The floor mounded up and flattened out into a cushiony seat, grew a back and padded sides, and moved up to bump softly into the back of his legs. Avery sat and leaned back, resting his left arm on his leg. “Let’s hear it,” he said.

Janet mentioned casually that she would like a chair for herself, and after it formed she sat and began explaining about capricious city behavior and the Zeroth Law and moral dilemmas with large and small factions on either side of the issue. Derec and Ariel and Wolruf soon joined in, and the topic shifted to their concerns.

“I worry about w’at introducing robots will do to life back ‘orne,” Wolruf said. “We ‘ave a fairly complex system. We ‘ave four separate species on two planets, all interdependent. W’at’s good for one is usually not so good for another in the short term, but in the long term we need each other.”

“Even the Erani?” Avery asked. Aranimas had been Erani, one of the four races Wolruf spoke about.

Wolruf nodded. She seemed surprised to have Avery listening to her so intently. “Erani ‘ave their place. They keep Narwe for slaves, and sometimes us, but without Erani, Narwe would probably starve. They’re ‘ardly more than intelligent sheep. “

“ And your own people have a trading empire, don’t they?” Ariel asked.

“ ‘at’s right. Once robots start making everything everyone needs, our economy will collapse.”

“But those same robots will provide anything you want. Let it collapse! “

“ ‘Aving everything done for us wouldn’t be ‘ealthy,” Wolruf said.

“That’s right,” said Ariel. “If everybody started doing everything the easy way, it would wipe out their individuality. All four cultures would decline. That’s what I’m worried about, that robot cities are eventually going to make every civilization in the galaxy the same. “

“Wait a minute. I’m supposed to worry about homogenizing the galaxy? That’s not my problem!”

“You’re right, it’s not,” Janet said. “That’s because I’ve solved it for you already.” She explained about providing each city with a positronic mayor, one who would have the best interest of all its inhabitants at heart. Including the long-term effects of having too much done for them.

“So in Wolruf’s situation, we’d use four learning machines, one for each species. Let them learn the separate mores of each culture, and then have them get together and coordinate their work so they wouldn’t step on each other’s toes.”

Derec watched his father watching his mother as she spoke. Avery’s jaw seemed to be dropping lower and lower with each word, until when she finally stopped, his mouth was hanging open in astonishment. He closed it just long enough to take a breath, then bellowed out a laugh that shook the walls.

“Oh, that’s rich,” he said when he could talk again. “I can’t believe it. I wouldn’t inflict these…these walking conglomerations of simulated neuroses on my worst enemies, and you talk about giving them to paying customers?”

“I do indeed,” Janet said. “Obviously, the final version will need to have the Zeroth Law programmed in from the start, but now that these three-excuse me-these four, “ with a nod to Mandelbrot, “have already worked it out, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. “

“My God,” Avery said. “You really mean it, don’t you? You’d provide every city with a mechanical dictator who’s capable of slicing off a man’s hand just for shooting a robot.”

“I was protecting a being whose humanity is still not clear,” Lucius said, and Derec, hearing the emotion behind his words, suddenly realized that Lucius would be trying to solve that problem for the rest of his life, however many millennia that might be.

And thus are obsessions generated,he thought.

Avery waved his free hand expansively. “Oh, right, well, that makes it okay. It might have been human, after all.” To Janet he said, “Sorry, I’m not buying it. I’d rather do nothing at all than be part of your ridiculous scheme.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” Janet’s tone of voice was a little too glib, her mouth just hinting toward a smile as she spoke.

“What?” Avery demanded. “I know that tone, woman! How many other nasty little surprises do you have in store for me?”

Janet was grinning openly now. “Just one,” she said. “Just one more.”

They had to postpone the landing while a heavy rain washed over the jungle around the Compass Tower, but as far as Ariel was concerned, that was just as well. The longer she could delay the inevitable, the better she liked it. And besides, the storm had left a wonderful aroma of rain and ozone in the air, and the complete double rainbow arching over the deep green forest canopy below was one of the prettiest things she had seen in weeks. It almost made being here worth it.

A fitful breeze played around the welcoming committee on the roof of the tower, tousling hair that had been meticulously brushed only moments before. Ariel watched three hands on three different people automatically rise to groom their owners’ stray locks back into place. Belatedly she added a fourth to the tally; she couldn’t suppress the urge either. Only Wolruf seemed to be immune to concern over the position of her hair. Perhaps it was because she had so much of it.

Everyone had dressed for a party. Derec looked handsome in his yellow, blue, green, and orange tie-died suit, currently the rage on twenty planets. Janet wore a voluminous black and gold dress that billowed and flapped in great folds around her, and even Avery had foregone his usual austere jacket and tie for a pair of flamboyant fuchsia slant-stripe pants, a turquoise shirt, metallic silver suspenders, and a lilac jacket with epaulets. Ariel herself wore a skintight body suit in black with cutouts that should have shamed a mannequin, but she still wondered if she was underdressed.

Wolruf’s concession to fashion was a single yellow bandana tied around her left wrist and a gold stud in the opposite ear.

Ariel became aware of a soft tearing noise wavering in and out of audibility. It sounded as if it were coming from behind her. She turned around and held her hand to her forehead to shield out the sun, and presently she saw a silvery speck just above and to the right, lowering steadily. The spaceship drifted left, its engines growing louder as it drew nearer, and crossed into the sun’s disk. Ariel looked down, blinking, while the noise grew louder, louder, almost unbearably loud, then softer.

She looked to the open expanse of tower surface, but the ship hadn’t landed. It had passed over instead. Ariel turned around and watched as it dropped down below the level of the tower, dipped beneath the rainbow, and banked around to come in for a landing.

“Cute,” she muttered.

In a way she was glad for the gesture; it proved that nothing had changed. The pilot had obviously not seen himself fly beneath the rainbow, since a rainbow always outpaces the observer, but of course the entire stunt had been performed for its effect upon the audience, not upon the people in the ship. That told Ariel what she needed to know: the few shredded memories of home to survive her amnemonic plague were still accurate.

Its entrance properly announced, the ship wasted no more time in landing. Within seconds it returned to the tower, pirouetted once around, and settled on its landing skids. A ramp extended itself, and two robots descended to stand on either side of the ramp. A moment later two young men-also in tie-died suits, Ariel noted with satisfaction-emerged and stood in front of the robots.

Mandelbrot, his body plating burnished to a lustrous glow, and Basalom, his arm replaced and good as new, bent down and began unrolling a red carpet toward the ramp. Ariel was impressed with their aim: they hit it dead center with only a fraction too much cloth.