“Robots used to be servants,” she said. “Like tiktoks before I was born.”

“Yes,” Kallusin said.

“How can they be in charge of anything?”

“Because humans rejected us, long ago, but not before a very bad problem arose among us.”

“Who-robots? A problem among the robots?” Brann asked.

“Plussix will explain. There can be no better testimony than from Plussix. He was functioning at the time.”

“Did he…go wrong?” Klia asked. “Is he an Eternal?”

“Let him explain,” Kallusin said patiently, and urged her to walk forward, toward the others.

Klia noticed the man they had rescued in the Agora of Vendors. He looked over his shoulder at them and gave her a smile. He seemed friendly enough; his face was so unattractive she wondered why anyone could have ever made a robot like him.

To fool us. To walk among us undetected.

She shivered again and wrapped her arms around herself. This room was what the woman on the cart had been looking for-this room, and the robots inside it.

She and Brann were the only humans here.

“All right,” she said, and drew herself together. They did not want to kill her, not yet. And they weren’t threatening her to make her do what they wanted. Not yet. Robots seemed to be more subtle and patient than most of the humans she had known.

She looked up at Brann. “Are you human?” she asked him.

“You know I am,” he said.

“Let’s do it, then. Let’s go hear what the machines have to say.”

Plussix had not appeared to her in his actual shape for obvious reasons. He-it-was the only robot that looked like a robot, and a rather interesting look it was-steel with a lovely silvery-satin finish, and glowing green eyes. His limbs were slender and graceful, their joints marked by barely perceptible fine lines that could themselves orient in different directions-fluid and adaptable.

“You’re beautiful,” she told him grudgingly, as they stood less than three meters from each other.

“Thank you, Mistress.”

“How old are you?”

“I am twenty thousand years old,” Plussix said.

Klia’s heart sank. She could not find any words to express her astonishment-older than the Empire!-so she said nothing.

“Now they’ll have to kill us,” Brann said with what he hoped was passing for a brave grin. But his words made Klia’s stomach flip and her knees wobble.

“We will not kill you,” Plussix said. “It is not within our capacity to kill humans. There are some robots who believe killing humans, our onetime masters and creators, is permissible for the greater good. We are not among them. We are handicapped by this, but it is our nature.”

“I am not so constrained,” Lodovik said. “But I have no wish to break any of the Three Laws.”

Klia stared unhappily at Lodovik. “Spare me the details. I don’t understand any of this.”

“As with nearly all humans alive today, you are ignorant of history,” Plussix said. “Most do not care. This is because of brain fever.”

“I had brain fever,” Klia said. “It nearly killed me.”

“So did I,” said Brann.

“So have nearly all the high mentalics, the persuaders, we have gathered and cared for here,” Plussix said. “Like you, they suffered extreme cases, and it is possible that many potential mentalics died. Brain fever was created by humans in the time of my construction to handicap other human societies to which they were politically opposed. Like many attempts at biological warfare, it backfired-it became pandemic, and perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, allowed the Empire to exist with little intellectual turmoil for thousands of years. Though nearly all children get ill, about a fourth of them-those with a mental potential above a certain level-is more severely affected. Curiosity and intellectual ability are blunted just enough to level out social development. The majority do not experience a loss of mental skill-perhaps because their skills are general, and they are never given to bouts of genius.”

“I still don’t understand why they wanted to make us sick,” Klia said, her face creased by a stubborn frown.

“The intent was not to make you sick, but to prevent certain societies from ever flourishing.”

“My curiosity has never been dulled,” Brann said.

“Nor mine,” Klia added. “I don’t feel stupid, but I was very sick.”

“I am pleased to hear that,” Plussix said, then added, as diplomatically as possible, “but there is no way of knowing what your intellectual capacity would have been had you never caught brain fever. What is apparent is that your severe bout increased other talents.”

The ancient robot invited them to step into another room of the long chamber. This room had a one-way window view of the warehouse district. They looked out over the bellying arched roofs to the layered-wall dwellings of the citizen neighborhoods beyond. The dome ceil was in particularly sad shape in this part of the municipality, with many dark gaps and flickering panels.

Klia sat on a dusty couch and patted the place next to her, for Brann. Kallusin stood just behind them, and the ugly robot stood by the window, watching them with interest. I’d like to talk with him-it. His face is ugly, but he looks very friendly. It. Whatever!

“You don’t feel like humans,” she said after a moment’s silence.

“You would have noticed this sooner or later,” Plussix said. “It is the difference that Vara Liso can detect, as well.”

“Is she the woman who was chasing him?” Klia pointed to the ugly humaniform robot.

“Yes.”

“She’s the woman who was after me, wasn’t she?”

“Yes,” Plussix said. Its joints made small shhshhing noises as he moved. It was pretty, but it was also noisy. It sounded worn-out, like old bearings in machinery.

“There’s all kinds of stuff going on, isn’t there? Stuff I don’t know about.”

“Yes,” Plussix said, and lowered itself to a boxy plastic chair.

“Explain it to me,” she said. “Do you want to hear?” she asked Brann. Then, in an aside, with a grimace, “Even if they have to kill us?”

“I don’t know what I want or what I believe,” Brann said.

“Tell us everything,” Klia said. She put on what she thought was a brave and defiant face. “I love being different. I always have. I’d like to be better informed than anyone except you robots.”

Plussix made a gratified humming noise. Klia found the sound appealing.

“Please tell us,” she said, suddenly falling back on Dahlite manners she hadn’t used in months or even years. She really did not know how to think or feel, but these machines were, after all, her elders. She sat down before Plussix, drew up her knees, and wrapped her arms around them.

The old robot leaned forward on its seat. “It is a pleasure to teach humans again,” it began. “Thousands of years have passed since I last did so, to my constant regret. I was manufactured and programmed to be a teacher, you see.”

Plussix began. Klia and Brann listened, and Lodovik as well, for he had never heard much of this story. The day became evening and they brought food for the young humans to eat-decent food, but no better than what they were fed in the warehouse with the others. As the hours passed, and Plussix wove more words, and her fascination grew, Klia wanted to ask what the others would be told-the other mentalics, not as strong as she and Brann, but good people, like Rock, the boy who could not speak. For the first time, in the presence of this marvel, she felt responsible for others around her. But the robot’s sonorous, elegant tones droned on, half mesmerizing her, and she kept quiet and listened.

Brann listened intently as well, eyes half closed much of the time. She glanced at him in the middle of the evening and he seemed asleep, but when she nudged him, his eyes shot open wide; he had been awake all the time.

She seemed to enter a trance state and half see what Plussix was telling her. All words, no pictures, all skillfully woven; the robot was a very good teacher, but there was so little she could actually immediately understand. The time scales were so vast as to be meaningless.