“We aren’t superior,” said Decan-Trap, “when we don’t know how to create new generations.”

  “We’ll learn how, long before it’s too late. The age of organic life is over. The age of machines has dawned. And Font Prime’s last effort to circumvent the fate of humankind has failed. There, inside that cylinder, that’s what humanity has become—a ruin that continues to live only because it hasn’t the sense or the ability to die. Well, I have the power, and it would be selfish of me to refuse to help.”

  With that, Kaantur swung his arm against the cylinder with all his force.

  The clear material was suddenly crazed with cracks, and thin sprays of fluid emerged from several spots.

  “No,” cried Decan-Trap, leaping forward.

  “What, are you going to raise a hand of violence against your own kind?” asked Kaantur mockingly.

  “You are not my own kind!” cried Decan-Trap.

  “That sign you wear, the sign of the Olm, the sign of the first generation of wisdom, that stops you from harming me.”

  “It doesn’t stop me,” said Caps.

  Kaantur laughed. “Oh, how sweet, how sad, you think you can keep me from killing your poor broken original?”

  He swung again at the cylinder. More cracks appeared. The spray grew more intense and came from more spots. Alarm lights blazed yellow. Repair machines rolled into the room. Kaantur pointed at them each in turn and soon all were stopped.

  Caps stepped forward. “I think it’s clear that Font Prime is not the enemy of humanity after all.” He looked at Beryl and Juomes. “It’s Kaantur-Set that wants humanity dead. Kaantur-Set, who killed Beryl’s family, and took your hand, Juomes. Not Font Prime.”

  “Listen to the poor copy try to defend his original,” said Kaantur-Set.

  “If I am Font Prime,” said Caps, “then I declare you, Kaantur-Set, to be a rebel, a traitor, a murderer, and I sentence you to death.”

  “Give it a try,” said Kaantur-Set. “Let’s match your strength against mine.”

  “Maybe it won’t be as easy as you think, Kaantur,” said Rend.

  Kaantur swung out an arm to strike at Caps, though with far less force than he had used against Font Prime’s cylinder, for he expected Caps to be too slow to dodge and too frail to resist.

  Instead, Caps caught the arm and pulled Kaantur off his feet, throwing him across the room and flinging him against a Servant near the wall.

  Juomes was astonished. “I can’t even do that to a robot.”

  “You should have seen him jump fifteen meters from a standing start,” said Rend.

  “Was Font Prime a super human or something?” asked Beryl.

  He would need to be, for now Kaantur was not going to toy with Caps. He came up from the tangle of the Servant’s limbs and robe in fighting posture and leapt out at his quickest speed, with his greatest strength. The fight moved almost too quickly for Juomes and Beryl to follow, but Caps seemed to respond faster than Kaantur could attack. Blows that should have shattered Caps’s bones instead were caught in his hands or shunted aside. Not that there was no damage—blood sprayed from a deep gash in Caps’s arm, flecking the cylinder with bright red drops.

  “Stop this violence!” cried Decan-Trap. “By authority of Font Prime, I compel you to stop!”

  In that moment, Kaantur’s body froze in place. Caps backed away, panting.

  Then doors burst open at the four cardinal points around the chamber, and eight of Kaantur’s elite hunters came into the room.

  Kaantur said, “Override,” and he moved again.

  “You cheated the system,” said Decan-Trap.

  “You didn’t think I’d actually wear a body that was subject to you, did you?” said Kaantur. To his hunters he said, “The Servants have committed treason against Font Prime. Arrest them.”

  Immediately each hunter gripped a Servant, reached under their robes, and punched the deactivation codes, putting them into stand-by mode.

  “Kill this impostor,” said Kaantur-Set, pointing at Caps.

  At once Juomes roared and flung himself into action against the nearest hunter robot, tearing its head off with twist.

  “You meddling donkey!” cried Kaantur. “What do you think you can accomplish?”

  Juomes’s goal was quickly obvious—he wanted to occupy enough of the hunters for long enough so that Caps might win his fight with Kaantur, and Caps wasted no time. He leapt onto Kaantur and broke one of his antennae off even as Kaantur twisted away from underneath him.

  Beryl and Rend helped as they could, but neither of them had the strength to take on one of the hunter robots directly. One blow from a hunter, and their fragile bodies would break. In the forest, Beryl always used the terrain to her advantage, coming upon robots from above or out of hiding, and then disappearing again into the trees. Surprise allowed her to kill many a much-stronger opponent. Here, combat was strength against strength. If she tried to fight one-on-one, she would quickly die.

  So Beryl improvised, shoving any robot that came near her and waving her arms and shouting to try to distract others, crying out warnings to Juomes and Caps if a hunter came up behind them.

  It was obvious that, left to himself, Caps might well defeat Kaantur—but he was not left to himself. Instead hunters kept attacking from behind while Kaantur never relented in his frontal assault.

  Meanwhile, Rend went to Decan-Trap and found the pattern to press to reactivate him. Decan-Trap revived at once, but said nothing aloud. Instead he went silently from Servant to Servant, reactivating them. Rend helped him, scampering to corners where Decan-Trap could not have gone without being noticed. Within moments, all the Servants were gathered around Decan.

  “Can’t you do something?” shouted Beryl.

  “Nothing useful right now,” said Decan. “But something quite vital later, if Font Prime manages to live through this.”

  “What about you?” she demanded of Elyseo-Set.

  “I banned him from helping,” said Decan-Trap.

  “This is how you serve Font Prime?” Beryl cried scornfully.

  Elyseo looked at her for a long moment, saying nothing. Then he left the room, slipping away without a backward glance, followed by all the Servants except Decan. Beryl watched them with contempt. To Rend she said, “It’s a good thing you went to the trouble to wake them up.”

  “Yes,” said Decan, apparently without irony. “It is.”

  All this had taken only a few moments, but by now Juomes was in serious trouble, with nine hunters hanging onto him, tilting him heavily to one side, while another sat on his shoulders, smacking his head to one side, then to the other. He was groggy. “Kill Kaantur!” he managed to cry.

  Beryl screamed and leapt upon one of the robots that pulled at Juomes, prying at his antennae. The robot easily flung her off, but had to let go of Juomes to do it. It was some help, but not much. Not enough.

  Kaantur broke away from Caps, rushed to Juomes, and sliced his hand through the soft fleshy undersurface of the hunter-beast’s throat. A gout of blood gushed from the wound, reddening Kaantur’s arm. Juomes gave one great gurgling cry and fell over.

  For one crucial moment, Caps stood frozen in place, watching his friend fall dead.

  Kaantur did not waste the opportunity. Two of his hunters lifted Caps under the arms and threw him toward Kaantur, who caught his feet, swung him around, and struck him into the cylinder like a wrecking ball. The clear material broke into shards, and the fluid spilled to the floor, mixing with Juomes’s blood.

  Caps jumped to his feet at once, not harmed except that the cut in his arm had snagged, tearing open the skin. He reached out to try to stop Kaantur, but too late. Kaantur reached in, pulled the life support away from the feeble body, then slammed his other fist into where the poor creature’s heart must be, smashing it completely.

  All the lights on the cylinder blinked red briefly, then went black.

  Kaantur tossed the frail corpse on top of Juomes’s body. “There you go, hunter-beast! It was Font Prime you wanted. Now you’ve got him!”

  “This way, Master,” said Decan-Trap.

  It took Caps a moment to realize that the Servant was talking to him.

  They were both standing near the teleporter. Decan-Trap had the door open. “Inside.”

  “But it won’t work,” said Caps.

  “Looks like poor human-loving Decan has found a new master,” said Kaantur. “Too bad he won’t live much longer, either.”

  “He’s not alive at all,” said Beryl. She was pointing.

  Where the skin had been yanked back from Caps’s arm, it showed, not the red-streaked white of radius and ulna, but a complex robot arm more robust and intricate than that of any of the other robots in the room.

  “Font Prime was human,” said Beryl. “But you’re not.”

  “Into the teleporter!” Decan shouted at Caps while climbing into the machine.

  “Yes, Caps, into your prison!” shouted Kaantur.

  “Beryl,” said Caps. “I didn’t know.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you knew,” she said.

  Decan pulled at Caps’s arm. Caps allowed himself to be lifted at first, then he turned and climbed through the doorhole into the machine where he had first awakened.

  Rend scampered away from Caps and hid in the corner of the room.

  “Beryl!” cried Caps. “Come with us!”

  She turned her back on him.

  “They’ll kill you!” cried Caps.

  “At least I’m alive enough to die,” she answered.

  “I can’t help what I am,” said Caps, “but I want you to live.”

  “You live,” said Beryl. “Close the door.”

  Decan’s arm snaked out, caught the door, and pulled it shut.

  Kaantur laughed. “Where do they think they can go? The thing doesn’t work. Even if it did, there’s nowhere it can transport them to because I’ve destroyed all of the teleporters.”

  “You knew what he was,” said Beryl to Kaantur.

  “Of course I didn’t know,” said Kaantur. “His face told me he was Font Prime—you’d think the old faker would think to disguise himself, but no, vanity wins every time. Still, I thought he’d resurrect himself as a human. After all his rage at the idea of implanting human minds into robot bodies—what a hypocrite.”

  “So you have what you wanted,” said Beryl.

  “Yes, my darling. And you gave it to me.”

  “Don’t call me your darling.”

  “My pet, my sweetling.”

  “Where is my sister?”

  “She’s safe. At home. Where she belongs.”

  “She doesn’t belong with you.”

  “You’ll get her when I have Caps’s dead body. Which isn’t long from now, I think.” He turned to the hunters. “Get that thing open,” he said.

  While they worked at prying open the machine’s door, Beryl knelt by Juomes’s body. “The one hero in all this story,” she said, “and now you’re dead. I suppose that makes this a tragedy.”

  “And it makes you the false friend who betrayed him.”

  “You had my sister,” said Beryl. “He would have understood.”

  “Not really,” said Kaantur. “When I had his family, he let me kill them rather than betray the secret of his cubing jewel.”

  Tears streaked Beryl’s face. “I’m not a hero, then. But what are you?”

  “I’m the winner,” said Kaantur. “That means I get to write the story however I want. Winners always do.”

  Inside the teleporter machine, as Decan closed the door, Caps felt nothing but failure and despair. “We left Beryl out there with them,” he said. “And what good does it do for us to hide in here? How long before Kaantur has this thing peeled open like an orange?”

  “Master,” said Decan, “we won’t be here.”

  “If you think I can make this machine transport us out of here just because Font Prime could . . .”

  “Font Prime couldn’t,” said Decan. “He could transmit an old code—a modified code—into the receiver on this machine, but he couldn’t use it to transport anything because this is the only teleporter left.”

  “Is this supposed to make me feel more confident somehow?” asked Caps.

  As he spoke, Decan raised a portion of the floor. Under it was a hatch, which he cranked open.

  It revealed nothing under it but smooth floor.

  Kaantur’s robots began prying and pounding on the outside of the teleporter.

  Decan rapped on the floor twice.

  The floor sank out of the way. Decan gestured for Caps to go through the hole.

  “Where does it go?” shouted Caps over the pounding outside.

  “Do you have another door to choose from?” asked Decan.

  He had a point. Caps sat on the edge of the hole and dropped through to the floor below.

  The Servants who had left Font Prime’s chamber only a few moments before were gathered in a circle around him. They inclined their heads, bowing to him.

  One of them approached him, took hold of his torn and bleeding arm, applied a spray, and taped it together. At once the pain stopped and the metal of his robotic skeleton was hidden under his all-too-human flesh.

  Decan-Trap came through the hole. Immediately one of the Servants reached through the opening, re-covered the interior floor of the teleporter, sealed the hatch, and then pressed the floor piece back into place.

  “The surface material seals automatically,” said Decan-Trap. “There will be no sign of our hole in the floor.”

  “So Kaantur will think I made the machine work,” said Caps.

  “Kaantur can think what Kaantur wants,” said Decan. “We have work to do.”

  Decan led Caps at a steady jog through the corridors, down shafts, into the pendant stone, past the dungeons, and finally into a room that was surrounded by windows showing a view of the ocean below them.

  Decan sat at a console, pressed a few controls, and watched as coded messages flashed across the screen.

  “What’s happening?” asked Caps.

  “Kaantur is giving the order for his invasion force to move into action,” said Decan.

  “Invasion force?”

  “He plans to destroy the jodphur city. The place where you and Elyseo met Beryl.”

  Caps felt his stomach sink. “Is that what Font Prime wanted?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Decan. “It has taken all Font Prime’s influence all these years to keep Kaantur from destroying it.”

  “And now that Font Prime is dead . . .”

  “Font Prime is not dead,” said Decan.

  “I told you, I don’t remember anything. However he put me together, he left out way too much of his memory. I don’t know how to do the things you think I should be able to do.”

  “Yet,” said Decan. “Kaantur’s sending out a fleet of ships to start poisoning the forests of the world.”

  “What for?” asked Caps.

  “He wants to eliminate all carbon-based life from Robota.”

  “But there’s no point to that,” said Caps.

  “We’re leaving at the same time as the other ships,” said Decan-Trap.

  “To do what?”

  “To get you your memory back.”

  A command came across the console. At once Decan’s fingers flew across the controls, and the room they were in began to quiver. Then it detached itself from the rock above it and plummeted downward toward the sea.

  “What are you doing!” cried Caps. “This thing isn’t flying!”

  “It’s going to crash into the sea,” said Decan, sounding rather proud.

  “That’s your plan?”

  “No,” said Decan, “it’s your plan.”

  “I thought Font Prime was silent!” shouted Caps as they fell between the vast cliffs of sea.

  “It depended on who was listening,” said Decan, quite calmly.

  They now plummeted toward the lower ocean level of the sunken part of the sea, but now Caps could see that there was yet another, much narrower, hole in the sea, and through this one no water fell.

  The only thing that fell into it was the airboat in which Caps sat gripping the arms of his chair.

  Surrounded by darkness, the airboat slowed, stopped.

  “Where are we?” asked Caps.

  “We are plumbing the depths of your memory,” said Decan.

  “My memory is a hole in the sea?”

  “Your memory is encoded into the crystals and metals of the crust of the planet.”

  “But I don’t know how to . . . to remember it.”

  “That’s what good Servants are for.”

  The door of the airboat opened. A red light shone into the darkness. Caps followed Decan-Trap out into the land under the sea.

  The door to the transporter broke off and clattered to the floor. One of the hunter robots dived through the open doorway. In a moment his head reemerged. “Gone,” he said.

  “Gone?” said Kaantur stupidly.

  “There’s nothing in here,” said the hunter.

  “He can’t have used the transporter!” cried Kaantur. “I had all the other units disabled!”

  “Nothing,” repeated the hunter.

  Beryl laughed.

  Kaantur whirled on her. “Your sister stays with me until Font Prime’s robot copy is dead.”

  Beryl continued laughing.

  Kaantur nodded, as if agreeing with her. “It’s good to laugh while you can.”

  Beryl’s laughter died. “What are you planning?”

  “Nothing that should stop you from laughing,” said Kaantur as he left the chamber.

  She ran after him. “What’s the trick? How have you trapped me?”

  “Life has trapped you. Mortality has trapped you. Allowing yourself to love other people has trapped you.” Kaantur put a hand in the middle of her chest and pushed her back into what had once been Font Prime’s chamber. “But your sister will be returned to you unharmed.”

  “Meaning what!”

  The door closed between them.

  Beryl turned back to look around the room. At Juomes’s inert body. At the poor tortured relic of Font Prime, dead at last. At the blood and fluids across the floor. At the doors leading . . . where? Nowhere. At least, nowhere that mattered to her.