The burned trail turned another right angle, descending at an even pace toward the floor. Dennis clutched his sharpened stone as the wooden segment finally fell away, leaving an opening in the door just above the floor.
Dennis tried to call out, to summon the guards—anybody— but he couldn’t find his voice.
For a moment the new opening was dark and empty. Then two gleaming red eyes appeared in the smoking opening— eyes larger than ought to belong to any living thing. They shone at him in the dimness for several heartbeats.
Then the thing that owned them moved slowly forward into the cell.
In his half-starved condition, with the catalepsy of sleep still in his muscles, Dennis felt far from ready for a fight. Against his will he closed his eyes, holding his breath as the softly chittering monster approached.
Then it stopped. He could sense it poised only a few feet away, muttering slowly to itself.
Dennis waited. Then his lungs started to burn. He couldn’t hold his breath any longer. He opened one eye to look, ready for anything…
… and exhaled in a long sigh. “Oh, lord—”
There, waiting patiently on the cool stones, was his long-missing Sahara Tech exploration ’bot. It sat complacently, its sensors whirring quietly, ready—at last—to follow his instructions, to report.
Even in the dim light he could tell that the thing had changed. It rode lower, sleeker, with a sly pattern of coloration on its back. It had been… practiced… become better at the job he had assigned it. His most recent instructions, shouted briefly several weeks ago, had been to come and report to him. No Earthly robot could have managed it. But here it was, hardly “Earthly” anymore.
The thing must have followed his trail ever since that escapade on the rooftops of Zuslik, patiently working past obstacles until it overcame them, one by one.
But how? A tool had to have a user to benefit from the Practice Effect, didn’t it? Could he really be thought to have been using the ’bot when it was out of sight and mind?
This played havoc with the theory he had formed, that the Practice Effect was at least partly a psi power exercised by humans on this world.
Then he remembered. The last time he had seen the robot it had been accompanied by a living thing—someone who loved to watch tools being used, the more complicated the better.
“Come on in, Pix,” he whispered. “All is forgiven.”
Two bright green eyes appeared in the little gap in the door. They blinked, then were joined by a Cheshire grin of needle-sharp teeth.
The little animal launched itself into a short glide and landed on Dennis’s lap. It purred and snuggled as if it had left him only hours ago.
Dennis sat there, stroking the little creature’s fur and listening to the quiet hum of the robot. Unexpectedly, tears welled. Hope seemed to fill him suddenly. After so long alone in the dark, to have companions and allies again… for a few minutes it was too good to be endured.
In the corridor outside, he found one of the jailers sprawled unconscious next to a bench. Dennis stripped the man of his clothes and left him inside his own cell, bound and gagged. He propped the rectangular piece of doorway into place. It was crude, but it was all he could do.
There was a bowl of stew and a slab of bread by the guard’s bench. Dennis wolfed them down while he hurried into the jailer’s clothes; they were too tight around the shoulders for him and too wide around the girth. When he finished, the pixolet took its old place on his shoulder, grinning at everything.
The robot had originally been equipped with a small stunner to acquire specimens of animal life. Apparently it had improved the device through practice and now was capable of knocking out anyone who stood between it and its job. Undoubtedly that ability would come in handy during the hour’ ahead.
Dennis knelt and spoke clearly and carefully to the machine.
“New instructions. Take note.” The ’bot hummed and clicked in response.
“You are to accompany me now, and zap unconscious anyone I point at like this.”
He demonstrated, cocking his thumb and miming a pistol firing. It was a pretty complicated concept, but he was wagering the machine had grown sophisticated enough to comprehend.
“Indicate if you understand and are capable of carrying out this function.”
The green assent light on the machine’s turret winked. So far so good.
“Secondary orders. Should we become separated, you are to preserve your existence and make every effort to discover my whereabouts again and report.”
Again the light flashed.
“Finally,” he whispered, “should you find that I am dead, or in any event after three months, you will go back to the zievatron and await anyone from Earth. Should such a person arrive, report what you’ve observed.”
The robot assented. Then across its tiny display screen came a request to begin its encyclopedic report on the denizens of Tatir. The ’bot seemed quite anxious to discharge its duty.
“Not yet,” Dennis said. “First we have to get out of here. I’ve got friends to rescue. Or at least one friend—and someone else I’d very much like to have as my friend…”
He realized he was babbling. Hope was a mixed blessing. He found he was capable of being afraid once more.
“Okay, then. Everybody ready?” His two little companions didn’t look like awfully formidable allies in an assault on a fortress. The pixolet would likely desert upon the first sign of danger, anyway.
He straightened his guard’s uniform and pulled the cap down low, then set off with his strange crew.
He didn’t even have to help the robot with the stairs. The thing was, indeed, a marvel.
I must get it home to Earth when all this is over and find out what’s happened to it! he thought.
Princess Linnora had little choice but to use some of the beautiful things in her room.
She sat before the ancient vanity table and looked at her reflection in the centuries-old mirror. She didn’t want to help practice her captor’s property, but there was so little else to do, trapped alone in the elegant room. She found that brushing her hair helped to pass the time.
At first she had tried to give Kremer nothing, not even the benefit of her good taste. She refused to pay attention to her environment, lest her appreciation of subtleness and beauty help make Kremer’s palace a little nicer for him.
The room had formerly been occupied by one of Kremer’s mistresses. The peasant girl’s tastes had made a heavy impression on the furnishings. After the first month of her captivity, Linnora had had enough of the bright, garish colors and flashy decorations. She took down the worst and began concentrating on her own image of the room.
It had been a subtle sort of setback, using some small fraction of her powers to make her imprisonment a little more tolerable. Kremer obviously intended to break her down a little at a time. And Linnora wasn’t at all certain she could prevent it. His will was strong, and he had her life in his hands.
She picked up the lovely antique brush and stroked her hair, watching her reflection in the mirror, trying to imagine a way to stay out of Kremer’s bed once he recovered, or to prevent being used as a hostage against her own people.
She concentrated on seeing Truth in the mirror It was a form of fighting back. The next person to look into the mirror would see more than just flattering images of themselves.
She looked at a young woman who had made mistakes. From that day when she had gone off riding on her own, far from her brother Proll, in search of the strangeness she had felt come into the world—from that day when she was captured by the Baron’s men at the small metal house in the forest—she had committed errors.