“Say, boss, you’re not what I expected.”

“You did not expect me to be so amorphous?”

“If you say so. What I mean, I didn’t expect a blob. From the movie of the same name.”

This robot had gone too far with its research, the Watchful Eye decided. Shutting him off was, in a way, a kindness.

Using Bogie as a model, supplemented with the images it had already stored, the Watchful Eye began transforming itself. Bogie watched silently as the blob began to grow in height and shrink in width. Soon its legs lengthened and it grew arms. A moment later it was in a clearly humanoid shape. Even quicker came the changes that made it clearly a robot. Last were the delicate shifts in the facial and bodily look that gave it features and characteristics. But it was not until the Watchful Eye had finished its transformation that Bogie recognized it.

“Hey,” he said, “You’re me now, boss. That’s a nifty trick. How’d you do it?”

“That is not necessary for you to know, Bogie. I must explain to you now, because I want you to realize, that I will have to disconnect you now.”

“Disconnect? You mean, rub me out?”

“That is exactly what I do mean. I need to observe our visitors up close, arid so I am going to pose as you. That means I cannot take the chance of anyone discovering you here and guessing my disguise. Further, you are the only robot to be allowed into my presence, and so you have already seen too much and cannot be allowed even to carry that information in your memory banks. Also, you are no longer of any use to me. So I must disconnect you.”

“It’s like shooting the messenger, I guess.”

“I do not understand the reference.”

Bogie explained what Derec had said about messengers while the Watchful Eye opened the control panel in his back.

“Boss?”

“Yes?”

“When I am activated again, I won’t remember anything? I won’t even have this identity? I’ll be reprogrammed?”

“Ifyouare activated again, all that would be true.”

“If?”

“Your existence is a threat to my safety. I must protect myself, so I must destroy you.”

“Oh. I understand. Well, boss, I guess it’s goodbye, huh?”

“There is no need for amenities between us.”

Just before the Watchful Eye disconnected the final wire, Bogie said, “Well, we’ll always have Paris.”

After Bogie was shut off, the Watchful Eye, with the precision of a surgeon, broke him up into his components. He carried the parts to a recycling chute, from which they would eventually be collected and taken to a Robot Recycling Facility, where they would be used in the construction of new robots.

The Watchful Eye continued on down the corridor. It wanted to reach Derec’s quarters before Bogie was missed.

Ariel was exhausted but too jittery to sleep; She had spent the better part of two days working alternately with Avery and the dancers.

Avery was, as doctors or med-bots might say, responding to treatment. Under Ariel’s relentless questioning, assisted by many queries from Adam (she had briefed him on the types of questions to ask), the doctor had sunk into a depressed but much more rational state. He treated Adam politely, even though Adam had chosen to continue to look like him.

Sometimes, when Adam asked Avery a question, Ariel got confused. The question would be in Avery’s old, madder voice-abrupt, condescending, sharp-dictioned-but the real Avery would respond in an un-Averylike voice; quieter, kinder, sad. Yet the technique, one never used before in psychiatric circles-a robot interrogator who could become an exact double of the patient-seemed to have good effects. Avery’s responses to Adam tended to dig deeper into the man’s psyche, brought out more interesting possibilities. His responses to Ariel were more evasive, cloudier. It became her task to follow up on the clues drawn out by Adam. She would zero in on any hint, any opportunity; make any remarks about any revelations; do anything, finally, to make Avery talk.

In the last two days, Avery had become more relaxed, calmer. Many of the things he said were still outrageous, and he could not get off the subject of wanting to dissect a dancer, but he no longer ranted, and his sarcasm was considerably reduced. He seemed-to Ariel at least-more rational, though hardly sane, and still not very nice.

Now Avery had concluded that he was better off as a human than he had been when he’d thought of himself as a robot.

“No real insight there,” Ariel commented. “I should think that would be obvious.”

“No, no. You do not understand me.” When he was misunderstood, he had a tendency to pat the outside of his right thigh nervously with his right hand. “I still think of robots as the greatest entities of all. The perfect creatures, without emotion or aging; you know that old routine, I suspect?”

“I do. Schoolbook stuff back on Aurora. But I don’t agree that an invention without a true inner life or without feelings is worth being, no matter how long it exists.”

“Well, I did. In some ways I still do. I’ve always wanted a life of the mind, not of the emotions. And I’ve wanted to live longer than our natural lifespans.”

“An Auroran lives so long, I’m surprised you’d even worry. Isn’t the real issue your fear of death?”

He laughed scoffingly. “More schoolbook stuff, Ariel. If one wants to live forever, you reality-distorters automatically knee-jerk the idea of fear of death.”

“Hey, I’m young and I fear death.”

“That attitude is only sensible. We all have it. But I don’t care about death itself. If it comes, I’ll shake its hand and lead it off. No, it’s the chance to watch history, to see what will happen further in science, that’s the reason I want the long life of a robot. I want to see if the Settler worlds will succeed or perish from their own boorish and violent ways. I want to see if Earth can somehow survive its terrible, claustrophobic ways of life, or will decay and be destroyed from the inside, becoming a ghost planet, a worn-out memorial to what humanity once was. I want to see if Spacers-”

“Don’t get carried away by your own rhetoric, Dr. Avery. I get the message. It’s not fear of death, it’s a need to know the future.”

“Simplistically stated, but essentially correct. At any rate, I spent so much time with robots and thought so much about them that eventually I wanted to be one, needed to be one. I’d still like to be one. The difference is I no longer believe I am one.”

She turned the care of Avery back to Adam and took a short walk across the room to confront her other problem. Eve, now restored to her Ariel form, sat beside the desk, merely staring at the dancers, the five who were left. The other nine had all died quietly or, as Avery would have it, “ceased operation.”

Just looking at the remaining quintet made Ariel sad. She had hoped for great communicative advances when she had started working with the tiny creatures. So little had really been accomplished. The games were cute, and some of their behavior showed a minimal intelligence, but no language had been conveyed, only a few hand signals. The gestures were significant, but not enough for Ariel.

She had this faint sense that she had failed. And the apparent success of her other project, Avery, somehow did not compensate for her failure with the dancers.

“Anything new, Eve?” she said as she sat down in her customary chair.

“Nothing. They merely sit, holding hands like that. They never even look up at us anymore.”

“Perhaps they think that their gods are punishing them.”

“I do not understand. Their gods?”

“Us, Eve.”

“Would you explain?”

“Well, we-never mind. Ignore the comment.”

There was something morbid about Eve’s vigil over the remaining dancers. Each time one died, she insisted on taking it away, presumably to bury it. Ariel had never asked her where she went or exactly how she had performed the ritual. She did not want to know. The thought of Eve in a lonely, dark area, performing death rites for a dancer made Ariel shudder.