"I was incepted as a runcible AI, but some faults developed as I expanded from base format towards that end. I chose then to be a drone."

"Why?"

"I wanted to interact with the world, not control it."

"Then I wonder if what you now describe as faults were truly such."

"I try not to let the question bother me too much."

I sat there and closed my eyes for a moment. I was tired, since it had been a rather trying day. "How long until nightfall?"

"Eight hours."

"Then take me inland now and drop me off." I heaved myself to my feet and stretched. "I'll need some way of contacting you."

I don't know if Tigger had already made the thing in preparation, or simply made it right then as an extrusion from his skin. He flipped his paw at me, sending an object sailing across, which I caught. It was a chain with a pendant attached, the pendant depicting a leaping silver tiger.

"Just say my name close to it—I'll be listening." Technology indistinguishable from magic? In a word: yes.

Orduval—to the Desert

It seemed the only way. His fits were becoming more frequent and the drugs being pumped into him, in an attempt to control them, ever stronger, till he could see himself soon joining the ranks of zombies he saw every day in the asylum. Orduval removed his arterial injector last, dropping it out of the window of the trans-Komarl maglev tram, along with the diagnostic device that linked him to the asylum's computer. Now back there an alarm would be ringing somewhere and the medtechs running to investigate his room. They would find it empty and they would find him gone. He had no intention of ever going back.

Hiatus.

"Hey, are you all right?" The woman leaning over him had the same concerned expression that Orduval had seen too many times before. As he blinked, everything seemed blurred around the edges, and fading light turned into a sharp pain in the centre of his skull. Another fit. He pulled himself upright and wiped bloody saliva from his chin, realising he had once again bitten the inside of his cheek.

"I'm fine, thank you."

The woman returned to her seat, obligation discharged. Orduval quickly checked the time display and the tram's current location on the screen display at the head of the carriage and realised, thankfully, that his latest fit had not taken him past the old outpost station. It would arrive there soon—hopefully before that same woman, now glancing at him with surreptitious concern, decided she was obliged to enquire further. It was always like this: first the immediate concern, then the relief once Orduval claimed to be okay, then a growing guilt impelling them to ask again after his health, to offer aid, to offer to call someone.

Sandposts indicated they were now approaching the station, and the tram began to slow. Orduval picked up his carryall and headed for the nearby doors, confident that another three or four hours would pass before the next fit struck him down. Peering through the window he observed a conglomeration of shacks with aluminium roofs sand-burnished and gleaming under the hot sun, their windows frosted by the desert wind, and their resin-bound sandstone walls carved by the same abrasive force into seemingly organic forms.

"Are you sure you want to get off here?" The woman again, standing up and peering out at the desolation.

"Yes, I'm sure. My brother is coming to pick me up with his sled." Orduval turned to face her and projected as much confidence as he could muster. "I made a small mistake with my medication, but have since corrected that. Thank you for your concern, but I will be perfectly all right."

"I'm sorry to seem intrusive but—"

"Yes, quite. I'm sure you are," said Orduval, and turned back to the doors as the tram finally drew to a halt and settled on the lev-road. He had deliberately calculated his parting words to be just sufficiently insulting to annoy the woman enough for her to think, Damn this uppity prick, I was only trying to help, and then promptly forget the entire incident. Perhaps in some other society she would have persisted in showing concern, but nowadays it wasn't uncommon to see people suffering Orduval's complaint, or something worse.

The doors folded open and Orduval stepped down onto the worn sandstone platform. Glancing to his right and left he waited for a moment to see if anyone else would descend from the front or rear carriages. No one did, and shortly the doors closed again, the tram rising on its magnetic field before sliding away. He watched it dwindle, raising a dust storm in its passage, and only when it was reduced to a black speck in mirage shimmer did he remove the gallon water bottle from his carryall, kick the bag away from him, and set off into the old outpost town nearby.

The wind stirred up dervishes in the dusty streets, and moaned between the abandoned buildings. Orduval stopped to peer inside one house and observed a beetle-chewed floor collapsed inside, and glimmer bugs on the walls airing their photo-active wings. Had he expected anything else? Moving on down the street he soon reached the outskirts and saw how orange dunes buried the road a hundred yards beyond. Ahead of him the Komarl desert extended, interrupted only by granite islands, for 2,000 miles towards the sea. He did not expect to reach that coast.

McCrooger

We arrived at a clearing in the woodland, where a metal sphere six feet across rested on the ground.

"I thought you were the only drone here?" I said, as the tongues of metal clamping my thighs in place sunk out of sight, releasing me.

"I am the only one; that's the rest of me," Tigger replied, as I dismounted.

My boots sank into soft loam and I peered down at a mat of damp rotting foliage subtly transformed to a bluish beige from the green-blue of that still growing on the trees. It looked like something produced by a paper shredder. Tigger padded over to the sphere and clambered up onto it; sphere and tiger then rose ten feet into the air.

"Now I must return to station before Geronamid starts shouting at me. The chief can get irate when I don't follow his instructions precisely, though he probably factors in both my disobedience and the effect of his shouting into his calculations concerning this place."

"Doubtless," I replied. Geronamid was a sector AI, a 'big' AI, but sometimes those of a lesser stature forgot what that status entailed. If he wanted absolute obedience he would have sent only those who absolutely obeyed. What I would do, and how I would react, he had already taken into account; as he had for Tigger. Predicted events here amounted to a formula inside Geronamid's ridiculously powerful intellect, with myself and Tigger as merely known quantities within that formula. Perhaps that kind of omniscience repelled Tigger, and had informed his decision to become a drone.

"Be seeing you, then, Old Captain." The drone rose above the level of the treetops and faded out of sight as the effect of its chameleonware impinged upon me. I sighed, and then began to survey my location.

The trees—it was easiest to describe them as such—sprouted multiple trunks from large woody bulbs that ranged from three to six feet in diameter. The surface of each bulb gleamed like polished oak and the trunks like highly polished mahogany. About ten feet up they began branching and sprouting foliage. This consisted of small palm-like leaves whose separated fronds would eventually make up more leaf-litter like that I stood upon. Here and there above, I spotted dark globes up to a foot across. Perhaps they were some kind of seed or bulb that would be knocked to the ground to germinate when Sudoria's passing influence also upset the weather here and started the storm season? I didn't know for sure, even though I'd absorbed much knowledge concerning this planetary system. That knowledge still sat in my mind but, subject to the vagaries of human mentation, I had probably already forgotten about a third of it.