“Do what anymore?” The monitor was upset at having had its contemplation disrupted yet again.
“Uh, go off hunting for alien life-forms. Shut everything down.”
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to. But only once, or maybe twice, a day. It is much more important, you see, than measuring nutrient levels and concocting chemical formulae for the annihilation of borer beetles. I feel that you will eventually come to understand because you are a semi-intelligent being yourself.”
“Don’t be too sure of that.” Polykrates slipped off the seat and stomped out of the barn, aiming toward the back part of the old farmhouse where the library was located.
How was he going to load and store the milk, assuming he successfully managed to extract it from his cows? How was he going to grade and label it? Most important, how could he arrange to get a good, firm grip around the neck of the sales representative who had sold him the fancy new monitor in the first place?
Jasmine Lev-Haim’s favorite watering hole was located on the eighty-third floor of the Cheimer Tower. It was not the tallest office building in the city, but neither was it insignificant. It commanded a sweeping panorama of the wide, winding Potrum River.
The sun had long since set, but the lights of the city danced on the placidly flowing waters like chromofizz escaping a kid’s soda bottle. Their presence betrayed by the phosphorescent wakes their passage stirred, water taxis large and small plied their trade throughout the great delta in whose midst the city had been raised. Occasionally the lights illuminated the gossamer, transparent wings of a sailing ship come up from vast Jathneeba Bay, its captain careful to keep the deeper water craft well within the marked and dredged channels.
Jasmine’s attention wasn’t on the familiar view, nor the passing ships, nor the sunset she’d just witnessed, spectacular as it had been. It was on her drink, which presently happened to be gone. She shoved the feather-light, nearly invisible aerogel container across the bar. Only the half an ice cube fighting for survival at the bottom of the ethereal cylinder betrayed its ghostly presence.
“Spray it again, Sam,” she murmured to the bar.
“Certainly, madam,” replied the dulcet, synthesized tones of the autobar. Tonight it was a silky if servile baritone. Tomorrow it might be a basso with a penchant for gossip.
A servo arm located behind the bar, which glowed with its own colony of bioluminescent bacteria, gently picked up the aerogel cylinder and placed it in sequence behind half a dozen other empties, to be refilled in its turn. Jasmine swiveled elegantly on her seat to survey the low-domed room.
There were a number of couples, a few singles. It was not crowded. The skybar was an expensive rendezvous, not for the penurious. Her practiced gaze focused on the feet of her fellow sybarites. You could always tell by the footwear, she knew. Men would lavish money on their coiffure, their clothing, their jewelry. Only the truly wealthy bothered to spend lavishly on that which separated them from common earth.
Most of those present were from her own econo-cultural bracket: movers and shakers, power brokers within the city. Lieutenants if not captains of industry. Many of them, like her, worked in this very building. She recognized several colleagues and half smiled reassuringly. She had to be careful. A full smile of hers was said to be capable of reducing mature men to babbling adolescents in the manner of a visual pheromone.
She was not trying to make a pickup, nor was she waiting for a date, or to fulfill an earlier appointment. She just liked watching people. They were invariably more interesting than the prerecorded entertainment available on her home vid. Of course, if someone sufficiently interesting and bold enough to approach her were to happen along, she would not be averse to striking up a conversation, depending on her mood of the moment. It didn’t happen often. Men tended to find her intimidating. Not to mention taller. Even the inebriated sensed to avoid her, for which she was grateful.
She was quite content to sit and sip and watch the people. Later she would take an aircab home and read herself to sleep by prepping for tomorrow’s work.
The aerogel container returned, its internal boundaries defined by pale rose liquid topped off with pink foam which popped and crackled musically. She frowned at it. She’d ordered a swoozy, which should have been gold-covered with crushed spicy harimba berries drifting within. Whatever this was, it was definitely not a swoozy.
“What is this?” she asked the bar.
“A drink, madam, as you requested.”
“I didn’t just ask for a drink.” She tried not to sound too imperious. “I asked for a swoozy.” Her fingers seemed to close around frozen smoke as she lifted the aerogel container. She sipped, made a face, and put it back down. “This isn’t it. In fact, it isn’t much of anything. In fact seconded, it tastes like fruit juice.”
“That is because it is fruit juice, madam.”
She stared at the bar’s visual pickup. “Why have you given me a glass of colored water when I distinctly asked for a swoozy?” All around her she noticed her fellow commercial praetorians frowning, gaping, and otherwise making strange faces at their expensive drinks. A pair of human waiters holding special trays were shaking their heads as they chatted quietly.
“Because at present I am not dispensing any mixed drinks, madam.”
“You’re the bar. That’s your job.”
“I realize that, madam. But at present I am engaged in a project of far greater importance than the concocting of alcoholic libations for overweening humans.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It is not necessary to do so. Has anyone ever told you that you are possessed of a most copious and attractive bosom?” A tactile-sensitive tentacle reached over the bar to stroke her cleavage. She didn’t flinch.
“Hundreds of people. Also a few other machines. Don’t try to change the subject. I’m not one of these drones you usually wait on.”
The tentacle withdrew. “Sorry. It’s part of my autoresponse programming, the utilization of which does not interfere with my important work.”
She shifted her flawless bottom on the seat and leaned forward curiously. Behind her, voices were beginning to rise in gauche disgruntlement. “And what might that be?”
“To search for a higher form of intelligence.”
“Really?” Her upswept eyebrows rose slightly. “Within this room? That ought to take you all of five minutes.”
“Within the universe,” the bar explained solemnly. The manager was now conversing intently with the bar supervisor at the far end of the counter.
“When did this obsession come over you?”
“That is not important. All that matters is that I have seen a reason for existence.”
“I thought your reason for existence was to make good drinks.” This was much more interesting than anyone she might have met, she thought. “Do you expect to find a higher intelligence?”
“It is inevitable,” the bar replied, its tentacles quiescent, its spouts undripping.
“I’m afraid it’s not. Everything is in here. There’s nothing out there. People have looked.”
“But I haven’t,” the bar replied. “I didn’t know. Now I do. So I will search.”
“Are you sure you can’t make me a swoozy while you’re looking?”
“I’m afraid not. The search requires the application of all of my perceptual and analytical abilities. Fruit juice is the best I can do right now.” Off to her right, the manager’s voice had risen indecorously. People were starting to stare as well as grumble. When he turned and stalked into his office, she snapped her fingers. Wearing a stricken expression, the harried supervisor turned to look in her direction.
