"Because clearly I possess all the mental and physical qualifications. Who better to playa girl who's going insane than one who really is? Of course, I don't know who's going to play Hamlet's mother, but that's not my problem, is it?"

At least she's keeping her sense of humor about things,Derec thought. "No-it's your director's-and your leading man's."

Ariel grinned and bowed. "At your service, Mr. Director."

"Master-"

"Yes, Mandelbrot."

"Forgive the intrusion, Master Derec and Mistress Ariel, but Harry, Benny, and M334 are at the door. They said they had vibes to present to you."

"Vibess?" said Wolruf. "Not ni-ice word on my would."

"Yes, but who knows what it means here," said Ariel. "Send them in, Mandelbrot."

"Yes, I suppose we have to begin interviewing for our cast and crew sooner than later," said Derec.

In walked the three robots, each carrying brass objects. Each object struck Derec as being rather strange. M334 held a tube with two dozen keys, with what appeared to be a mouthpiece on one end. It was evidently a wind instrument, though what sort of sound it was supposed to make, Derec had no way of imagining.

Nor did he know what sort of sounds he might expect from the other two instruments held by the other two robots. Benny's was smaller than M334's, and could be easily held in one hand; there were three taps on the top, presumably to modulate the sonic textures. Harry's was the straightest and the longest of the three; it had a sliding device that evidently would lengthen or shorten the tubing to match the player's will, again presumably to modulate the sound.

"Good day, sir," said Benny. "We can only presume we are interrupting your preparations-"

"Good grief, word travels fast around here!" Ariel exclaimed.

" Youfound out, didn't you?" said Derec. Ariel shrugged. "I heard it from Wolruf."

"And how did you hear about it, Wolruf?" Derec asked.

Wolruf merely shrugged. The effort made her entire body quiver.

"-and so we thought you might want to see for yourself the results of a project we have been devoting ourselves to instead of closing down in our spare time," finished Benny, as if no one else had spoken.

"Ah, and what is the nature of this project?" Derec asked suspiciously.

"Originally it was purely musical," said Benny.

"But when we heard you were planning to engage us in a recreation of human art forms, we performed research and discovered that music was often a significant part of such functions," said Harry.

"That struck us as being particularly fortuitous," said M334. "We thought-perhaps presumptuously, but how could we tell if we refrained from inquiring?-that our music might make a significant contribution to the enterprise."

"Uh, what kind of music are we attempting here, with those things?" Ariel asked. " Auroran nouveau fugues? Tantorian ecto-variations?"

"Something close to period, Terran-style," said Harry.

"You mean from Earth?" Ariel asked incredulously. Terran culture was not held in high regard in most Spacer circles.

"Shakespeare was from Earth," put in Derec mildly.

"Yes, but he was lucky enough to be talented," said Ariel. "You can't say that about most Terran artists."

"Perhaps you judge our aspirations too harshly," said Benny.

"Yes, you should judge after you hear us play," said M334.

"Yes, you should have plenty of critical ammunition then," said Harry.

Ariel stared at Derec. "It was a joke," Derec said.

"Close to bein' good one!" said Wolruf.

The three robots then magnetically applied computerized, flexible, artificial lips to their speaker grills. The lips were connected by electrical cords that led into the positronic cavities, and Derec saw at once, by the way the robots exercised the lips and blew air through them, that they responded directly to thought control.

Just like real lips,thought Derec, biting his lower one as if to make sure. "Excuse me, but before you boys strike up the brass, I'd like to know what names those instruments are supposed to have."

"This is a trumpet," said Benny. " A saxophone," said M334.

"And a trombone," said Harry.

"And by way of further introduction," said Benny, "the number we would like to assault for your aural perusal is an ancient composition dating not four hundred years later than Shakespeare's time. This was already during the age of recorded music, but no tapes are currently available through central, so we can only surmise the manner in which these instruments were played by examining the sheet music. "

"What there is of it," said Harry. "Most of this number is improvised."

"Uh-oh!"said Ariel to herself, putting her hand protectively on her forehead. "I must be having a delirium!"

"And the number we would like to assault is what the reference tapes denote as, in the parlance of the day, a snappy little ditty. This song its composer, the human known as Duke Ellington, called 'Bouncing Buoyancy."'

I've got a bad feeling about this,Derec thought. He waved his hand. "Play on, McDuffs!"

The robots did. At least, that's what the humans and the alien thought they were trying to do. The musical form was so radically unlike anything they'd experienced, the playing so haphazard and odd, so full of accidental spurts and sputters and stops, that exactly what the robots were attempting to do remained a matter of some conjecture.

Benny's trumpet played the lead with a blaring succession of notes that occasionally struck the ear as being just right. The noise the instrument made resembled the wail of a siren, recorded backwards. So high was its frequency that Derec became afraid his ears would begin bleeding. Benny's notes, on the other hand, did seem to possess some kind of internal logic, as if he knew where he was going but wasn't quite sure how to get there.

Harry on the trombone and M334 on the saxophone attempted to provide Benny with a solid foundation; awkwardly, they tooted eight measures of unchanging harmony, over and over again. They nearly succeeded, harmony-wise, and perhaps their glitches wouldn't have been so noticeable if they'd occasionally managed to start and end the eight measures at the same time.

The trombone itself tended to sound like an exquisitely crafted raspberry, surreally brayed from the mouth of a contemptuous donkey. The saxophone's sonic attack, meanwhile, resembled nothing so much as a gaggle of geese gurgling underwater. The effect of the three instruments combined was such that Derec wondered momentarily if the robot hadn't come up with a violation of an interplanetary weapons treaty.

Derec spent the first minute finding the music absolutely atrocious, utterly without redeeming social value. It was the worse kind of noise; that is, noise pretending to be something else. But gradually he began to perceive, vaguely, the equally vague ideal in the robots' minds. The music itself, regardless of the manner of its playing, possessed a single-minded joy that quickly became infectious. Derec discovered that his toe was tapping in a rhythm akin to that of the music. Ariel was nodding thoughtfully. Wolruf had her head cocked inquisitively, and Mandelbrot was his usual inscrutable self.

Derec's mind wandered a second, and he wondered if he could rig up a specimen of those liplike fixtures on the mouths to help robots portray human emotions during the production. The fact that most had immobile faces, incapable of even rudimentary expression, was going to cripple the illusion unless he devised some way to use the very inflexibility to greater effect. He imagined a set of lips twisted in laughter at the play's cavorting actors, and in fear of the ghost of Hamlet's father, and in anguish at the sight of all the dead bodies littering the stage. Well, it's a thought, he figured, and then returned his attention to the music.