Considering orders did not help. Derec’s order to come in an emergency was recent, while the Watchful Eye’s command for dutiful obedience had been in effect for some time now.

The only thing to do, Bogie decided, was to hope that real life was not like the movies, where so often violent activity preceded the peaceful finale. He had no desire at this moment to cut to the chase.

The creatures had seemed to calm down after Ariel had approached them. She had drawn a chair up to the desk, keeping her hands safely out of sight, and talked to them. Her words didn’t matter, she had known that. What language they had was their own. Whoever had created them had neglected to program any known language into them, perhaps on purpose.

Now they sat in a semicircle facing Ariel, seeming to listen to and understand her gently told version of Cinderella, a tale she embellished with some ancient Auroran variations. Cinderella became relegated to the management of the household robots (since no Auroran performed menial scullery tasks), and the glass slipper was replaced by a personal robot left behind at the ball. The prince’s emissary had been instructed to examine how the robot reacted to the maidens of the land. When it came to the mysterious, pretty woman who had danced with the prince, the emissary would be able to tell by the robot’s response that this was she. One of the ugly stepsisters nearly fooled the emissary (the robot, having been part of the household, did respond efficiently to others in it), but then Cinderella swept in and the emissary could tell by the promptness with which it went to her that the pretty maiden dressed so much more plainly than her stepsisters was indeed the beautiful woman in the lavish gown of the previous night.

Standing on the other side of the desk, the Silversides and Wolruf were also entranced by Ariel’s version of the tale, although Eve had to ask frequent questions of Adam that he could not answer. She decided that the fairy godmother must be, like them, a shape-changer, and that was why she could do such marvelous things with pumpkins and farm animals.

Ariel came to the end of her story and was about to say that the prince and Cinderella lived happily ever after, but she thought of the questions that the Silversides might ask her, especially about how a human pair could possibly live forever, even if they were long-lived Aurorans, and she swallowed the phrase and merely said that everything went nicely for the happy couple for the next few decades.

When she stopped speaking, the tiny people looked eagerly at her, as if they wanted more. However, now that she had settled their anxieties, it was time to find out something more about them. But what? She had in front of her a bunch of minuscule human beings, apparently sentient, possibly (if Avery was right) android in nature, essentially a sophisticated version of the kind of mechanical toys she had played with as a child. Should she see if they could playa tin drum or walk stiff-legged like tin soldiers? Eve had said she had observed dancing in the ones at the vacant lot, and that this group had been performing some kind of ceremony.

Ceremony, that was the key. Whatever life they had, whatever “civilization” they could develop in their short lives, it seemed that it all was tied in with ceremony.

Carefully putting her hand down on the desk at a sufficient distance from where the group was gathered, Ariel began to trace out a small circle with the tip of her index finger. She hummed an old melody, a song about a woman whose lover kept going off to war, was eventually killed, then returned to her as a ghost. It had a plaintive sound, she knew, even when sung in her slightly out-of-tune voice.

At first the group merely watched Ariel’s finger move around, then the leader stood up and made authoritative gestures to her followers. Joining her, they clasped hands, formed a circle, and began to dance around, slowly, to the rhythm of Ariel’s tune. Tears came to Ariel’s eyes as she watched them dance gracefully and with more than a touch of elegance. It was beautiful, both the dance itself and the fact that they had understood her so quickly and easily.

She stopped tracing the circle and lifted her hand from the desktop. A moment later the dancers halted, too, looking up expectantly at Ariel, who nodded and returned her hand to the desk, this time tracing out a figure-eight with her finger. She moved her finger faster, and hummed a quicker-tempoed song, one about the happiness of frolicking in Auroran woods. (The Auroran songs made her feel nostalgic for her home, and briefly she wondered when she would ever return there. The way things were going, she might live the rest of her life confronting danger with Derec and desiring a more peaceful time with him.)

The dancers reformed themselves into a line. With the leader in front, they began a quite lovely quickstep dance following the figure-eight with more precision than Ariel could with her finger. Tears now fell from her eyes, and Eve noticed them.

“What is it, Mistress Ariel? Are you injured?”

Ariel was touched by Eve’s First Law reaction. “No, I’m fine. I’ve always done this-bawled like a baby when I see anything done with any artistry. I mean, this is almost like dancing, ballet even, the way they move so delicately. Sometimes people think I’m reacting with sentimentality, but that’s not it at all. It’s just the way I respond to the beauty of it, even more the fact that such beauty is possible. Maybe it’s a kind of sentimentality, but it comes from admiration and not from tender feelings. You don’t understand very much of this, do you, Eve?”

“No, I do not.”

“Nor do I,” Dr. Avery said, stepping out-as usual-without warning from a hiding place. He had stepped through the doorway, which had been left open after the Silversides brought the desk through it. Ariel was so startled she didn’t know what to say, although she was already calculating how to make him stay So she could, as ordered, try to cure him.

“If there is anything to your theories of art, Ariel, or to anybody ’ s theories, for that matter, it is not in intakes of breath at seeing something well-performed or sighs of admiration at a work well-executed. But that is unimportant to me, actually, since I don’t believe there is anything to theories of art. I believe imagination is a curse, unless it is used for applied science. Works of art are garbage unless they demonstrate a useful theorem.”

Ariel, recalling Lucius’s sculpture called “Circuit Breaker,” the one authentic piece of art produced by a Robot City robot, and the doctor’s hatred of it, knew that Avery was speaking the truth. He truly despised artistic creations.

“Was not that idea once called utilitarianism?” Eve asked.

Avery seemed impressed. “My, she does look amazingly like you, Ariel, doesn’t she? And is, perhaps, smarter. At any rate, that ancient philosophy, utilitarianism, does perhaps vaguely resemble the assumptions behind what I said.”

He walked to the edge of the desk and stared down at the tiny figures. When he had started speaking and Ariel had stopped singing, they had ended their dancing. Now, they looked up at Avery. Fear had returned to their faces.

“I can see why playing with them made you feel like God, my dear,” he said.

“I never said it did.”

“Oh, but I could see a godlike look in your face. You were looking for ways to send down tablets from the mountain or part a body of water for them, were you not?”

“No, I was not!”

“I wasn’t speaking literally. But I think you’re trying to establish a relationship with them that is godlike, studying them and finding ways to improve their meager existence.”

“I requested Mistress Ariel to study them,” Eve said.

“Is that so? You continue to amaze me, what’s your name, Eve? You are quite a feat of robotics. While we’re on the subject of gods, who made you?”