his hands. It must be very short—something that would stick in the robot’s mind for weeks, but carrying everything a scientist could feel on proving that those who opposed him were wrong. Let’s see….
The buzzer on the telescreen cut through his thoughts, and he flipped it on to see Ceofor’s face looking out. Senthree’s spirits dropped abruptly as he stared at the younger robot.
“Failure? No!”
The other shook his head. “No. At least, I don’t know. I couldn’t give them full education. Maybe the tape was uncomfortable. They took a lot of it, but the male tore his helmet off and took the girl’s off. Now they just sit there, rubbing their heads and staring around.”
He paused, and the little darkened ridges of plastic over his eyes tensed. “The time speed-up is off. But I didn’t know what to do.”
“Let them alone until I get there. If it hurts them, we can give them the rest of it later. How are they otherwise?”
“I don’t know. They look all right, boss.” Ceofor hesitated, and his voice dropped. “Boss, I don’t like it. There’s something wrong here. I can’t quite figure out what it is, but it isn’t the way I expected. Hey, the male just pushed the female off her seat. Do you think their destructive instinct…? No, she’s sitting down on the floor now, with her head against him, and holding one of his hands. Wasn’t that part of the mating ritual in one of the books?”
Senthree started to agree, a bit of a smile coming onto his face. It looked as if instinct were already in operation.
But a strange voice cut him off. “Hey, you robots, when do we eat around here?”
They could talk! It must have been the male. And if it wasn’t the polite thanks and gratitude Senthree had expected, that didn’t matter. There had been all kinds of Men in the books, and some were polite while others were crude. Perhaps forced education from the tapes without fuller social experience was responsible for that. But it would all adjust in time.
He started to turn back to Ceofor, but the younger robot was no longer there, and the screen looked out on a blank wall. Senthree could hear the loud voice crying out again, rough and harsh, and there was a shrill, whining sound that might be the female. The two voices blended with the vague mutter of robot voices until he could not make out the words.
He wasted no time in trying. He was already rushing down to the street and heading toward the labs. Instinct—the male had already shown instinct, and the female had responded. They would have to be slow with the couple at first, of course—but the whole answer to the robot problems lay at hand. It would only take a little time and patience now. Let Arpeten sneer, and let the world dote on the Arcturus explorers. Today, biochemistry had been, crowned king with the magic of intelligence combined with instinct as its power.
Ceofor came out of the lab at a run with another robot behind him. The young robot looked dazed, and there was another emotion Senthree could not place. The older biochemist nodded, and the younger one waved quickly. “Can’t stop now. They’re hungry.” He was gone at full speed.
Senthr.ee realized suddenly that no adequate supply of fruit and vegetables had been provided, and he hadn’t even known how often Man had to eat. Or exactly what. Luckily, Ceofor was taking care of that.
He went down the hall, hearing a tumult of voices, with robots apparently spread about on various kinds of hasty business. The main lab where the couple was seemed quiet. Senthree hesitated at the door, wondering how to address them. There must be no questioning now. Today he would not force himself on them, nor expect them to understand his purposes. He must welcome them and make them feel at ease in this world, so strange to them with their prehistoric tape education. It would be hard at first to adjust to a world of only robots, with no other Man people. The matter of instinct that had taken so long could wait a few days more.
The door dilated in front of him and he stepped into the lab, his eyes turning to the low table where they sat. They looked healthy, and there was no sign of misery or uncertainty that he could see, though he could not be sure of that until he knew them better. He could not even be sure it was a scowl on the male’s face as the Man turned and looked at him.
“Another one, eh? Okay, come up here. What you want?”
Then Senthree no longer wondered how to address the Man. He bowed low as he approached them, and instinct made his voice soft and apologetic as he answered.
“Nothing, Master. Only to serve you.”
Superstition
1
The sepelora crawled along at her maximum eighty light-years an hour, as she had done for the four months since she’d left the university planet of Terra. The space-denial generators hummed on monotonously, maintaining the field around the ship where space almost ceased to exist. The big viewing panel and ports were blanked out by the effect, forming perfect mirrors. There was a steady wash of slightly stale air through the control cabin, and the pseudo-gravity on the decks was unvarying. With less than a day of superspeed left, Captain Derek should have been content.
Instead, he sat slumped loosely over the control board, staring with unfocused eyes at his image in the panel, while his fingers doodled black aces, hangman’s knots, and all the other symbols of doom for which his culture had no real referents. His deep-set eyes and the -hollows in his cheeks gave him an almost cadaverous look, borne out by the general angularity of his body. At forty-five he looked fifty, with gray speckles around his temples and lines of worry etched deeply into his face.
Abruptly a small speaker came to life with the voice of his aide, Ferad. “Psych Siryl to see you, sir.”
Derek sighed, letting his eyes focus slowly as his fingers came up in the ancient sign against evil, pointing at his own image. The physicist, Kayel, must have sent her; the man had been eyeing Derek all during the orders for instrument alert. But now that she was here, there was nothing to be done about it. “Send her in,” he acknowledged, and turned slowly to face the door that began opening.
Siryl’s bearing was more military than his, in spite of her civilian blouse. Her feet tapped across the deck precisely, her hips swayed just enough in the split skirt, and her face bore the impersonal warmth of all psychologists on duty. Under her professional pride lay the curious overdeveloped consciousness of being female possible only to women who wanted to be men. She was ten years younger than Derek and only slightly shorter, but her features and body were good, as near beauty as grooming and care could make them. Only her hair was wrong, and its black severity was deliberate.
She wasted no time. Before he could rise, she was beside him, rolling back his sleeve. There was the coldness of an antiseptic and then the faint bite of a needle. “You’ll be all right in a minute,” she said coolly. “I’d have come sooner, but all these rumors have kept me busy. I’ve been expecting this; your chart shows you’re a depressive with an irregular cycle.” Her precise smile was calculated to make it seem no more than mention of a bit of common gossip. “Come on now, Captain. Things aren’t all black.”
Now that the drug had ended his chance to wallow in the mood of his ill-fortune, he was almost glad. But her words touched it off again. The jinx was more than a mood. He was the only man of his age in the Service who rated less than sector commander. Everything he undertook went wrong, and seldom through his own failure. There had been the training ship that blew up, the girl who died from mutational weaknesses, the mislaid citation papers—and the whole affair leading to this foredoomed command.
“Optimism!” he said bitterly.
She snorted. “Superstition! Sure, you had a run of misfortune, Derek. But your real trouble came when you started to believe that jinx nonsense. You’re so sure of bad luck now that it’s sapped all your initiative. Look at you. You’ve been eyeing me for months, wanting me and being afraid to make a pass because something might go wrong!”
