"In that respect at least," the dog continued, "I think we can afford to give Model 17 the benefit of the doubt. How would you like to try to explain the underlying principles of the dimensional translocator which brought us here, say, to one of our new American acquaintances? I'll bet you'd have better luck conducting a seminar for them on the practical application of evil spirits. By the way, did she ever reveal what the tachyon telescope is for?"

  Remgar d'Nod kept pushing the cube until it almost touched the next one in line. He felt another hint of resistance, no greater than before, then there were two cubes—still not quite touching one another—moving along in front of him.

  Although he rather liked the sapient dog, the arachnoid engineer found he resented being interrogated this way. Just now he didn't really want to think about physics, the Americans, Model 17, or his employer, Mister Thoggosh. All he wanted at the moment was to get out of this fluorocarbon soup, spin himself a nice tight, dry, little overnight cocoon somewhere, go to sleep, and dream the lucid dreams his people always dreamed, about his wives and children back home in a friendly universe that seemed further away to him every day.

  Even more than Tl*m*nch*l, Dr*f*rst*v, and the other sea-scorpionoids he knew, Remgar d'Nod was the descendant of a hunter-warrior race whose nomadic yet highly technologized existence was a continual source of embarrassment to academics and scholars who maintained that, in order for true civilization to develop, a people must first tie themselves to a piece of land, preferably through the practice of agriculture. The culture his immediate ancestors had disappeared from some 15,000 years ago had ranged freely over two planets and three moons in their mechanized wanderings. They'd turned Mars into a hunting garden, been in the process of terraforming Venus, and made everyday household use of catalytic fusion.

  And perhaps, Remgar d'Nod thought, because they'd never beaten their swords into plowshares—the latter demanding greater brute strength and sexual dimorphism from their wielders than the former—they were unique among arachnoids in that females were neither morphologically nor socially dominant. Most other sapients had difficulty distinguishing the males of his species from the females.

  Remgar d'Nod stood twice as high as Sam at the shoulders and was covered with a soft tan-brown pelt shading to a creamy color at the rounded crest of his carapace and almost to black at the dainty tips of the plump legs curled beneath his body. His eight eyes were of assorted sizes, every one of them bright with intelligence, curiosity, and humor. An arachnid biologist would easily have spotted the tiny, alert jumping spider in his evolutionary past, slightly wider than it was long, little more than a ferocious little ball of fur and fangs.

  A hundred million years of evolution had not left his species unchanged. For one thing, they were much larger than their ancestors—although small as sapient spiders went—having benefitted from the same mutational chemistry that made that sort of size possible for sapient arthropods elsewhere. They still spun fiber useful for hunting, fishing, and making shelter (although domesticated non-sapients kept by his people did it better and there had been a flourishing synthetic industry in his home universe, as well). But they ate solid food and gave live birth to blond-pelted bright-eyed children who clung easily to the thick fur of either parent, the females producing a fine, soft, easily digested silk for the young which other species sometimes compared to spun-sugar candy.

  "The tachyon telescope?" he repeated Sam's question at last. "Certainly she explained it . . . sort of. In that polite, matter-of-fact way of hers, she informed us ignorant savages that it was for seeing anything out in the galaxy, beyond the Solar System, that happens to be moving faster than the speed of light."

  "Hmph." The dog sat on his haunches between two stationary cubes. "How much would there be to see?"

  "From what she said, more than you might guess." Experimentally, he applied sideways pressure until his cubes not-quite-collided with one to the left. He then pushed all three on an odd, unpredictable diagonal. "She told us that the universe—any universe—is full of natural objects moving faster than light, but that they can't be seen by anyone moving slower, which makes a crazy kind of sense, I guess. She says that's where we'll find the so-called missing matter astrophysicists worry about so much. She implied even more—an entire mirror-universe in which tachyons are basic particles like quarks or photons, complete with the analog of stars, galaxies, and living ecologies—but wouldn't go into any detail about it."

  "As if we didn't have enough universes on our hands, already." The dog chuckled, a very humanlike sound coming from his suit transducer. Unlike many of Mister Thoggosh's land-dwelling employees, he didn't care for swimming in oxygenated liquid fluorocarbon even under the best of circumstances and had refused to take his filmsuit off down here. "Personally, I'd guess that anything moving faster than light would stir up a pretty visible racket, especially whenever it happened to smack into something going slower than light. Did she happen to say what she intended to look for with that thing? Or why it was so all-fired important to get it operating right after she came out of hibernation?"

  At last Remgar d'Nod let the cube go, watching it and its displaced companions slowly reverse themselves and begin drifting back to their proper places. The fascinating thing, the reason he'd pushed them off sideways, was that any stationary cube which happened to be in the way would politely move until the displaced cubes had passed, then go back to where it belonged. Why, he couldn't say.

  "I'm afraid she didn't, Sam. I have half an idea she wants to see what became of the Predecessors. If it works like a radio telescope, maybe she can even consult with them."

  " `A radio for speaking with God,' " Sam quoted in a French accent. The citation was lost on the arachnoid. Probably another old American TV show he'd dredged up.

  "She does seem extremely disappointed for some reason," he told the dog, "that the Successors turned out to be molluscs, rather than arthropods." All three metal blocks were back in place now, and he had exhausted his patience. "Listen, Sam, I don't want to be rude, but I have work to do. Is there some point to all this?"

  The dog appeared to lift an eyebrow. "I certainly hope not."

  "What?"

  "Look, Remgar d'Nod old buddy, it wasn't simply to annoy you that I asked you to step into this square-balled billiard parlor for a little chat with me. In the light of certain disturbing facts we've already uncovered, my boss was worried by the reports you and the others sent back of your initial interview with Model 17. That's why we hustled down here after communications were restored."

  The spider focused his full attention on the dog. "Certain disturbing facts such as . . . ?"

  "Consider the implications." Somehow the shaggy white creature managed to convey a shrug. "In our explorations so far, we've yet to find a single door—not even to what are clearly personal quarters—with a lock on it. And if we're right about the bathrooms, not one has a partition in it or a private stall."

  "That's what's so disturbing?" Remgar d'Nod snorted again. "Sam, I know of many peoples, certain tribes among my own species, without much sense of privacy or property—"

  "Okay," the dog persisted, "how about this: we've discovered several medical facilities aboard this overblown bowling ball. What you may not know is that Rosalind—Dr. Nguyen—says they're all just Band-Aid emporia for minor wounds, the school nurse kind of thing. Dlee Raftan Saon agrees: no equipment or supplies for dealing with major trauma, nothing at all to cope with disease."

  "Interesting." The arachnoid thought about it. "No, I hadn't noticed that. Maybe the Predecessors had eradicated disease altogether. Judging from their engineering, they were pretty advanced. But what if they hadn't, Sam? What does it prove?"

  "Not a blasted thing. But it gives us a very unpleasant idea." Sam lifted a hind foot to scratch behind one ear and was again impeded by his suit. "My boss thinks he knows what those big rock tumbler things are for. He thinks they're for grinding up the bodies of dead—or maybe just injured and useless—trilobites. Have you noticed how close they are to the kitchen facilities?"

  Remgar d'Nod swallowed uncomfortably. "Ugh."

  "I'll see that `ugh' and raise you a `yech.' Add it up yourself: no personal privacy, no heroic medicine, presumptive evidence of cannibalism. Model 17—"

  The spider interrupted. "You think she's dangerous to us?"

  Sam shook his head. "Not directly, perhaps, but Model 17's a cybernetic device constructed and programmed by a race of apparently antlike sapients—and that contradiction's disturbing enough—who never got around to inventing individualism. She was created to serve Successor species, yet unavoidably the Predecessors will have built into her many of their own values and prejudices."

  "Well," the arachnoid argued, thinking of the robot's repeated apologies to Valerian, Betal, Jones, Ortega, Ortiz, Tl*m*nch*l, Dr*f*rst*v, and himself, "once she got the idea who we were—or weren't—she seemed to treat each of us as individuals."

  "She's a very talented device. Her builders knew she'd be dealing with beings who possessed viewpoints quite different from their own. But she was constructed hastily, according to what she told you, and shut off before any extensive testing."

  "Meaning what?"

  "Meaning nothing—we hope. But deep down, she reflects the values of her makers. Even if we're only right about the locks, the infirmaries, and the bathrooms—not the tumblers or the kitchens—she inherently needs to be part of a tight-knit community of beings identical to herself. Now she's unique and alone. And she's been conscious long enough for the isolation to begin driving her insane."

  Remgar d'Nod would have shaken his head had he been capable of it. "Can a machine go insane?"

  "You haven't seen 2001 a Space Oddity?" Sam peered suspiciously around the corners of the cubes to his right and left. "What worries Eichra Oren and me most is something else you may not have noticed. We're keeping quiet about it, so far. At the air lock, we've found what could be evidence of comings and goings during the late lamented unpleasantness with this Earth's gaggle of governments. Either some of the troopies got down here, which we doubt, or something from down here got up there. If it was Model 17, why didn't she mention it?"

  The spider sighed exasperatedly. "Why not ask her?"

  "I'm here because I use my implant for more than communicating. You might even say I am my implant. My boss thought I might see things from Model 17's point of view better than a natural sapient. If I had fingers and she had a nose, I'd try the Vulcan mind-meld. But I haven't asked because she isn't here now. She left after we came down, saying she had maintenance to perform. Eichra Oren was right: it sounded phony to me. She didn't say where or to what, but she trundled off, deeper into the asteroid, like a bat out of New Jersey."

  "Which is why you asked me about the tachyon telescope. Well, I've given you everything I know, Sam, plus my unsubstantiated opinion that she wants to see what became of the Predecessors and maybe even talk with them. What else can I do for you?"

  Sam peered around the cubes again, in imitation of the Soviet Americans, making sure they weren't being overheard. "You realize there's another, more ominous possibility."

  Remgar d'Nod flapped his palps in an impatient gesture. "And what might that be, my mammalian friend?"

  Sam looked around again and lowered his voice. "That if it's dark outside, before putting your car in gear it's always a good idea to turn on the headlights."

  "You mean—"

  "I mean a tachyon telescope might be how a faster-than-light starship sees where it's going. Maybe we're all about to take a little trip, whether we want to or—!"

  Without warning, the metal blocks Sam sat between suddenly slammed together, snapping the dog's ribs, crushing his pelvis, and fracturing his spine.

  FIFTY-SIX More Restitution

  "I, and I alone am responsible for what happened to your friend Sam, Eichra Oren."

  "Now, Model 17—"

  "Others of your friends have told me that you are a professional expert in matters of personal guilt. Is there anything I can I do to restore the moral balance?"

  "I—"

  English being the language they had in common, that was what they spoke. Momentarily speechless, Eichra Oren drew a ragged breath and shook his head. His experience with what amounted, metaphorically, to an amputation was much too recent for him to control himself any better than that. The sword he'd done the literal amputation with lay across his knees, still bloody from the ugly job.

  Finally, he spoke: "Model 17, I'm too personally involved, I'm afraid—and on that account professionally disqualified—to be of much assistance to you. For whatever informal reassurance it may be worth, I can't see how you're to blame for what happened in any case. It's exactly the kind of horrible accident that was bound to occur sooner or later whenever people start experimenting, fooling around with an unfamiliar piece of equipment. In principle, it doesn't matter whether it's a simple handtool or a gigantic spacecraft."

  Before Model 17 could reply, a creature resembling a manta ray wrapped in transparent plastic, walking on its rear corners, pushed a cart past where the human sat on a bench extruded from the sidewalk. Pausing along the way, she greeted Eichra Oren by name in his native Antarctican, tendered her sincerest condolences, and offered him and Model 17, who squatted beside him, a doughnut and a cup of coffee.

  Each refused politely, for different reasons.

  "That was Remaulthiek," Eichra Oren nodded in the direction the manta creature had trundled, "who probably knows more about matters of guilt than I ever will."

  Everyone on 5023 Eris was aware that Remaulthiek was working her way through some kind of self-imposed penance for a moral debt she'd incurred long before anybody could remember. What Eichra Oren didn't know, nor did anyone else he was acquainted with, was exactly what she'd done and to whom. It was characteristic of the culture he'd grown up in that no one ever thought to ask her and never would.

  "Nonetheless," the ancient trilobitic robot insisted, "it was my personal responsibility. It matters little whose mind or manipulator lay upon the controls. I was specifically constructed by those you call the Predecessors, and left behind when they departed, for the purpose of accomplishing two equally important tasks."

  The man nodded. "And those were . . . ?"

  "My first task," she answered, "was to warn possible Successor races of an impending catastrophe too unspeakably terrible for any organic sapient to contemplate sanely. Eichra Oren, forgive me, but I must reiterate that the threat to all sapient life, in every version of the Solar System, represented by the Eldest is—"

  "Excuse me," the p'Nan moral debt assessor found that he was interrupting the robot as gently as he could. Something she'd said intrigued him, although he couldn't place a finger on exactly what. "What was your second task, Model 17?"

  There was an empty moment where a living, breathing creature would have put a sigh. Like any sapient being, she was beginning to pick up phrasing and other nuances of language from those she associated with. "My second task appeared much simpler, much more straightforward than the first when I was initially programmed. Now I am not so certain about that. I was to be in total control of this gigantic spacecraft, as you call it, prepared in every way to assist less-technologically accomplished beings with its eventual management."

  "Well," Eichra Oren answered thoughtfully, "these things don't happen all at once, do they? You're supposed to warn us all about the Eldest, and you're supposed be a—I don't know, a flight instructor, or purser or helmsbeing, maybe. It seems to me that you're somewhere in the middle of getting both of those jobs done."

  "See how well I have accomplished either!" Making scrabbling sounds with her many feet, she swiveled around like a small tank, so as to avoid looking at him or being looked at.

  Eichra Oren was profoundly surprised. Having lived among technologically advanced sapients all his life, well over half a millennium so far, even he would never have guessed that a machine, however sophisticated, might be capable of voicing sarcastic bitterness or what appeared to be genuine self-deprecation. Model 17 actually seemed to be experiencing guilt. This was a startling new phenomenon to him, or at least he believed it was. It had never occurred to him that the friend he grieved over at this very moment had been at least partially a machine himself—just as he had never thought of Sam as an animal.

  Model 17 had told him that this was her first excursion onto the asteroidal surface, which had never been meant by its builders for habitation. Each of them had already expressed a wish that the circumstances of the occasion were more pleasant. At the moment, words having failed to take them any further, they simply kept each other company, the man sitting on his bench and the robot sprawling on her countless legs, waiting beside a main-level thoroughfare in the Elders' settlement. While Model 17 contemplated some inward guilt-distorted landscape, Eichra Oren stared upward into the great trees and the environmental canopy they formed overhead, reconsidering his evaluation of her.

  At a sudden harsh noise, they both turned to listen. A little way down the busy street a shrill-voiced sapient whose species had obviously evolved from deepwater starfish had set up shop while they were preoccupied with their own problems and was now selling flowers, balloons, the equivalent of greeting cards, and similar gifts and souvenirs from a pushcart exactly like Remaulthiek's.

  Eichra Oren returned his eyes to the canopy and his attention to his earlier thoughts.

  The artificial environment which the Elders and their allied species had arranged for themselves here on 5023 Eris was simple in conception, but it was a simplicity born of great and ancient sophistication. Following the initial remote surveys of the asteroid—and the one and only universe of alternative probability in which it could be found—beginning in what Americans reckoned as the late nineteenth century, the seeds of a unique species of plant, genetically engineered to germinate and prosper despite the freezing vacuum of space, had been carefully scattered across its carbonaceous "topsoil." These had sprouted relatively quickly into what one deeply impressed Soviet American arrival had compared to outsized California redwoods and another with more imagination had later labeled "super kudzu."