But wherever he was, he could always see the distant shards of light shining from Lucius's building. They stabbed up from the surrounding darkness like ethereal swords rising up from a pit, swords that cut deep into the cloud banks high in the sky. The clouds twisted and rolled, covering new sections of sky, as if the light were stirring an inner fire.

The group with Derec-Ariel, Mandelbrot, Wolruf, and Lucius-walked in silence, as they had been doing for some time. Derec suspected that all of them, even Mandelbrot, required a few minutes lost in their own thoughts to digest what they had seen tonight.

Derec wished it weren't so difficult to remember so much of his knowledge of galactic histories and customs. Not only had he lost his personal history, but he had forgotten the methods he used to recall things. He'd lost his entire mental filing system, and had to be immersed in doing something, such as fixing a robot, before it came back to him.

He did not like this state of affairs because he did not like to think that he and Ariel-both of whom were mentally handicapped at the moment-were the only ones who had ever encountered robots that were capable of searching, creative thought. He wondered if originality in humans was the result of logical thinking as much as transcendent inspiration.

Besides, who was to say that robots didn't possess subconscious minds of their own, minds capable of generating their own brands of inspiration, neither superior nor inferior to those of humankind but merely separate? After all, humans themselves hadn't been aware of the existence of the subconscious mind until it had been defined by primitive scientists and doctors, before the era of colonization. Had anyone ever bothered to make similar explorations into the mental depths of robots? It frightened Derec to think that he had the potentially awesome responsibility of witnessing the robots during-and possibly midwifing them through-their mental birth pains. He hardly felt qualified.

But then again, I'm not the type to miss an opportunity, either,he thought. Creative robots might be able to make the conceptual breakthrough I need to have them find a cure for Ariel's ailment.

Her disease was the reason for her exile from Aurora, whose population dreaded diseases of all sorts.They had managed to rid themselves of most illnesses, but whatever it was that Ariel had contracted, it was beyond the grasp of Auroran medical science. The doctors there had been able neither to diagnose nor cure what ailed her. The diagnostic robots here were completely stymied. And Derec himself had made exactly zilch headway. Perhaps a team of creative robots-whose inspirational talents leaned toward the sciences rather than the arts-could succeed where he had failed.

But first Derec had to understand as much as he could about what was happening now-to Lucius, to Harry and the others, and even to the ebony. He had long since formulated his line of questioning, but he had decided to wait because he was reluctant to break the spell of silence that had fallen among the members of the group.

Besides, Derec saw it was no use trying to pull Ariel into a conversation. She walked with her shoulders slumped and her hands behind her back. Her expression was pensive, her eyebrows narrowed. Derec knew from bitter experience that it did no good to engage her when she was this way. She rarely cared to have her depressed moods interrupted, rationalizing the unhealthy tendency by claiming the moods belonged to her and she preferred to enjoy them while she had them.

Well, she'll come out of her shell when she's ready,he thought. I just hope this current episode of introversion isn't the result of her disease.

Of course, it was always possible that she wanted a little bit of attention and was reacting badly to the fact she wasn't likely to get it. He had just decided to risk taking a few unkind words from her, in the hope of pleasantly surprising her, when Lucius surprised him by taking the initiative and breaking the silence.

"Were you pleased with my creation?" the robot asked. "Forgive me if I seem to be overstepping the boundaries of politeness, but I'm naturally interested in your human reaction."

"Yes, absolutely, I'm pleased. It's unquestionably one of the most spectacular buildings I can recall ever having seen." An easy enough compliment, because he could recall so little-just jumbled images of Aurora, and what he had seen since awakening with amnesia. "The question is: were you satisfied?"

"The building seems adequate for a first effort. Already its logical shortcomings seem all too obvious to me."

"But not to others, your circuits will be warmed to know."

"Yes, you are quite correct. They are," he replied. "And they are warmed, too, by the fact that I have found some strange sense of purpose resolved in seeing the final product. Now my mind is free to formulate my next design. Already it seems inappropriate to dwell overmuch on past accomplishments."

"I found that by looking on your building, I personally experienced what I have always assumed humans to mean by the thrill of discovery," said Mandelbrot, with a measured evenness in his words that he had never used while speaking to Derec. "Indeed, my positronic pathways concentrated easily on it."

"Then I am gratified," said Lucius.

"So am I," said Derec. "I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say I felt almost privileged to be viewing the structure."

"Then I am doubly gratified," said Lucius.

"In fact, I would go so far as to say that never before in human history has a robot produced such a composition."

"Never before-?" said Lucius. "Surely I would have thought that elsewhere-" The robot shook its head, as if to assimilate the ramifications of the notion. The effect was disconcerting, and for an eerie moment Lucius reminded Derec of what a human might act like if he had a nervous tic.

"I' d like to know what prodded you to think in terms of art in the first place," Derec said.

Lucius responded by suddenly standing perfectly still and staring blankly straight ahead. Everybody, including Ariel, stopped walking. Something seemed terribly, terribly wrong.

Derec felt an awful wrenching in his gut. Not since he had awoken alone and amnesic in the lifepod had he felt such dread.

For Lucius's words definitely indicated he had assumed he was merely the first robot in Robot City to produce art. It was hardly unreasonable on the face of it to assume that elsewhere, among the Spacer societies, other robots routinely conceived art and labored to make it reality.

Robots are not programmed to take initiatives, especially those whose consequences are as yet unknown. They routinely rationalize anything, and freely expound upon the logic justifying every deed. And Derec felt certain Lucius's immobile stance was the outward sign of what was happening in its brain, where its circuits were grappling with the inescapable fact that it had taken an unacceptable initiative, but were incapable of justifying it rigorously.

As a consequence, Lucius's brain was in danger of overloading. It would die the robotic death of positronic drift, an irreparable psychic burnout-thanks to an inherent inability of its programming to resolve apparent contradictions.

Derec had to think fast. The body could be fixed up after the disaster happened, of course, but the worthless brain would have to be chucked into the recycler. The special circumstances that had brought about Lucius's capacities for intuitive leaps might never again be duplicated.

An angle! I need an angle to get inside Lucius's mind!Derec thought. But what?

"Lucius, listen to me very carefully," he said through tense lips. "Your mind is in danger. I want you to stop thinking about certain things. I know there are questions in your mind. It is essential to your survival that you deliberately close down the logic circuits preoccupied with them. Understand? Quickly! Remember-you're doing this for a reason. You're doing this because of the Third Law, which dictates that you must protect yourself at all times. Understand?"