Derec heard the wailing of the injured even before he entered the tunnel to the main gallery. Mingled with the clinical noises of paramedics and ambulances, the controlled urgency of shouted orders and sirens, the sound cut through him, sharper than any cold wind, and he shuddered. As he emerged beneath the high arched ceiling, his two aides close at his heels, he saw bedlam and pain.

"Sir," a harried security guard challenged him, "this area is restricted. I-"

Derec held up his ID and the man stopped, blinking at it as if momentarily unable to recognize it.

"Oh. Phylaxis Group." He nodded, suddenly relieved. "You're expected. Let me…" He stepped back and spoke quietly into his comlink.

Derec did a slow survey of the scene. So many robots trampled and broken, frozen in place, or wandering about purposelessly, in advanced stages of positronic collapse, and human paramedics and security people shouting at them or pushing them out of the way. Derec felt a chill at the sight; these robots all should have been linked through the RI and if they were breaking down, then the RI must be having trouble. The only other robotic presence were the service drones-nonsentient automatons that did the grunt work for the emergency personnel. They did not even call them robots here. He wondered briefly if Bogard was still here, if it had survived, if it had functioned, if…

He turned to his team.

"Get to the mid-stage breakdowns first," he told the people with him. Only two specialists from the Group had accompanied him, Caro and Amson, his best field team. From the look of things, he wished he could have brought a dozen. But the Phylaxis Group's limited resources allowed only a small team; other specialists were too far away, in the Spacer districts at the periphery of D. C., working other situations. "Get them out of the arena. Find out where the stand-by niches are-I doubt any of these people will be using that room. Then tend to interaction and facilitation crises."

His people gave him quick nods and dispersed into the chaos.

"Hey, hold it," another voice intruded. A uniformed policeman strode up, one hand raised, the other touching the butt of his holstered stunner. He glared briefly at the first security guard, who was still on his comlink. "Who and what are you and what are you doing here?"

Derec extended his ill again. The officer studied it briefly. "Phylaxis Group. Great, we already have more medics than we need walking allover the evidence; now we get you people collecting tinheads."

Derec pocketed his ill. "Sorry if rendering assistance is such a burden for your forensics people. Maybe you'd even prefer leaving the dead and injured just where they fell till you finished? I'm sure only a few of them would expire before the evidence techs got all they wanted…"

The policeman's mouth tightened and he stepped toward Derec. Whatever he had intended to say, he changed his mind. "All right, point taken. You have clearance." He turned sharply and strode away.

"Thank you," Derec called after the retreating officer, who gave a negligent wave.

"Sir," the security guard said then. "Mil Jeffries is the floor supervisor. I'll have you taken to her." A drone approached, a nonpositronic escort unit, little more than a tall, spindle-like machine with a map programmed into it. "Just follow this one."

"Thanks."

Derec followed the drone along a narrow path between bodies that had not yet been picked up and small knots of people he assumed to be security-rigid, anger-frozen faces, quick conversations with each other or into coms, attitudes of arrested momentum, and, if Derec was not mistaken, embarrassment-and tried to get his mind around what he saw. It was clear that the bodies here had been trampled.

The largest knot of standing people occupied the raised platform toward which the drone led him. Everywhere the wounded and traumatized moaned and cried, a few shouting anxiously for help or an explanation or for the simple emotional need to scream at something. Whole sections of the huge floor contained the injured, stretched out, and tended to by humans and a few medical support robots-again, nonpositronic units that lifted and carried and contained portable diagnostic units for the human techs. Most of these did not even look like robots in the Spacer sense, but rather were collections of boxes and spheres and chunky assemblies mounted on treads or antigravity motivators, following the humans around like obedient pets. Derec saw frightened people shoving at them, crying or cursing, unwilling in typical Earther fashion to be touched by metal fingers. It was probably just as well no positronic robots were here to try to help-only the specially programmed could cope with injured or dead humans, but here they would be faced with the added confusion of humans rejecting their help. First Law dictated that they aid the injured. Second Law said to obey humans. The conflict of being ordered not to render aid would hit them hard; they would not understand the nature of the fear and resentment. Positronic breakdowns were sad, pathetic things to see. The robots still functioning here clearly could not cope. The lucky ones seemed already shut down. Derec's team moved quickly among the traumatized robots, getting them out of the way with the least damage possible. Some might be salvaged but he was not optimistic.

Several robots stood around the collections of the dead, mechanical bodies stiff, eyes dark, minds broken.

What about Bogard? he wondered. He could not find that particular robot here. Perhaps it had already been removed from the gallery. It was not really his anymore-it had been signed over to Special Service for active duty-but Bogard remained Derec's creation and he could not help but worry about it.

Derec looked away. The outer walls of the gallery bore tall, blackened streaks from the explosions. On the subetheric broadcast, the blasts had seemed great enough to gouge holes, but all that showed were the stains.

Derec's right foot slid sharply and he pinwheeled his arms to keep balance. He looked down. On the floor was a bright red smear leading from a puddle of blood. His stomach lurched sickeningly.

The drone led him up onto the platform and toward a small woman who stood in the midst of a cluster of people, talking rapidly and stabbing the air with her index and middle fingers.

"Supervisor Mil Jeffries, sir," the drone said, loudly enough to attract her attention. The woman glanced his way, frowning, then nodded and held up her hand to indicate that he wait.

Task completed, the unit moved away. Derec waited at the edge of the cluster and listened while Jeffries issued instructions. One by one and in pairs the people left to carry out their assigned tasks until only Derec remained. She looked at him, one eyebrow cocked dubiously.

"And?"

"I'm Derec Avery, from the Phylaxis Group."

"Those your people out there herding the braindeads away?"

"Yes."

"Good. About time. I only have two people on staff who know anything about traumatized tinheads, and right now they're busy with the RI… which is where I need you, if that's what you're wondering."

"The Resident Intelligence…?"

"Resident Idiot, you mean." She snorted derisively, then gestured for him to follow. "Come on. Avery? You're supposed to be the expert on positronics?"

"One of-"

"Fine. Come with me."

Jeffries, despite being a good head shorter, walked away fast enough to make Derec struggle to keep up. He glanced over at the huddle around the diplomats and representatives. Ambulances stood open, receiving bodybags and injured. Blood slicked a large area. A dozen or so people were gathered off to one side, the quality of their clothes announcing their importance. A few seemed nervous and several were deathly pale, but none looked hurt.

Derec and Jeffries came to the far end of the platform, descended the steps shoved against it, and the supervisor led the way through an innocuous door labeled PRIVATE. A few meters within they mounted a narrow stair leading up.

"I was worried that you might bring some more robots," Jeffries said. "We're having trouble enough with the mere presence of them right now."

"We don't have any," Derec replied. She gave him a look. "Besides the Spacer districts, the embassies, and here, they are illegal on Earth."

Jeffries nodded. "Hm. Do you have any idea what happened here?"

"I saw the replay on subetheric on the way over."

"Probably edited."

"How many-I mean, who?"

"Estimates are that eighteen people died in the shooting, but we have at least thirty wounded, maybe a hundred dead or injured in the panic-trampled, kicked, that sort of thing," Jeffries explained. "All those you saw down there, that's what happened to them, except for a half dozen or so that got hit by stray blaster fire from the security teams on the platform. The Auroran ambassador is dead, along with half her staff, plus the Aurorans from the embassy here." She stopped at the top of the steps and looked at him. "Senator Eliton, too."

Derec opened his mouth to say something. But then he saw a brief glimmer of pain in Jeffries' eyes, a glimpse of what lay beyond the brusque jobber she had shown him till then, and closed his mouth. He made himself nod. Jeffries' walls came up again, and she continued up the stairs to an unmarked door.

On the other side was a broad office pressed against a strip of window that overlooked the gallery. Desks, consoles, and people formed a loose maze between the window and a wall of monitors that stretched the length of the room.

"From here," Jeffries said, "we watch the RI run Union Station. Normally, anyway. Today we watched it go out to play while people died."

Everyone in the room stopped to look at Jeffries, then at Derec. He felt the bitterness in her voice, saw it reflected in all the staff faces. No robots were present, only people trying to cope.

"Would you explain that to me?"

"Kedder," Jeffries said.

Two people sat before the sprawling main interface console in the center of the room. One of them, a tall, slim man with short reddish hair, stood and cleared his throat.

"I, uh-"

"Kedder, this is the man from Phylaxis," Jeffries went on. "He's here to show us how to talk to our robots."