“They look nothing like me,” said the Stranger indignantly. “They are a completely different class of robot: no symmetry, no artistic line to their structure.”
The Stranger had reason to be proud, thought Edward. His body did look rather beautiful, in its odd way. It rather resembled one of Armstrong’s throwing stars. Edward had never seen a swastika, but if he had he would have said the Stranger looked a little like that. Four black and silver legs curved out from the center of the robot, their ends branching into an array of tentacles, some incredibly fine, some thick and powerful, no doubt for heavy-duty repairs. The Stranger was spinning slowly in space, allowing the crew of the
“What’s that you have written on you?” asked Donny, squinting to make out the words
“Oh, just verses, epigrams, things that I like the sound of.”
Donny glanced at his console.
“Circumstances uploaded for both us and the Stranger. Correlation is now running. It’ll take about ten minutes.”
“What’s going on?”
At the sound of Miss Rose’s voice, Edward put down his glass of milk and went to sit down again at Craig’s feet. The old woman stood in the carved wooden doorway leading to the living area, wearing a white shift over a dove- grey passive suit. Her white hair was brushed back to cover the balding patch at the back of her head.
“What’s he doing?” she said, pointing at Edward. “Drinking all the apple juice, I bet.”
“I had milk, Miss Rose,” said Edward defiantly, but Miss Rose ignored this and shuffled into the middle of the room, staring at the Stranger’s eerily beautiful body, still coming into focus in the viewing area.
“What’s that thing?” she asked.
“The Stranger,” said Michel. “We’re giving him a lift to safety. In return he’s going to repair some of the failing systems on this ship.”
“Good. He can fix the AI in my room. I haven’t been able to get a peep out of it since I boarded this ship.”
Michel raised his eyes to the ceiling. “I’ve told you this before, Miss Rose. There are no AIs on board this ship. You know that. We can’t have anything to do with them if we are to run the FE software.”
“So you said. But I can’t see one little AI in my room hurting anybody. It would give me someone to speak to. Are you going to give an old woman a seat?”
Despite the fact that there were plenty of empty seats around the room, she made Maurice move to another place.
“And who is this?” asked the Stranger. “Why hasn’t she spoken before?”
“This is Miss Rose,” replied Michel, “the last member of our crew. She’s…older than the rest of us.”
“He thinks I’m senile,” said Miss Rose. “Is one of you going to get me a drink of apple juice?” She looked accusingly at Armstrong and Maurice.
“I’ll get it,” said Armstrong easily.
“No, let me,” said Maurice, leaping to his feet and heading for the fridge. Edward watched sullenly. She was the one who drank all the juice, and when she blamed Edward, everyone believed her. It wasn’t fair. She said Edward could drink beer like the other adults, but Edward didn’t like beer. Everyone drank apple juice on Garvey’s World. They drank cider when they were hot, and they distilled it into apple brandy to keep out the winter chill. Edward wasn’t used to beer.
“Thank you,” said Miss Rose, accepting the cold glass that Maurice gave her. “So, are we going to get ripped off again?”
“We haven’t been ripped off,” said Michel. “The FE software stops that happening.”
The yellow carbon discs woven into the n-string bracelet on Miss Rose’s wrist jangled as she took a sip of apple juice.
“We always get ripped off,” she said with finality. “That last ship we met was barely functioning. With half of its life system down, we should have cleaned up on that deal. So what happened? We gave it Douglas and a spare set of nanotechs to fix their life support, and got what back in return? A warning about Earth and two useless wooden
