Jacob and Wohler-9, when not conversing audibly, close at hand, had been communicating with their cumbersome, long-distance, radio frequency systems. The comlink cartridge would hook Jacob into their more sophisticated, short-range, microwave telephone network.

“Very well, Miss Welsh,” Wohler-9 said.

Ariel did not hold out much hope that Keymo and Jacob would come up with anything significant. In her experience, ordinary robots just weren't creative. Yet there was that extraordinary exception: that brief period on Robot City when Shakespeare's Hamlet had lived again, supported by robot actors, and the robot Lucius had created his artistic masterpiece, the dynamically chromatic edifice called Circuit Breaker.

A half-hour later Wohler-9 returned.

“Did Jacob locate Keymo?” Ariel asked.

“I believe so,” Wohler-9 said. “He had contacted Keymo over the comlink before I left.”

“Good. Does this apartment have a memory projector?”

“Yes. The niches are equipped with sockets, and that wall serves as the screen.”

“Just what we need. How many times did you meet with the alien Synapo?”

“Thirty-four.”

“How long each time?”

When Wohler-9 began reciting the list that contained the time for each meeting, Ariel interrupted him.

“On the average!” she said.

“Forty-two minutes,” Wohler said.

“I'll not have time to go over all that before tomorrow morning. Yet I desperately need some clue as to how we may resolve this dilemma.

“Wohler, while I'm thinking how to screen that material rapidly, download to central core just the dialogue of your meetings with Synapo, and get a printout back to me as soon as possible.”

“Download in progress,” Wohler-9 said.

A fraction of a minute later, while Ariel was still pondering her problem, Wohler-9 said, “Download complete.”

A couple of minutes later, she said, “I really don't know what I'm looking for, but I do know what I'm not looking for. Wohler, delete all sections of the meetings dealing with linguistics and play back the rest at double speed.”

She could understand neither Wohler-9 nor the alien at that speed. Then when she slowed it down so she could understand Wohler-9, she still couldn't understand Synapo's Webster Grove accent. She finally slowed it down to normal and could understand most of what Synapo said, but not all. She refused to slow it any further.

Just as she didn't hope for much from Keymo and Jacob, she really didn't expect to get anything much out of listening to Wohler-9 and Synapo. But it did keep her conscious mind actively on the problem and left her subconscious mind to freewheel on all the correlated branches of the main subject.

Neither her conscious mind nor her subconscious mind contributed anything of significance during an inquiry that became dull and dragging after the novelty of watching and listening to a giant bat wore off.

The courier from central core arrived with the printout of the dialogue late in the afternoon, and with that interruption, Ariel decided to take a break and eat an early dinner. She had heard nothing from Jacob and realized she had been expecting him to return for dinner, when there was really no reason why he should, since he didn't eat and merely kept her company when she did. Still, it was a habit she had become accustomed to, and she missed him now that she was deprived of that pleasure.

Was it Jacob she missed, or really Derec? She had only to ask herself that question, and the longing to see Derec and the flood of homesickness for the beautiful estates and green farmlands of Aurora overwhelmed her.

She tried to put it out of her mind as she ate a lonely dinner, but it was not possible. Her mind rebelled from the magnitude of the problem that faced her on this alien world, and while she ate, she wallowed in her loneliness and homesickness, and before she finished eating, tears of self pity were trickling down her face.

As she finished eating, Wohler-9 asked, “Are you in pain, Miss Welsh?”

Ariel wiped her tears away with a napkin. “No, Wohler. Just lonely. “

“Does my presence relieve your loneliness to any degree?”

“No.”

“To what degree did my assistance this afternoon serve in the preservation of the city, Miss Welsh?”

“Very little, I'm sorry to say,” Ariel said. “Why do you ask? Did you expect otherwise?”

“Certainly I had hoped otherwise, Miss Welsh. I proceed at all times in the direction that best serves the Prime Directive, if that does not violate the more compelling laws that govern my behavior.

“I have been neglecting my supervisory duties in the construction and operation of the city, Miss Welsh, for I concluded that your imperative best served the Prime Directive. If that seems no longer to be the case, I must return to my duties, which are currently spread among the other six supervisors.”

“Very well, Wohler. Return to duty.”

“I will clear the dinner table, request a maid to serve you in the future, and then take my leave.”

“I'll clear the table, Wohler. And a maid won't be necessary. Jacob will suffice. “

“But he is on another assignment, Miss Welsh.”

“We'll handle it, Wohler. Just raise Jacob on the comlink, tell him to get back here no later than ten PM, and then leave.”

She was anxious to be alone. Wohler had begun to get on her nerves, Wohler and that alien she had felt compelled to watch and listen to all afternoon.

“Will you be needing me at the meeting tomorrow morning?” Wohler asked.

“No. Did you get hold of Jacob while you were chattering there?”

“Yes, Miss Welsh. He will be here by ten PM.”

“Then leave, Wohler.”

Despite her warm feelings for Wohler-l, she was fed up with this Wohler-9. Yet in his dialogue with the alien, she felt there had to be some clue to the aliens, to their behavior, to their needs, to their culture, a clue to something that would make the aliens and humans compatible so that this desirable planet did not have to be abandoned and bypassed in the future.

She turned to the printout the courier had delivered before dinner.

Strange how that archaic form of transmitting information-the printed word-had stayed around so long. Yet was it so strange when that marvelous instrument, the human brain, was taken into account: the speed with which she could assimilate the words and conjure related images, the speed with which she could scan the pages?

She quickly thumbed to where Wohler had left off in his projection that afternoon and scanned through the rest of the dialogue-ten times the volume they had covered that afternoon-and she did it in less than two hours. And got more out of it, by being able to easily and quickly replay, fast forward, skip, and ponder over the significance of a phrase, a word.

It was true that central core had eliminated the alien's accent -and certainly that had speeded things up-but the true efficiency came with the printed word itself: the strange archaic telepathy that extracted alien ideas from an alien mind and moved them into hers.

Yet despite the ancient beauty of the printout, nothing of significance came from its perusal, no more than had come from the boring afternoon with Wohler and the memory projector.

Still, her intuition told her there had to be a solution. She just wasn't looking at it right, or with the proper frame of mind, or in the proper place. If not the dome, where on this weird world was she supposed to look? The city was the problem, a weather node the aliens had termed it, an aggravating, uncontrollable irritant, like a grain of sand in an oyster.

And the aliens were coating it, smoothing it, to relieve the abrasion, like an oyster coats the sharp edges of a grain of sand with iridescent nacre, mother-of-pearl. Now she was even beginning to think like an alien. This world is an oyster and the city and its dome are a pearl. Oyster World. Pearl City. She had christened a world and a city.