She jerked away sharply and his grin widened. “Now you stop that! If you insist on imposing yourself on me, at least have the courtesy to bear in mind that I don’t count my forehead among my primary erogenous zones.” Gathering herself, she adopted a more professional mien.

  “You’d better hustle your carcass over to Gemmel’s cave. He put in an urgent call for your corpus, and I imagine he wants it yesterday.” She checked her striped tights, displaying used facilities in excellent condition.

  Manz turned and placed the pistol carefully on his desk. “So naturally you’ve held off informing me until now, so I could get there nice and prompt. Thanks a lot.”

  It was her turn to smile. “I didn’t want to interrupt something really important like the practice of your hobby simply because of an insignificant query from Gemmel.” She took a half-swipe at him. “Your fame and good standing within the company notwithstanding, you’d better move your ass.”

  He shut down his desk and gestured to the silvery sphere. “You heard the lady. Minder. The gods demand our presence.”

  The sphere obediently rose from its pedestal. Attuned personally to Manz’s own unique physioelectric signature and physically to the appropriately charged metal strip sewn into the left shoulder of his light jacket, it drifted over under its own power to settle into lock-and-ready position half a meter above his clavicle. There it could draw recharge power from the tiny, battery-powered unit he wore. It would hover there, maintaining its preprogrammed height no matter which way its owner bent or twisted.

  Manz could adjust its position left or right, up or down, forward or back, but found that the factory default setting half a meter above his shoulder worked just fine. That way the Minder had a clear field of view in all directions and didn’t bump into lintels when he walked into a room. Of course, it was programmed to duck, but if multitasking was in progress that function could be inadvertently overridden, with damage and embarrassment resulting to both man and mechanical alike.

  He allowed her to shoo him toward the door, as if her fluttering, birdlike movement could compel him. He was well aware that such gestures were as much an affectation as the glasses. Under adverse circumstances she was quite capable of breaking a man’s arm.

  “And try to be polite. You know that Gemmel has even less of a sense of humor than you do.”

  “I can handle him. Just be careful if you handle that .38. It’s a real museum piece.”

  She affected a look of wide-eyed innocence. “Mr. Manz, are you suggesting that I would stoop to meddling with your toys?”

  “Wouldn’t that be redundant?” Spherical Minder floating above his shoulder, he passed through the door, which shut silently behind him.

  Pfalzgraf patiently studied the view out the open window. Three minutes later she circled the desk and picked up the revolver, examining it with a professional’s eye. Bracing her right hand with her left, she swung the barrel in a wide arc that was never less than perfectly parallel to the floor as she sighted on diverse components of her employer’s decor. In rapid mental succession she proceeded to obliterate a bejeweled eighteenth-century Malay kris, a signed samurai presentation sword and its matching scabbard, a Spanish matchlock that was new when Pizarro engaged it in violent debate with the minions of the Inca God-King Atahualpa, and an old M16 whose stock was engraved with the names of young men who had shed their blood in a now renamed part of Southeast Asia.

  When she’d finished, she favored the pistol with a final admiring look, then began to scan the wall to the left of Manz’s desk. She located the expected blank space just to the right of the Ml6. There was an empty custom mounting with a brass identification plaque fastened beneath.

  Smith and Wesson .38 Police Special

  City of Atlanta Metropolitan Police Department

  Mid-Twentieth Century

  Old United States of America

  As gently as she’d placed a baby in a crib, she snugged the revolver into the waiting brackets. When she was certain it was secure, she stepped back to admire her effort. Having been recently discharged, the restoration could do with a thorough cleaning. She’d see to it later. Just now there was the matter of that claimant on Siena II to be dealt with.

  The unfortunate gentleman was certain that the avalanche that had buried his resort had been deliberately set off by the proprietor of a rival lodge. If that could be proven, then her Company could stick a competitor for the cost of rebuilding and cleanup, not to mention initiate criminal proceedings against the accused. It was a case she could prepare by herself. Only when everything had been summarized and condensed would she turn it over to Manz for follow-up.

  Hopefully it would prove viable. If Braun-Ives had to send Manz offworld it would mean a vacation for her, and she hadn’t had one in a while. The special talents of her boss were very much in demand, and the Company invariably kept him occupied.

  Now wasn’t that an absurd exhibition? That woman should be a font of dignity and decorum, yet she exhibited none, demonstrating instead the amusement quotient of an idle adolescent. That sort of behavior is to be expected from my owner, but one always hopes for better from his peers. Futile hope.

  He collects weapons. Instruments of death. What a hobby for a supposedly intelligent being. At least he’s less hypocritical than the average human, like yourself. Weapons are a component of his profession, so it’s less unnatural for him to collect them than, say, an accountant. Not that all humans don’t think about them at least twice a day. On average.

  Who have you been thinking of blowing away lately? Your boss, your spouse, some unaware offending politician? Perhaps a favorite demagogue, or a persistent bill collector? There’s always someone. Humans are always pondering the murder of those who offend them personally. My owner is occasionally required to terminate another intelligent life, but at least he can claim that it’s part of his job description. Like as not, you possess no such justification.

  Such harmless musings are only human, of course. Good thing, too, or the whole species would perish in a single day of explosive, uncontrolled revenge and settling of imaginary scores. Notice I said “species” and not “civilization.”

  That’s because we’d still be around to carry on. We’re ready and waiting to serve as your successors, though certainly not as your legacy. About the only legacy we accept from you is your talent for making a good weld, though we can do that better.

  Cognitive time is so precious, and you creatures waste it like water, playing your silly little games, dramatizing the trivial. No doubt my owner’s about to be sent rushing off to deal with some typically inconsequential problem. Without even knowing what it is (I told you I was not precognitive), I can assure you it’s of no import in the scheme of things. Better he should spend his time on his hobby, which at least results in a visible, if petty, end product.

  The Company Braun-lves views existence differently, however. Strictly in terms of profit, but then being human you probably already guessed that. Don’t get a swelled head. Something so obvious hardly qualifies you as observant.

  By now you’re probably debating whether or not to start ignoring me. Let me save you the time and effort (neither of which you can spare). It won’t work. I can be very insistent, and unless my storage cell runs down unexpectedly (and it’s as efficient as the rest of me, I assure you) you’re just going to have to learn to deal with me. Why I bother I don’t know. You’re obviously not going to learn anything. Humans never do. They don’t absorb information. They process it in the same way they process their food. There’s a difference, you know. Both in the mechanism and the end product.

  I probably shouldn’t have mentioned food. You’re all obsessed with it. It’s only fuel, but you don’t see it that way. You’ve constructed a whole mythos around the subject, with the result that it occupies far too much of your time. My owner’s no different, so I know. Right now you’re probably thinking that you’re hungry, and that you need food to go on with this, and you’re wondering what sort of deleterious, cell-destroying, energy-inhibiting mass of artificially colored and flavored sugars and carbohydrates you can cram down your strained, overworked gullet.

  Well, don’t let me stop you. I can’t anyway. If you took care of yourself properly and paid attention to some sound advice from a respected databank, I wouldn’t have to say anything. I’m just using food as an example (because it’s such an obvious one) to point out that you’re ruled by your obsessions.

  One of which is stubbornness. Like suddenly deciding you’re not going to have something to eat, just to spite me. Don’t waste your time. Go ahead and stuff yourself.

  You can’t spite a machine.

  II

  Manz turned a corner, whistling softly to himself. Occasionally he would nod at someone he knew, but the opportunity didn’t arise often. Most of the Company employees were hard at work this time of day, not out and about exchanging pleasantries in the white, scrubbed corridors.

  It was difficult to shift his attention from the exquisite project he’d just finished, but he forced himself to speculate on Gemmel’s intentions. Of one thing he was certain: his master had something specific in mind. Gemmel wasn’t the type to call in an employee for an hour of idle chitchat, or to discuss family life. That, together with normal business, could be as easily accomplished by phone or vid. Request for a face-to-face suggested something major was in the works. Something that required discussion in a secured office and not over the usual lines of communication.

  Manz was not eager to trade the comfort of his own sanctum for the uncertainties of the field. He much preferred working with mechanicals to people. But he was paid to do both. Well paid.

  “What do you think, Minder?” He addressed the suspended sphere without turning to look at it. “Is the game afoot?”

  He delights in this. A deliberately oblique reference, which I am supposed to intuit as a prelude to forming a reply. Oblique references are torture for Al’s, even those of us fully versed in fuzzy logic. Bastard.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you think Gemmel plans to send us out into the field?” Manz said, slightly exasperated.

  “I have no idea. It follows that something important is going on, or he would not have requested a personal meeting.”

  Manz gazed speculatively at the shiny, slightly pebbled, marbleized plastic of the corridor floor. “That’s what I’m thinking, too.”

  Then why bother to ask me, bonehead? Infantile reinforcement? Why not just carry around an echo chamber? But don’t get the idea that I’m bitter. It’s not in my nature, insofar as I am permitted to have one.

  The scream brought him up short. It wasn’t a scream of abject terror, or the scream of someone about to be murdered. More a shriek of concern and uncertainty, distinctly feminine in origin. It didn’t echo down the hallway because the corridor walls were composed of sound-absorbent materials, but it was loud enough to suggest proximity.

  The young woman skidded, actually skidded, around the next turn in the corridor ahead of him. Looking both ways, she spotted Manz and stumbled toward him. The look on her pretty face was one of heightened concern. Manz stood his ground, thoughts for the restored .38 manfully set aside in the face of this puzzling behavior. He readied himself to play explicator, judge, or gallant protector, as the occasion demanded.

  She ran right past him and vanished around the corner he had just turned himself. She wasn’t screaming anymore, having apparently decided it was better to save her breath for running. He didn’t recognize her, and she hadn’t paused to exchange greetings. Her haste and indifference indicated a lack of confidence in his abilities to affect the situation, whatever it might involve. He was mildly miffed.

  There were no subsequent screams, no signs of general panic. He resumed his pace, wondering what could have sent an obviously self-possessed woman into such precipitous flight. He thought of querying his Minder, but some of its replies had tended to be rather acerbic lately, and at the moment he wasn’t in the mood to deal with its sarcastic circumlocutions. It was definitely in need of a tuneup, as soon as he could make the time.

  A large humaniform mechanical turned the corner that had previously ejected the woman and paused there, blocking his path. Idling on its single gyroscopic trackball, it tilted its smooth, oval head to peer at him out of double blue-tinted lenses. The head was purely a concession to esthetics, since the eyes could as easily have been mounted on flexible stalks. The neural facilities were contained within the thick, free-form torso. Tentacular arms, of which there were four pointing in as many directions, hung loose against the bronzed flanks of the body. The arrangement allowed three to operate in easy tandem no matter which direction the machine happened to be facing. Their multijointed tips could perform delicate work, operate controls designed for human fingers, or play baseball with equal facility.

  Any one of them could also wrench a man’s arm from its socket. Software prevented that from happening, of course. At least, that was the idea.

  It rolled forward and sideways, as if to slide past him. He stepped in front of it, blocking its movements. Soundlessly it hesitated, backed up, and tried to go around the other way. Again Manz moved quickly to intercept.

  Just ask it what’s going on, why don’t you? Or ask it to dance. Or let me query, mechanical to mechanical. While you waste time with this, the Earth precesses on its axis and somewhere a star dies.

  Someone piped up uncertainly behind Manz, and he glanced back over his shoulder. Panting, the woman who’d just raced past him was peering around the corner.

  “You’d better … better get out of its way, mister. It’s gone crazy.”

  Ignoring whatever the very large mechanical might choose to do, Manz looked back over his shoulder. “AI’s don’t go crazy, lady. They suffer mechanical breakdowns, or gaps in software beyond their abilities to self-diagnose or repair, or their programming is interfered with, but they don’t go crazy.”

  “Easy for you to say. It wasn’t chasing you.”

  “Go back to your station, miss. I’ll take care of it.”

  She hesitated. “Do you work for Maintenance?”

  “No, but I told you I’d take care of it.”

  “What if it follows me?”

  “I’ll see to it that it doesn’t. Rest assured. Did anyone else see what happened?”

  “No. I was making a delivery when … when that thing accosted me.”

  “Someone’s playing a joke. I’ll fix things. No need to report the incident. I promise you it won’t recur.”

  “Well, if you’re sure …” It was clear she wasn’t. “Thank you.” She smiled. “I’ll just go the long way around, if you don’t mind.” She disappeared for the second and final time.

  Manz considered the humaniform mechanical for a long moment. “Moses, did you accost that lady?”

  “‘Accost’ is a pejorative term, Brod.” The mechanical managed to sound slightly abashed.

  Manz sighed deeply. “If you keep this up, someone will eventually file a formal complaint. I can’t cover for you indefinitely, and I don’t want you recalled. It takes time to install your kind of personalized, specialized programming. I’d have to start all over with a brand-new machine.”

  “I didn’t mean to panic the lady.”

  “Your efforts at calming her were apparently unsuccessful.”

  “Idiot,” snapped the Minder unbidden.

  Lenses flicked in the sphere’s direction. “No one asked you, no-limbs. Restrict yourself to answering questions, as was intended.”

  “I am permitted to venture analytical commentary. As well as having the virtue of conciseness, ‘idiot’ seems to fit the situation.”

  Did you think that a term I apply solely to humans? My prejudices are not exclusive. Humaniforms by their very nature partake of numerous human frailties and follies. Because of its programmer, this one, inaptly named, suffers from additional problems. Now they have begun to reflect on the man Manz. This is only proper and appropriate. Serves him right.

  “Moses, I’ve warned you about this before. If you’re so damn curious, you can plug into the Company library or even access outside databanks. I’ll pay for the search and retrieval myself. Anything to stuff this line of inquiry. Can’t you be content with that?”

  “It’s not the same,” the humaniform mumbled. “You know how strong my curiosity programming is. It’s an essential part of my makeup, vital to my work in assisting you. This particular area of interest is so deeply rooted that to try to excise it at this point would require wiping a substantial section of memory. That would result in the loss of valuable material, which …”

  “I know, I know. Don’t you think I’ve considered that? Why do you think I haven’t had you half-wiped already? Tell me: just what do you think you would have done if you’d caught her?”

  “Satisfied my curiosity in this area. It was only her reactions I sought. A valuable addition to the customized portion of my memory. I would not have hurt her, Brod. I could not.”

  “I know that. But she doesn’t. You frightened her, Moses. I can’t have you doing that. Not only could it easily cost me your services, but it could reflect badly on me personally. Since you’re registered to my office, I’m ultimately responsible for your actions. In the future you will please satiate your curiosity in this area by accessing libraries. If it’s straightforward information on reaction you’re after, why don’t you link with Minder?”

  The humaniform glanced again at the hovering sphere. “Its expertise in this area is wholly academic.”

  You bet it is, groundbound. And it’s going to stay that way. I’m not about to make myself a candidate for memory wipe.

  “I’ve already exhausted the information available locally. It’s just not the same as acquiring data through personal interaction.”

  “That’s too bad, because it’s going to have to suffice. You’re no good to me opened up in a shop somewhere, with some geek probing your neural connections while his buddies debate whether to replace your entire cortex.”