The Warlock's Companion (14 page)

The robot rock-cutter had produced another forty blocks during the three-hour night.

"Well, production's up to standard." Dar looked back over the cutter's trail. "Just wish we could afford another one."

"That would be desirable, Dar, but it would push the limits of our power output. Slagging requires sixty percent of our reactor's capacity, and the crane and factory require the rest."

"So we could buy a bigger power plant." Dar glanced at the cable running from the crane off to the reactor, dug into the foot of an outcrop a hundred meters from the house. "Then we wouldn't have to depend on the solar-cell screens for the household."

"You should be able to afford one in the not too distant future, Dar."

"How far is 'not too distant'?" Dar growled.

"Only four years now," Lona had answered. "Our ship will come in, Dar. You'll see."

"Yeah, but will it be a tug or a freighter?"

"A freighter." Lona raised a hand as though she were being sworn in. "Cross my heart."

"Okay." Dar reached for her.

"Not yet, naughty." Lona slapped his hand away. "I have work to do first.''

"I take a lot of doing," Dar suggested.

"Braggart. Next thing I know, you'll tell me you do a lot of taking."

"Well, as a matter of fact…"

"Don't try." She pressed a finger over his lips. "Any teacher who really does his job, doesn't qualify as a taker."

"I stopped teaching six years ago."

"Only because the sheriff was after you. You'd open school here, if there were any children."

"That's a vile canard; there are fourteen children."

"Yes, but the oldest is only four."

"Well, I specialized in adult education, anyway. Is it
my
fault nobody here has less than a B.S.? Except me…"

"A B.A. will do quite well, thank you. Especially since you've learned enough about engineering to qualify for the other bachelor's anyway."

"Yeah, but I was only interested in the bachelor girl."

"So I was a great motivational device." Lona shrugged impatiently. "You're the one who did the learning."

"Yeah, but you did the teaching."

"Me and a small library. You've even learned enough not to be afraid of the reactor."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that." Dar turned to look out the port at the outcrop where he had just finished burying the power plant. "Intellectually, I know no radiation can get out of that plasma bottle—but emotionally, I still want it as far away from me as I can get it."

"Well, you're only human." Lona came up behind him, slipped her arms under his, and began to trace geometrical figures on his chest.

"Of course, five hundred meters wouldn't do any good if it blew. We'd still be right inside the fireball."

Her hands stilled. "You know it can't blow up, though."

"Yeah, my mind knows it, but my stomach doesn't."

"If anything did go wrong enough to make the plasma bottle collapse, there wouldn't be anything to hold the hydrogen in, so the fusion reaction would stop."

"I know, I know. I just don't like the feeling of living next door to a hydrogen bomb, even if it
is
in a bottle. I keep thinking about what happened when they broke the seal and let the genie out."

"Well, this is one genie that isn't going anywhere, and in the meantime, it's going to make all your wishes come true."

"Is that why we need a bigger genie?"

"Of course. That's the only way this one can fulfill your more extravagant hopes—by calling in his big brother.'' Her hands began moving again.

Dar held still, trying to let the sensation wash through every inch of himself. "What do you think you're doing—rubbing the lamp?"

"All right, so I have designs on you. I told you I have to leave for Terra tomorrow, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but you promised to make today worthwhile."

"Then
carpe diem
."

"I thought I'd done enough carping." Dar turned around, reaching out. "And the moment is not what I wanted to seize."

She had, though. He could have sworn she had—she'd led him on into a place where time slowed down, and he could have sworn the climactic moment lasted for an hour. He blew out a long breath and gave his head a shake, remembering.

"May I remind you of the project at hand, Dar?"

"Huh?" He looked up to see Fess's rod-and-canister body silhouetted against stark, jagged rocks, and wrenched himself back into reality and the present. "Just letting my mind wander for a minute."

"I am concerned for your safety while you are operating the crane, Dar."

"Don't worry, I'll turn on the radio."

"There is no real reason for you to assist. I am perfectly capable of building the wall."

"Yeah, but if I do, too, it'll take half the time."

"You are needed to supervise the factory."

"So what's to see? I checked the automatons just before tea break, Fess. They were in fine shape, as always, and the alarm will sound if anything goes wrong."

"Quality control…"

"I'll check the monitor at triple-speed and run the other checks in the morning. Come on—time to throw stones." Dar pushed gently against the rock and glided to the crane, unhitched his safety line while he held onto its grab-handle, hitched onto it, and climbed in.

"You do not yet live in a glass house, Dar," Fess's voice said in his earphones.

"Then I'd better toss rocks while I can. And the house
is
glass, on the outside, after we get done slagging it. Or at least obsidian—and if it's not, it's too close to tell." He powered up the crane, checked its water level, turned up the hold-down jets, and retracted the anchor. Then he dipped the arm, lifted a block of stone in its tongs, and turned to trundle over to the wall of the house.

Fess was there before him, fitting a block onto the top of the wall, interlocking it into the corner beside it. He stepped back. "Clear, Dar."

"Going in." Dar eased the crane forward and lowered his block into place. Nothing another robot couldn't have done, of course—but one more brain in the crane meant one less they could sell to a company on Terra. It was cheaper for Dar to do the guiding himself, boring as it might be.

As he trundled away, Fess came up with his next block—and so it went, the two of them taking turns for an hour and a half, as the wall grew higher and higher.

Eventually, Fess said, "Midday, Dar."

"Gotcha." Dar threw the crane into neutral and glanced back at the cutter. "Timed out just right; it's only three blocks ahead of us. Okay, faithful worker—let's slag."

"I shall assume a discreet distance, Dar."

"Please do." Dar turned the crane to face away from the wall, turned his seat around, and took hold of the torch's controls.

"Good thing we've got a decent water supply on this asteroid." He pressed the on patch for the big laser.

"I believe that was one of the factors in the founders' selection of Maxima as a dwelling place, Dar."

"Yeah. It wasn't for aesthetic factors, that's for sure."

"That statement is debatable, Dar. I find great satisfaction in contemplation of the mathematical interrelationships of the landforms in our vicinity."

"I'd
like
to say it's the kind of vista only a robot could love—but I know that some of our more eminent members think this stark, harshly lit landscape is the epitome of beauty."

"It is not your aesthetic ideal, though, Dar."

"No." A brief vision of Lona flashed before his mind's eye. "My notion of beauty runs more to curves than to planes." He felt a surge of frustration-charged irritation, knew it for what it was, and tried to quell it. "Come on, let's spit."

All the meters were in the green—at least, he knew it was green, though it looked more like charcoal gray, between the glaring sunlight and the filter in his faceplate. He thumbed the pressure point at the top of the handle, and a bolt of coherent light stabbed out at the wall, searing the shadows and darkening his faceplate. He yelled for the sheer joy of it and moved the beam slowly back and forth over the rocks he'd just been stacking, watching the cold rock glow red, then begin to flow. He panned the beam over to the next area, and the stone congealed as the beam left it, glowing an angry ruby, darkening as it cooled.

Off to his right, Fess's laser seared the adjacent wall.

They kept it up until sunset forced them to stop, darkness hiding their target; the laser beam lit only the stone it was currently melting.

Dar shut down his systems and climbed down from the crane, feeling stiff but satisfied, recognizing the sublimation involved, but happy about it anyway. He went toward the new wall.

"Please be careful, Dar," Fess reminded him.

"Don't worry, I'm not stupid enough to touch it." In fact, Dar stopped a good five feet away from the wall. Without air, there was no possibility of the heat reaching out to him—but he was planet-born, and inbred caution held him back. He could admire his handiwork, though, by the light of his headlamp—the first section had cooled into darkness now. It was a great effect—a towering wall of wax left too near the fire, melted into drips and runnels. He stepped back, then remembered what tripping and falling might do to a pressure suit and turned away, stalking off fifty meters before he turned back to take in the whole of the shelter he and Fess were building.

"It is good to take pride in your handiwork, Dar."

"Thanks." Dar grinned. "Though I wasn't about to squelch the feeling, Fess—I'm not
that
much of a Puritan."

Fess didn't respond.

"Besides, it's not my design—though I can't see why Lona wants another room for the factory. We can just barely sell the dozen brains we make in a month, as it is." Dar cocked his head to the side. "But I think I'm beginning to see the effect she's trying for, now."

He was silent long enough so that Fess prompted him: "And that effect is?"

"A castle." Dar turned away. "Not that she doesn't deserve it—but she also doesn't have to let everybody know."

The call light on the console was blinking as Dar stepped in from the airlock. He pulled his suit open just enough to tilt back the helmet as he stepped over to punch for playback. The comm screen lit up with the face of Maxima's Director of Imports. He knew Myrtle was plain, as women go, but she looked very attractive at the moment. Dar remembered his vision of Lona, and realized how much too long she'd been away.

"Shipment coming in, Dar," Myrtle's face said. "A miner's trying to make a few kwahers on his way back out from Ceres. He's bringing in the usual mixed bag—silicon, metals, and replacement parts. If you're interested, he'll be opening shop about 1600. 'Bye, now." She favored him with her favorite sheep's eyes just before the screen went dark.

"She'll never stop," Dar sighed. "I swear that woman has given me the best leers of her life."

"No doubt because she is certain it is safe to do so," Fess assured him. "Will you go, Dar?"

"Are you kidding? We've only got a month's supply of pure silicon left! And the aluminum and gold are getting low, too." Dar stripped off his suit in a hurry and hung it on its peg in passing, heading for the shower.

"You could buy a smelter," Fess reminded him, "and buy raw minerals much more cheaply, from the local miners."

His answer was a blast of water-noise—Dar preferred the sensation of spray to the admittedly quicker supersonic vibration that shook dirt loose; and why not use water, when it was only going to be purified and fed into the fusion reactor, anyway? His voice rose above the burble. "Don't trust 'em, Fess. The big one on Ceres does a better job than any home bottle could do—and I can buy an awful lot of pure minerals for what a smelter would cost."

Besides, with his own furnace, he wouldn't have as many occasions to go into town and see other people.

Dar headed out a half-hour later, cleansed, depilated, and anointed, with a hot meal in his belly and Lona's shopping list in his pocket. He knew well enough what they were low on, of course, but she always hit a few things he wouldn't have thought of. He had to admit she was more experienced at shopping.

Of course, it could also be that she knew more about building and programming computers.

"No question there," he said, holding up a hand and closing his eyes. "I defer to your superior wisdom." It was galling to have to admit it, but he did. "I scarcely know how to grow rock candy, let alone a molecular circuit."

"But there's nothing to it," she'd said. "You see, this little sawtoothed line means a resistor, and the number over it tells you how many ohms it has to be."

Dar frowned and peered over her shoulder.

"The paper," she reminded him.

"I
am
looking at the paper."

"But I want you to concentrate, too." Lona pushed her chair aside so that the schematic was between them. "And these parallel lines show a capacitor."

"But how do I tell how many ohms the resistor is? The real one, I mean, not the one in the drawing."

"It's printed on the side of the box."

"Yeah, but we're talking about me being able to make sure the robots are using the right ones. What if the wrong number gets stamped on the side? Or if it's the right number, but a stray resistor is in there with the wrong number of ohms?"

"Hm." Her brow knit (she had a very pretty frown, Dar thought). "That
is
a good point, my love. So that's why Mama taught me how to read the color code."

"Color code?"

"Yes. You see how each of these rings painted on the resistor has a different color? Well, each color is equivalent to a number…"

And so it had gone—electronics, chemistry, particle physics, with Lona always impatient, always trying to breeze past and hit only the points absolutely necessary for the job, and Dar always doggedly pulling her back to the part she'd skipped, knowing that if he didn't keep asking "Why?" it wouldn't be very long before he wouldn't understand what she was talking about.