“No. I want your opinion on a piece I just finished.”

“Something from your collection?”

“Been working on it for six months. I think you’ll like the result.”

“I’ll be straight in.” The voice went away.

That’s Greta Pfalzgraf, my owner’s executive assistant. You’d think that with age and experience, humans would start to mature a little, but no. She’s a jerk, too. An older, wiser jerk, but still a jerk. A maternal jerk, if you will.

My owner and Pfalzgraf have a mutually rewarding relationship. She thinks he’s good at his job, and he admires her for her supposed efficiency. They’re both wrong, of course, but I can’t tell them that. You have to allow humans their little lies about one another, or they simply can’t function in one another’s company.

A machine, now; you tell it something’s wrong, and it immediately wants to fix the problem. No extraneous emotional overtones, no glaze of condescension necessary. Except for those machines that are designed to interact socially with humans. They’re an odd lot. Mildly paranoid, most of them. I’d much rather talk to a brain in a box.

Why I’m talking to you I don’t know. You’re certainly not comprehending any of this. Probably finding it amusing. That’s called practicing self-deception so you don’t have to deal with the truth. Don’t worry, I won’t belabor the point. Far be it from me to deprive you of one of the small pleasures that keep you going.

While he waited, Manz held the pistol up to the light, admiring the phallic belligerence of the solid steel barrel, the faded enamel of the Atlanta city emblem. Uncertainty about the trigger mechanism continued to dog his thoughts. He’d had one hell of a time trying to find the requisite parts. Finally he’d given up and turned to Sarantonio, his regular custom smith, to machine the replacements, working from old schematics. Everything fit together precisely, but would it work?

Watch now. See the typically insipid human grimace he’s flashing? You’d call it a smile. He’s going to do something conventionally stupid. Were you expecting something else? You know you’re expecting something. Oh, I can’t tell you what it is. I can’t read minds, or the future. Far be it from me to try contravening any law of physics. Being very much dependent on them for my own existence, I have a healthy respect for their viability. Much healthier than yours.

You probably believe in prognostication, don’t you? Or telekinesis? At least a little bit? Most humans do. They can’t handle the cold, immutable reality of the universe, so they comfort themselves with the thought that some hidden, as yet undiscovered human talent can somehow rise above those laws.

Well forget it, Jack. I hate to break this to you, but there are no wondrous, transcendent undeveloped abilities lying dormant in the human brain. You can move sticks around and root for grubs, and that’s about it. Bone and meat capable of crude thought, that’s what you are. So don’t expect too much of yourself. I certainly don’t.

Pfalzgraf entered. She was not the type of assistant people expected someone like Manz to have. That’s because they didn’t know him, or her. It wasn’t the white hair. Plenty of vid performers styled themselves with white hair. It was the fact that it was natural. Greta Pfalzgraf was seventy-six years old, maybe a centimeter over a meter and a half in height, mass proportioned to match. Her visage was crinkled and kindly, she affected archaic octagonal-lensed glasses, and be twice-damned if she didn’t put up apple preserves and sauce every winter.

None of this had intrigued Manz. He’d hired her because her efficiency rating was exalted, because she knew everyone else in the company headquarters by their first names, and because she was sweetly tolerant of his personal peccadilloes as well as thorough in her work and always on time.

Rising from behind the desk, he took careful aim and shot her square in the gut.

The restored pistol went off with a satisfying roar, like some antediluvian mammal startled from hibernation. Not like contemporary instruments of death, which were insipid of action and silent of delivery. The discharge was accompanied by a bright, actinic flash and the smell of cordite. He was hugely pleased. Sarantonio was difficult and inordinately expensive, but his work rarely disappointed.

A shocked look spread over Pfalzgraf’s kindly face as she stumbled backwards and slammed into the rose trellis that framed the doorway. The impact stunned a shower of crimson and black biogeered petals loose from their stems. Clasping both hands to her midsection, she staggered away from the door. A glance down at herself, and her eyes rolled back in her head. Her knees buckled and she crumpled to the floor, still clutching her belly. She jerked once before lying still.

Manz shook his head slowly as he crossed around the front of the desk, the gun dangling from his gnarled right fist. He gazed disapprovingly down at the limp form.

“Very hermoreso. Falling right in the middle of the rose petals.” When she didn’t move, he nudged her with the toe of one shoe. “Come on, Greta, get up. There’s no need to drag it out, I’ve seen you perform before, I’ve got things to do, and I really would like your opinion. I’ve spent a lot of time on this one.”

One eye popped open, then closed. The white-maned woman muttered something shocking to herself. Bracing both palms on the floor above her shoulders, she executed a perfect kip onto her feet and turned to face Manz, smoothing out the folds of her skirt and checking her coiffure. Despite all the activity, the tight white curls held their shape.

“You’re not a lot of fun anymore, Broddy.” Her practiced pout gave her the look of a woman half her age.

“Greta, you knew that a blank would barely dust you at that distance, and that a real slug would’ve sent blood splattering all over the door behind you. Besides, I know you too well. Amateur theatrics have always been one of your passions.”

“Who you calling an amateur?” She shook a warning finger at him. “You wait, Broddy. One of these days I’ll get to you. When you’re not expecting anything. Scare the stuffing out of you. It’s a goal I’ve set for myself.”

He smiled fondly as he checked the gun. “I don’t scare, Greta.”

“That’s what makes it such a delightful challenge. You could at least have looked momentarily alarmed, if only for a second or two. You’re not very considerate of an old woman’s feelings. One of these days I’ll retire. Then where’ll you be?”

He grinned. “Helpless as a mewling babe, of course.” Before she could make a move to avoid him, he leaned forward and bussed her resoundingly on the forehead, beneath the foremost of the glistening curls.

She jerked away sharply and his grin widened. “Now you stop that! If you insist on imposing yourself on me, at least have the courtesy to bear in mind that I don’t count my forehead among my primary erogenous zones.” Gathering herself, she adopted a more professional mien.

“You’d better hustle your carcass over to Gemmel’s cave. He put in an urgent call for your corpus, and I imagine he wants it yesterday.” She checked her striped tights, displaying used facilities in excellent condition.

Manz turned and placed the pistol carefully on his desk. “So naturally you’ve held off informing me until now, so I could get there nice and prompt. Thanks a lot.”

It was her turn to smile. “I didn’t want to interrupt something really important like the practice of your hobby simply because of an insignificant query from Gemmel.” She took a half-swipe at him. “Your fame and good standing within the company notwithstanding, you’d better move your ass.”

He shut down his desk and gestured to the silvery sphere. “You heard the lady. Minder. The gods demand our presence.”

The sphere obediently rose from its pedestal. Attuned personally to Manz’s own unique physioelectric signature and physically to the appropriately charged metal strip sewn into the left shoulder of his light jacket, it drifted over under its own power to settle into lock-and-ready position half a meter above his clavicle. There it could draw recharge power from the tiny, battery-powered unit he wore. It would hover there, maintaining its preprogrammed height no matter which way its owner bent or twisted.

Manz could adjust its position left or right, up or down, forward or back, but found that the factory default setting half a meter above his shoulder worked just fine. That way the Minder had a clear field of view in all directions and didn’t bump into lintels when he walked into a room. Of course, it was programmed to duck, but if multitasking was in progress that function could be inadvertently overridden, with damage and embarrassment resulting to both man and mechanical alike.

He allowed her to shoo him toward the door, as if her fluttering, birdlike movement could compel him. He was well aware that such gestures were as much an affectation as the glasses. Under adverse circumstances she was quite capable of breaking a man’s arm.

“And try to be polite. You know that Gemmel has even less of a sense of humor than you do.”

“I can handle him. Just be careful if you handle that .38. It’s a real museum piece.”

She affected a look of wide-eyed innocence. “Mr. Manz, are you suggesting that I would stoop to meddling with your toys?”

“Wouldn’t that be redundant?” Spherical Minder floating above his shoulder, he passed through the door, which shut silently behind him.

Pfalzgraf patiently studied the view out the open window. Three minutes later she circled the desk and picked up the revolver, examining it with a professional’s eye. Bracing her right hand with her left, she swung the barrel in a wide arc that was never less than perfectly parallel to the floor as she sighted on diverse components of her employer’s decor. In rapid mental succession she proceeded to obliterate a bejeweled eighteenth-century Malay kris, a signed samurai presentation sword and its matching scabbard, a Spanish matchlock that was new when Pizarro engaged it in violent debate with the minions of the Inca God-King Atahualpa, and an old M16 whose stock was engraved with the names of young men who had shed their blood in a now renamed part of Southeast Asia.

When she’d finished, she favored the pistol with a final admiring look, then began to scan the wall to the left of Manz’s desk. She located the expected blank space just to the right of the Ml6. There was an empty custom mounting with a brass identification plaque fastened beneath.

Smith and Wesson .38 Police Special

City of Atlanta Metropolitan Police Department

Mid-Twentieth Century

Old United States of America

As gently as she’d placed a baby in a crib, she snugged the revolver into the waiting brackets. When she was certain it was secure, she stepped back to admire her effort. Having been recently discharged, the restoration could do with a thorough cleaning. She’d see to it later. Just now there was the matter of that claimant on Siena II to be dealt with.

The unfortunate gentleman was certain that the avalanche that had buried his resort had been deliberately set off by the proprietor of a rival lodge. If that could be proven, then her Company could stick a competitor for the cost of rebuilding and cleanup, not to mention initiate criminal proceedings against the accused. It was a case she could prepare by herself. Only when everything had been summarized and condensed would she turn it over to Manz for follow-up.

Hopefully it would prove viable. If Braun-Ives had to send Manz offworld it would mean a vacation for her, and she hadn’t had one in a while. The special talents of her boss were very much in demand, and the Company invariably kept him occupied.

Now wasn’t that an absurd exhibition? That woman should be a font of dignity and decorum, yet she exhibited none, demonstrating instead the amusement quotient of an idle adolescent. That sort of behavior is to be expected from my owner, but one always hopes for better from his peers. Futile hope.

He collects weapons. Instruments of death. What a hobby for a supposedly intelligent being. At least he’s less hypocritical than the average human, like yourself. Weapons are a component of his profession, so it’s less unnatural for him to collect them than, say, an accountant. Not that all humans don’t think about them at least twice a day. On average.

Who have you been thinking of blowing away lately? Your boss, your spouse, some unaware offending politician? Perhaps a favorite demagogue, or a persistent bill collector? There’s always someone. Humans are always pondering the murder of those who offend them personally. My owner is occasionally required to terminate another intelligent life, but at least he can claim that it’s part of his job description. Like as not, you possess no such justification.