“ At about the same time, a mysterious kin known as SilverSides joined the pack. She destroyed several of the WalkingStones, and forced the GodBeing that lived in the Hill of Stars to come out for single combat. Local kin say that SilverSides became a GodBeing herself and went into the Hill of Stars.

“Since then, SilverSides has been seen only once, in the company of a strange, half-kin, half-GodBeing creature named Wolruf. ”

Wolruf?Maverick wondered. What ’ s a wolruf?

“LifeCrier, who speaks the history for the kin of PackHome, says that SilverSides was a gift of the OldMother and has returned to her. LifeCrier insists that SilverSides will return to lead the hunt and protect all the kin.

“Young kin from many packs have come to the eastern lakes country to hear LifeCrier speak and hoping to glimpse the GodBeings. But there are stories of widespread confusion.

“In the meantime, the faithful wait, and the Hill of Stars itself remains silent. This report was first cried by StormBringer on the eastern lakes echo. ”

Maverick sat quietly a few moments longer, listening to the last reverberations of the message die out against the mountainside. Then the yips and howls started up again as other kin picked up the story and repeated it. Maverick cleared his throat, laid his ears back, took a deep breath

And thought better of it. “PackHome, eh? In the eastern lakes country?” He squeezed out a tight-lipped smile, got to his feet, and trotted over to where the spur of rock joined the side of the mountain. “Sounds like a chaotic, leaderless mess to me. ” At the top of the trail he paused to look at the stars and get a good fix on the direction he was heading. Then he started carefully picking his way down the talus-covered slope.

“Just the place for a strong kin with a little ambition, eh, lad?”

He looked up at the stars one more time and noted that LargeFace was now well up in the sky. In this phase the shadowy outline of SplitEar, the kin in the moon, stood out very clearly.

Maverick couldn’t help but feel that old SplitEar, first pup of the OldMother, was smiling down on him.

Dr. Avery was hunched over a data terminal in the ship’s robotics lab, deeply engrossed in a dense mass of hex code, when Derec called out, “Hi, Dad!” and came bouncing into the room.

Avery pulled his face away from the terminal just long enough to glare at Derec. “Will you please stop calling me that?” he asked, his white mustache bristling with anger. “You know how much it annoys me. ”

“Sure, Dad. ”

Avery shot his son one more if-looks-could-kill glance, ran his fingers through his long white hair, and turned back to the terminal. He would never have said it out loud, of course, but in his heart, Avery admitted that Derec certainly had every right to try to annoy him. After all, it was Avery’s megalomaniacal experiment that had erased Derec’s memory and infected Ariel with amnemonic plague. Now he could not reconstruct how, in his madness, he had caused the amnesia, much less how to reverse it. And while his little chemfet nanomachines had ultimately worked to perfection, they’d nearly killed Derec twice, and they had killed Derec and Ariel’s unborn child.

Given all that, Avery resolved once more to put up with whatever juvenile revenge Derec was in the mood to exact today. He waited patiently while Derec found a noisy tin stool, dragged it over, and sat down. Then, when it appeared that Derec wasn’t going to say anything, he called up another bloc of code.

“Whatcha doing, Dad?” Derec asked brightly.

Avery sighed and turned to his son. ‘. I’m going through the ship’ s systems software, in hopes of finding the shape-changing algorithm. ”

“Why?”

“I’d like to stop the polymorphism, or at least slow it down a great deal. ”

“Why?”

Avery sighed again and ran his fingers through his hair. That ’ s one of the problems with having children raised by robots, he thought. When they ’ re about three years old, they go through a “Why, daddy?” stage. The Second Law forces the robots to answer. So the kids never outgrow it.

Avery straightened his lab coat, pasted on his best imitation paternal smile, and answered the question with another question.

“Have you ever walked off the edge of a gravity field?”

. Derec sifted through his attenuated memories. “I don’t think so. Why?”

“I did, last night. You‘ve seen how minimal the environment on the second deck is? I was looking for Lucius last night and I walked into a pitch-dark cabin that had no gravity field. ”

“What happened?”

“When you reach the edge of a gravity field, you don’t float up into the air. Rather, down suddenly becomes the floor of the room you just left. There’s no sensation of falling; you simply pivot on the doorsill and follow the field through a 90-degree curve. ”

“So?”

“Have you ever heard the expression,. the floor jumped up and hit me in the face’?”

. Derec snickered.

“Blast it, Derec, it’s not funny! If the floor hadn’t realized what was going on and softened itself an instant before impact, I would have broken my nose!”

. Derec tried to keep the laugh suppressed, but a small giggle found a crack and wiggled through.

Avery scowled at Derec through his bushy white eyebrows. “You think that’s funny? This morning I happened to think out loud that I needed to use the Personal, and frost me if the chair I was sitting on didn’t transform itself into a toilet!” Avery shot a savage glare at the ceiling of the cabin. “And no, I do not need to use the Personal now!” His chair, which had begun to soften around the edges, quickly firmed up again.

. Derec sputtered twice and then exploded into uncontrolled laughter.

Avery’s scowl melted. “Okay, maybe it’s a little funny. But I’ll tell you, the thing that finally pushed me over the edge was the nightmare I had about one this morning. I dreamed that the ship had transformed itself into a giant humanoid robot and was insisting that its name was ‘Optimus Prime. ’ “

. Derec abruptly stopped laughing, and his face went pale. “Gad, that’s a horrible thought. ”

“Woke me up in a cold sweat, I can tell you. ”

After a few seconds of thoughtful silence, Avery turned back to his workstation and slapped a hand on the data display.,, Anyway, that’s when I decided that the shape-changing program had to go. Or at least, it had to get toned down some. ” He looked at Derec, attempted a tentative smile, and then looked around the robotics lab.

“You know, son, there are some really good ideas here. Take this ship’s skin, for instance; cellular robotics is the perfect technology for seamless, self-sealing spacecraft hulls. If we could just find some way to bond the robotic skin permanently to a titanium-aluminide frame, we might really be on to something. ” He turned to Derec and cautiously met his eyes.

“. Derec? When we get back to Robot City, we’re going to have to work on this design some more. ”

. Derec nodded and looked away. He never enjoyed admitting it, but every once in a great while his father could be right.

While Derec’s face was turned, Avery stole a few moments to really look at his son. It was funny, but despite the nearly twenty years that had passed since Derec was born, Avery couldn’t remember ever once just looking at the boy and seeing him for what he was. He’d always looked at the boy and seen what he wanted him to become. For most of the boy’s life, Avery now noted with a little sadness, he’d treated Derec more like an experiment than a son.

Derec. Even that name was part of an experiment. The boy’s real name was David, but Avery had wiped out that memory along with everything else. This young man who stood before him now, fidgeting uncomfortably and staring at the wall-this . Derec - was a stranger.