The robot lifted his blasters again, but Mishkin told him to stop.

"That's not going to do it," he said. "What else do you have in mind?"

"Immobility."

"To hell with that, I think we should run like crazy."

"No time," the robot said. "Freeze!"

Mishkin forced himself to stand perfectly still as the worm's heads approached him. He shut his eyes tightly and listened to the following conversation:

"Let's eat him, huh, Vince?"

"Shaddup, Eddie, we ate a whole ormitung last night, you wanna give us indigestion?"

"I'm still hungry."

"So am I."

"Me too."

Mishkin opened his eyes and saw that the worm's five heads were talking to each other. The one named Vince was in the middle and was noticeably larger than the other heads. Vince was saying, "You guys make me sick, you and your eating! Just when I get our body in shape after working out at the gym all month, you wanna go put a belly on us and I say nix to that."

One of the heads snivelled, "We can eat anything we want whenever we want. Our Poppa, God rest his soul, said it was all of ours body and we was to share it equally."

"Poppa also said that I was to look after you kids," Vince said, "because between you all you ain't got enough brains to climb a tree. And besides, Poppa never ate strangers."

"That's true." The head turned towards Mishkin. "I'm Eddie."

The other heads also turned. "I'm Lucco."

"I'm Joe."

"I'm Chico. And that's Vince. OK, Vince, we're gonna eat him now "cause there's four of us and we're tired of you always giving orders just because you're oldest, and from now on we're going to do exactly what the hell we want to do and if you don't like it you can damned well lump it. OK, Vince?"

"Shaddap!"Vince bellowed. "If anyone does any eating around here it's going to be me."

"But how about us?" Chico whined. "Poppa said…"

"Anything I eat will be for all of you," Vince said.

"But we won't be able to tasteanything unless we eat for ourselves," Eddie said.

"Tough," Vince sneered. "I'll do the tasting for all of us."

Mishkin ventured to speak. "Excuse me, Vince…"

"Mr Pagliotelli to you," Vince said.

"I just wanted to point out that I am a form of intelligent life, and where I come from one intelligent creature does not eat another intelligent creature except under really exceptional circumstances."

"You trying to teach me manners?" Vince said. "I gotta good mind to break your back for making a remark like that. Besides, you attacked me first."

"That was before I knew you were intelligent."

"You trying to put me on?" Vince said. "Me, intelligent? I never even finished high school! Ever since Poppa died I've had to work twelve hours a day in the sheet metal shop just to keep the kids in orlotans. But at least I'm smart enough to know that I ain't smart."

"You sound pretty smart to me," Mishkin said smarmily.

"Oh, sure, I got a certain native shrewdness. I'm maybe as smart as any other uneducated Wop worm. But education-wise…"

"Formal education is frequently overrated," Mishkin pointed out.

"Don't I know it," Vince said. "But how else are you going to get along in the world?"

"It's tough," Mishkin admitted.

"You'll laugh at me when I tell you this, but what I really always wanted to do was study the violin. Isn't that funny?"

"Not at all," Mishkin said.

"Can you imagine me, big stupid Vince Pagliotelli, playing stuff from Aidaon a goddamned fiddle?»

"Why not?" Mishkin said. "I'm sure you have a talent."

"The way I see it," Vince said, "I had a dream. Then life came along full-freighted with responsibilities, and I exchanged the insubstantial gossamer fabric of vision for the coarse grey cloth of — of —"

"Bread?" Mishkin suggested.

"Duty?" asked Chico.

"Responsibility?" asked the robot.

"Naw, none of them's quite it," said Vince. "An uneducated dumbell like me oughtn't to fool around with parallel constructions."

"Perhaps you could change the key terms," the robot suggested. "Try "gossamer fabric of poesy for the coarse grey cloth of the mundane"."

Vince glared at the robot, then asked Mishkin, "Who's your wise-guy buddy?"

"He's a SPER robot," Mishkin said. "But he's on the wrong planet."

"Well, tell him to watch his mouth. I don't let no goddamned robot talk to me that way."

"Sorry about that," the robot said briskly.

"Forget it. I guess I ain't going to eat either of you. But if you want some advice you'll watch your step around here. Not everyone is as basically distractable, good-hearted, and childlike as I am. Other persons in this forest would as soon eat you as look at you.

They'd rathereat you, frankly, because you don't neither of you look so good to look at."

"What sort of things should we look out for, specifically?" Mishkin asked.

"Everything, specifically," Vince replied.

8

Mishkin and the robot thanked the good-natured Wop worm and nodded politely to his ill-mannered brothers. They moved on through the forest, for now there seemed no other way to go. Slowly they marched, and then more rapidly, and each sensed at his footsteps the sour breath and sodden cough of old mortality shuffling along behind them as usual.

The robot commented on this, but Mishkin was too preoccupied to answer.

They passed huge rough trees that peeked at them through amber eyes half-covered by green shades. After they had passed, the trees whispered about it to each other.

"A real bunch of weirdos," said a great elm.

"I think it was maybe an optical illusion," said an oak. "Especially that metal thing."

"Oh, my head," said a weeping willow. "What a night! Let me tell you about it."

Mishkin and the robot continued into the inner recesses of the deeper glooms where, wraith-like, the dim, indistinct memories of past arboreal splendours still clung in a pale miasma. (A kind of dying around the sacred shafts of vague luminescence that crept broken-backed down the branches of lachrymose trees.)

"It sure is gloomy in here," Mishkin said.

"Stuff like that generally does not affect me," the robot said. "We robots tend to unemotionality. Empathy is built into us, however, so we come to experience everything vicariously, which is the same as experiencing it legitimately in the first place."

"Huh," said Mishkin.

"Because of that, I am inclined to agree with you. It is gloomy in here. It is also spooky."

The robot was a good-hearted sort and not nearly as mechanical as his appearance would lead one to believe. Years afterward, when he was quite red with rust and his hands had the telltale cracks of metal fatigue, he would speak to the robot youngsters about Mishkin. "He was a quiet man," the robot said, "and you might have thought he was a little simpleminded. But there was a directness about him and a willingness to accept his own condition that was endearing in the extreme. Taken all in all, he was a man; we shall not see his like again."