As he scrambled upward, the ancient, moss-eaten stone crumbled under his hands and feet. He slid. He fell, bumping against the nose and then crashing onto bare stone at the temple’s base.

  He must have been dazed by the fall, for by the time he was able to raise his head from the ground and look around, two robots were already upon him, pointing their rifles at him.

  But they did not shoot. Waiting? For the one with the pipe? The one the monkey had called Kaantur-Set?

  Was there some way to escape? I am stronger than I imagined possible, he thought, to have made the leap I made. Yet these robots must have strength beyond anything a human’s bones could support. Strength and quickness and accuracy. I couldn’t run away quickly enough; fighting them would be useless; yet to lie here and die . . .

  Suddenly a tall shape moved into view behind the robots, silhouetted by the sun behind it. Something sinuous in its movements told him this newcomer was alive, not a machine. Not a jodphur this time. Rapidly it moved toward the robots and, with huge hands, struck blows that knocked the weapons from their grips. The hunter-beast picked up one robot, then the other, and broke them like branches.

  Without showing a sign that he had even seen the man, the hunter-beast bent over and pried the antennae from the robots he had just broken.

  The hunter-beast wore an apparatus on its head that covered its ears and had a thin rod that extended near its mouth. A headset, the man realized. So it can hear. And speak. It has language.

  “Thank you,” said the man.

  “This is no place for humans,” answered the hunter-beast.

  Of course it could speak. Like the monkey, hadn’t it been bred partly from human genes? A robot-killer that could handle enemies that ordinary humans could not fight?

  Why do I know this, and yet so little else?

  “Tinheads kill any animal they find,” said the hunter-beast.

  “What’s your name?” asked the man.

  “Juomes,” said the hunter-beast. “What’s yours?”

  He could not answer because, of course, he did not know. “There were robots behind me, up on top of the cliff.”

  “Then soon they’ll be down here,” said Juomes. “When they get the trail of a human, they never give up.” Trophies in hand, Juomes turned and climbed onto a large flea-like creature.

  “Don’t leave me,” said the man. “I don’t know where I am or where to go.”

  Juomes barely paused. “When they follow you, I don’t want them to find me. Rend will lead you.”

  “Rend?” said the man to Juomes’s back. And then the hunter-beast was gone.

  At once the monkey leapt from a low branch and scampered along the foot of the temple wall.

  “I’m Rend, you fool!” cried the monkey. “Don’t you remember anything? They’re coming, they’re going to find you, follow me! Follow me, Caps!”

  “Is that my name?” asked the man.

  “It is until they kill you because you’re too stupid to move out of this clearing!” screeched Rend.

  Caps followed him into dark low paths among the trees, winding upward, around the steep cliff that Caps had jumped. “You know me, then?” he asked.

  “We go through this every time,” said Rend. “Don’t you learn anything?”

  “I don’t remember ever doing this before,” said Caps.

  “Well, I can promise you I don’t plan to do it again,” said Rend.

  “Take me back to the machine I came out of,” said Caps. “Where you found me. There must be something there that will tell me what I’m supposed to do. Maybe it’ll play the message it played before, and you can listen to it and help me understand it.”

  Rend leapt up and dangled from a branch before his face. “I don’t go in there,” said Rend. “You’re on your own.”

  Rend pointed the way for Caps to go, then swung up into the higher branches, calling down as he climbed, “You’re on your own now!”

  Moving as quickly as he could in the direction Rend had pointed, Caps soon emerged into the clearing where his machine had been. But it was not there.

  It had been dragged away from the clearing. Since the machine was large and heavy, Caps was not eager to meet whatever it was that had moved it. Yet if he was to find out more about who he was and what he was supposed to do, he had no choice but to follow its path into the forest.

  Caps might have the ability to leap across chasms, but that did not make him good at stealth in the woods. He did not see the hunter robot until he was almost upon him.

  This robot was not quite like the others—he was marked with orange on his right arm, though what the marking meant Caps could not guess. And instead of pointing his weapon at him, the robot merely gestured harshly for him to leave.

  But he did not speak. Because he could not? Or because he did not want to be heard?

  When Caps did not obey, the hunter shook his head and then ran off into the woods.

  Caps looked around to see if the hunter was warning him of something. But how far could he see into the underbrush? He looked up into the branches of a tree and saw nothing there, either.

  And yet his eyes kept returning to one spot, as if some deep part of his brain recognized something that his conscious mind did not. He studied the place, and gradually came to realize that, even though it was very still, there was something alive perched among the branches.

  Alive, not a robot. Even before he realized it was a human, he knew it was not a machine.

  As he stared, the figure moved, emerging from its hidden posture to stand openly on a heavy branch. It was a young woman, luminous with beauty, wearing ragtag clothing that, astonishingly, was white. How had she managed to remain concealed? Why would she wear white in a place where robots were hunting? She seemed to have ample reason for confidence, judging from the robot-antenna trophies she wore on her belt.

  Why is she watching me? Or was she watching the hunter robot? Did I spoil her kill? Or . . .

  Before he could speculate further, Rend burst screeching from the woods, soaring three meters over Caps’s head. “I found your nest!” he cried. “But the hunters found me!”

  Caps did not wait to see how close behind Rend the hunter robots were. He followed him into the woods, and the chase was on again.

  Rend knew where he was going, and Caps did not, so this time Caps followed him faithfully. Soon they were back at the temple ruins, and Rend flung himself into a shadow that did not look like an opening.

  As he dropped to the ground and slid into the opening, Caps realized that it still didn’t look like an opening, or not much of one. The robots were more slender than any adult human—they could go through any aperture Caps could fit through. But what made this passage a good escape was that it bent almost immediately between stones, first to the right, then down, then left, then up, then out, in turns so tight that Caps had to contort himself in ways he had not imagined possible in order to fit.

  Robots might be stronger and quicker and thinner than humans, but their joints weren’t as flexible and their skin had no give to it. This was one of the few places where a man could go and a robot couldn’t.

  Caps wondered, briefly, if that’s precisely why this passageway was built.

  But how could it have been? This temple dated from the glorious days when robot and human were still friends, living together, cooperating, learning from each other.

  How do I know that? wondered Caps yet again.

  In the darkness he bumped into something hairy.

  “Rend?” asked Caps.

  “Up or down?” asked Rend.

  “How should I know? You’re the one who knows the passageways, not me.”

  “I only come here to hide from predators. I wait till they go away or fall asleep. But Kaantur-Set will post a watch. Robots never sleep. Robots never disobey.”

  Caps thought of the orange-marked robot and wondered.

  Outside the passageway, they could hear a harsh voice reprimanding the hunters. “You had him in your sights. You didn’t fire. Why?”

  Caps heard no reply. Then a single gunshot suggested there would never be a reply.

  Again the harsh voice. “And you? Where were you?”

  “I thought I saw him in the trees.”

  Could this be the orange-marked robot?

  “Thought?”

  “I saw something, and thought that it was him.”

  “I should shoot you, too.”

  “If I deserve it, you will,” said the robot.

  “Stand guard, and shoot any beast or man that comes out of that hole,” said Kaantur-Set. “I will also have a guard stand watch on you, from up there, where you can’t see.”

  Could it be the orange-marked robot? Kaantur-Set had not killed him, but he did not fully trust him, either. Had the orange-marked robot been trying to save Caps’s life by motioning him to leave?

  Don’t try to find explanations alone in the dark, Caps told himself.

  “Up or down?” Caps asked Rend.

  “I asked you first,” said Rend.

  “Down, then.”

  This passageway was much smoother, and instead of sharp angles it had gentle curves and bends.

  Then a stone rocked downward and sent Caps and Rend slipping down a steep slide. They didn’t stop until they became entangled in a net, which swung out to dangle in the middle of a dimly lit room.

  “I think this is a trap,” said Rend.

  “But not an ancient one,” said Caps. “Because this net is new.”

  “You smell like a human,” said Rend, sniffing disdainfully.

  “I’m allergic to monkey fur,” said Caps.

  “I thought you didn’t remember anything,” said Rend.

  “I didn’t remember it. I discovered it,” said Caps.

  The room had once been ceremonial. The walls were painted with heroic-sized depictions of humans and robots engaged in solemn activities together. But all around the room, shelves and tables had been put up, many of them makeshift contraptions that could barely support their contents.

  What they held were a few books, a lot of papers in haphazard-looking stacks, and bottles, jars, vials, boxes, tubes, trays, dishes, and a weird assortment of once-living things—heads and other body parts of various animals, lots of different leaves and roots, and hundreds of herbs growing in pots placed along the one wall, which would presumably be scanned by sunlight from the high windows during the course of the day.

  Specimens. Whoever used this room was a biologist. This was a laboratory.

  Then they heard the grinding sound of stone rolling across stone, and they fell silent, waiting to see who their captor was.

  It was the hunter-beast Juomes, who had saved him after he fell. Juomes moved about slowly, taking off his trophies and weapons, putting them away, giving no sign that he saw that his net was full. Neither Caps nor Rend felt any need to break the silence.

  “Got away from the tinheads,” said Juomes at last, chuckling, “and came to visit me.”

  He lowered the net to the ground and unfastened it at the top. Rend immediately scampered away, running for safety, hiding somewhere. Caps didn’t have that option.

  Instead he studied his . . . what, captor? Deliverer? He noticed that on a jewel that hung on a chain around Juomes’s neck, there was inscribed a symbol Caps had seen inside the machine where he awoke. The symbol had no meaning to him, but he thought it significant that Juomes voluntarily wore something that might be connected to the machine. It did not prove him to be either friend or foe. It was simply a fact, which Caps would remember and try to make sense of. If there was some link to the machine, there was a chance Juomes would know something to help Caps understand who he was and what had happened to his memory.

  But it was Juomes who asked the questions, not Caps, and when he learned of the machine, he insisted that Caps and Rend lead him there. Once they got him in the vicinity, Juomes took the lead, sniffing the air and holding still, listening and watching carefully, and then moving branches slowly so that the three of them made no sound as they passed through the underbrush to a good vantage point.

  The robots had webbed the machine with cables and were hitching it to several large beasts. Apparently they meant to haul it somewhere—probably to a road. Caps thought it ironic that the robots had to resort to the labor of beasts when a really difficult task was at hand. Later, when he said as much to Juomes, the hunter-beast spat and said, “They have no problem with domesticated animals. If we were tame and they could use us as tools, they’d not kill us, either.”

  Now, though, watching the robots at work, they said nothing.

  A plume of smoke announced that Kaantur-Set was emerging from the machine. Caps felt an irrational anger that this man-imitating robot had been inside his place—though in truth Caps had no idea if the place was really his. For all he knew, he had been put there by an enemy, who used the machine to wipe out his memories.

  But if that was so, what was the incomprehensible message about?

  And now that he thought about it, the facelike image that delivered the message resembled these hunter robots. For all Caps knew, the machine really did belong to them, and he was just a dumb animal who had stumbled into it and pulled the wrong lever.

  Kaantur-Set followed the smoke of his pipe out of the machine.

  Caps now had a chance to look at him without running away, and he saw something else. A preserved animal paw hung from around Kaantur-Set’s waist. A talisman?

  A trophy. Like the antennae that Juomes and that woman collected and wore around their waists.

  Juomes started breathing heavily and rushed away. Caps and Rend followed. As soon as they were far enough from the robots to dare to speak, Caps asked him what was wrong. Juomes didn’t explain, but said they had to get back to his hideout.

  The place was in a shambles. Someone had ransacked it. “I only have one thing worth stealing,” he said. “My jewel.”

  Sure enough, it was gone.

  “I thought you wore it,” said Caps.

  “Not when I was heading for your machine,” said Juomes. “I feared a trap. Better they should kill me than take the jewel.”

  “But they’ve taken it anyway,” said Rend.

  “Yes,” said Juomes bitterly, knocking boxes and papers aside in vain. “It was a trap, but a more subtle one than I expected.”

  “It suggests they knew you had this jewel,” said Caps, “and knew where you lived, and watched you and waited until you were out.”

  “They’ll be back,” said Rend.

  “Of course,” said Juomes. “But what do I care?”

  He pulled the battle glove from his left hand. Under it was a prosthetic hand.

  “Looks like you’re part robot,” said Rend.

  Juomes casually batted him across the room with the back of his right hand. Rend rolled away, cursing, unhurt.

  “That was your hand at Kaantur-Set’s belt, wasn’t it?” said Caps.

  “He took my hand trying to get me to give him my jewel,” said Juomes. “After he killed my family, he thought that taking my hand would make me confess?” Juomes laughed bitterly. “Now he has the jewel anyway.”

  “Why would he want it?” asked Caps.

  “These jewels with the symbol on them came from an ancient spaceship. They allowed the higher animals to ‘cube’—to become intelligent, to speak. Like our monkey friend here.”

  “No jewel made me smart,” said Rend.

  “How did it work?” asked Caps.

  “I’m not a scientist,” said Juomes. “Are you?”

  “I just—did they eat the jewel or wear it to sleep or what?” asked Caps.

  “It hasn’t worked in years,” said Rend, “or Juomes wouldn’t be so stupid.”

  Juomes ignored him. “Once it changes an animal, it breeds true—all its offspring have speech as well. It brought a golden age to the world. It made the robots jealous, and the king of the robots, Font Prime, sent out Kaantur-Set and his hunters to destroy all the jewels. They think when the jewels are gone, we’ll all become dumb beasts again. Mine was the last.”

  “Font Prime,” said Caps.

  “Do you remember something?” asked Rend eagerly.

  “The message inside my machine. It mentioned Font Prime.”

  “I’m going to find Font Prime,” said Juomes. “I’m going to kill it. That will end the persecution of the animals.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Caps, “if you’ll have me.”

  “To help me?”

  “I don’t know if you need my help,” said Caps. “A man with no memory.”

  “Oh, you have a memory,” said Juomes. “You know how to speak. How to reason. You know many things. All that you’ve forgotten is yourself.”

  “He forgot me, too,” said Rend.

  “Everyone who knows you tries to forget you,” said Juomes.

  “But they all fail,” said Rend smugly.

  “Come with me, Caps,” said Juomes. “I’ll teach you to fight. Maybe your memories will come back to you. Maybe you know something, locked in your head, something that will lead me to my jewel, or if I can’t save it now, then to Font Prime.”

  When the children of the hunter-beasts tell the story, Juomes is the hero—and who can blame them? In their tale, Caps was like a baby, and Juomes taught him everything.

  Juomes did teach him, talking to him as they journeyed by day. And when they stopped at night for sleep, and when they first arose in the morning, he tried to teach Caps to fight.

  Juomes discovered that Caps had strength and adroitness beyond any mere teaching, however. Juomes had only to show Caps how to do a maneuver with a weapon or with his bare hands, and Caps mastered it at once. And when they sparred, weapon on weapon, Caps could disarm the great hunter-beast by brute strength alone.

  “You don’t look it,” said Juomes, “but you were born to be the scourge of the robots.”

  Rend was not impressed. “Big animals fighting to see who’s strongest. Monkey goes where they can’t go, monkey sees what they can’t see.”

  “Monkey poops and throws it at big animals,” said Juomes.

  “I can also pee in their eyes,” said Rend. “Everybody does what he can do.”