The Warlock's Companion (13 page)

The guests had departed, filled with stew and emptied of gossip—after all, they'd been waiting two hundred years to tell it—and Gwen had decreed bedtime. Rod had mentioned to Fess that keeping a watch might be a good idea, and the Steel Sentry had taken up his post, right next to the children.

Which made him handy for bedtime stories, especially since the children were so keyed up that sleeping was the least possible activity for them. Quarreling ranked high on their list, though, with fighting right behind it, so Fess was watching for more than ghosts.

Not that they were out of line yet, of course. They were just barely bedding down.

" 'Tis a foul and brooding pile," Geoffrey gloated. "Nay, who doth know what deeds of glory a valiant man might achieve within it?"

"Naught, an he doth run at the sight of a spectre," Magnus answered.

"Thou dost not say I would run!"

"Thou hast it; I did not. For myself, I
know
I shall stand fast."

"Aye, transfixed in horror!"

"Boys, boys," Fess reproved. "You are both brave and bold, as you have proved many times."

"Yet I am not." Gregory's eyes were wide, and his blanket was drawn up to his chin. "Thou wilt not allow a spectre to approach, wilt thou, Fess?"

"Pooh!" Magnus said quickly. "Thou hast as much courage as any man, when the fight's upon us."

"Well—mayhap when 'tis come." Gregory relaxed a little, reddening with pleasure. "Yet 'til then, I do wallow in horror.''

"I, for one, think 'tis grand." Cordelia snuggled down into her blankets. "Ghost or no, 'twill be thrilling to live in a castle. Will it not, Fess?"

"I cannot truly say so," Fess answered slowly.

"Wherefore?" Cordelia frowned. "What canst thou foresee disliking in it?"

"I look not to the future, Cordelia, but to the past."

"Thou hast lived in a castle?" Cordelia sat bolt-upright.

"Down," Gwen's voice called softly, and the girl flopped back down with a flounce.

"I helped build one, Cordelia," Fess answered, "and I dwelt in it while we were building it, and after it was completed."

"Who was 'we?' " Geoffrey rolled over on his stomach and propped his chin in his hands.

"The first d'Armands, Geoffrey—your ancestor Dar, and his wife Lona."

"Dar?" Cordelia frowned. "Him of whom we have heard, as Dar Mandra? Papa's ancestor who was pursued by his enemies?"

"The same—though, since he and Lona had gone into hiding, he amalgamated his two names and inserted an apostrophe, then trimmed the end to make it 'd'Armand.' Yet he kept his surname, though he reversed the phonemes when naming his son."

"Dar d'Armand?" Magnus frowned. " 'Tis not greatly euphonious."

"No, but it was practical."

"He was thy fourth owner, was he not?" Gregory chimed in.

"It was Lona who was officially my owner, Gregory, though in practice, they both were, the more so since I was Dar's only companion for long stretches of time."

"His only companion?" Cordelia frowned. "Were they not wed?"

"They were, but they were also a manufacturing concern. There was little else to do on Maxima—the asteroid they chose to live on—but they chose it because it offered that opportunity for making a living…"

"DAMN! It doesn't work!" Dar sat back and glared at the chipped enamel on the robot's claws. "What happened, X-HB-9?"

"I did just as you said, sir," the little robot answered. In size and shape, it resembled nothing so much as a canister vacuum cleaner—but one with jointed arms extruded from the top.

"All I said was to go into the kitchen and take the breakfast tray out of the autochef!"

"I did, sir, but my clamps encountered a solid vertical instead of a vacant space."

"They sure did." Dar had heard the clang all the way to the bedroom. Not that he'd been sleeping, of course; after all, it was 1:00 p.m.—Terran Standard Time; if they'd gone by local Maxima time, they would have had a noon and a midnight four times a day, and sometimes five. Maxima was big, as asteroids go, almost a kilometer and a half in diameter, but it was still miniscule on the planetary scale.

So why was a robot delivering breakfast in bed? Purely a trial run, with an imitation breakfast. Food was too scarce to waste on a simulation.

And if this was a trial, X-HB-9 was doomed. Dar frowned. "But I don't understand. All you had to do was wait until the door was open. Fess!"

"Yes, Dar?" A humanoid robot stepped into the room. His head was a stainless steel sphere with binocular lenses, an audio pickup, and a loudspeaker, positioned in a rough semblance of a human face. His body was a flattened tube, big enough to have some storage capacity for tools and spare components; his arms and legs were sections of pipe with universal joints. His gait was a bit awkward, like that of a gangly adolescent.

"What did you see in the kitchen?"

"X-HB-9 came up to the autochef, waited for its chime, then reached up to crash into the door. The enamel on the autochef is chipped, too."

Dar sighed. "One more fix-up for me to get to. Damn! This whole shelter's put together with chewing gum and baling wire!"

"It is still more salubrious than a PEST prison, Dar—especially when you consider that no one is torturing you to reveal psionic powers that you do not have."

"Yeah, but it doesn't work! Why didn't the autochef open its door?"

"Because X-HB-9 has no provision for cueing it to do so."

Dar lifted his head slowly, eyes widening. "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?"

Fess tactfully forbore to comment; from contextual analysis, it could tell Dar's question was rhetorical.

"I was so chirpy about getting the take-out-the-tray part of the program right, that I forgot to program X-HB-9 to open the door!" Dar slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand. "All these details that I keep overlooking. Where the hell is Lona, anyway?"

Fess was unexpectedly silent.

"No, no!" Dar said quickly. "The PEST immigration authorities might trace the radio signal. Don't try to contact her."

"I am merely attempting an extrapolation of her activities, based on past records, Dar."

"Back when you used to take her there, you mean." It still rankled that Lona had only started leaving Fess with Dar after she had made herself a new guidance computer that did even better piloting than Fess had.

"After all, he's just a general purpose robot," she had explained. "GAP is built to do guidance and piloting only—of
course
he's better at it! And I really do need a specialist. PEST has tightened security around Terra again, and it takes some very careful astrogating to slip through their net."

"No argument." Dar held up a hand. "The important thing about sending you away, is to get you back. Just seems kind of poor of you to dump good old Fess just because you've got a new one."

"Oh, he won't mind. He really won't, Dar—he's a machine": You keep forgetting that. Computers are just machines; they don't really think, and they don't have feelings."

"I know, I know! It's just that… well… I wouldn't have expected it of you, that's all."

"But you shouldn't care." Lona swayed a little closer. "Or do you identify with him, darling? You shouldn't, you know."

"Yeah. After all,
I
never get to go to Terra with you, at all."

"But you did—vicariously. As long as I was taking Fess with me. And now you're feeling rejected. Is that it?"

"What
can
I feel, when you keep going off and leaving me? I know, I know, you don't have any choice—but you don't have to be so damned happy about it."

"Poor darling." The sway turned into a snuggle. "I know you feel left out—but honestly, it wouldn't make sense to put us both into danger of being arrested, and I'm the one who has the contacts."

"You didn't, the first time you went."

"No, I had one—Lari Plandor."

Dar felt a stab of jealousy. "Yes, just a close friend left over from your college days."

"And that's all he ever was, too. Mind you, I'm not saying he didn't want to be more—but
I
didn't."

"Yeah, I know. And you didn't want to be cruel, so you stayed friendly. Aloof, but friendly."

"Yes, and it came in handy when we decided to start up our own business. A friend in the purchasing department of Amalgamated Automatons was just what we needed."

"Still do, I suppose," Dar sighed. "And are you still aloof to him?"

"Well, I can't be, now, can I? When I'm trying to get him to place an order for a thousand new components. I mean, I have to be a little warmer."

"Just so long as you don't get him fired up." But Dar felt his stomach sinking; how could any man
not
get fired up when he looked at Lona?

"
I
can't control what he feels."

The hell she couldn't. "Let me amend that—'just so long as you don't get interested in him.' "

"Silly! Do you really think I could feel amorous with anybody but you?"

Do lady kangaroos have pockets? Dar carefully noted that she had avoided the direct answer. "What've I got that he hasn't got?"

"Me," Lona answered. "All my clients have are my order forms. After all, I don't feel toward them the way I feel toward you."

"Oh? And how do you feel toward me?"

"I'm in love with you," she murmured as her lips met his, and her body curved into his.

Dar shook his head with a sigh—it had been a wonderful way to say "good-bye." He couldn't understand his luck—her clients had status, wealth, influence, sophistication, looks—but, true to her word, he had her.

On the other hand, two hours later, she'd been space-borne again, heading for Terra—and he'd stayed here to watch the factory, with her discarded robot. It still rankled.

But not too much—it had been very lonely whenever she had taken off for the fleshpots of Terra, and Fess was good company.

Fleshpots—the thought sent a shiver through Dar. What was she up to, down there in Sin City? Which, as far as he was concerned, meant the whole planet. What was she up to, and how many times had she been unfaithful to him?

Not that it mattered. Or at least, he knew it wouldn't when he saw her again, live and vibrant, before him. She always came home with stars in her eyes and contracts in her hands. So who was he to criticize?

"Her husband, that's who," he muttered.

"Not officially," Fess corrected.

"Does it matter?"

"Certainly. Your current status is only that of business partners."

"Yeah, business partners who've been living together for seven years!"

"Still, that is only a matter of convenience and mutual pleasure," Fess said primly. "Neither of you is legally bound to the other."

"Well, fine. You talk about the legalities, but I have to live with the actualities."

"You are free to leave, Dar."

"Yeah, and she keeps all the patents." But Dar knew that was only the smallest part of it.

"You have become so skilled an engineer that you could earn a living anywhere in inhabited space, Dar."

"Yeah, but
she
wouldn't be there." Fess wouldn't say it, but Dar knew he had a problem with his self-image. It resembled nothing so much as a large, multicolored lollipop. "Come on. If I'm such a hotshot engineer, I gotta be able to figure out how to make a simple little housecleaner deliver breakfast, don't I?"

"Yes, Dar. After that we can move on to the really interesting program—enabling it to wash windows."

Dar thought of the chipped enamel and shuddered. He glanced at the skylight. "Well, we've got time—a good two hours till the next sunrise. Come on, X-HB-9." He headed for the shop.

They finished the next (successful) test just as the first ray of sunrise fingered the skylight dome. Dar looked up at it, swallowed his toast (well, it had been time for tea), and said, "Go stand in the corner, X-HB-9."

"Yes, sir." The little canister turned, rolled over to the corner, plugged itself in to recharge, and went immobile.

"I'll meet you at the airlock," Dar called. He took a last swallow of tea, wiped the cup, dropped it into the dishwasher, and headed for his pressure suit.

He suited up, checked his seals, stepped into the airlock, and floated. The hatch closed automatically behind him, but he had to grab a handhold with his right while he spun the locking wheel with his left, or he would have gone spinning away in the other direction. As the air hissed back into its storage tank, he allowed himself a glow of self-satisfaction; he'd been wise to insist on not having artificial gravity under the airlock, so that he could get used to weightlessness before he stepped out onto the surface. Dar's enduring nightmare was a breakdown in the gravity plates.

On the other hand, he wouldn't have to worry about falling. No, strike that—in weightlessness, he was
always
falling. He just didn't have to worry about the sudden stop at the end. Of course, he was good at landing—he tripped a lot, and had learned how to hit safely, if not softly—but he didn't like it much.

Fess was waiting for him just outside the airlock, one more sharp-angled piece of rock in a surreal landscape of glaring light and total shadow. "Visual inspection, please," Dar requested.

"No leaks in evidence," the robot answered as Dar turned slowly, changing hands on the grab-handle next to the hatch. "All seals appear intact. Good manners are not necessary when dealing with a robot, Dar."

"Yeah, but if I neglect them, I'll get out of the habit of using them, and I'll start being rude to people. Can't afford that, Fess—I need every friend I've got, especially when there are only two hundred fifty-six of us on Maxima. Come on, let's see how the cutter's been doing the last three hours." He clipped his safety lead to the guide wire and pushed off toward the north side.