“There’s a combination,” said Beryl.

  “Oh, I forgot,” said Juomes. “You grew up with them. No doubt you switched them on and off as a prank.”

  Beryl came over and knelt behind Elyseo. Almost without looking, she reached in and pressed a combination of control points. “OK, not that one,” she said, and moved her hand to another position, then another.

  Elyseo came alert.

  “I did not betray you,” he said immediately.

  “You don’t have to argue,” said Beryl. “They already believe you, and I never will.”

  “You can try to persuade me,” offered Rend glumly. “Except I don’t care.”

  “Everybody’s keeping secrets,” said Caps. “Except me and Elyseo.”

  “I don’t have any secrets,” said Rend. “I’m just a monkey.”

  “Caps has secrets,” said Beryl. “He just doesn’t know what they are.”

  “You were raised by Kaantur-Set himself,” said Caps. “I think that was a pretty big one.”

  “Juomes already knew, and it was none of your business,” said Beryl.

  “Didn’t know it was Kaantur,” said Juomes.

  “Does it make a difference?” asked Beryl defiantly.

  “And Juomes is getting weaker the longer he’s away from his jewel,” said Caps. “It would have been nice to know that.”

  “Right, tell a stranger like you that I’m getting weaker,” said Juomes.

  However understandable their reticence might have been, Caps was sick of it. “I want to know right now,” said Caps to Beryl, “what it is that the humans of your city are trying to do to destroy the robots?”

  “Not in front of the robot,” said Beryl.

  “They’re trying to develop metal-eating bacteria,” said Juomes.

  Beryl glared at him. “We’ve had that for years.”

  “Excuse my inaccuracy,” said Juomes. “They’re trying to find a way to make them airborne, so the wind can spread them.”

  “We know that,” said Elyseo. “We’ve been getting antibacterial coatings for more than a century.”

  Beryl looked at him in consternation. “Why? We didn’t have anything a century ago.”

  “Because we know that the only science you humans still practice is biological. We robots were so much better at engineering that you turned that whole side of things over to us. We built your cities for you. We created your machines. But the science of life you . . .”

  “Kept to ourselves?” said Beryl.

  “No. In those days neither robots nor humans kept any knowledge to themselves. We shared everything. But you humans stayed . . . involved in the science of life.”

  “Too bad you robots didn’t stay up on the science of robotics,” said Juomes. “Except of course that I think of that as a good thing.”

  “They didn’t forget how to make robots sentient,” said Caps. “They never knew.”

  The others all stared at him.

  “Once again the lord of random memories enlightens us,” said Juomes.

  “I can’t help what I know and what I don’t know,” said Caps. “I didn’t know I knew this until you started talking about robots and humans sharing knowledge.”

  “So humans did keep the secret of how to make robot brains?” asked Beryl. “It’s a shame we don’t remember now, because it would make it easier to destroy them all.”

  “Humans never knew it either,” said Caps.

  “If robots didn’t know, and humans didn’t know . . .” said Elyseo.

  “The monkeys,” said Rend. “Finally we get credit for our contribution to science.”

  “Monkeys weren’t sentient then,” said Beryl.

  “We’re not even sure any of them are sentient now,” said Juomes.

  “The Olm,” said Caps.

  “The what?” said Juomes.

  “You’ve heard that legend?” said Elyseo.

  “They never existed,” said Beryl.

  “They’re long gone,” said Rend.

  “What are you talking about?” demanded Juomes.

  “The Olm knew,” said Caps. “The Olm taught humans how to make robots that could take their places as our equals.”

  “Till they became our masters,” said Beryl bitterly.

  “They’ve never been equal to a living mind,” said Juomes.

  “They refused to stay,” said Rend, “when humans used robot armies to slaughter each other.”

  “What a ridiculous idea,” said Beryl. “Humans would never kill each other. Especially not by using robots to attack other humans.”

  “The world was divided differently then,” said Rend. “Wasn’t it, Caps?”

  Juomes glared at Rend. “You know too much for a monkey.”

  “Just because I know more than you,” said Rend, “doesn’t mean I know too much.”

  Beryl looked from Rend to Caps and back again. “I think, Caps, that this monkey knows a lot more about your origin than he’s been willing to confess. I think he’s been inside your machine. I think he’s heard that message that you can’t remember clearly. I think he knows everything you’re supposed to do and he just hasn’t told you.”

  “I don’t know anything,” said Rend petulantly.

  “Now that you admit it,” said Juomes, “I don’t believe it.”

  “Humans warring against each other, yes,” said Caps. “The Olm gave us this great gift, and we used it to kill. But when they left, we woke up to our stupidity and we stopped making war on each other. That’s when the golden age came, after all the killing, after the Olm were gone. When it was too late to learn any more from them.”

  “How tragic,” said Beryl. “And how useless for us to hear it now, when we’re imprisoned in the middle of this hanging rock.”

  “There’s something,” said Caps. “If I could just remember it . . .”

  Rend giggled. “Poor Caps,” he said. “So strong, but so weak. So wise, but so forgetful.”

  “Tell me what I’ve forgotten,” said Caps. “I know you know it.”

  “What do you know that I know?” asked Rend.

  “I don’t know,” said Caps.

  “I think it’s tail-wringing time,” said Juomes. “I think it’s bite-the-ear-off-the-monkey time.”

  “I think it’s pee-in-the-hunter-beast’s-eyes time,” said Rend.

  “How about bleed-in-the-hunter-beast’s-hands time?” said Juomes.

  “I don’t think things are hopeless,” said Caps.

  “You don’t?” said Beryl. “You think there’s still a chance for us to . . . what, die a swift and merciful death instead of a slow one?”

  “I think we’re close to Font Prime here,” said Caps.

  “And you think this because . . .” said Beryl.

  Caps turned to Elyseo-Set. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Font Prime is kept here in Oonoftes,” said Elyseo.

  “So, technically, I guess that means our mission is almost successful,” said Juomes sarcastically.

  “How did you know that?” said Beryl to Caps. “How can a human just ‘feel’ that he’s close to Font Prime?”

  “I didn’t just ‘feel’ it,” said Caps. “When I saw this place from the air truck, I knew then. It’s something I remembered. Only I didn’t trust the memory because it made no sense.”

  “What didn’t make sense about it?” asked Juomes.

  “Font Prime is tied into vast reservoirs of memory embedded in the earth,” said Caps. “Here, floating in the air, Font Prime would be crippled. Weakened.”

  “ ‘Vast reservoirs of memory,’ ” said Beryl. “What, we sink a well and memories come bubbling up?”

  “I don’t know,” said Caps. “I just know that Font Prime is here, and because it’s here, it’s crippled.”

  “So why would the robots move it here, if it makes Font Prime weaker?” Juomes asked Elyseo.

  “It’s here to keep it safe,” said Elyseo. “Centuries ago, before Kaantur began his extermination program, there was an attack on Font Prime. Sabotage. After that, Font Prime was moved to a place where humans could never go.”

  “Except here we are,” said Caps.

  “And that’s what makes no sense to me at all,” said Beryl. “Why would Kaantur bring us here, when he could have killed us back when the Guardians had us?”

  “Because there’s something he needs,” said Rend.

  Juomes reached out a hand and plucked Rend up from the floor and dangled him by the tail. “Tell us what you know, you ugly little poop-throwing hairy-tailed rat.”

  Rend was screeching and taking aim to pee in Juomes’s face when the door of their cell opened. Two robots wearing robes stood in the doorway.

  Elyseo immediately knelt before them. “Kneel,” he said. “These are Servants.”

  “All robots are servants,” said Juomes.

  “If only that were true,” said Elyseo-Set.

  “They’re like priests,” said Beryl.

  “They want us to come,” said Elyseo. “Put down the monkey. There is no violence in the presence of the Servants.”

  In moments the prisoners were walking down a corridor behind the Servants. Their very wordlessness was unnerving, but none of the prisoners wanted to break the silence.

  They went up elevators, up winding stairs, and even floated upward through a tube where gravity seemed to have been reversed. They passed through security checkpoints where no one questioned them or even bothered to look at them. They walked through huge halls with great vaulted ceilings, and through maintenance tunnels filled with pipes and ducts and cables.

  Finally they emerged into a circular room where more Servants stood watchfully around the perimeter, all facing a huge machine in the center. Was this the king of the robots? Caps saw at once it was an egg-like assembly that had no face, no bilateral symmetry of arms and legs. It must be pure robot, he thought, completely devoid of any resemblance to humanity. On the surface of the machine had been etched the same symbol Caps had seen in the machine where he awoke not all that many days before.

  “Font Prime,” murmured Elyseo-Set.

  So this was indeed what the robots all obeyed and served, the opposite of life.

  It was attached to the ceiling by cables and tubes, and no doubt more connections were piped through the floor, allowing Font Prime to receive all the information coming in from every robot, and to give commands to them in return. How could Juomes possibly attack it? Perhaps it would be enough to go after the tubes to the ceiling. Perhaps some or all of them might be disconnected before Juomes was cut down and killed. But then what? The Servants would simply reattach the cables and Juomes’s death would be for nothing.

  Yet if they did nothing, they would no doubt be killed anyway, and what good would their deaths do then?

  The Servants led them farther into the room, closer to Font Prime. Caps saw his teleporter had been placed directly behind the huge machine.

  Caps started toward it. At once a Servant stepped between him and the machine. A Servant in a red robe emerged from a door behind it. “I’m sorry we must keep you from this teleporter,” he said. “I am Decan-Trap.”

  Elyseo echoed reverently: “Decan-Trap.”

  “The big boy,” said Beryl.

  Decan-Trap ignored her. “We have brought you here because Font Prime could not answer our question until you came.”

  “What question?” asked Caps.

  “Font Prime will tell you whatever Font Prime believes you should know,” said Decan-Trap. Then he pointed at the egg-like machine.

  Immediately all the Servants that watched around the perimeter extended their slender metal arms and pointed at the egg. Side panels pulled away at the base and began to rise. Behind the panels was a cylinder of transparent material, and inside it, attached to tubes and supporting rods and cables, was a shattered, twisted, ruined, but unmistakably human body, its face masked within the life-support equipment, the whole body floating in a viscous fluid through which slow bubbles rose.

  Caps was stunned—and then the shocking revelation awoke a long-forgotten memory. “Font Prime is human,” he murmured. He realized that he had known this, that he had expected all along to see a human Font Prime. Only it should not have been this wrecked near-corpse. It should have been a man. It should have been a man that Caps knew as intimately as . . . as a brother . . . as intimately as . . .

  From another room came the sound of a piano being played. Even that seemed familiar to Caps now. It seemed, in fact, like home. Only how could it? This broken human body in a tube of preservative, an ancient instrument playing a familiar tune that Caps had never heard before . . . his memories were twisted and intermingled with those of some stranger, except that he knew it was the stranger who was himself, and Caps’s own memories were the strange ones, the overlay that didn’t fit what lay underneath.

  “Who is playing the piano?” asked Caps.

  “What’s a piano?” asked Juomes.

  “Kaantur plays it,” said Beryl. “He saved one from the ancient times. He maintains it himself.”

  “Forgive my rudeness,” said Decan, “but Font Prime wishes me to ask you some questions.”

  “Let him ask them himself,” said Beryl defiantly.

  “You see that he cannot give voice in a way that you could hear,” said Decan.

  “Right, as if this wreck could give voice to anything at all,” said Beryl. “What a scam you have going here, Decan-Trap. Always full of instructions from Font Prime, and now we see that Font Prime is a mass of protoplasm that can’t talk or think or—”

  “Font Prime asks . . .”

  “You can stick your questions in Font Prime’s butt,” said Beryl, “if you haven’t already. I don’t think this thing talks at all. I think you make it all up.”

  Juomes chuckled.

  “Font Prime can talk,” said Rend.

  “Shut up, monkey,” said Juomes.

  “Font Prime talks all the time,” said Rend.

  “Listen,” said Decan-Trap. “Perhaps Font Prime’s communications are not as clear as we would like . . .”

  “Start with the truth or we won’t answer your questions,” said Beryl.

  Decan-Trap raised an arm as if to lash out at Beryl. But then he either changed his mind or never intended violence. Instead the upraised arm reached out and stroked the cylinder that protected the broken body of Font Prime. “Ever since they came so close to killing Font Prime, he’s been like this. Silent, his movements random, his body consumed by pain that never heals. If we had any mercy, we would let him die, but we can’t be merciful. He alone knows how to save us from the extinction that awaits us.”

  “Then let him die,” said Juomes. “We’re content with that.”

  “He’s already dead,” said Beryl. “They’re keeping the cells alive, but the organism is dead.”

  “No,” said Decan-Trap. “We know that Font Prime is still alive, still thinking inside that unresponsive body.”

  “How do you know that?” said Beryl scornfully. “Faith?”

  “Because of this teleporter,” said Decan-Trap. Then he pointed at Caps. “Because he came out of it.”

  “What does that have to do with Font Prime?” asked Beryl.

  “Only Font Prime can make a teleporter operate,” said Decan-Trap. “We’ve tried, believe me, but the teleporters work by utterly encoding a body and then reassembling it from available materials in another machine. We can feed the raw biomass and metals into the teleporters, but when we try to encode, nothing happens.”

  “So it doesn’t transport things,” said Caps. “It copies them.”

  “And when it certifies that the copy is perfectly identical, the original is destroyed.”

  “So you can’t use it to make endless copies of the same person,” said Juomes.

  “That’s why control was left to the mind of Font Prime,” said Decan-Trap. “So the law would never be broken. But ever since the assassination attempt, the teleporters have been inert.”

  “Except my machine,” said Caps.

  “Except you,” said Decan-Trap.

  “Me?”

  “You came out of the machine,” said Rend, and then the monkey giggled madly.

  “But what am I a copy of?” asked Caps.

  No one answered.

  “I’m . . .” Caps could hardly bring himself to say it. “I’m a copy of Font Prime.”

  “No,” said Decan-Trap. “You are Font Prime.”

  Rend rolled on the floor, laughing and laughing. “I knew I knew I knew.”

  Caps walked to the cylinder and put his hand on it. “But why don’t I remember more?”

  “There’s no encoder here,” said Decan-Trap. “He had to use an image stored from an earlier journey he took by teleporter. You could not have remembered anything that happened after that. And it’s quite possible the image he held in memory was not perfect. He would have to try to fill in what was missing. In the midst of his pain, he had to draw out the image from deeply hidden memories stored in the networks of robotic minds, and he had to transport it to a distant machine. He had to find some way to fill the machine’s intake with biomass and metal—”

  “That was my job!” cried Rend. “He trusted me. Not a hunter-beast, not a human, not a robot, me, the poop-throwing hairy-tailed rat!”

  “So tell us,” said Decan-Trap, “what Font Prime wants us to do.”

  Kaantur-Set’s voice came from behind the machine. “He doesn’t know,” said Kaantur. “If he did, he would already have said it.” Kaantur-Set emerged into the open area before the cylinder. “Font Prime’s little attempt to resurrect himself has failed.”

  “As you hoped,” said Decan-Trap acidly.

  “As I predicted,” said Kaantur. “No one longs for Font Prime to be awakened more than I, as you well know. But it cannot be done. This Caps may have a face that looks like Font Prime’s face, but the mind is gone, the knowledge is gone, the power to waken the ancient learning of the Olm, that is lost forever. And this . . . thing, this mass of pain that was once . . . the man whom robots and humans all followed, united in honor and . . .”

  “Love,” said Decan-Trap.

  “Stupidity,” said Kaantur. “Pure stupidity. When evolution brings a new species to the pinnacle, the species before must fade away or be exterminated. Humans refused to get out of the way. The law of nature decreed their destruction. Font Prime was too sentimental to allow it.”