He carried her back down to the kennel. On the way, she shifted in his arms, and he realized she had awakened, but she kept her eyes shut, hex limbs slack.
He put her in dead Cerulean's run, on the mat of artificial grass: beside her he laid the coverall. Cerulean had been one of his favorites, until the night she had fallen down a well and ruptured vital elements of her personality skein. Her empty hulk still lay on the worktable in the kennel.
Aandred shut the grating, thumbed the lock. He took two stainless pans from a locker and went back up to the apartment. One he filled with water, the other with thick broth.
Back in the kennel, he slid the pans through the grating. “Here,” he said. “Drink, eat. You'll need your strength.”
She lay still, her back to him.
He shrugged. “Do as you like, then. No one will molest you here; you're safe for a time.” He opened his forearm and put the dogs to sleep, so that they would not frighten her. They froze, their bright eyes dimming, and Aandred went into his quarters.
Aandred's internal timer awakened him from that vague dreamless state that served him for sleep. He unplugged the recharge cable and swung himself from the niche; his feet clanged to the floor. Through his door came a squeak of fear — then a metallic rattle.
Aandred went swiftly into the kennel. Merm the Troll King was crouched at the captive's grating, jabbing a long-handled meat fork at her. She was pressed back into the far corner, just out of Merm's reach. Her eyes were blank with terror.
“Here,” said Aandred. “What's this?” Merm dared invade his home? He took a step toward the troll, hands clenching.
Merm's lumpy face was at first full of malicious pleasure, but that emotion rapidly drained away, to be replaced by cringing bravado. “Hello, Huntsman, just amusing myself. Your prisoner is the talk of the castle. I had to see; the kennel door was open, and I took it to mean you were in the mood for company.”
Disgust filled Aandred. “Would I ever describe you as company? Get out, and in the future I'll leave a dog active in the kennel. You'll extract the proper meaning from the situation, should you wander this way again.” Merm rose slowly from the grating, holding his meat fork like a weapon. His small eyes glittered. “Droam wouldn't want you to talk so. I’m a valuable property harm me, and you'll feel Droam's anger.”
Aandred raised a trembling finger, pointed to the exit. Merm’s bravado crumbled, and the troll scuttled away. At the door, Merm cast a bright, poisonous look over his shoulder, a look that included Aandred, the dogs, and the prisoner.
Aandred stepped to the grating, looked in at the prisoner. She had donned the coverall and made use of the comb. Her hair was quite lovely, a thick, silken mane framing the a face of unconventional beauty. Her eyes, fixed unblinkingly on him, were huge with apprehension, but Aandred saw that they would still be large, even in less fearful circumstances. Her cheekbones were a bit too sharp, her chin sturdy, her mouth wide.
Aandred saw that food and water were untouched. “Are you not thirsty? Hungry?”
Her eyes veiled, and she looked away.
“Ah,” said Aandred. “I understand. You fear poison, or drugs. Am I right? Don't concern yourself. The probe is more effective than any drug and when Droam wants you dead, it has a million ways to do the deed.”
He was surprised when she replied; he had almost decided she was a mute. “What of you, iron thing? You're a skillful murderer, as you proved last night. Do you want me dead? How many way do you have to do the deed?” She spoke bitterly, but her voice was low and soft, almost a whisper. Her accent was unfamiliar.
He nearly laughed his terrible laugh, but caught himself in time. For some reason, he didn't want to frighten her. “No. No longer do I lust for anything's blood. Except, perhaps, for Merm's, though he has none to spill.” And of course, Droam's. “Merm is that smelly green heap I just threatened from my kennel, the one who wanted to test you with his fork.”
She shuddered. “Him. I thought you the ugliest thing I'd ever seen, until I saw him. Are there none but gods and demons in this place?”
“God? Oh, I see. You mean Droam's pretty hulk? I assure you, that was no god, only a better-looking puppet than I, carved of richer material.”
She seemed to fall into deep thought, and said no more. After a bit, she lifted the water bowl and drank deeply. Aandred watched her, wondering. She was remarkably self-possessed, considering recent events. Had the human race changed so much, or was she simply an unusual woman?
Aandred activated the dogs, and they rose from their sleeping mats, tails wagging. He fed them their morning pseudofood, a ritual they never tired of. It served no purpose beyond providing them with a pleasurable stimulus. The pseudofood passed through them unchanged, to be reinvested with odor and taste and then fed to them again.
When the dogs had finished their breakfast, he decided to repair Umber's olfactory transducer. He released Umber from her run, and she leaped joyfully about him. The prisoner's face was pale, Aandred shook his head; her apprehension was natural enough. What would it be like, to die tom by the dogs? His own death had been easy: the prick of the injection, torpor, then oblivion.
Aandred moved Cerulean's empty hulk aside, feeling a small, familiar twinge of sorrow. He whistled at Umber, snapped his fingers. She jumped nimbly to the insulated tabletop, waited with her usual good humor. “Good girl,” he said, and stroked her back. She wriggled ecstatically. He opened his forearm and touched a switch. She became a graceful statue, and he applied a screwdriver to the access panel on her brisket.
The transducer was mounted on a swing out card. He eased it out, applied the point of an analyzer to various diagnostic nodes. The malfunction became clear: a loose memory flake. He popped it out, examined the contact edge, reseated it.
When he had buttoned Umber's chassis and restored her to active mode, the telltale on his forearm burned a steady green. Umber bounced off the table, raced around the kennel, barked her mechanical bark. “Better, girl?” asked Aandred.
His captive pressed against the grating, watching. “You speak oddly for a machine,” she said.
“That’s because we're not entirely machines,” he said. “Not entirely.”
“What do you mean?”
He took a stool, sat beside the grating. She drew back slightly, she controlled her fear well. “Once upon a time, we were ail living creatures, alive as you,” he said. “Me, the dogs, even the rats in the dungeons. Even Merm. All once alive, all now dead — except for Droam, who is indeed a machine.”
Aandred moved his stool a little closer to the grating, leaned toward the bars. She didn't move away, though her eyes narrowed. “Shall I explain?” he asked. “If I do, what will you trade for this information?” When he had spoken, he felt a trickle of shame. Why was he trying to frighten her? An ugly old habit, he thought. She would, soon enough, know terror, when Droam gave her to the trolls, and then she would be dead. “Never mind. Just tell me your name — that will be sufficient.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “What harm can it do? My name is Sundee Gareaux.” She lifted her chin, gazed into his face with cold eyes, as if daring him to sneer.
Her courage is pleasing, he thought, and then he said, “Listen.”
He told of the beginning, seven hundred years past. SeedCorp had come to the Sea of Islands and built Droam, an expensive resort for a special kind of guest, those fascinated by certain legends of Old Earth. Droam's bulk covered several hectares; its towers rose three hundred feet above the island's highest hill. The builders endowed Droam with a potent macromolecular intelligence, and then they conceived their grand scheme.