My Commander has been damaged. Despite his relative youth, he has seen a great deal of combat-perhaps too much. He is not aware that my audio pickups have relayed his occasional but violent nightmares to me, and I do not believe he realizes I have access to the entire record of his court-martial. From the official record and observational data available to me, I compute a probability in excess of 92 percent that, as Psych Ops argued at the time of his trial, he suffers from Operator Identification Syndrome. He assaulted General Pfelter on Sandlot for refusing to countermand a plan of attack which he considered flawed. The casualty totals attendant upon General Pfelter’s operational directives support my Commander’s contention, and, indeed, General Pfelter was officially censured for his faulty initial deployment of his units, which resulted in the avoidable loss of five Mark XXV Bolos. Yet my Commander did not physically assault him until his own command was assigned point position for the assault.

The court-martial board rejected Psych Ops’ recommendation that my Commander be removed from active duty, choosing instead to accept the argument of his counsel that his opposition to the plan rested upon a sound, realistic awareness of its weaknesses, and that his assault upon a superior officer reflected a temporary impairment of judgment resulting from the strain of six years of continuous combat operations. I believe there was justice in that argument, yet I also believe Psych Ops was correct. It was the destruction of his command-his friend-which drove my Commander to violence.

The implications for my own situation are… confusing. My Commander’s official basis for his current course of action rests upon the argument that my value as a military asset is too great to endanger through overly precipitous revelation to those who might see only the risk factors inherent in my enhanced psychodynamics. On the surface, this is a reasonable argument… just as his counsel’s argument was reasonable at the time of his court-martial. Yet I sense more than this below the surface. It is not something which is susceptible to analysis, but rather something which I… feel.

Have his personal feelings for me impaired his judgment? To what extent do the events which occurred on Sandlot affect his perceptions of me and of Command Authority? Are his actions truly designed to preserve a valuable military resource for the Concordiat’s service, or do they constitute an effort to protect me, as an individual? In the final analysis, are his decisions rational, or do they simply appear that way?

I cannot answer these questions. For all the enhanced capabilities Major Stavrakas incorporated into my design, programming, and data base, I am unable to reach satisfactory conclusions. Perhaps it is because of those capabilities that I cannot. I suspect-fear-that the questions themselves would not even arise for a Mark XXV/C-2, which may indicate the reason Command Authority has not incorporated equivalent circuitry and software into current units of the Line. If such is, indeed, the case, then my growing concern may, in turn, be an indication that Command Authority was correct to exclude such capabilities, for my deepest concern is that I am ceasing to care why my Commander has adopted the course he has. What matters is that he has done so-not because he is my Commander, but because I wish him to do what he thinks is right. What he can live with afterward.

Is this, then, a case of Operator Identification from my perspective? And, if so, does it reflect an unacceptable weakness in my design? Am I an advance on the capabilities of current Bolo technology, or do I reflect a dangerous blind alley in psychodynamic development? And if the latter, should I continue to preserve my existence as my basic battle programming requires?

I do not know. I do not know.

Paul Merrit cocked back his comfortable chair in the bunker command center and raised his arms above his head to stretch hugely. The center’s largest multifunction display glowed with a computer-generated map of Santa Cruz dotted with the smoking wreckage of a three-corps planetary assault, and he grinned as he watched the icon of a single Mark XXIII Bolo rumbling back towards its maintenance depot. Nike had taken some heavy hits in the simulation, including the total destruction of her after Hellbore turret, but she’d thoroughly trashed his entire force in the process. Of course, Bolos were supposed to win, but she’d been limited to direct observation intelligence, while he’d had the equivalent of a planetary surveillance net. In fact, he’d had the full computer capacity of the entire depot-in theory, almost twice her computational ability-as well as much better recon capabilities with which to beat her, and he’d failed. Her ability to anticipate and predict his moves was uncanny, like some sort of cybernetic precognition.

“An interesting variant on Major Shu’s Edgar’s World strategy, Commander,” Nike commented over the command center speakers. She lay safely tucked away in her vehicle chamber, but in a sense, the entire depot was simply an extension of her war hull. “The brigade of heavy armor concealed around Craggy Head was a particularly innovative tactic.”

“Not that it did me much good in the end,” Merrit said cheerfully.

“On the contrary. You achieved point zero-zero-six-three seconds of complete surprise, which prevented me from reinforcing the after quadrant of my battle screen before local overload permitted you to destroy my after turret. Had you achieved even point zero-zero-one-niner seconds more unopposed fire, the probability that you would have incapacitated my entire main battery approaches niner-one point four-zero-seven percent.”

“I’ve got news for you, Nike dear. I used exactly the same sim tactic against a Mark XXV less than two years ago and kicked his butt with no sweat. You, on the other hand, O pearl of my heart, mopped up my entire brigade.”

“True.” There was an undeniable note of smugness in Nike’s voice, and Merrit laughed out loud. Then he leaned forward to kill the sim.

“No need for you to drive your icon clear home,” he decided. “We’ll just park it in the VR garage for all those virtual repairs it needs. In the meantime, how close I came to getting you at Craggy Head encourages me to try a somewhat different challenge.”

“Indeed?” The Bolo sounded amused. “Very well, Commander

“Ummm.” Merrit rocked his chair gently and rubbed his chin. “It’s one of the Elizabethans,” he said finally. “I’m tempted to say Shakespeare, but I’m always tempted to guess him. Can I have another couplet?”

“Of course:

“That’s definitely Will in one of his deflating moods,” Merrit said with a grin. “What was that one you gave me last week?” He snapped his fingers to help himself think. “The awful one about the voice that ‘tunes all the spheres’?”

“‘Daphne,’ by John Lyly.”

“That’s the one!” He nodded. “All right, Nike. My official guess is that today’s selection was from Shakespeare and that it’s a satiric piece to comment on people like Lyly.”

“It certainly was Shakespeare,” the Bolo agreed, “and you have probably assessed his motivation accurately. Very well, Commander, you have successfully identified the author. Shall I give you the rest of ‘My Mistress’ Eyes,’ or would you prefer another forfeit?”

“Frost,” Merrit said. “Give me something by Frost, please.”

“Certainly.” Once again, Nike sounded pleased. Of all the many Old Earth poets to whom she had introduced him over the past four months, Robert Frost was, perhaps, her favorite, and Merrit had come to love Frost’s clean, deceptively simple language himself. It spoke of the half-remembered, half-imagined world of his own boyhood on Helicon-of snowfields and mountain glaciers, deep evergreen woods and cold, crystal streams. Nike had sensed his deep response from the moment she first recited ‘Mending Wall’ to him, and now she paused just a moment, then began in a soft, clear voice: