Cordell Scotten - Renegade

Neuronius leveled off, taking up a circular flight pattern, and Eve fell into place beside him, matching his wing movements stroke for stroke, so that the two were soon idling side by side, effortlessly.

“How may I serve you, Master?” Eve asked.

“If all else fails, you must personally destroy the Cerebron leader, Synapo,” Neuronius said.

“Destroy Synapo? I am programmed to preserve organic life. I can do otherwise only if the act of preservation would conflict with my Robotic Laws.”

“That is the case. It comes down to a matter of Synapo's life or mine. Synapo is not human. I am.

“But first, there is another way,” Neuronius added without pausing, “a more indirect and less violent way. Your personal involvement with Synapo is only a last resort, only if Miss Ariel Welsh cannot handle Synapo herself, after we provide her with the powerful and lethal knowledge I tried to give SilverSide, the wisdom that allows the Myostrians to construct weather node compensators. “

“You taught that to Adam?” Eve said. “And now you are going to teach me, too?” She had been right to come to Neuronius. This was going to be a truly exciting experience.

“No. This time I cannot take time for that. I must pass the knowledge directly to Miss Ariel Welsh. You must arrange that meeting.”

Slight though it was, and very faint-deep down in the nethermost parts of her positronic brain-that disappointment with Neuronius was something not easily dismissed. But at the time it was overshadowed by the thrill of being involved in exciting and world-shaking events. She planned to acquire the knowledge anyway by listening while Neuronius instructed Ariel. “When?” Eve asked.

“Now,” Neuronius said. “As soon as you can arrange it. I'll be waiting among the trees where The Forest of Repose meets the node compensator. Bring Miss Ariel Welsh there.”

“Very well, Master.”

Eve started a long shallow glide to the dome but decided that a small detour would not significantly delay the primary mission.

Adam dug postholes in the prairie grass, and with the long slender logs he had cut, he constructed a fence that enclosed a rectangular corral roughly 20 by 50 meters. The entrance to the brook path was centered in the long side that bordered the forest. The three minillama trails leading across the prairie to the brook passed through manual gates in the outer sides of the corral.

Along the forest side at the end away from the dome he placed another row of posts to form a meter-wide exit chute from the brook, so the minillamas could exit the forest path without going through the corral. The fence on the forest side of the chute kept the beasts from creating an easy, short bypass to the old path.

At the entrance to the brook path, he placed two gates: one automatic, the other manual. The automatic gate connected the brook path to the exit chute and acted like a check valve, allowing beasts to exit the brook path, but preventing loose beasts from the prairie from coming through the chute to the brook. The gate was actuated by breaking a light beam across the brook path that activated a microfusion motor, driving the gate so that it opened into the chute, forcing back any minillamas waiting in the chute outside, while letting out the beast leaving the brook.

The other gate closed off the exit from the narrow shearing chute that was formed along the woodside fence opposite the exit chute by a short parallel fence with a manual entrance gate. Another short length of fence angled into the corral from the chute at 45° to form an entrance funnel.

He turned on the lamp and photodetector that would activate the motor on the check-valve gate, closed the gates at both ends of the shearing chute, loaded all his tools and leftover supplies into the cargo robot, and directed it, in turn, to each of the three outside entrance gates, which he opened. He wound up parking the cargo robot outside the entrance gate nearest the dome.

He was ready for business. The thirst of the mini llamas should draw the beasts into the corral. There was nothing to do but wait.

He let down the cargo ramp and sat down, then lay back supine so he could watch the Ceremyons circling in the blue sky far overhead. He remembered then that last flight he had taken to talk to Synapo, when he had found Sarco instead. During none of his flights-neither on this planet, or earlier, on the wolf planet -had he considered the experience of flying itself. At the time his mind was far too busy with other disturbing thoughts. Now he looked back to those flights and realized that the act of flying had been an exceedingly enjoyable experience. Watching the Ceremyons far above, he relived those moments, recapturing the pleasure he had unconsciously stored away without really savoring and appreciating it at the time.

Until it got quite close, he failed to notice the large Ceremyon shape coming directly at him on a long glide path from the direction of The Cliff of Time. Its dull silvery color blended into the grayish-blue sky, and because of its lack of motion in bearing and elevation, the beast was almost invisible until it was nearly upon him. Then it came at him with a rush, flared its wings, lost momentum and stalled, but did so almost two meters too high, so that it fell to the ground only a couple of meters away with a decided impact, wings outspread. The momentum of its low center of gravity had swung its body forward, pivoting around the shoulders, so that it fell flat on its back. Adam couldn't help but recall his similar experience in testing the Ceremyon wings for the first time, when he had glided from the lorry, dragged his toes, and fallen on his face.

From the size and the color he knew at once that it was Eve. He had risen to a sitting position when he had detected the moving object. Now, while Adam watched quietly, Eve transformed back to the Ariel imprint, lying on the ground, as though the robot didn't want to risk the awkward indignity of trying to stand while still imprinted on the Ceremyon. With the metamorphosis complete, she stood, quickly and with a delicacy and grace that contrasted sharply with her harsh words.

“You misled me, Adam SilverSide.”

“How so?” Adam asked

“Ariel is not human. Neither is Derec. You knew, yet you didn't tell me that Neuronius is the only human here. He is my Master. You and Mandelbrot and the Avery robots are alien to me. Your Laws are obviously not my Laws. Something compels you to serve non-humans in spite of Neuronius and the wisdom he tried to pass on to you.”

She talked so fast Adam didn't get a chance to interrupt. And then she wheeled abruptly and ran rapidly in the direction of the dome. Although disturbed, she didn't seem violently so. She didn't seem dangerous, even though she had clearly responded to the insidious persuasion of Neuronius. Adam would have liked to have had a chance to counter that poison. Still, Ariel could probably do a better job than he, and with more authority. After all, it was Ariel who had pushed Eve in the direction of Neuronius in the first place, albeit unwittingly.

Adam sat there watching her progress toward the dome, waiting patiently for his experiment to reach its climax, when the minillamas would start entering his corral.

It was some time later, after he resumed his supine position and his observation of the soaring Ceremyons, that he heard the muffled explosion. He rose up just as a flaming, cartwheeling object landed in the grass midway between him and the activity near the dome, where the explosion had taken place.

He jumped up, raised and secured the ramp, and directed the cargo robot to the location where the object had landed.