The High-Tech Knight

Interlude One

I hit the STOP button.

"Tom, that horse is one of your critters, isn't it?"

"She's an intelligent bioengineered creation of my labs, if that's what you mean."

"Then what's an old atheist like you doing designing religious animals?"

"In the first place, Anna's not an animal in the sense you're using the word. She's intelligent. In the second, I didn't design her. That sort of thing takes a big staff a long time to do. And in the third place, it was as big a surprise to me as it was to you."

"It was?"

"Those horses are very literal-minded. They will always take every word that an authority figure says as the absolute truth. Nobody ever thought that one of them would be told deliberate lies."

"Tom, you're an old heathen!"

"I'm also your boss and your father. Now shut up."

He hit the START button.