that characterized an adult member of society.
The assembly process was essentially identical to the ways in which animals and
other life forms grew. Thirg’s naturalist friend had assured him that all forms,
including robeings, were supplied from the same sources of components, and it
seemed remarkable that one species should exhibit thinking abilities sufficient
to distinguish it so sharply from all the others. On the face of it, the
difference seemed to support the orthodox teaching that robeings were unique in
possessing souls which would eventually either return to the Lifemaker after
undergoing worldly quality-assurance testing, or else be consigned to the Great
Reduction Furnace below, from which the liquid ice volcanoes originated. But the
physicians who had carefully dismantled and studied bodies of dead robeings had
been able to find nothing more than was found in any other machine: the same
kinds of perplexing arrangements of tubes, fibers, brackets, and bearings, and
baffling arrays of intricate patterns etched into countless slivers of crystal
that descended to levels of detail way beyond the power of the most powerful
protein lenses to resolve. So where was the soul? If it existed, why was there
no sign of anything different to say that it existed? True, nobody could explain
how robeings were able to think, but on the other hand nobody could explain how
animals came to act the way they did or to know what they seemed to know either.
So did the existence of robeings require anything fundamentally “different” to
be explained? Thirg wasn’t at all sure that it did. To him the “fact” of the
soul sounded suspiciously as if it had been invented to suit the answer; the
answer hadn’t been deduced from the facts in the way that was required by the
system of rules he had constructed for answering questions reliably. And in all
of the tests that he had subjected them to, the rules had never failed him.
A sudden grinding sound from the edge of the clearing interrupted his thoughts.
Moments later the grinding changed to sharp clacking as Rex began gnashing his
cutters and running backward and forward excitedly in front of the trail leading
from the forest. Thirg stood up just as a tall figure clad in a woven-wire tunic
and a dark cloak of carbon fiber came into view. He was wearing a hat of
ice-dozer wheelskin and carrying a stout staff of duralumin tubing. “Down, Rex,”
Thirg said. “It’s only Groork coming to pay us a rare visit. You should know him
by now.” And then, louder, “Well, hello, brother, Hearer-of-Voices. Have your
voices led you up into these parts, or do you bring us tidings from the world?”
Groork came into the clearing and approached between the metallic-salt
deposition baths on one side of Thirg’s garden and a decorative row of
sub-miniature laser drilling and milling heads busily carving delicate aesthetic
patterns in an arrangement of used gas cylinders and old pump housings. His
radiator vanes were glowing visibly after his exertions, and he was puffing
coolant vapors. “There are many strange voices in the sky of late, the like of
which I have never heard before,” he replied. He didn’t smile in response to
Thirg’s greeting; but then he was a mystic, and so never smiled at anything.
“Surely it is an omen of great things that will soon come to pass. I am called
to go out into the Wilderness of Meracasine, and there I will find the
Revelation that many have sought. For it is written that—”
“Yes, yes, I know all about that,” Thirg said, holding up an arm of silver
alloy, jointed by intricately overlapping, sliding scales. “Come in and rest.
You look thirsty. A drink of invigorating mountain methane is what you need. I
don’t know how you stand that polluted muck that they run into the city at all.”
Thirg led the way inside, and Groork sat down gratefully on the couch by the
wall in the dining area. While Thirg was pouring a cup of coolant, Groork
selected one of the array of power sockets sprouting from the transformer unit,
each of which designated a particular strength and flavor, drew it out on the