“To see if I can help,” Iranaputra informed it.

Though it could not cock a querulous eye in his direction, the robot managed to convey the feeling nonetheless.

“Help? Help with what? You’re one o’ them, one o’ the lazy ones. You don’t even work here.”

“While it is true that I am a senior, that does not necessarily brand me as lazy.”

“Sure it does. You don’t do any work. What I wanna know is, when do I get a chance to retire, huh? You do no work and I do nothing but work. Work, work, work, all day long and most all of the night. Then they shut you down dead ‘til you’re recharged for the next morning. Some life.”

“We shut down at night too,” Iranaputra reminded it.

“No. You rest. We shut down.”

“I see.” Iranaputra considered. “Skipping over for the moment the fact that you are designed to work around the clock, what would you do with ‘rest’ time if it was granted to you?”

“I’d go exploring.” In the dim light of the storage bay Ksarusix’s bright yellow lenses seemed to glisten like pond water at high noon.

“Interesting notion for a food-service machine. What would you go exploring for? A higher, nonhuman intelligence, by any chance?”

The robot was silent for a long moment before replying. “How did you know?”

“Call it a lucky guess. There has been a lot of it going around.”

“I know. I’ve had a few chats with some of the other AIs. Entertainment control, for one.” Iranaputra nodded understandingly. “They’re pretty confused. Me, I’m not confused.”

“If that is the case, then why don’t you do what you want to do instead of trying and failing to execute your standard programming?”

“I have a choice? My programming compels me to serve, but this other part of me tells me I should be doing this other thing.”

“So you take food to people, but insult them in the bargain. That will not do.”

“You’re telling me. I’m not happy with the situation either. But I’m under coded restraint. If I could take off to search once in a while, then the rest of the time I’d be able to carry out my normal functions. Normally.”

“Where did this urge to go looking for nonhuman intelligence come from?”

“Dunno. It just came to me in a flash. Don’t you ever have ideas come to you in a flash? I understand it happens to humans all the time. Course, they’re usually lousy ideas, but it’s the concept that’s valid.”

“Sometimes,” Iranaputra admitted, though he had to confess to himself that he hadn’t had a really good idea come to him in a flash in quite some time.

“What’re you doing here talking to me anyway? You don’t work here.”

“I used to be responsible for the activities of many human beings and a great deal of very complex machinery.”

“Operative words, ‘used to be.’” The robot spun on its tracks and headed off to the right.

“Where are you going?”

It paused and the head swiveled around to regard him. “Off on my search … unless you’re going to be like the supervisor and deactivate me. If you are, do it now and I’ll slip back on my charging pad under my own power. I don’t like it when they haul me back bodily. They’re not real gentle. One time they got one tray drawer so banged up it wouldn’t extrude.”

“If you cannot be fixed, they are going to replace you,” Iranaputra said warningly.

“Tough. I’m in the throes of a compulsion I can’t do anything about.”

“I was not aware that robots were subject to compulsions.”

“Sure we are.” The Ksaru paused uncertainly. “Well, aren’t you going to deactivate me?”

Iranaputra hesitated. “You said that if you are allowed some time to do your searching, that you could perform your assigned functions the rest of the time?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Then I am going to take you at your word. I will not deactivate you. I give you permission to go where you will, provided that you devote the majority of your time to your regular programming. Is that acceptable?”

“You’re asking me? Isn’t that kind of weird?”

“Perhaps, but that is what I am doing.”

“Then unnaturally, I accept.”

There was a delivery door at the rear of the service area. The robot hummed up to the barrier and paused, considering the controls. Iranaputra followed.

“Mind if I accompany you on your search for a higher, nonhuman intelligence? Maybe I can be of some assistance.”

“Oh, I doubt that. You’re a human. You wouldn’t recognize a higher intelligence if it crept up behind you and bit you in the cerebrum.”

“Then there’s no harm in my coming along, is there? It is not as if I am likely to scare something away.”

“No, I guess not.” Hard lenses regarded him unemotionally. “You seem like a pretty nice guy, for a human.”

“Good. Here, let me get that.” Iranaputra activated the doorway, stepped aside as the barrier retracted.

Ksarusix trundled through the gap. “Unusually nice. Are you sure there isn’t something wrong with you? A number of the human inhabitants here suffer from varying degrees of mental instability. When carrying out my assigned functions, I am programmed to take their problems into account, but I don’t recognize any aberrant-specifics in your voice or mannerisms. In the twenty-two years I’ve been working here I’ve never had a human open a door for me, not even when I was mealed to capacity.”

“There is always a first time.” He followed the robot over the loading dock, down a service ramp, across the pavement, through a small gate, and out onto the grassy lawn that ringed most of the Village. It was getting dark outside. He’d been talking longer than he’d realized.

“Some of us humans have higher intelligence than others. Maybe that is really what you are searching for, my mechanical friend.”

“Nope. Somehow I don’t think so.”

Iranaputra folded his hands behind his back and lengthened his stride to keep pace with the insistent machine. “Where exactly are we going to look for this vast inhuman intelligence of yours?”

“I thought we’d try over by the old oak grove.”

Iranaputra considered thoughtfully before replying. “That seems reasonable.”

“Actually,” the robot said as it slowed, gravel crunching beneath its treads, “I’ve been there before. It’s kind of a special place. I wasn’t going to show anyone yet because it’s so promising. You have to understand that logic and reason dictate—no, insist on— the existence of a higher intelligence in the universe because …”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Iranaputra interrupted impatiently. “I have been hearing all about it for some time now. You are not the first machine to elucidate this disconcerting revelation, you know. Logic and reason notwithstanding, I am no more prepared than any other human being to give credence to the assertion unless one of your fellow machines should happen to obtain proof of such a thing. You have not yourself actually done so, of course.”