"This manufacturer- Low bidder?"

"Should I have placed it for bid, sir?" Minerva sounded worried.

"Hell, no! If you had, I would have told you to tear it out and start over-then we would have hunted for the best supplier. Minerva my dear, once you leave here, it may be many years before you have any factory service; you'll have to maintain yourself. Unless Ira can minister to a sick computer?"

"He can't."

"You see? Dora is gold and platinum where a cheaper computer is copper and aluminum. I hope your new carcass is just as expensive."

"It is, Lazarus. My new me is even more reliable than my old me-and smaller and faster, as much of me-'old me'- is about a century old; the art has improved."

"Hm. Must see what ought to be replaced in Dora, if anything."

Minerva made no comment. Lazarus said, "My dear, when you don't talk, it is louder than when you do. Have you been overhauling Dora?"

"I stockpiled some components, Lazarus. But Dora won't let herself be touched unless you order it."

"Yeah, she hates to let a doctor poke around inside her. But if she needs it, she'll get it-under anesthesia. Minerva, it would be smart, with two of you in the ship, for Dora to carry your maintenance instructions in her permanents, and hers in yours-so that you can nurse each other."

Minerva answered simply, "We have been waiting for you to tell us to do so, Lazarus."

"You mean you have been waiting; it is not something Dora would think of. So now I'm telling you both, and let her hear my voice say so. Minerva, I wish you would get over being so humble with me. You should have proposed it; you think faster than I do by many orders of magnitude; I've got flesh-and-blood limitations. How are you coming on astrogation? Is she teaching you to pilot? Or balking?"

"Lazarus, I am now as skillful a pilot as she is, in my other me."

"Like fun. You're a copilot. You're not a pilot until you've made an n-space jump unassisted. Even Dora gets jumpy before a jump-and she's made hundreds."

"I stand corrected, Lazarus. I am a very highly trained copilot. But I'm not afraid to do it, if the time comes. I've rerun all of Dora's jumps in real time, and she tells me I know how."

"You may have to someday, if disaster hits. Ira isn't the pilot I am, I'm certain. With me no longer aboard, your new skill may save his life sometime. What else do you know? Heard any good ones lately?"

"I don't know, Lazarus. I've heard some stories, bawdy ones I believe, from listening to the technicians installing my twin. But I don't know that they are funny."

"Don't bother. If it's a bawdy story, I heard one like it at least a thousand years back. Now the key question- How fast can you cut loose if ha decides to jump? Assume a coup d'etat and he's running for his life."

"One-fifth of a second, minus."

"Huh? You're not pulling my leg? I mean how long to put your whole personality aboard the 'Dora.' Not leave anything behind and not leave the computer here aware that she ever was Minerva-for anything less would not be fair to yourself, dear. The 'Minerva' left behind would grieve."

"Lazarus, I am speaking not from theory but from experience, as I knew it was the critical aspect of this twinning. So, once I dismissed the contractor and had twinned my permanents and logics and my running temporaries, I experimented, cautiously at first; I simply paralleled me, as I described to you. That's easy, I just have to balance the lag at each end, to stay synchronous in real time-but I have to do that with my remote extensionals at all times; I'm used to it.

"Then I tried, very cautiously, suppressing myself, first at the ship end, then at the Palace end, with a self-program to revert to full twinning in three seconds. No trouble, Lazarus, not even the first time. Now I can do it in less than two hundred milliseconds and run all checks to be certain that I have neglected nothing. I have done so seven times since you asked that question. Did you notice a lag in my voice at times? Approximately a thousand-kilometer lag?"

"What? My dear, I am not equipped to notice a lag of less than thirty thousand kilometers at speed 'c.' " He added, "Call it a tenth of a second. You flatter me." Lazarus added thoughtfully, "But a tenth of a second is a hundred million of the nanoseconds you use. Or a hundred milliseconds. What's that in your time? About a thousand of my days?'

"Lazarus, that is not how I would express it. I split much smaller than a nanosecond in many things I do-a 'millishake' or less. But I'm just as comfortable in your time; I am right now with my personal me. I could not enjoy singing, or this quiet talk with you, if in my personal mode I were forced to consider each nanosecond. Do you count each of your heartbeats?'

"No. Or rarely."

"It is somewhat the same with me, Lazarus. The things I do quickly I do with no effort and with no conscious attention other than necessary self-program. But the seconds and minutes and hours I spend with you, in personal mode, I savor. I do not chop thorn into nanoseconds; I grasp them whole and enjoy them. All the days and weeks you have been here I hold as a single 'now' and cherish it."

"Uh...hold it, dear! Are you saying that, well, the day Ira introduced us to each other is still 'now' to you?"

"Yes, Lazarus."

"Let me sort this out. Is tomorrow 'now' to you also?"

"Yes, Lazarus."

"Uh...but if that is so, you can predict the future."

"No, Lazarus."

"But- Then I don't understand it."

"I could print out the equations, Lazarus, but such equations would merely describe the fact that I am constructed to treat time as one of many dimensions, with entropy but one operator and with 'the present' or 'now' a variable held in steady state for a wide or narrow span. But in dealing with you I must necessarily move with the wave front that is your personal now-or we cannot communicate."

"My dear, I'm not sure we are communicating."

"I am sorry, Lazarus. I have my limitations, too. But were I able to choose, I would choose your limitations. Human. Flesh-and-blood."

"Minerva, you don't know what you are saying. A flesh-and-blood body can be a burden...specially when its maintenance begins to occupy most of one's attention. You have the best of both worlds-designed in man's own image to do what makes him distinctively human-but better, faster- much faster!-and more accurately, than he can do it-without the aches and pains and inefficiencies of a body that must eat and sleep and make mistakes. Believe me."

"Lazarus, what is 'Eros'?"

He looked into the gloom and saw in his mind's eye how solemnly and sorrowfully she stared back. "Good God, girl-do you want to go to bed with him that badly?"

"Lazarus, I do not know. I am a 'blind man.' How can I know?"

Lazarus sighed. "I'm sorry, dear. Then you know why I have kept Dora a baby."

"Only as conjecture, Lazarus. One that I have not and will not discuss with anyone."

"Thank you-you are a lady, dear. You do know. Or you know part of my reason. But I'll tell you all of it-when I feel up to it-and then you will know what I mean by 'love' and why I told Hamadryad it must be experienced, not defined in words...and why I know that you know what love is, because you have experienced it. But Dora's story is not for Ira, just for you. No, you can let Ira have it, after I'm gone. Uh, call it 'The Tale of the Adopted Daughter'; then place a hold on it and let him have it later. But I won't tell it now; I'm not strong enough tonight-ask me when you know I'm feeling up to it."

"I shall. I'm sorry, Lazarus."

"Sorry'? Minerva, my very dear, there is never anything to feel sorry about with love. Never. Would you rather not love me? Or Dora? Or never have learned of love through loving Ira?"

"No. No, not that! But would that I knew 'Eros,' too."