally as well. She didn't want the aliens thinking she was toadying up to them, no matter that they might not be able to classify her attire one way or the other. It was more a matter of establishing the proper frame of mind—in her mind.

She reached over impulsively and patted him on the forearm. She put out of her mind the thought that he was incapable of not being thoughtful and caring, incapable of acting otherwise, and programmed so. And he was a handsome hulk.

He gave her a quick glance in turn.

“Is there something else, Miss Ariel?”

“Oh, yes, Jacob. There is. I just hadn't anticipated it back on Aurora when I first asked for your companionship.”

After all, he was only a robot. She kept telling herself that, over and over.

“Then I can be of further service?” Jacob said, questioning.

“You could, indeed, Jacob. It's just that I can't accept that service, no matter how delightful I might find it.”

And then there popped into her mind the image of Derec, waving, standing far away at the end of a long row of waving green corn. And she wondered where that memory came from. She had never been in a cornfield with Derec. Not that she could remember.

And that brought her back to her present responsibility, which was more an obligation to Derec, to carry out his wishes, for she had only negative feelings for the robot city otherwise.

Still, the obligation remained.

“Do you see any sign of the aliens, Jacob?” she asked.

“Possibly,” Jacob said. “I see three blackbodies that have just descended into a circular flight pattern around the dome.”

“Can you time our return so that we arrive just after they have landed?”

“I will endeavor to do so.”

He succeeded.

She got out of the runabout, walked over to face the aliens, and decided not to bow. Jacob stood to one side and slightly behind her.

Affecting a faint note of haughtiness, she said, “Good morning, ambassadors.”

They had called themselves leaders the day before, but she refused to use that term for fear they might misconstrue themselves to be her leaders.

“Gud mahnin', Miz Ahyahl Wilsh,” the middle alien said.

Ariel could not help smiling broadly. The Webster Grove accent took her by surprise again, but she immediately set her mind to eliminate it from consideration so as to avoid the less-than-serious attitude she had briefly lapsed into the day before.

“This is my assistant, Neuronius,” the middle alien continued, bunching on the right side what looked like a shoulder in silhouette, “and this is my third in command, Axonius,” and he bunched his silhouette on the left.

Ariel responded by inclining her head in the appropriate direction as each was introduced, a casual, restrained acknowledgment short of a pronounced nod.

The alien did not use the grand gesture that Sarco had used the day before when he had introduced Synapo, but it still left Ariel wondering whether she was dealing with Synapo or Sarco.

Here she was, on thin ice already, and the meeting had just begun. She guessed that it must be Synapo. It was he who had dominated the meeting the day before. On the other hand, these others were subordinates. They did not rate the grand gesture, even if this were Sarco.

She had nothing with which to parley except the analysis of hyperwave modulation that Jacob and Keymo had concocted at her prodding. And if this were Synapo, and if she had construed properly—that his green flaming the day before was an impatient assessment of Sarco's complaint—then it must have been a trivial complaint in Synapo's mind and not much of a bargaining chip for her side.

Not knowing for sure whom she was dealing with, she decided to stall.

She said, “I trust that you have now concluded that closing the dome does not have any immediate importance since it is already ninety-nine-point-two percent effective.”

“On the contrary, we feel it would be better to close the compensator and to completely enclose any such creations in the future,” the alien replied. “Although the emissions from the creation that Wohler-9 calls a city have been brought under control, we are still concerned, for the city may merely be a harbinger of worse things yet, things that lie off-world and are yet to be inflicted upon us.”

“I can assure you that no such dire things exist. We merely want to share this planet with you and are quite willing to go to great lengths to insure our mutual compatibility.”

“That would be more reassuring if it were to come from a leader. That would be a member of your he clan, if I downloaded Wohler-9 correctly.”

Another male chauvinist like Wohler-9, Ariel thought. This big bat had to be a male. Clearly.

The entire universe was filled with insufferable males.

“Not necessarily. Women—our she clan as you describe them —have often been leaders, and able leaders, functioning quite as well as men—our he clan.”

“But most leaders are still members of the he clan. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Ariel was forced to reply.

The discussion was certainly not going well. Ariel decided to risk her only bargaining chip in an effort to turn things around.

Without giving the other a chance to respond, she said, “But let's get back to the main points of our discussion, the things we have been doing that are disturbing to you. We do not wish to disturb you in any way and are willing to go far to insure that that does not occur.

“For instance, we can change our modulation of hyperwave from discrete to continuous so as not to disrupt your listening comfort.”

A small flame of irritation shot from beneath his eyes, smaller than the day before, but still a respectable, quite noticeable, luminous green jet.

“Sarco!” he said like he was uttering a curse. “That hyperwave disturbance is not important enough to discuss here. My esteemed colleague is a music lover and prone to give those minor disturbances more attention than they deserve.”

She had shot her wad, and at the wrong alien.

“Still,” she said, “that does show how far we are willing to go to avoid disturbing your people. That should reassure you as to our intentions.”

“Proper reassurance can only be supplied by your leader.”

With strangely mixed emotions—longing and irritation inexplicably intertwined—she thought, I am the leader here, mister bat, and you're stuck with me. But I wish my darn partner were here instead of way off cruising down some alien cornfield.

She didn't stop to question where that strange image came from—the vision of Derec at the other end of a green, green cornfield; the yearning for Derec was too intense; and then the answer to the dome problem struck her with that marvelous insight that can come only from one brain hemisphere communicating with the other, passing on the subconscious machinations of the one that are hidden from the other.

For the first time, she felt in command of the situation.

CHAPTER 10

NEURONIUS STRIKES

Synapo was growing impatient with the she alien. The discussion was becoming tedious and unrewarding, and at the same time had not yet provided a suitable circumstance for embarrassing and discrediting his striking subordinate, Neuronius.

It was becoming more and more obvious that the small alien was in no sense a leader; that Synapo must somehow contrive to bring to his world a true leader of the aliens. In the meantime, he would have to direct Sarco to close the compensator and to start construction of the next one if, as he suspected, they were beginning to construct a second city on the other side of The Plain of Serenity.

Those were the thoughts that had led up to his last remark, and now the small, tedious alien was speaking again.

“There is no need to bring another leader to this world. You are looking at one. I had hoped to continue with the construction of our city, but that appears now to be impossible in view of your irrational fear that we have some insidious and covert plan to irrevocably disturb this planet.”

The manner and bearing of the little alien had changed; her voice had taken on a different timbre. Had Neuronius noticed the subtle changes?

He discounted her attempt to belittle them by use of the adjective irrational. Disparagement was a not uncommon diplomatic ploy that was sometimes effective, but not often so, yet still worth the gamble in her case. He recognized that, but would the haughty Neuronius recognize her ploy and properly discount it? Or would he let irritation distort his analysis?

And would Neuronius recognize those subtle changes in her demeanor that were pure telepathy, transmitting information more effectively than the spoken word.

“We have other, more compatible methods of cohabitating with you on this planet,” she continued. “The city under the dome in its present state would be essentially deactivated and serve merely as a coordination and communications center for the new effort.”

She had switched diplomatic techniques, discarding the superior, haughty manner—every bit as haughty as Neuronius—and was now the companionable, friendly tactician. That was indeed the sign of a genuine leader. Would Neuronius recognize that and be able to switch tactics himself?

She had abandoned her mission's preferred goal, apparently, and was regrouping around an alternative; again the sign of a true leader with full authority to make important field decisions.

“Please describe this compatible method of cohabitation,” Synapo said.

“Let me first ask a question. Do I, by myself, constitute a weather node, or my companion Jacob here, or our vehicle here with us in it?”

She had inclined her head toward the servant and pointed to the creation behind her, the vehicle.

“No,” Synapo replied. “None of those entities, singly or together, create a weather node. The thermal disturbance is too small and quickly dissipates.”

“Good,” she said. “We will switch, then, from an urban, energy-intensive mode to an agricultural, labor-intensive mode; from a centralized society to a dispersed society; from industrial products to agricultural products; from robot cities, which you feel compelled to cover with domes—your node compensators —to robot farms that you will find completely benign.”

Wohler-9 had not provided the agricultural and farm terminology, so Synapo could not immediately translate the small alien's words. He had to extrapolate from all that he had been told by her and by Wohler-9 and from all the previous data he had acquired by monitoring the aliens' hyperwave transmissions, but still it took him only a moment.

“By agriculture you mean the intentional cultivation of grasses and other plants like those growing on The Plain of Serenity and in The Forest of Repose; and by farms you mean the land subdivisions where this takes place. Is that correct?”

“Yes,” the small alien replied.

“We have been exceedingly patient with your invasion of our world. You did not inquire whether this was a reasonable thing to do, nor negotiate ahead of time a suitable program for doing so, and when it did not prove to be reasonable, and we took steps to isolate the disturbance in as minimal a way as possible, you killed two of our people.

“Yes, we have been patient beyond any reasonable translation of that word, and now I'm going to ask that you be as patient with us today as we have been with you these many days past. Your patience will be tried, not by violence and death—as ours has been—but by boredom and ennui as we carry out, as we must, the rituals of our government as they were set up uncounted millennia ago.

“At that time an ancient Cerebronian philosopher by the name of Petero observed that all of our levels of government were filled by incompetents, that indeed government officials rose to their ultimate level of competence and then one level beyond, where they then remained, incompetent, for lack of ability to advance further.

“The observation was so striking and so self -evident that it became known as Petero's Principle, and all government was immediately reorganized to include the strike factor, whereby any official may be declared incompetent and displaced merely by a subordinate showing greater competence at that higher level.

“That, by definition, proves that the former official was incompetent, that is, not as competent as he could have been; and the process of proof, whatever form it takes, is known as striking for the higher position.

“So I now turn responsibility for these proceedings over to my subordinate, Neuronius, so that he may evaluate and respond to your proposal.”

As he made the last statement, Synapo graciously gestured in Neuronius's direction and carefully watched his subordinate for involuntary reflexes, the body language, the telepathy that would tell him what was going through his subordinate's mind.

And if Axonius were competent for command, he would also be studying the mindset that Neuronius would be bodycasting—broadcasting with his body. And Axonius would take that into consideration when he finally rendered his detailed analysis and final judgment of Neuronius in a caucus of the Cerebron elite.

So in a sense, not only Neuronius and Synapo, but Axonius as well, was on trial, for it would be the Cerebron elite, in caucus, who would render the final judgment that would restructure the government of the Cerebrons, if this immediate negotiation proved to be a decisive node in their history.

And in that negotiation with the aliens, Axonius must be the tie splitter—on the spot—if Synapo and Neuronius disagreed. Axonius could be placed in a quite delicate position. He could literally be dumped from the elite if he made a wrong decision, no matter how the contest between Synapo and Neuronius came out.

However, Axonius did have one factor going for him: he had nine votes in a caucus that would exclude Synapo and Neuronius. Each member of the elite had votes corresponding in number to his position in the hierarchy.

So now, all of this was surely going through the minds of the other two Cerebrons as Synapo turned to Neuronius to obtain his response.

The bodycast was not good. Neuronius radiated confidence, and that must surely have an effect on Axonius, which could make things difficult for Synapo if Neuronius took a contrary course.

“Miss Ariel Welsh, you plead a good case for the cause of your people,” Neuronius said. “Perhaps I do not fully understand all that you said, but my mentor is an excellent instructor who has never failed me thus far, so I'm reasonably sure I understood the gist of your remarks.

“You radiate confidence and sincerity and all the other aspects essential to the execution of leadership, so you can surely not be found at fault in that regard

“And your proposed change to the labor-intensive mode of agriculture seems—on the surface—benign, as you so eloquently describe it.

“The node compensator is operating at ninety-nine-point-two percent efficiency, and that has proved acceptable in Cerebron caucus, so that certainly is a point in your favor.

“And neither you nor your servant, taken individually, nor the small collection represented by one of your loaded vehicles—all small thermal emitters—constitute a weather node, as my mentor has concluded.

“Those are all positive arguments that weigh in your favor, but we must counterpose on the scale the few negative things which argue against your proposal before we can assess which way the scale finally tips.

“And surely weighing in against your proposal are the deaths of our two colleagues, and in the particular case of the last fatality, the passive state of our colleague before his death—in tether, a grim way to die without being able to defend one's self. How many more deaths of Ceremyons lie in the future?

“Yet those deaths—which can be largely attributed to misunderstandings by incompetent servants—and the small likelihood of more deaths in the future, do not tip the scale against you.

“Now we must weigh the true nature of the agricultural mode and the supporting, partially compensated, city nodes, and there is where we stumble.

“We know nothing about the agricultural mode except your reassurances of its serene harmlessness, nor do we know what additional emanations may find their way out of the opening in the city compensator.

“You term our fears irrational, when any rational being, considering your past performance, must judge your actions to be frightening and such fears to be well founded.

“We mourn our dead colleagues, and we are ever so uncertain concerning the nature of your proposal, so we have no choice but to vehemently oppose your further occupation of our planet. We do not consider your intentions benign, Miss Ariel Welsh, not by a hooked eye.”

Neuronius hunched his wings and fell silent.

The fool, Synapo thought. He has just cast himself from the elite. There is little doubt of that. And just as I suspected. he reacted to the small alien's haughty disparagement when she used the term “irrational.” It weighed in heavily with the fool's own irrationality. his basic paranoia. which I have long suspected.

Thank god for the level-headed Axonius.

Now it was time for Synapo to cast his own vote.

If he agreed with Neuronius, he would only have to say so, and Axonius would be off the hook. For Synapo to register his opposition, he had only to ask Axonius for his opinion.

Which he did.

“And how say you, Axonius?”

For the second time that morning, Synapo felt some misgivings. Axonius's body language showed fear and irresolution when he should have been exuding confidence and decisiveness.

“Clearly,” Axonius said, “Neuronius has properly assessed the situation and has come to a remarkably astute conclusion.”

Synapo was stunned. His clever strategy had backfired completely. His attention this past year had been too much on the paranoia of Neuronius, and he had failed to properly assess Axonius, who had always seemed such a reliable lieutenant. That was where Synapo had gone wrong, perhaps: the difficulty of properly assessing someone you basically like and who invariably agrees with you.

It was a mere formality now. Synapo was foremost a statesman and a loyal Ceremyon; and a politician only when it wouldn't hurt the tribes.

He could have opposed his two subordinates, and the elite might grudgingly have supported him, but then he would have presented to the aliens the picture of a race and a government in disarray. It was more the position of the elite to acknowledge that disarray after the fact and to show magnanimity toward the aliens and flexibility in government by reversing the decision of their agents.

“We agree, then,” he said. “It pains me, Miss Ariel Welsh, but your proposal cannot be accepted. In our short acquaintance, I have come to admire and respect you —your forthrightness and courage and unfailing good humor. May all those attributes stand you in good stead as you take this painful decision back to your people.”

He was finished as the leader of the Cerebrons unless he could get this decision reversed in caucus—and in a caucus truncated to nine members with the nine votes of Axonius weighing in against him.

CHAPTER 11

S.O.S.

Immediately after the meeting, Ariel and Jacob returned to the apartment. Jacob started toward his storage niche, but Ariel forestalled him.

“Fix a large garden salad, Jacob,” she said, “with thousand island and a couple of glasses of milk. Set the table for two. And then join me. It won't hurt you to. act human for a change, like you're enjoying my company. That's an order.”

“That is an order not difficult to comply with,” Jacob said.

“Do you like thousand island dressing?” Ariel asked.

“Whatever pleases you, Miss Ariel. Lacking true taste buds, I really have no preference.”

“What a shame. You're missing half the pleasure of life.”

“Experiencing the pleasure of taste has never been my privilege. But of course,” he added swiftly, so as to preclude generating displeasure for Ariel, “neither have I missed it.”

“Did you have any reaction to the meeting this morning, then? Pleasure, displeasure?”

“My positronic potentials registered a sharp disturbance when it was apparent that the aliens were not going to endorse your proposal. I was reacting, however, not to a subjective or objective analysis, but to the knowledge that you were going to be intensely disappointed and in a quandary as to how to proceed.”

“You have certainly analyzed my reaction correctly. Quandary is the operative word. I've held off calling Derec until now because I wanted to be able to tell him what he had to do rather than have him tell me what I had to do.”

Jacob keyed the food processor and received a head of lettuce, two tomatoes, a cucumber, a handful of mushrooms, a block of cheddar cheese, a block of ham, a package of bacon bits, and a package of croutons. Derec had done a great deal to improve food processor technology while he was on Robot City.

“I really had a darn good chance of being in the driver's seat,” Ariel continued. “When that farm inspiration came to me, I really thought it was the answer. I really thought old Synapo would buy it.”

She didn't say anything more then. The vision of green Auroran truck farms and golden wheat fields had come to mind. She could see the robots moving down the green, weedless rows, harvesting lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, the very things Jacob was taking from the food processor.

Those same farms would flourish equally well right here on Oyster World. This world could be the breadbasket for this part of the developing galaxy. And without interfering with the aliens at all. There would be no need for expensive and energy-wasting food processors in this part of the galaxy if all one wanted was a simple green garden salad.

She had failed to create the same image in Synapo's mind. But how could she have succeeded? How was he to understand something that was as alien to him as his government was to her? She had been expecting too much.

Yet was his government so strange? She herself had seen many instances on Aurora—city governments with their bureaus and committees and councils—which Petero's Principle fit perfectly: all positions filled with incompetents, almost without exception.

“I guess it's not so strange that the aliens didn't buy my proposal,” she said. “They are aliens and can't possibly think like we do. Yet their government makes sense, odd sense, mind you, as you might expect coming from aliens. Nothing a bunch of humans would ever come up with. It makes too much sense.

“And I guess it's just wishful thinking to expect Synapo to change his mind. So when you think about it, I guess I'm not really in a quandary, am I, Jacob?”

“So it would appear, Miss Ariel,” Jacob replied.

In a process that was too fast for the human eye to follow, he had torn the lettuce into bits, sliced the tomatoes, and had diced everything else except the bacon bits and croutons. Now he was tossing, in a large bowl, everything but the ham, cheese, bacon bits, and croutons.

“They'll close the dome tomorrow,” Ariel said, “and we'll be camping out.”

“That seems to be the only logical deduction.”

“So I've got to call Derec for help, right?”

“Quite so,” Jacob agreed.

“How do I do that?”

“I do not have personal knowledge of that function. I will check with Wohler-9 using the comlink.”

At the same time, he keyed the food processor for milk and thousand island dressing.

Ariel said nothing, and then, while he set the table, Jacob reported from the comlink.

“Avernus-8 supervises Mr. Avery's special monitor link.”

“Tie in to him,” Ariel said.

“I now have Avernus-8,” Jacob said.

“Tell him to transmit the following message to Derec.”

Ariel hesitated, thinking, while Jacob finished putting everything on the table. He had topped two bowls of salad with diced ham and cheese, ladled out a generous dollop of thousand island dressing onto each, and then sprinkled on the bacon bits and croutons.

Then she said, “No. Ask him first what's special about Derec's link, how does it work?”

She sat down at the table and motioned for Jacob to do likewise, and they both began to eat.

“Avernus-8 says that the connection with Derec's internal monitor is not made over hyperwave,” Jacob said. “It is a special system Dr. Avery developed. The equipment is mounted on the mobile platform supporting the computer mainframe and on the mainframe's backup platform, but is accessible by all seven supervisor robots.”

“And who has detailed technical knowledge of the system?” Ariel asked. “User's manual, wiring diagrams, maintenance manual?”

“Avernus-8 and the technician on each of the two computer platforms.”

“I'll bet a pewter button that Derec's special link does use hyperwave, but unlike it's ever been used before. It's not common, ordinary discrete modulation.

“Dr. Avery has beat us to it, dam it. He's already invented the aliens' continuous modulation.

“Jacob, hook Keymo into your comlink connection, and tell Avernus to describe Derec's monitor system to him. See if the two of them don't agree that it's continuous modulation of hyperwave as Keymo would define it. “

That connection and analysis took a little longer than quick, but still consumed less than two minutes.

“Avernus-8 replies in the affirmative,” Jacob said. “To communicate with all robot cities, Master Derec's internal monitor metabolically manipulates hyperwave in a manner similar to what Keymo describes as continuous modulation.”

“Bingo,” Ariel said. “Derec does it and doesn't even know how he does it. And I don't need to know anything about engineering to do engineering. Tell Avernus to ring up Derec and give him this message:

“CRISIS HERE ON OYSTER WORLD. YOU MUST IMMEDIATELY REPROGRAM AVERY ROBOTS. I ALSO HAVE A BIT OF IMPORTANT ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY TO TEACH YOU, DUM-DUM. IN FACT, YOUR OWN INTERNAL ENGINEERING, SO COME AT ONCE.

“Sign it: LOVE, ARIEL, and ask for confirmation.”

For ten minutes Jacob said nothing while Ariel forked salad into her mouth and mooned over Derec. With that wild imagination one has when extrapolating hope, she visualized Synapo meeting with her before Derec arrived, telling her the aliens had changed their minds and would accept her proposal. She would then be the aliens' kind of Leader.

No matter what, the robots would have to be reprogrammed. They weren't going to build any robot city on this planet.

While they were finishing their lunch, Jacob broke the silence. “

Avernus-8 has received this reply from Master Derec:

“ON MY WAY, SMARTY PANTS. LOVE, DEREC.”

She spent the rest of the afternoon on the balcony, which overlooked Main Street, sitting in the subdued light of the perpetual dusk under the dome, reading a book of poems she took with her whenever she traveled: Selected Poetry of Old Earth.

It was an ancient book, bound in soft brown imitation suede, and printed in a small, graceful font on one side of thin, translucent, parchment-like paper. It was the only thing her mother had ever given her that she truly treasured. Juliana Welsh had given her a lot of expensive things: clothes, jewelry, cars, fliers, jumpers, but seldom anything with the taste and thought that was reflected in the selection of that little book. She wondered if her mother had picked it out or had merely asked one of their robots to pick up something via the hyperwave shopping service.

She came to a very short poem she had forgotten, but when she reread it, it seemed like a piece of wisdom that might apply at almost any time in a person's life—Robert Frost wisdom:

The Secret Sits

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

That's what she seemed to be doing. Dancing around the solution to the problem. She had come so close to the answer in that meeting with Synapo and his lieutenants. He had said as much with that elaborate apology he had left her with, as though he would have done things differently if it had been left up to just him. In that case, would he really have bought her proposal?

She looked up every now and then to stare at the opening in the dome. It made her uneasy. What if they could suddenly close it and trap them all inside that insidious blackness? There would be no way out, no way that human technology could provide.

But she didn't want to camp out, and she certainly didn't want to spend any more time in that tiny, cramped, two-passenger jumper than she absolutely had to.

After dinner Jacob rigged a viewing screen on the balcony so she could spend the evening keeping an eye on that critical opening in the dome while she watched a library tape of an old hyperwave drama involving Elijah Baley, Gladia Solaria, and the robot Daneel Olivaw..

She could not see the dome opening when she looked up. The starshine in the black sky was not bright enough to be seen through pupils contracted by the illumination required to present Elijah Baley in all his glory. But she could see the lights of the robot traffic far out on the plain, traffic that was now diminishing as the materiel transfer neared completion.

When she went to bed, she posted Jacob on the balcony with instructions to call her immediately if he saw any change in the size of the dome opening.

In the middle of the night, she dreamt that she was trying to escape from that black void inside the dome, piloting her hyperspace jumper with the monster Synapo sitting beside her in the cockpit, heading on a course that would take them down Main Street with the Compass Tower far in the distance. But she was still out in the void, hanging motionless at least a kilometer from where Main Street began, with her throttle pushed to its limit; and stretching away from her toward Main Street were long, long rows of waving green corn; and standing at the end of Main Street, far away down those rows of corn, was Derec waving and beckoning for her to come to him. She turned to look at Synapo in the midst of a feeling of disoriented horror, and a crimson flame shot out of the blackness beneath his luminous green eyes and bummed her hand.

She awoke drenched in perspiration, her hand resting painfully on the sharp corner of the nightstand beside her bed. She finally drifted back to sleep, yearning for Derec to be there in bed beside her, but back on Aurora, not there on Oyster World.

By ten o'clock the next morning, the materiel transfer dwindled to a halt, and with their limited possessions piled in the runabout beside them, Ariel and Jacob stood outside the dome at the meeting site, keeping vigil with Wohler-9 and his lorry, waiting to witness the final closure of the dome.

Five minutes passed—10:05 AM—and no blackbodies had shown up to send their shimmering additions down the edge of the dome, then a half hour, and then an hour, and still no construction activity.

There weren't even any signs of preconstruction activity like the long line of blackbodies that had formed on other mornings heading toward the apex of the dome opening, like an outspiraling thread unwinding from a black hole, from a spherical black mass that from far away could not be resolved into individual blackbodies basking on the wing in the light of the sun.

There was no dull black ball in the sky this morning. The blackbodies were up there like every other morning, but unlike construction days, they were loosely dispersed from horizon to horizon, languidly circling, soaking up the sun's radiation.

Ariel and the two robots sat there all day waiting for something to happen and nothing did: no construction activity and no visit from the aliens to explain the lack of activity.

Ariel ate lunch and dinner from supplies Wohler-9 had stashed in the lorry for her, supplies that were to last a month to give them time to get the Oyster World dilemma resolved.

Derec was due to arrive in three days: one day to get far enough away from that other planet to allow the jump through hyperspace, and two days to travel in from the jump arrival point, the nearest clearsafe in the Oyster World zone.

They spent the night in the open. Ariel slept on the long back seat of the open lorry under the stars of a cloudless sky. She refused to spend another night under the dome with the threat of its imminent closure literally hanging over her. One night like that was enough.

CHAPTER 12

WOLRUF STANDS INSPECTION

They arrived at the clearing well before noon, following a large animal trail Derec had discovered and explored with Mandelbrot a few days before. Although the forest cover discouraged the growth of dense underbrush, there were scattered patches that occasionally blocked the trail for homo sapiens, low branches that the animals who had made the trail—possibly SilverSide's erstwhile associates—simply walked under.

The trail was clear now, of course. When they had first explored it, Mandelbrot had simply fashioned his arm into a machete—the arm that was made of Robot City material—and cleared the way with a motion that bore some resemblance to a buzz saw.

This morning Derec led the way, with Mandelbrot next, then Wolruf, and finally SilverSide bringing up the rear. SilverSide kept up a steady conversation with Wolruf during the hour that it took to reach the clearing.

Derec could hear the buzz of conversation but was too far in front to make out what they were saying. When he reached the clearing, and as they approached, he could hear them clearly but still couldn't understand them. They were no longer speaking Standard.

Mandelbrot was already erecting the tent as Wolruf walked into the clearing.

“I don't believe this,” she said. “ 'ees already speaking my language. Not fluently 'et. But give 'im another decad and 'e'll be speaking it like a native.”

“Yes. He has a marvelous affinity for new knowledge,” Derec said. It made him uneasy, that affinity.

Derec gathered some stones from the brook and built a fireplace. Wolruf put the inside of the tent in order. Mandelbrot gathered firewood.

SilverSide disappeared. It wasn't until Derec finished construction of the fireplace that he noticed SilverSide was gone. Wolruf was fast asleep in the tent on one of the cots she had erected. She really wasn't much of an outdoors person, not at all like Derec in that respect.

There was no point in looking for SilverSide. This was his habitat far more than theirs. They might never see him again.

The thought of that filled Derec with dismay. He had become vitally interested in the strange robot—a fascinating study in alien robotics. He had learned a great deal merely by association, but he needed to learn much more, including its origin and the purpose of its original programming.

And he had sucked Wolruf into the problem as well. He had brought her “half across the galaxy” as she had so emphatically pointed out. How was he going to explain that he would not need her services any longer? That she had come all this way for nothing!

When Wolruf awoke, she took the news of SilverSide's disappearance quite calmly.

“Good,” she said. “Can I go 'ome now, back to civilissation? Can we at least go back to the city?”

“He'll come back,” Derec said more confidently than he felt. “We'll at least stay overnight. He might not come back to the city, but he'll come back here.”

They spent a quiet afternoon. Derec read. Wolruf slept. Mandelbrot stood guard, just outside the clearing, facing away from the campsite, with his back against a tree on the other side of the brook. SilverSide would have a hard time getting at his switch panel that way.

After dinner, after it got dark, hoping to attract SilverSide, Derec built up the fire so that it lighted the entire clearing.

Mandelbrot stayed at his guard post. Wolruf dozed in the warmth of the fire. Derec thought about Ariel, and that brought him to Jacob Winterson and, putting Jacob out of his mind, brought him back full circle to worrying about SilverSide.

The fire died down. Derec was talking when Wolruf quietly laid a hand on his arm and pointed across the fire to the other side of the clearing, the side away from Mandelbrot's guard post.

There—just inside the clearing, in the faint light of the dying fire—were two gray wolf-like shapes, sitting on their haunches. When he looked at them, the firelight caught the backsides of their eyes and came back at him as a ghostly green glow. That must have been how Wolruf had seen them in the first place; they were otherwise almost invisible.

“Master Derec,” Mandelbrot called softly from behind them, “we are surrounded by animals circling around the campsite. Should I take any action?”

“Can you suggest anything suitable?” Derec asked.

“Not at the moment,” Mandelbrot replied.

“Stay at your post then,” Derec said.

“I 'ate stuff like this,” Wolruf said. “Why do you alwayss 'ave to bring me along?”

Just then the shape on the right threw back its head and howled, long and piercingly, letting it trail off slowly into a series of soft sobs.

That howl was answered by an identical howl from the forest that seemed to progress halfway around the campsite before it, too, sobbed to a finish.

The two shapes rose then and trotted toward the campfire. The one on the left was smaller, Wolruf's size, and as they approached the campfire, its form became silvery while the form of the other, standing a meter at the shoulder, became more distinctly mottled black and dark gray.

After coming well into the light of the fire, the larger beast turned and loped into the forest. The small silvery beast came around the fire and sat down on its haunches beside Wolruf.

“That was LifeCrier,” the small beast said. “He wanted to inspect Wolruf.”

“SilverSide?” Derec queried.

“Yes. Surely you can tell it's me. The imprint is quite realistic.”

“And did I pass muster?” Wolruf asked.

“I wouldn't be here if you hadn't, Mistress Wolruf,” SilverSide replied.

She had achieved a remarkable likeness to Wolruf, considering that the robot was an organometallic construction from coarse cellular microbots. The flat face, the pointed ears, the fingered forepaws were all in character. She had even achieved a good simulation of the fur without creating individual hairs.

“I think the wolves have gone, Master Derec,” Mandelbrot informed them.

“I would suspect so, Mandelbrot,” Derec said. “SilverSide is back. Perhaps you should come and meet her in this new form.”

Mandelbrot crossed the brook and walked up to the fire. He hardly glanced at SilverSide.

“Would you like me to build up the fire, Master Derec?” he asked.

“Yes,” Derec said, “and then perhaps you should resume guard duty. Other beasties may come calling, some that are not so friendly.”

Those that had just left had not been nearly so friendly at one time, Derec recalled.

“And SilverSide, you might post yourself on the other side of the campsite, but don't stray so far into the forest this time.”

“Mistress Wolruf?” SilverSide said, questioning with a rising inflection.

“Yes?”

“Are those your wishes?”

“Of course.”

SilverSide's fealty had clearly shifted to Wolruf.

Derec slept well until the middle of the night. With SilverSide back in the fold, his attention had shifted to himself, and he went to sleep yearning to be with Ariel. The gentle snore from the cot next to him reminded him of Ariel and aggravated the desire, but it was not enough to keep him awake long.

That night he didn't dream of Ariel or of anything else. The short hike, the outdoor environment, and the relief connected with SilverSide's return promoted sound sleep, and he didn't stir until shortly before dawn, when he was awakened by Avernus's call over his internal monitor, transmitting Ariel's call for help.

CHAPTER 13

THE VOTE ON SUPERIOR COMPETENCE

Immediately following the last, disastrous meeting with the aliens, Synapo had circled up to charge altitude with Neuronius and Axonius trailing far behind. He was looking neither to left nor right nor up nor down. His eyes were open but staring straight ahead—staring, unseeing, out of a mind closed down by shock.

So when he arrived on station, he was surprised to see Sarco there ahead of him, circling in Synapo's space, hook set aggressively forward.

Although it was virtually unheard of and highly unethical to communicate political matters by radio, Neuronius must have done just that, radiating Synapo's defeat for all to hear, while Synapo, in shock, had his sensory equipment shut down. Else why would Sarco be up here already, contesting Synapo's dominance?

So, indeed, it had been a conspiracy; and it involved not only Sarco and Neuronius, but Axonius as well.

Synapo ignored Sarco, and with his hook set aggressively forward, he winged Sarco out of the way and took up his station in a tight circle immediately over the center of the compensator.

“What's up?” Sarco said, meekly yielding the space. “You don't seem happy.”

Synapo said nothing.

“What happened down there?” Sarco asked again, putting more insistence into his voice.

“You should know,” Synapo finally said. “One of your Cerebron toadies has already radioed you.”

“What are you talking about? Nobody has radioed anything; and I can't stand toadies, least of all a Cerebron.”

“Neuronius? What about Neuronius?”

“Neuronius coached me in pronunciation of the alien language. Does that make the poor soul a toady?”

“Poor soul, my hook. He was just trying to stir up trouble between you and me; if you somehow don't relish that idea, then he was using you, Sarco, and you must be exceedingly naive.”

“I must admit I thought it was an elegant idea, using your second in command to advantage in our rivalry. But, Synapo, it has always been a friendly rivalry.”

“Neuronius is striking, Sarco. And with Axonius on his side. Why do you think I took them both with me and excluded you rather unceremoniously?”

“Frankly, I didn't know, and you didn't appear to want to explain. So what did happen down there?”

“Neuronius made a wrong decision involving the aliens, I reversed him, and Axonius sided with him. It was as simple as that.”

“That doesn't sound like Axonius, Synapo. Give me the details. You three have involved all the Myocerons. You can't expect me to sit idly on the sidelines.”

“Axonius had you fooled as well, eh?”

With that slight dig, Synapo proceeded to describe the meeting in detail. Before the end of the long account, Sarco had rotated his hook so that it pointed passively aft, expressing silently but eloquently whose side he was on.

When Synapo finished, Sarco asked, “When are you having your caucus?”

Synapo had put off that decision until Sarco prodded him. His mind had been so paralyzed he had not worked out a plan of action during his slow climb to station.

“One hour from now,” he replied, making a quick decision.

“I hereby exercise my right as leader of the Myostria,” Sarco said, “and proclaim that caucus to be a joint gathering, a Cerebron caucus and a Myostrian hearing. Please announce it as such to your people, and I will do the same for mine.”

It was an historic occasion. A joint gathering of the elite of both tribes was something that occurred only once a decade or so, if that often.

In an ordinary Cerebron caucus, Synapo would be on station circling lazily above the center of the compensator in a large, loose circle with the other members of the Cerebron elite flying to right and left, above and below, a wingspread apart.

In the larger assembly of a joint gathering, however, the flight caucus was not compatible with clear and audible communication, so a grounded gathering was held on the high crags atop The Cliff of Time—a ninety-meter escarpment that cut across the intersection of The Plain of Serenity and The Forest of Repose eight kilometers to the northeast of the robot city and its node compensator.

Synapo, with his hook set forward, stood on the highest crag while the other ten members of the Cerebron elite stood below, facing him in a line on a slightly tilted table of flat granite. Their hooks were all set aft.

Neuronius stood in the middle of the line immediately below Synapo, Axonius stood to his right, the next in rank stood to the left of Neuronius, and the other members of the Cerebron elite stood right and then left in descending order of rank in the hierarchy.

Sarco, with his hook set aft, stood on a nearby crag on Synapo's right, above the same rock table, with his elite gathered below him in similar fashion and within easy earshot of Synapo.

In addition to Sarco, there were fourteen other members of the Myostrian elite. It had been temporarily expanded to handle the increased load imposed by construction of the huge node that compensated the weather effects of the robot city.

“As you all now know,” Synapo said, opening the joint gathering, “we are in a strike situation, not only at the highest command level in the Cerebron elite, but with regard to our world in general, for in all fairness, we must regard the invasion by the aliens as a strike for cohabitation of a world which we have previously regarded as strictly our own.

“To regard the presence of the aliens in any other fashion is not to give them their just due, for we cohabit now with many lower forms of life. The aliens may simply be another inferior species seeking peaceful coexistence.

“On the other hand, that may not be so. We must consider the possibility that we are seeing a superior race and may be bargaining from a disadvantageous position, trying then to retain cohabitation rights ourselves.

“The Cerebron elite and the leader of the Myostria were all familiar with this philosophy of negotiation and with the details of the discussion that had already taken place as we undertook further discussion with the aliens this morning.

“By this morning, however, it had come to my attention that Neuronius was striking for command, so we entered this latest meeting with the aliens under slightly different circumstances.

“If conditions were appropriate, it behooved me to give Neuronius his chance to prove competent in command, to possibly prove superior competence in our continual striving to avoid the pitfalls that beset a governmental hierarchy described by Petero's Principle.

“The Cerebron caucus has been called this afternoon to judge that competence, while remembering our delicate situation with regard to our cohabitation with aliens.”

Synapo then summarized the discussion with the aliens that had taken place that morning up to the point when he had turned over control of the negotiations to Neuronius.

After calling upon Neuronius to defend his response to the aliens' proposal, Synapo sailed down to the table rock to stand a pace in front of Neuronius, who then sidled out from behind Synapo, and with an awkward hop and a powerful flap of his wings, arrived at the position on the topmost crag that Synapo had just vacated.

“Cerebrons, your challenge this afternoon is not just a matter of judging day-to-day competence of command. The matter is far larger than that. You must also judge competence in assessing and establishing the rank of the Ceremyons in a galactic hierarchy that includes the invading aliens.”

His body language radiated confidence, even arrogance.

“There are many facets of superiority of one race with respect to another, but the fact of most concern to us should be whether we are superior enough to eject the aliens from our planet. All else is the weak juice of the soft, degenerate culture Synapo would have us embrace.

“That summarizes the results of my cerebrations, and I responded accordingly. There is no point in subjecting you to useless rhetoric. I told the aliens that we could no longer tolerate their presence on our planet and terminated the negotiations.”

Synapo was stunned for the second time that day. That last was a brazen lie. He, Synapo, had terminated the negotiations that morning. For Neuronius to lead the caucus to believe otherwise was to presume the outcome of the forthcoming vote.

Neuronius paused for just a moment and then continued, “However, I did not tell the aliens how I propose to insure their removal. Threats merely alert the enemy and eliminate the element of surprise.

“But to this caucus I suggest—and strongly recommend—that we immediately remove them the way one of their number accidentally and effectively removed himself from our world—when he blindly ran into the edge of an embryonic compensator.”

Neuronius paused for a moment. Then he dramatically rotated his hook forward.

“I suggest we ship them all into the black eternity that lies beyond space and time, where those two part company in the bowels of a node compensator. “

Neuronius stood silently on the crag for a moment, and then sailed down to the table rock and waddled back to his place in the line behind Synapo.

For a while the silence was disturbed only by Neuronius, by the rustle of his wings and the soft slap of his feet against the table rock as he moved to resume his position in the line.

Finally, when even those sounds were complete, the only thing to be heard was the soft sigh of excess oxygen being vented here and there among the assembly.

Synapo was appalled by the suggestion, so disconcerted he had a hard time taking it in.

Finally, he spoke again from his position on the table rock.

“Axonius, I appoint you temporary Chairman of the Caucus, for the purpose of stating your position, taking other statements from any who may care to speak, and finally tallying the Vote on Superior Competence.”

That was the standard statement to make at that point in the proceedings; and that was fortunate, for he could not have trusted himself to say anything else after Neuronius had presented such a quixotic solution to the alien problem.

Axonius now flew up to the topmost crag.

Neuronius had impaled Axonius on the horns of a terrible dilemma, unless Synapo had completely misjudged the younger Cerebron. Axonius was an opportunist—that had become clear that morning—but he was not a killer.

Synapo knew exactly what was going through Axonius's mind and could sympathize with him and feel his anguish—a terrible anguish his body language clearly bespoke: the flicker in his eyes, the slight flutter of his cold-junction, the tight way he was hugging his wings to his body.

Axonius was finished. The only way he could possibly save his position in the elite after the foolhardy position he had taken that morning was to vote for Neuronius and hope that he would win. Yet he was a gentle being and could not honorably endorse the violence recommended by Neuronius. He had misjudged Neuronius, and now he would have to pay the terrible penalty for that unfortunate error.

Synapo wondered how well Axonius would handle it. He wanted to see him unbowed by defeat, wanted to feel he had not completely misjudged him.

“Honorable leaders, fellow Cerebrons, fellow Ceremyons, I am placed this afternoon in an exceedingly awkward position.”

Good, Synapo thought, that's the first promising observation I've heard from a Cerebron all day.

“This morning,” Axonius continued, “it was my opinion that Neuronius spoke from a position of superior competence in his assessment of what should be the posture of Ceremyons if we are to insure our proper place in the galactic hierarchy, to use his terms.

“It was not a decision arrived at lightly. I have great respect for our leader, and have never before seen him come to an erroneous judgment. He is completely right in pursuing a policy of peaceful cohabitation with all life forms on our world.

“But is he right in applying that same policy to any galactic species that may take a notion to inhabit our planet? How can we determine and judge the intentions of an alien species without conducting an experiment and risking our survival in the very process of the experiment?

“It is an unfortunate dilemma which risks, on the one hand, prejudging and punishing an alien species without a hearing, but on the other hand, risks our very survival not to do so, not to prejudge.

“Mine was not a decision arrived at impetuously this morning. We have all been pondering the problem and updating our cerebrations with each report of the negotiations by our leader.

“So this morning, the risk to our survival seemed overwhelming, and I favored the position of Neuronius as being the more competent exercise of leadership.

“I shall not dwell unduly on the remarks of Neuronius this afternoon, and will merely conclude by saying that I cannot in good conscience endorse them; they do not reflect competent leadership.”

His hook had remained pointing aft throughout his remarks.

He hurried on then, no dramatic pauses, words tumbling out of his mouth in an effort to somehow put distance between himself and his own pronouncement.

“Would anyone else care to make a statement?” he said. Synapo was proud of Axonius. Almost ready to forgive him. Axonius had stuck courageously to the position he had taken earlier that morning and yet had denied Neuronius that afternoon.

Synapo, like everyone else, was expecting any further remarks to come from the Cerebron elite before Axonius called upon him for a final statement, giving him the traditional privilege of last remarks before the vote.

So they were all surprised when Sarco spoke up, standing on the crag to Axonius's right.

“Honorable chairman, under ordinary circumstances any remarks that I might make to a Cerebron caucus would be off the record unless I were called as an official witness, which I have not been this day. In fact, quite the contrary. The Myostrians are here because of Leader Privilege which I exercised, recognizing this meeting to be of vital concern to the Myostria. This is our world as well as yours, Cerebrons, and ordinarily decisions affecting our mutual welfare are jointly arrived at by friendly discussion between the leaders of the two tribes.

“Today, a matter of vital concern to both tribes is unavoidably going to be decided by the exclusive vote of a Cerebron truncated caucus, without our leader being able to participate in the decision.

“You can understand my concern, then, and the reason I ask to be considered an official witness in your proceedings. How say you, Mr. Chairman?”

“So noted and recorded, Honorable Leader,” Axonius confirmed.

“My remarks will not be brief, yet neither am I given to excessive rhetoric. I am fortunately not constrained by the extraordinary position Axonius finds himself in. Quite the contrary. I feel compelled to dwell at length on Neuronius's position this morning and his remarks this afternoon.”

As he was concluding those words, without pausing, Sarco slued his hook around until it pointed forward.

“Taking the last first, his final statements this afternoon confirm what I have long suspected: he is a paranoid psychopath with a cunning way of hiding his affliction by artful words and soothing flattery until the hook needs be set.

“Then his pent-up fears and irrational solutions come bursting forth, as we witnessed in stunned silence this afternoon. If you were not stunned, Myocerons, then you need to examine your own state of mind.

“Axonius obviously was, and his introspection guided him accordingly. Neuronius had him deluded with the promise of honorable ascension until this afternoon, when all the honor evaporated in the course of an irrational grab for power.

“I can understand Axonius's reasoning at this morning's meeting with the aliens, but a true leader has to look deeper than Axonius did and reason rationally—as Neuronius did not—to find the ultimate solution to problems: that solution which looks beyond immediate and easy resolution.

“Typically, Synapo summed it all up quite concisely in his opening remarks this afternoon—somehow we can always count on him. Neuronius could have spared us all a lot of grief, if he had just been listening and taken heed, if he had just been listening to Synapo's daily reports these past few days and taken heed.

“Setting honor aside—and the honor is quite as compelling to Synapo as the logic—to strike blindly as Neuronius recommends is to possibly kick the toe of a giant who then, as Synapo suggests, may not be so willing to cohabit, and might even shuffle all Myocerons into their own version of a space-time partitioner or, perish the thought, some even more malevolent and painful form of annihilation.

“To not strike blindly, but instead, to try to understand the aliens—and I am already impressed by their small leader and think I understand their intentions—is to soothe the giant under the worst of circumstances or to help and minister to a lesser species under the best of circumstances. Both are honorable directions for the Myoceria.

“Neuronius has sorely misguided you, Cerebrons.

“Synapo has already shown you the way. I have merely reiterated what he so concisely and clearly pointed out.

“Please do not fail him.”

A silence as keen as that which followed Neuronius's last statement now fell upon the assembly.

Axonius seemed in no hurry to break the silence; instead he seemed to be providing a space for the Cerebrons to ponder Sarco's remarks.

Finally he said, “Are there any others who would like to make a statement?”

But now he waited not at all before he said, “If not, our Honorable Leader is here provided the traditional last words before the Vote on Superior Competence.”

“I have nothing further to add to my colleagues' remarks,” Synapo said and turned his hook until it pointed aft to accept humbly whatever the Cerebron elite might decide.

Axonius took the vote by radio ballot: secret and unanimous.

CHAPTER 14

BEARER OF GLAD TIDINGS

When he heard Axonius announce the favorable results of the unanimous vote, Synapo immediately took flight, circling up and up into the calm sky, matching that calmness with the cold detachment he had induced in himself as Sarco was speaking.

He was not surprised when Sarco joined him, and he was grateful to Sarco for the power of his oratory, but he wanted to be alone, and he had been on the point of ensuring himself that solitude when he detected Sarco close behind.

With Sarco close at hand, expecting some kind of dialogue, he could not balloon himself into isolation as he had intended; that would show neither tact nor the genuine gratitude he felt.

So he merely climbed to a safe ballooning altitude and then started circling in position, waiting for Sarco to catch up.

“I know you want to be alone,” Sarco said, “and I'll not intrude on your time but for a brief moment, just long enough for a word of warning.”

“You're not intruding, old friend,” Synapo said, “and rushing off as I did may have made me appear ungrateful for the service you rendered at the gathering. But I am truly grateful and might not have won the endorsement of the elite if you hadn't made that impassioned speech. You deserve to be where you are, Sarco, the very antithesis of Petero's Principle.”

“I didn't come up here to be praised, you old jet, but to warn you about Neuronius.”

“You and the elite have taken care of him, Sarco. “

“For the moment, perhaps, but maybe not even for the moment. He's dangerous, Synapo.”

“Neuronius? Dangerous? To himself maybe. He certainly confirmed that today.”

“No, to you, Synapo.”

“I think not. He's devious, and a liar, and not to be trusted, but hardly dangerous otherwise.”

“He was standing in back of you,” Sarco said. “You couldn't see his body language, his undisguisable reaction to that last bit of terse, indirect language Axonius used to describe his competence to guide the caucus.

“But I was watching him intently, Synapo, then and again when I gave my harsh assessment of him. He may even be dangerous to Axonius and to me, but he's going to hold you responsible for his downfall, and you're the target he'll be focusing on.”

“Perhaps, but there's little you or I can do about that,” Synapo said. “His danger to the future of the tribes, at least, has been eliminated by his departure from the elite. That was my primary concern.”

“He's still a danger to the tribes so long as he can get at you and me. And what about Axonius? Where does he stand in the elite now? He helped save your hide.”

“I'm not sure at this point. This has been a rather full day. I'm too exhausted to think clearly now.”

“I was impressed with his handling of the caucus, Synapo.”

“And so was I.”

“I'll leave you now. May Petero guide your deliberations.”

“You agree that the alien proposal for cohabitation should be given a fair trial?”

“I'll not argue that,” Sarco said, “not after what you've been through. Yes, we'll postpone closure of the weather node compensator indefinitely. “

He glided away. Synapo balled and immediately closed and inflated his reflector to its full extent, suitable for high-altitude cerebrations.

Although his storage cells were still critically low, and though his cerebrations in reflection mode would use a modest amount of juice, he could recharge to full capacity as he leisurely beat his way back from wherever the gentle air currents would take him during his silvery ruminations.

His first step in the direction of those ruminations had been taken when he reached stable altitude, and with only his hook, eyes, and primary vent protruding beneath the balloon, he surveyed the vast panorama.

The Ceremyons were far below him at optimum charge altitude, replenishing their juice stores in random flight circles that covered the globe in a loosely dispersed pattern up to the dusk band.

The dusk band was creeping toward him from the east—powered by the natural rotation of his world and his slow easterly drift—delineating day from approaching night that was just barely visible as a thin black crescent sliced from the edge of the globe.

From such high altitude, he appeared to have drifted very little from the point where he had ballooned. The compensator with the pie-cut sector lay only a small way to the west.

He closed his eyes, purging his mind of stress and strain which gradually faded away to a calm serenity.

And he slept.

He awoke to a star-studded frame surrounding the jet black circle of the planet. And his mind went immediately to Axonius, and to the answer to the question posed by Sarco as they parted that afternoon.

He would keep Axonius as his second in command. To discard a competent aide who was now all the more valuable for the lesson he had just learned, and all the more loyal for the gratitude he could not help but feel, would be to exercise a petty vengeance that was not characteristic of the statesman Synapo.

That resolved the tribe's hierarchical question, and the aliens had proposed a course that they felt promised harmonious cohabitation. He had no more problems at that moment, questions perhaps, but no problems, for he did not consider Neuronius a problem apart from the day-to-day governing of the Cerebrons; and the only worthy question that remained—the question of the possible superiority of the aliens—he could do nothing to answer right then.

Their small leader would make a friendly pet but was in no wise a threat, no more so than the servants, the Avery robots. The only question that remained was how did the small leader fit into the alien hierarchy, that part that still lay off-world.