“I’ve been useful—”
“What a poor word, … Mother!”
A robot cannot weep. “I kept her promise for her. Now let me go.”
“Do you want to die?” he whispers.
She forms a laugh. “What the hell does that question mean, for me?”
He must take a moment before he can say it. “Do you want your program wiped? Made nothing?”
“Your mother set that condition before she agreed to be downloaded. I hold you to it.”
“Anson Guthrie goes on.”
“He is he. I am I.” Oh, Dagny Beynac loved life, but to her, being an abstraction was not life. Nor does the revenant care to evolve into something else, alien to her Edmond.
“The time could come—very likely will come— when they have need of you again.”
“No. They should never think they need one person that much.”
Her gaze captures his and holds it. Beneath his thin white hair is a countenance gone well-nigh skeletal. He is near the century mark himself. Yet he was born to a girl named Dagny Ebbesen.
After a long time, he slumps back in his chair and says unevenly, “The, the termination will be a big event, you know.”
If she were making an image, it would have smiled. “I’m afraid so. See it through.”“I already hear talk about it. The same tomb for you—”
“Why not, if they wish?”
A gesture, a symbol, a final service rendered. This hardware and the blanked software may as well rest there as anyplace else. The site may even become a halidom, like Thermopylae or Bodhgaya, around which hearts can irrationally rally. Besides, she likes the thought that that which was her will lie beside the ash that was Dagny Beynac beneath the stars that shone on ‘Mond. Fog rolled in during the night. By sunrise it had cloaked Guthrie House in a gray-white where the closest trees, two or three meters from a window, were shadows and everything else was formless. Air lay cold and damp and very quiet. You could just hear the hush of waves along the shore and perhaps a dripping from the eaves.
At breakfast Matthias, Kenmuir, and Aleka exchanged no more than muttered greetings, for it was plain to see that the lodgemaster wanted silence. But when the last cup of coffee had been drained, he rose and growled, “Follow me.” The others went after his bulk, out into the hall, up the stairs, down another hall to a certain door which he opened, and through. He closed it behind them.
“I believe it’s right we talk here,” he said.
Kenmuir and Aleka glanced about. Unlighted save for what seeped through the fog from a hidden sun, the room would have been dim were its walls and ceiling not so white. A few ancient pictures decorated it, family scenes, landscapes, a view of Earth from orbit. Drapes hung at the tall windows. The floor was bare hardwood. Furniture was sparse and likewise from early times, four chairs, a dresser, a cabinet, a bed. In one corner stood a man-high mechanical clock. Its pendulum swung slowly and somehow inexorably; the ticking seemed loud in this stillness.
A chill ran through Kenmuir. The hair stood up on his arms. He knew where he was.
“For privacy?” Aleka was asking.
“No,” Matthias replied. “I told you, the estate is spyproof and everybody on it is a sworn consorte. But here is where mortal Anson Guthrie died.”
Her eyes grew large. She made a sign that Kenmuir did not recognize.
Then she looked more closely at Matthias, stooped shoulders, lines graven’deeper than before in a face where the nose stood forth like a mountain ridge, and murmured, “You really didn’t sleep much, did you?”
“There’ll be time for that later,” he said. “All the time in the universe.”
Heavily, he sat down and gestured his visitors to do so. They put their chairs side by side. Aleka’s hand found Kenmuir’s. What comfort flowed from hers into his!
Matthias raised his head. “But we haven’t much of it just now,” he warned. “The hunters don’t know you’re here. If they did, we’d be under arrest already. They’re searching, though, and surveying, and thinking. Before long, Venator or a squad of his will return. Meanwhile, if you leave in any ordinary way, you’ll surely be sported. Disguises won’t help. They’ll stop everyone for a close look.”