matter-of-factly, his silicon mind wrapped around memories of near-death and madness as if oblivion and chaos shared a neutral equality with life and reason.
He nods. Overhead, in the lordly blue distances, flyers spin on rings of wind, milling the emptiness.
4
The Avenue of Limits
WHEN MUNK FINISHES HIS STORY, BUDDY STANDS AND CASTS A long, sweeping look at the parkland with its willow manes, hackled reeds, glassy pond, and, all around them, wheels of sunlight riding among the trees. 'After a lifetime in space, this must all seem very strange to you.'
'Not at all. My C-P program is packed with terrene images I downloaded from the archives.' He listens for the crystal atonalities of the city's silicon
mind, and satisfied that the andrones he detects are not near, he tastes the air with his sensors. The wind- woven and complex organic chemistries of heather,
leaf rot, pond mulch, and lawn dew mingle the stoichiometry of their busy atoms in his mind's eye. But he ignores that and focuses instead on the bird raptures in the ferny holts, the cygnets gliding shyly across the pond, the solitary and strung-out clusters of people strolling along the mown fields. 'It is beautiful,' he declares, feeling a soft elation at actually being here in the leafy, loamy moment.
'Take this beauty with you,' Buddy advises. 'This is the Maat's jewel, cut and polished by them. It doesn't get any better.'
'Where are we going?'
Buddy juts his jaw to the side as he ponders this. 'Now that I know about Jumper Nili, it's clear you can't just take Mr. Charlie and march across the wilds to Solis.' He sinks his mind into the spangled sunlight on the pond and makes a decision. 'I'll take you to the exurbs of Terra Tharsis. From there, you can contact Jumper Nili when she leaves the city. Come on.'
Munk follows Buddy up the chine of the hill, past the last chrome wisps of the dissolving night wings lacing the shrubs, and they enter a thick grove, where daylight dims to dusk. The cushiony leaf duff beneath their feet silences their passage, and Munk looks through the gloom of hawthorn and oak moss for the park. Heraldic sun shafts gleam like spectral crowns high in the forest canopy, but
the radiant threads that pierce the dense undergrowth reveal only confounding reaches of bracken, vetch, and dodder vines among the pillared trees.
Ahead, the cold, crystal chimes of the silicon mind grow louder. 'Buddy, there's an androne ahead.'
'Yes,' Buddy confirms, not looking back as he shoulders among the clatter and scarves of dried branches and vines. 'There's security at every droplift that exits the city.'
'Security?' Munk stops in the gray light pooling among the trees. 'I don't dare confront security andrones. They will try to take Mr. Charlie.'
'Yes.' Buddy turns around in the burdock and nettles and holds out his arms. 'Give him to me.'
'Why?'
'The plasteel capsule is disputed property,' Buddy says, leaning through the weeds. 'You removed it from the Moot, and security will apprehend you if they find you with it. But, since it's not stolen goods, there's no crime in my taking it out of the city. You follow after me.'
'I don't understand.' Munk scans Buddy for signs of prevarication, increased bloodrush, sweat scent, blink rate, and voice-pattern stress and detects none. 'Won't I be arrested?'
'Security won't stop you if you don't have Mr. Charlie. You committed no crime.'
'Obstructing a legal proceeding, threatening violence, absconding with evidence, destruction of property-' Munk's voice drones nervously in the blurred shadows of the estranged sun.
Buddy shakes his head. 'The fault lies with the Moot for placing an androne of
your capability in the presence of property that the court took from you. I know the law. The court misjudged your C-P program and can't condemn you for being true to yourself.'
'Then I am not a criminal?'
'Of course not. Give me the capsule, and let's get out of here.'
In the instant's wide theater of decision, Munk twice reviews everything he has learned from Charles. His imagination, true to its natural duplicity, counsels trust and suspicion simultaneously. He wants the human experience of trust but cannot shake his wariness. Who is this man who requires his trust? Is he, in fact, a security agent sent to connive Mr. Charlie from him? Perhaps. Escaping with Mr. Charlie had been a supreme risk from the start. Perhaps it
ends here. Or not. If Buddy is his ally, Munk must trust him. If-there is no way to know. It is time to tread emptiness again, the androne realizes in a flush of dread and excitement. Time to endure more uncertainty--to act human again.
Munk passes Charles to Buddy. 'Thank you for helping me preserve him.'
Buddy holds the capsule to his chest, and in the ruined light his expression is warped with sadness. 'You're good to trust me.'
'I detect no prevarication from your body's signals,' Munk admits. 'And as the archaic poet Blake wrote, 'There is no Soul distinct from the Body.' I trust
your soul.'
Buddy's small smile flares briefly in the shadows. He pushes through a tattery gap in the veil moss hanging from the groping boughs, skids down a dirt track on a steep, tree-clenched bank, and bratdes through a cane brake. With the canes clacking, he runs directly toward the icy tissues of sound that Munk knows are the unreadable codes of another androne.
