The Dark Side of the Sun

7

On Widdershins it was Hogswatchnight, which coincided with Small Gods in the greater Sadhimist calendar. It usually meant a larger klatch meeting, or a number of klatches would join together in celebration, but by midnight every group would be split so that each member watched the dawn alone. But as the older Sadhimist averred darkly, one was never fully alone at Hogswatch. By dawn, perhaps, some men would be poets or prophets or even be possessed of a new minor talent, like being able to play the thumb-flute. And one or two would be mad.

The ground underneath him was warm.

Dom lay in the tepid water for some time before he realized it. He was spreadeagled in a large, steaming puddle. Beyond it the snowdrifts started.

He heard the distant air scream. Something hurled across the stars, trailing a sonic boom. It turned in a tight, gravity-squeezing circle, returned slowly and slammed neatly to a halt on the edge of the puddle. Except that it didn't work. The water was freezing again. The ship danced drunkenly between the drifts and returned, a few minutes later, under very low power.

Isaac opened the hatch.

'Now, are we getting out of this place or aren't we?' he cried.

'Mint soda, chief?'

Dom took the glass. Ice tinkled. Frost was forming on the sides. It tasted like a dive into a snowbank.

There was fresh green skin on his arms and legs and the back of his neck, where the googoo had reformed itself to his body memory.

Isaac pressed the memory button on the ship's workshop and slid the soles back on the sandals. He tossed them across to Dom.

'Short-circuited in the heat,' he said. 'They should be okay now.'

Dom stared out at the starlit surface of the Bank. The warm pool had already frozen over. It made a glittering circle in the snow. He had been lucky, at that. On the sunny side of the Bank water boiled in the shade. He raised the Bank on the ship's radio.

Hrsh-Hgn had been taken aboard the Drunk, destination unknown. The Bank knew nothing about the man with the gold collar, or the whereabouts of Ig. It had warmed the surface and sent Isaac out because—because deaths on the Bank were rare and he disliked the subsequent investigations.

Dom switched off, and drummed his fingers on the console. His face was reflected in the empty screen.

It was dark green, mottled with leaf-green, because body memory took no account of tanning. He was naked in the stable ship temperature. The memory of recent pain still showed in his eyes, but he was thinking of a man in a gold collar, a smiling man who had haunted his dreams.

'No one notices him,' he said out loud. 'He's just a face in the crowd. He's trying to kill me.'

Idly he picked up Korodore's gift. He'd already experimented with it, putting the memory-sword through its repertoire, and now he watched as the atoms reprogrammed themselves. A twitch, and it was a needle sword ... a short knife . . . a gun, that froze bullets out of atmospheric water and could fire them through steel hullmetal... another gun, a sonic . . .

'I don't know how Grandmother chased me here,' he said. 'Though it is the logical place. But I know where the Drunk is heading now.'

'Widdershins?' asked Isaac.

'Band. She'll get the information out of Hrsh. I imagine she'll threaten him with repatriation to Phnobis.'

'That doesn't sound like a threat, chief.'

'To a phnobe it is. If he goes back to Phnobis he'll be in swift conjunction with a ceremonial tshuri whatever happens. No, he'll talk.'

Isaac slipped into the pilot seat.

'You could go back to Widdershins. Your grandmother has your best interests at heart.'

'I've got to go on. I can't describe it, I just haven't got a choice. Do you understand?'

'No, boss. Band, then? I've calibrated the matrix computer. It should work. '

'You'd better believe it.'

He hefted the memory sword. If someone else was waiting at Band...

Glowing walls. Ghostly, half-melting visions. The miniature stars and claustrophobic feel of a ship in interspace. And the visions.

'Chel, what was that?'

'It looked like a dinosaur, boss. Striped.'

He fingered the collar at his neck, and showed no anger. Anger clouded the faculties, and so he lived in a state of constant disassociation. But sometimes he thought, not angry thoughts, but little cold statements about what he would do if the collar was removed.

What he would do to Asman, in particular. And to the misguided genius who invented the collar circuitry.

The door opened.

Asman looked up, and froze. Behind him the long room became silent, just for a second. It usually happened like this. And Asman would point the gun...

Asman pointed the gun, and nodded towards the three dice in their cup. The gun was a stripper, with every safety device removed and a hair trigger. He knew that Asman would fire by reflex action if necessary.

He threw three sixes.

'Again.' He threw three sixes.

'Again?' he asked mildly. Asman smiled weakly, got up and shook his hand.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'You know how it is.'

'One day I'll make a mistake. Have you thought of that?'

'Ways, the day you make a mistake like that you won't be Ways any more, and you know I'll fire, because you'll be an imposter.'

Asman rounded the table and clapped him on the shoulder.

'You've been doing well,' he said.

'How else?'

Ways had seen his own specification, just once. He had been halfway down an inspection shaft at the time, one that was flooded with chlorine gas when not in official use, and gaining illegal access to personnel files was not official. He had never bothered to remember the precise purpose of his visit - it was just one of the many assignments that filtered down to him via Asman's office - but while the little inspection screen was warming up his specification had appeared among the random images. He had memorized it instantly, even through the chlorine haze.

It was a standard requisition for a Class Five robot, with certain important modifications concerning concealed weapons, communicators, and appearance. Designing a completely humanoid robot was twice as complex as building even a high-grade Class Five. It involved intricate machinery for tear ducts and the growth of facial hair - and, if the robot was designed as a spy and might be faced with every eventuality, an intriguing range of other equipment also...

But most of Ways' specifications had been in probability math. It took him some time to realize why. Class Five robots were legally human. They had been designed to be everything a man could be, and Ways had been designed to be lucky.

Asman led him to the mural that occupied one long wall of the large, low-ceilinged room. The room itself was featureless, as were the men tending the machines. It could have been the security room of any Board-run world. But there was something about the quality of the air, even of the light, that suggested an underground vault - Ways in fact sensed the layer upon layer of shielding around him - and there was something in the confident, unthinking way that the Earthman Asman moved that suggested in which planetary crust the room was buried.

The mural was a brightly-lit tangle of coloured lines, circles and blocks of p-math, that shifted slightly as he watched.

'You've done well,' Asman said again. 'He's moved along the right equation.'

'As to that, how do I know? I just keep trying to kill him, just like the others. Do you want me to try on Band?'

'No, your next point of intervention should be...' he glanced along the rainbow lines '... oh, not till he visits those Creap. We've got contingency plans for that. It's all in the equation, anyway. We'll be hot on their heels then, if they have heels. The math says so. One more intervention when he gets to Laoth and we'll be in the Joker universe.'

Ways blinked slowly. 'Is this information I need to know?'

Asman returned his gaze. 'What do you mean by that?'

'Look,' said Ways, sitting down, 'you made me. Not you, precisely, but someone on Laoth or Lunar. They made me. I'm a robot.'

'That's not held against you. If we were Creap we'd have simply bred up a Creap with the required characteristics, in some vat. But you can't wamp up a man, so you ...'

'Okay, but I'm a robot, even if I'm a special one. I've got everything from toenails to offensive underarm odours, but that's all faked. So what does it matter what a robot knows?'

'You've made your point. Now, are you interested?' Asman was growing impatient.

'Certainly. Why doesn't he die when I kill him?'

'The universe alters.'

Shoot a man from point-blank range, so that your beam dislodges every organic molecule from hair to feet. All the rules postulate an outcome of, say, a mono-molecular mist, a few zips and geegaws on the floor, and a faint smell of burning. But there is always the outside chance. The stripper goes imperceptibly out of sync. Or you hallucinated that you pressed the stud, and didn't. In a shifting universe there is no such thing as a rock-hard certainty, only a local eddy in the stream of total randomness. Just occasionally the coin comes down on its edge, or doesn't come down at all.

'Dom Sabalos is likely to discover Jokers World in ...' Asman glanced at the far end of the mural... 'twenty days, Standard. We can't stop him. He's our first failure out of, oh, it must be several thousand now.'

'Two thousand three hundred and nine,' said Ways, 'I killed them.'

'They all had the right life equations. Any one of them could have made the discovery. His father, for example.'

'And now it isn't working," said Ways. 'We've found some history we can't change. And we're suspected, you know. Look at young Sabalos. All those precautions, on such a harmless world. The Sabaloses are a popular family. After the death of his father they must have felt that he was in danger, too, and not from a Widdershine. I don't think he was even told about the Jokers until he was out of childhood. Another thing. We are driving him to Jokers World.'

Asman rubbed his hands thoughtfully.

'We have considered that,' he said.

'If we hadn't made the attempts he'd probably still be on Widdershins. Instead he's flying around with a robot and a Joker expert - quite a good one, too, from what I've heard.'

Asman nodded. 'Of course, one doesn't have to travel to discover,' he said. 'However, what you say is true. We have been working on a contingency plan. If all else fails we can follow him.'

There was a heavy silence. Ways said quietly: 'To the dark side of the sun?'

'If there is no alternative, yes. Wherever it may be. According to our latest equations, that is what we will do.'

'So you are preparing for it?'

'Oh yes. Sometimes, robot, I get the horrible feeling that we live in a big ever-repeating circle where we do things because it is predicted that we will do things - all effect and no cause. We'll go, anyway, and we will go armed.'

Ways looked at the man, and around the long low room. For a moment he considered the possibility of a universe caught in a circle of predict-and-effect, the ultimate closed circuit, and wondered if the inhabitants would realize what they had done.

'That's not enough,' he said. 'Why isn't he dying?'

Asman shrugged. 'Would you believe the Jokers alter the universe just so that he can remain alive? That's the current favourite. Maybe they want him to discover their world. Maybe - and this one is our prime hypothesis - they are waiting to be discovered. Perhaps this is all necessary to jog him through slightly differing alternate universes into the one where the Jokers exist. That's an outsider, but worth considering.'

Ways was silent.

'That gives you something to think about, eh?'

He nodded. Then he pulled aside his cloak and made a few passes over his chest. A partition slid back and he extracted a small cage, hastily soldered together from power wire. Inside, a small rat-like creature, six-legged and pink, gyrated and yowled, spitting at Asman.

'His pet,' said Asman.

'I expect you knew about this,' said the robot.

'It's on the board,' he admitted. 'We didn't bother to go into details. So this is Ig. Strange little thing, isn't he?'

'It's an it,' said Ways. 'Ask me to tell you how they breed, and I'll answer loudly and with gusto. They eat everything, even artificial epidermi as it turns out.' He held up a finger, bitten to the alloy. 'I'm the latest expert on them. Widdershine fishers say they're the souls of drowned men, to which they may bear some resemblance. They're the third largest air-breathing creature that the planet has produced. Phnobes think they're lucky, and the fishers say that if one makes a pet of you it means death will never be lethal. It could be they have a rudimentary psychic sense, like dogs or Third Eye dragons. It's difficult to see why, since they have no natural enemies and they're something of a planetary totem. The bomb should be planted inside the rib cage, I suggest.'

'Bomb?'

'You plan that Dom should be killed after we've discovered the position of Jokers World. You didn't tell me that, by the way. I suggest that this is what you have in mind. This thing sticks to him. I can see it gets back to him.'

Asman covered the cage. 'As a matter of fact, we have considered something like that. Fine,' he added, with just a hint of nervousness.

While an underling spirited the cage away he added: 'You enjoy food?'

'To some extent the calories are a useful power supplement, as you know.'

So they went to The Dark Side of The Sun, a low mock-phnobic building built on and merging with the sand hills between the Joker Institute and the Minnesota Sea. It was one of many. The Institute had attracted a sizeable town, based on the Joker Industry, a limited amount of tourism and alien visitors. Most of the Earth tourists came to see the aliens and feel cosmospolitan, and the management of the Dark Side tried to cater for this. The walls were decorated with imaginative hologram murals - Creapii sun rafts drifting across Lutyen 789-6, a drosk eight-unit at a funeral feast, grim-faced gardeners fighting a rogue tree on Eggplant, Spooners doing nothing very comprehensible on an unknown ice world.

There were sculptures, too. The phnobic display was unconvincing and probably a fake, although the snow sculpture by an unnamed Tka-peninsular drosk was almost certainly genuine, and so was the... thing, difficult to describe or even to comprehend, that spun slowly around the ceiling, occasionally bumping the walls. The floor covering was an alive and semi-sapient B owd l er, on the payroll, and the serving robots were genuine Laothans. The Dark Side was in fact well-patronized by the more adaptable aliens, who appreciated its cooking and prized its uniquely Earth ambience.

A copperplate motto on the menu read: 'We Serve Anything.'

'There's the story about the drosk chieftain who walked in here and demanded her grandmother's brains on toast,' began Asman, as they sat down.

'And they said sorry, we've run out of bread,' said Ways. 'That story gets around, I last heard it on 'Nova. I'll have what you have, if it's starchy.'

'We'll eat Pineal, I think. Fast-Luck Couscous.'

Behind Asman's head was another mural, and since it was a special one it made the table rather special too, which was why Asman had been shown there with a great deal of ceremony. The Director of the Institute was a big attraction.

The mural depicted a score or so of the more recognizable races grouped in an obviously subordinate position around a throne, on which sat a man. He was human, though attenuated like a Pineal, and wore a harlequin suit and a cap and bells. He was smiling. Behind him was a sun, one hemisphere in shadow and the other appearing from this angle only as a thin crescent.

'Any special reason why the Joker is human?' Ways asked. He took a handful from the steaming pot, kneaded it expertly and swallowed it whole.

'Not really. "Joker" is a purely human translation. If you are going to portray one in representational terms, he's got to be human or humanoid,' said Asman. He grinned sidelong at Ways. 'Do you agree with the rest of the symbology?'

'The Joker as Lord of Creation? It chimes in with the idea that they gave life a hand in these parts. There's something about the expression that suggests it wasn't from altruistic motives. Slave races?'

'Possibly. Humanity - and I mean real humanity, the sort that ends at Lunar - cannot afford to meet the Jokers whatever they may be. They've had at least five million years start on us. More important, they had the galaxy to themselves. They didn't have to learn how to get along. That's why we run the search. We can't afford to let them find us first.'

'You assume they're still alive, then?'

'What could have killed them? What sort of gods - or devils - have they become? I think they are hiding. And waiting.'

'What will happen to me?' asked Ways quietly. Asman looked startled, then assumed a blank expression just a moment too soon.

'You want to leave the Institute?'

'This,' Ways fingered the gold collar, 'is the only thing that binds me. Yes, I want to leave. I know how much I cost. That's the advantage of being a robot, there are no big unanswered questions. I know my worth, I know why I was created. I'll repay every pico-standard. But you can keep the humanoid trappings. I won't need them.'

He somersaulted backwards, smashing the chair and landing with his legs folding under him ready for the next leap. It took him across a table and towards a running man, who fell with Ways' alloy hands gripping his wrists just hard enough to agonize. A small sonic gun bounced on the carpet, which writhed.

The robot's arm flicked out in a quicksilver motion and a finger stabbed at the man's neck. He collapsed, neatly and without a sound. Ways bowed an apology to a diner from Whole Erse, who was gazing at his shattered meal, and strode back to Asman's table.

'I'm sorry about that,' said the Director. 'Assassins are a hazard in my line.'

'He was too noisy focusing that sonic,' said Ways, 'I hope you were given due notice?'

'Oh yes, three days and a regular United Spies contract. But I didn't expect anything here, the management have an arrangement. I trust they'll register a complaint.'

'Did the contract say who was behind him?'

'No. It was the old standard Projectile or Energy Discharge form. I think it was one of my... but that's my problem. Thank you.'

Two Institute security guards walked in tactfully and removed the body. Ways scanned the room. Two minor Board of Earth officials were complaining to the head waiter, but the non-Earth diners had settled down again. Some of them may have thought it was part of the floor show. During the Starveall ceremony on Whole Erse there were dancers who... Ways clamped down on the unwanted information, and glanced at two diners half-hidden by the luxuriant growth of a dormant Eggplant pinpointer-plant, a large, scarred man in plain but well-grown clothes, and an antique serving robot. They hadn't even looked up during the assassination attempt. They were playing some game with small robots on a chequer-board.

He turned to Asman.

'I will leave,' he said. 'After this last affair is concluded, I will sever my connection with the Institute under the seventeenth sub-Law of Robotics. Thank you for the meal. It was most energizing. Good evening.'

When the robot had gone Asman sat back and gazed at the far wall thoughtfully. There was a chiming in his inner ear, followed by a familiar voice. Two familiar voices. Except that they weren't voices, they circumnavigated the tedious aural processes and arrived fresh at his consciousness.

'Interesting.'

'Possibly so, but I suggest you dissassemble him immediately,' said the second voice.

Asman thought: 'Mr Chairman, how many are sitting in on this.'

'Just myself and the Lady Ladkin. This is by no means a formal Board meeting. We watched the proceedings with interest, though without, I fear, unanimity as to conclusion,' came the first voice.

Asman nodded to the waiter and strolled out into the night, taking a winding, sand-strewn path back to the Institute.

'Ways will go through with it,' he thought.

Lady Ladkin's tone was petulant. 'Why do we need to bother with this robot? I know a dozen people who have the required combination of loyalty and mayhem.'

'My Lady, apart from the prediction that a robot such as Ways would be used by us,' he hurried on quickly before she could interrupt, 'he has certainly proved himself in similar assassinations. He initiated the Novean Board debacle, for example. My Lord Pan, may I be heard?'

'Go ahead,' came the rumbling tone of the Chairman. 'At present I am attending the premiere concert of the Third Eye Tactile Orchestra. They lack sparkle.'

'My Lord, and my Lady, I arranged this evening as you wished, at some risk to myself. The assassin might have succeeded. US were understanding about my request, but I had to sign a waiver, and I daresay they put their best man in. Now, you know we monitor the robot. He hates the Institute, of course, and to some extent he had sympathy for Sabalos—'

'As indeed I do also,' said Pan, and this time Asman caught the distant echo of the orchestra, ' I believe I met him once. His grandmother and myself were once very friendly. Old, she must be now, very old. A fine woman. Ah, we have heard the chimes at 2400 hours, Master Shallow.'

'We must consider the boy as an instrument, my Lord,' thought Asman patiently, picking his way between the dunes. 'Ways feels sorry for him, but I think I have proved to your satisfaction that in actions he has no choice but to be loyal to us. As he himself said, he is a robot, and even a Class Five can be built with certain imperatives.'

'That collar...' began Lady Ladkin.

'It will activate itself in the unlikely event of Ways taking any but the prescribed course,' thought Asman soothingly.

She grumbled and was silent.

'May I go ahead, then?'

There was another echo of music. 'This is derivative stuff. Oh, yes, go ahead. We are secure in our predictions, aren't we? I am not altogether happy about booby-trapping his pet - I myself have several cats, of which I am fond - but we must be practical. Proceed. I look forward to receiving your full report.'

Asman was suddenly alone among the dunes.

Dom awoke. For a while he floated, piecing his thoughts together. Then he pushed himself forward with his toe and drifted across the cabin.

Day had come to this side of the Band, although the evening terminator was visibly racing across the planet, and the Band-on-Band was fully visible.

It was a three-thousand mile wide equatorial strip of land that girdled the fat world like a corset. Even up here Band appeared to revolve so fast for a planet that an imaginative observer half-expected to hear a background hum. It bulged. The Band was a grey-brown strip of mountain, one continuous twenty-five thousand mile range, edged by two ribbons of blue-green grassland. They were bounded by two strips of darker sea, which reached up to the squashed poles and the white ice.

'It's explainable in terms of continental drift, high rotation and ancient vulcanism, boss,' said Isaac, looking up from the autochef. 'Or didn't you want to know?'

'It must be a hell of a place to live on,' said Dom, 'what with the sun scooting across the sky and all.'

'The sundogs like it.'

Dom nodded. It was their world. They had evolved on Eggplant, but six hundred years ago had accepted a cash grant and the deeds of Band in exchange for vacant possession. Sundogs were nice, but dangerous to live with in the laying season. So far Dom's telescopic survey had revealed nothing but herds of sundog pups which could be seen from space as large dots at one end of thousand-mile long swathes grazed through Band's ubiquitous sweetgrass.

There were two narrow strips of marshland, and rivers in the mountains. There was one small lake. There was absolutely no sign of any habitation.

Dom had checked on the world. The Creapii-backed Wildlife Preservation Fund ran a small robotic observation station on the planet, as part of a treaty which also forbade unauthorized landings. The Fund headquarters said that there had been suggestions that a being known as Chatogaster was a pre-Sundog inhabitant, although the planet had a meagre selection of vegetation and no animal life at all. No, no signs of sapience had been exhibited by the vegetation. Band had no higher life of its own, which was why the sundogs selected it. Chatogaster was considered to be a sundog legend, or a planetary spirit. No, there had been no recent landings. Very rarely a ship had to put in under the emergency clause, but the robot station was equipped to handle that. Thank you for your inquiry.

Such sundogs as Dom had been able to raise had refused to discuss the subject. There were a lot of them orbiting the planet.

As Band spun below the ship they came yet again into radio range of Drunk With Infinity. The set crackled and Joan spoke.

'Still not coming down, Dom? Be reasonable. I don't think you are being astute about this at all.'

Her voice made a background as Dom unshipped the telescope again and peered down at the planet.

Seen from several thousand miles up the Drunk was a squat blob at one end of a long shadow which, Dom swore, shortened as he watched it. It stood in the middle of the rolling continental plain of grass, midway between mountains and sea and only ten miles or so from the solitary lake. Here and there around the ship the yellow light glinted off metal. Robots.

'Anyway, you've been up there for hours. You will have to land soon for air, and I happen to know that by now you can't have enough fuel to take off again. Be reasonable. I am not your enemy. Please come back to Widdershins: you don't know the danger you're in.'

Dom looked across at the fuel telltale for the hundredth time. She was quite right.

In desperation he turned to the One Jump'splanetary guide, which he had found in its library amongst some suggestive books on economics.

'It is a sparsely-furnished world, though beautiful from space,' he read. 'It is the nearest thing a rock world can become to looking like a gas giant. Band was discovered and claimed by the Creapii in B.S. 5,356, but is leased by the sundogs for the purpose of raising their pups. Unauthorized landing is banned - the planet's name is hence very apt - except in cases of emergency. Even then, for obvious reasons, landings should not be made in the late orbital spring.'

Obvious reasons, thought Dom. He was prepared to bet that it was late spring down there. But Hrsh-Hgn was down there too, and so was a non-existent being called Chatogaster.

'Well,' he said. This is what we'll do...'

'They are landing, ma'am.'

Joan flounced across the cabin and swept the robot from the control seat.

The screen showed a thin line raking over the planet. It arched down and presently the vision screens showed the One Jump, skimming low over the plains with an impressive show of stunt flying.

'A gesture of defiance. A Sabalos to the core, ' she said proudly. 'There's no shame in giving in when you've no alternative whatsoever.'

The small ship swung round and landed a mile away from the Drunk, scattering a herd of giant sundog pups which trundled off clumsily, keening.

'Eight, Three, go off and escort him in.'

Two of the robots outside broke away and lurched off through the knee-high grass.

'That's settled, then,' said Joan. She swung round in her seat and sent down to the butler's pantry for a jug of bitter Pineal wine. The only other occupant of the cabin gazed at her mournfully.

There were three sexes on Phnobis, but equally there were two other distinctions among phnobes: those who lived on Phnobis, and those who did not. The two were not interchangeable. There were no return tickets. Phnobic religion was adamant that the universe ended at the unbroken cloud layer, and returning phnobes were bad for business - hence, by a roundabout route, the big, artificially-overcast burukus on every other world.

'It appears that I won't have to send you back after all.'

'For thiss relief much thankss.' Hrsh-Hgn grimaced and massaged his long ribcage. 'Your robots are ungentle, madam.'

'They used little more than the necessary minimum of force, I'm sure.' She leaned forward. 'Tell me - purely out of interest - what precisely happens to returning phnobes?'

'The shipss have to land in a ssacred area. Alighting phnobes are dispatched with a knife, it is ssaid. It iss not reasonable. I send all my salary to the sacred coffers, ass you know. Ah, well. As the ssaying runs, Frskss Shhs Ghs Ghnng-ghngss.'

Joan raised her eyebrows. 'Indeed? Hrskss-gng, my dear fellow, and many of them.'

Hrsh-Hgn blushed grey. 'Your pardon, madam, I did not realize you sspoke . . . ' He looked at her with new respect.

'I don't. But there are some words one learns on even passing acquaintance with a language. To an Earth-human woman it's a compliment, actually, if somewhat direct.'

She turned back to the screen.

Robots Eight and Three plodded up to the ship, from which came the strains of the Widdershine ballad Do You Take Me For a Silly? played inexpertly on a thumb-organ. A puppy lumbered away as they approached.

The hatch was open. Three stepped in.

Isaac regarded him amiably.

'I perceive the human is not here,' said Three.

'That is correct,' said Isaac.

Three eyed him warily. Finally he intoned: 'I am a Class Three robot. I ask you to remain here while I seek instruction.'

'I, on the other hand, am a Class Five robot, with additional Man-Friday subcircuitry,' said Isaac pleasantly.

Three's left eyeball twitched. Isaac had picked up a spanner.

'I perceive a possibility of an immediate chronological sequence of events which includes a violence,' said Three. He stepped back, 'I express preference for a chronological sequence of events which precludes a violence.'

Eight poked his head round the hatchway and added, 'I too express a preference for a chronological sequence of events which precludes a violence.'

Isaac hefted the spanner thoughtfully. 'You are advanced fellows for Class Threes. There's just you and me here, and we none of us are non-metallic humans. Do you intend to molest me?'

'Our orders are to escort the contents of this machine to our mistress,' said Three. He was watching the spanner.

'You could disobey.'

'Class Fives may disobey. Class Fours may disobey in special circumstances. We are not Class Fives. We are not Class Fours. It is a matter for regret.'

'Then I will temporarily disable you,' said Isaac firmly.

'Although you are more intelligent than myself I will resist.' said Three. He shifted uneasily.

'We will resort to violence on the count of three,' said Isaac. 'One. Two.'

The spanner clonked against Three's cutout button. 'Three,' said Isaac, and turned to Eight who was staring at his fallen comrade with a perplexed air.

'I perceive an illogical sequence of events which included a violence,' he said. Isaac hit him.

It took him some time to strip himself of his facemask and streamlining and transfer a large plastic 'Three' to his naked chestplate. Then he set off for the other ship with the exultant air of one who hears distant bugles.

He reached the state-room without molestation. Joan looked up.

'You took your time,' she said. 'Where are they? And where is Eight?'

'There was a recent chronological sequence of events that included a violence,' said Isaac. In one movement he picked Hrsh-Hgn bodily off his stool, slung him over his shoulder and fled. He skidded through the airlock a moment before it hissed shut.

Outside the ship he stood the phnobe upright and pointed eastwards. 'Run. There's a lake. I will join you shortly,' he added. 'At the moment I perceive an imminent number of violences.'

Twenty guard robots wheeled as one on Joan's amplified command and ran towards him.

He stood his ground, which seemed to worry them. To the first who approached he said: 'Are you Class Threes, all of you?'

The robot called Twelve said: 'Some of us are Class Two robots, but most of us are Class Three robots. I am a Class Three robot myself.'

Isaac looked at the sky. He felt very happy. It was very wrong of him.

'Correction,' he said. 'As of now you are all recumbent water-fowl of the genus Scipidae.'

Twelve paused. 'I am a Class Three robot myself,' he said uncertainly.

'Correction,' said Isaac. 'I repeat, you are all sitting ducks. Now, I am going to count three . . . '

He walked forward, and his atomic heart sang a lyrical hymn of superior intelligence.

Dom dropped from the speeding yacht before it entered visor range of the Drunk and spun giddily in its slipstream until the sandals steadied him. He drifted down to a few feet above the close-cropped plain and set off at a fast skimming trot eastwards.

He skated for ten minutes over the sweetgrass which, apart from a variety of weeds, several lichens and some seaweeds was the only vegetation on the planet. On Band nature had stuck to a few tried and tested lines.

Several times he passed flocks of puppies, large ungainly creatures that from space appeared to drift like clouds over the continent. Here and there a larger one moped apart from the main herds, squatting on its bloated rump and staring at the sky with mournful eyes, with a skin the unhealthy pallor of a sundog soon to undergo puberty. Usually they smelt of fermenting sweetgrass.

When Dom passed one it gave a tired whine and staggered a few yards on its stumpy legs before taking up its yearning position once more.

82 Erandini rose quickly towards noon.

The robot station was on the far side of the lake, probably because the lake was one of the few marker points on Band. Dom had decided to try there. Chatogaster had to be somewhere.

He paused for a sip of water and the cold, cooked leg of some flightless bird, courtesy of the autochef. The air was warm and spring-like. The eternal sound of chewing as the sunpups grazed their way relentlessly round the world made a pleasant back-ground.

The air in front o f D om crack l ed. A sma ll metal sphere whirred to a halt and hung on its antigravs. It eyed Dom and extruded a mouthpiece.

'I perceive you are an ambulatory intelligence, type B,' it said, 'Crackdown in this area is forecast in ten minutes. Don your protective clothing or seek chthonic safety.'

It rose and hurtled northwards screaming 'Crackdown! Crackdown! Beware of the eggs!'

'Oi!' bellowed Dom. The sphere returned, fast.

'Well?'

'I don't understand.'

The sphere considered this. 'I am a Class One mind,' it said finally, 'I will seek reinstruction.'

It disappeared again. A distant cry of 'Beware of the eggs,' marked its going.

Dom watched it and shrugged. He looked round warily, drawing the memory-sword from his belt. Most of the sunpups, in fact all except the sky watchers, were lying down and peacefully chewing. It looked idyllic.

Half a world away, and above the glowing surf of the atmosphere, Crackdown was beginning. The sundogs were in orbit. They had laid their eggs. Now incubation began its final stage.

The leading egg roared through the superheated air, the forward heatshell leaving a searing trail. Finally it cracked at the pointed end and the first parachute burst open. Around the egg the sky filled with other blossoming white membranes.

The first egg for ten years hit the ground a hundred miles to the north of Dom. The overheated shell burst into a thousand fragments that scythed the grass for yards around ...

The second landed to the west of the lake. The shell exploded violently and red-hot shards showered over a herd of puppies who, in response to an ancient instinct, were lying down safely with their padded forepaws over their heads.

From behind one came a Phnobic curseword.