Gerald Tarrant Wakes Who: Gerald Tarrant Where: The Apartments (When: Sunday, December 9)
The gasp of breath was like coldfire down his throat, blooming and burning his lungs. Gerald Tarrant's body jerked up, muscles stiff and knotted, chest heaving, silver eyes wide and unseeing. His hair hung around his face in soft brown strands. His skin prickled over with gooseflesh.
He had sent Vryce away, knowing the ex-Priest was already praying for him. Gerald wondered if he was praying for his life or his death - really, he wouldn't blame him for either.
After ten centuries he had more than his share to regret. The only one that he thought of then was that all of his knowledge would be reduced to rubble and ash because of the Church's blind hatred. Those who considered themselves so worldly would condemn all of the future generations to terra firma.
Andrys' hands were unsteady with anger, but his crossbolt found a true mark. There was no Fire soaked into the wood of the shaft, none left to spare, but Gerald knew that it didn't make a difference. He was human.
His lips formed a prayer.
Breath scraping raw sounds into the silence, Gerald looked around.
This was not Jahanna, his Forest, his Keep.
There wasn't much light, but enough to see. Air, not stale, exactly, but too clean. He was alive. The screaming pain of the death wound was cut off, just gone. His skin and bone were no longer compromised.
And he was naked. Lying on a surface that yielded, in a spacious enclosure.
There was hardly any dust at all, for a room that hadn't been disturbed by anything living in eons. In this part of the habitations, some of the machines still cleaned, which was comprised of removing what dust traveled along passive air currents past the equally passive energy fields. As much of the devastation as could be repaired without clear direction had been. The smooth lines of the furnishings included the couch he lay upon, not a rectangle, but wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, almost an equilateral triangle with rounded corners. The satiny coverings on the cushioning might look like fabric, but they weren't. Age hadn't disintegrated them. It had only dulled them. Comparable spans of time had eroded pyramids to ash.
The quiet was profound.
There was a long stretch of time where Gerald didn't understand. A mind that had built an ecosystem from the ground up, and all he could do was stare at his surroundings and simply fail to comprehend. Finally he turned to himself.
Fingertips (clean, no splits, no bloodied scrapes from the jagged rock of Mount Shiatan, no dirt under the nails) spread across the middle of his chest and pushed palm to unmarred skin. And he could feel the beat of a heart. Gerald closed his eyes and listened to the whoosh-pound his pulse. He didn't do it because he knew, knew, that he should be in Hell, but because he hadn't heard it in a thousand years. Not his own.
Even though it had started beating again two days ago, there had been no moment available to him to use to wonder.
He would have as many moments as he wanted, now. Stillness was welcome here. Nothing would disturb him. At least not for a good long while.
Outside there were things that might, if he ventured there. Outside, in the parks, overgrown and wild, there were life forms that had long since evolved from their domesticated progenitors. They were used to having the run of things, and an unfamiliar new inhabitant might provoke curiosity. But they wouldn't venture among the buildings. There were no true memories of why, but some instinct kept them apart. Because there, the great ones had once lived.
And there, It had walked.
Gerald closed his eyes and eventually stopped listening to his heart and started listening to his surroundings. There was nothing to hear and instinct had him reaching for the Fae to cast a Knowing...
Only there was no Fae. Not inaccessible or a torrent that would burn him to a crisp had he dared to Work. It was not the Fae that had slipped through his fingers time and time again on the volcano's edge, impossible to touch for reason he and Vryce and Karrill couldn't understand.
There was. No. Fae.
It was like Gerald was sitting in unWorked space.
The gooseflesh that had settled under the comforting rhythm of his beating heart reclaimed his arms and legs. Gerald opened his eyes and stared down at the limp length of his cock laying against his thigh. Just like he hadn't thought of the heart that had begun beating, neither had he given any thought to the other organ that he hadn't been able to use in a thousand years. And now was not the time other than to make him aware of how vulnerable he was. No Fae, no clothes, no idea of where he was.
Discipline took over and getting off the couch where he was settled, Gerald began to investigate the room that he was in. Nothing was left untouched.
Mostly, that meant furniture. There weren't many Things, or many apparent things. The oddly-shaped couch had a covering, thin, silken, but indestructible.
Besides the couch, there was a wide, three legged stool, the lines heavy and graceful, the seat, a rounded triangle, the legs short. There was a wide ledge built into one wall, for no apparent reason. Seating?
There was a table, almost V shaped, and on it an object. A clear, empty dome. It seemed to rest on the table but it couldn't be moved.
As he handled it, a light winked on, on the surface of the table.
Gerald frowned. It obviously did something; the light wasn't bright enough to illuminate the space with. He hunkered down (conscious of his nudity so much more in the new position) and spent time running his fingers slowly over the entire surface.
Not that he would push or pull anything that his fingernails might trace out.
Gerald realized that the blisters that had plagued him over his last miles were completely gone.
The surface was smooth and only the faintest graininess that turned out to be dust finer than breath.
Nothing happened for his actions except that a faint cloud appeared in the air, inside the clear dome.
He rested his palm heavily on the top of the dome and peered at the fog. "Where is this?" His voice was half only to hear that he could; his normal low and commanding tenor ringing flat in the silence. But even that broke the spell that was wrapped in dust and unsurety. "And why am I not dead," was added as with a sigh, Gerald stood.
The tiny cloud in the clear dome thickened as he turned away from it. Within the cloud, there was the faintest flicker of light.
It caught the edge of his attention and eyes the color of winter water moved back. Something sensational crawled up his spine with hooked claws and Gerald's eyes narrowed. Starfarer technology?
Tarrant, you don't even know where you are. Better yet, this could all be an Iezu illusion.
Which would be the crowning glory, certainly. The only thing that kept him from believing it was that he knew Calesta was dead. That no other Iezu had a reason to want him dead.
Fingers brushed his chest again, the movement near unconscious, seeking the hole of a crossbolt - as if he'd somehow missed it before. He looked at the clouded dome. "Where... am I?" And yes, he did feel ridiculous talking to furniture, though his face remained impassive.
The cloud flickered again, and the mist swirled.
A voice sounded in the room. At least... it might have been a voice. Or it might have been a very odd musical instrument, tuned to a microtonal scale. The arrangement and timing of sounds ran on, then stopped abruptly.
Impassive gathered itself into a frown that hardened the delicate lines of Gerald's face. "I suppose something familiar was too much to ask." It got easier, speaking to yourself, the more you did it. "You don't have that track in English?" It had obviously responded to his question - if not specifically, than the general spoken prompt.
He knew no technology like that. Vulking hell, technology like that shouldn't be possible on Erna.
There was a pause, and then the exact same series of sounds repeated.
The cloud in the dome swirled and light flickered inside of it again.
Seconds after the sounds ceased, more light, ambient, from panels in the ceiling above, began to glow softly, then brightened until the room was fully lit.
And continued to brighten.
Instinct brought an arm up to shield the more sensitive area of his face before Gerald realized that light wouldn't hurt him.
That was before he realized that it was not sunlight.
And that was a moment before it didn't matter what kind of light it was - it was too bright. Gerald kept his arm up, pressed to his forehead, eyes watering. "Stop!" Even though it was clearly some sort of machine, the word was nothing short of a command and the tone was one that said Gerald was used to being obeyed.
The light continued to brighten for maybe four seconds, then flickered, then dimmed back down, more slowly than it had brightened. It continued to dim.
"Stop," he said again, trying to figure out if it was actually responding to his voice or just running on some set of timers that should not be functional on his own planet.
The dimming stopped, a tenth of a second after he spoke.
The cloud in the clear dome was flickering rapidly now, swirling tightly.
Then the cloud coalesced in the center of the dome into a shape. The shape was vague at first, too short, oddly humped, then it slenderized, grew taller, and became a solid-looking human form, with a head, arms and legs.
It continued to refine, rapidly now, until it was a mirror of Gerald Tarrant.
Despite himself, Gerald stepped forward to watch his image appear. He'd never seen anything like it. The pistol, his telescope... that those things worked reliably was a testament to his will. Something like this?
Impossible.
He sat himself back on the couch, slowly, his eyes never leaving the picture of himself. There were several questions on his tongue, but he took a moment and picked through them, discarding most. Finally he just said, "Gerald Tarrant."
The solid looking, three dimensional image in the transparent dome turned, and looked at him. It was about seven inches tall. There wasn't much expression on the face but the features were his own, identically.
Lips moved. It mimicked the way his moved when he spoke. A tiny voice, proportional in tone to the reduced size of the simulacrum, seemed to come from the dome. Gerald Tarrant.
Mimicry was hardly intelligence, but it was the first other voice speaking any sort of sense since he'd woken. Gerald tried something else. "Where am I?"
The simulacrum mirrored him again.
Seconds after the tiny imitation of Gerald's voice ended, the unrecognizable sounds returned. Different this time, a different sequence.
Gerald glanced up, noting the difference. The lights... what were they? Too steady to be gas. But not real light, not skylights. Leaving the simulacrum he stood on the couch and reached to glance fingers over the lighted panels.
The ceiling above was as smooth as the floor below, the light glowing from it, seamless. As if the substance of it simply glowed here, and not elsewhere.
With his inattention, the figure in the clear dome dissolved back into misty cloud.
Another question with no answer. The man bit back a noise of frustration and stepped down with a single glance at the now empty globe. He headed for the next room.
The doorway was obvious, but a panel closed it off.
Frowning absently, Gerald explored it. The puzzles intrigued him - the place intrigued him. There was a part of him that knew he was dead, that this was far too detailed to be an illusion. Maybe his new, ironic vision of hell was a place in which he was alone, a state which he'd been only too happy live in for centuries, until he'd met that damned priest.
But why would hell conjure such creations as these? They were nothing that could have been pulled out of his mind, not even after the fragments of histories from the colonists that he'd scoured. Those had been data logs, not prone to expanding on technologies that they had been living with for ages.
In the wall near the oddly shaped doorway, about the height of his hip, there was an indention. it might almost have fit a palm, if the palm belonged to something short, and if there were only three thick digits or appendages connected to it, instead of five slender fingers.
Pressing his fingers into together to mirror the shape, Gerald settled his hand into the indentation.
The door panel slid back, showing its thickness - fully four inches. The wall it slid into was six. There was a room beyond, larger, wider, with other doorways and furnishings. If he had come out of a 'bedroom' or resting area, this gave the impression of a living space. As he entered, the ceiling began to glow with light to the same pitch as the bedroom.
Gerald stopped a moment to watch the ceiling before pitching his eyes back down. No one. Nothing. Almost... sterile. More questions that would have no answer rose to mind, overwhelming in numbers.
Knowing that listening to them wouldn't do any good, Gerald once again set about methodically combing over everything in the room.
There were surprisingly few objects. And the furnishings - couches, stools, larger than the one in the room he'd left, narrow ledges or shelves with nothing on them - reinforced the impression of something comfortable on them that wasn't shaped like him. As he moved around the room, the light in the room's had left faded back to dim twilight. There were other doors, all the same odd shape. One wall was made up of darker panels from floor to ceiling. Something about those spoke of difference to the rest of the room.
Trailing over to them, Gerald stroked the walls, searching out cracks or fissures or anything that spoke of accessibility.
The panels were too well made, too perfectly fitted. And the substance of them - it wasn't cold or warm. It accepted energy - the warmth of his hand - but didn't suck at it.
The series of sounds that had greeted him in the bedroom suddenly began again. Different sequence.
"I can't understand you," Gerald spoke, from between his teeth as he stepped back from the dark paneling.
There was a pause, and the sequence repeated. More slowly.
Gerald's head turned, and he listened, noticed. "I don't speak your language," he said once the recording had finished. Perhaps it wasn't sentient after all.
There was another pause and then he heard his own voice, perfectly recorded to the last nuance. You don't have that track in English? Then another, shorter sequence of sounds.
Gerald took a step away from the wall. He didn't know where the voice was coming from, didn't know why it stayed centralized in the first room he'd been in--after all, the strange lights followed him. "English. It is a language..." He folded his arms over his chest. "The language of the 22nd century from the planet Earth." Erna had not come so far to evolve from the speech of their colonists.
There was silence for a moment, and then a path of sequenced lights ran along one wall near one of the other doors.
The door slid open. There was something standing beyond it, very roughly man-shaped, with moving lights and appendages.
"Yes, sir, English is a language, if an obscure one."
Gerald backed away when the panel opened to reveal... Whatever it was, he didn't have a world for it. Danger and wonder warred for a moment and Gerald stepped back again, very conscious of his nakedness and lack of weaponry or Fae with which to protect himself.
But, English!
Gerald wet his suddenly dry lips. "Yet you speak it."
"I speak 372 languages and dialects, sir. English is only one of them."
The figure moved several steps into the room. It wasn't graceful, and it somehow didn't match everything else Gerald had seen so far. The aesthetic was all wrong.
It brought the frown back to his lips, the oddity of it. Gerald stepped back smoothly, keeping an even distance between them at all times. "What are you?" A golem of metal. "An English-speaking Earth man of the twentieth through the twenty-fifth centuries would call me a 'robot'. I am monitored to accept the name 'Robby'."
The figure paused when Gerald backed up and simply waited.
Gerald's mind spun as if it were caught on ice. "A... robot?" The word was queer on his tongue, but the golem seemed to know of Earth. He tried something else. "Do you know of Erna? A colony of Earth?"
There was a pause and an almost mechanical sound from within the body of the robot.
"My data is incomplete. I have nothing referenced to a colony designation Erna. The only Earth colony presently in my databanks is Altair."
"My data has always been incomplete," Gerald said, sighing. They'd always known what the original sacrifice of Casca had cost them even while it gave them some control over the Fae but to hear if from the mouth of a metal obscurity...
"Are you a machine?"
"That is correct."
Legs feeling suddenly weak, Gerald sank onto the nearest available object that would support his weight. A hand was run over his mouth. "Why are you called a robot?" he heard himself ask, thinking even as he felt shell-shocked. "What makes you a robot and not... a telescope?"
"According to a twentieth century source, 'The word robot was introduced by Czech writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which premiered in 1920. The play begins in a factory that makes 'artificial people' - they are called robots, but are closer to the modern idea of androids or even clones, creatures who can be mistaken for humans. They can plainly think for themselves, though they seem happy to serve. At issue is whether the "Robots" are being exploited and, if so, what follows?
However, Karel Čapek was not the originator of the word; he wrote a short letter in reference to an article in the Oxford English Dictionary etymology in which he named his brother, painter and writer Josef Čapek, as its actual inventor. In an article in the Czech journal Lidové noviny in 1933, he also explained that he had originally wanted to call the creatures laboři (from Latin labor, work). However, he did not like the word, seeing it as too artificial, and sought advice from his brother Josef, who suggested "roboti".
The word robot comes from the word robota meaning literally serf labor, and, figuratively, "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech, Slovak and Polish. The origin of the word is the Old Church Slavonic rabota "servitude" ("work" in contemporary Russian), which in turn comes from the Indo-European root *orbh-. Robot is cognate with the German word Arbeiter (worker).'"
The recital was dry, the robot never moved, though various lights inside its domed 'head' flashed in sequence, as well as a translucent 'grill' across it's front section.
Dry, and emotionless. Yet somehow the voice managed to register a hint of distain at the word 'drudgery'.
The great majority of the recital went over Gerald's head. He didn't know what czech was, nor latin, polish... But some things stuck.
"Artificial people. Dear... robots - like you - that can pass as human?" Gerald's immediate sense of danger had been forgotten, overlaid with awe.
"R.U.R was a play, sir," Robby answered, the veiled superiority just hinted at in his tone strengthening. The veiled superiority of a butler or other managerial level servant of an upper class environment. "My data is, as I said, incomplete, but it does not contain any records of actual androids being produced."
The machine also managed to somehow make it sound as if such a marvel would be inherently inferior to himself.
"Of course not," Gerald said, the words placating and only half aware. It was hard to collect him, buzzing, from his thoughts. He blinked and looked up - eyes focusing, Gerald's face pulled itself into placidness. "Where am I, Robby?"
There was a much longer pause than before. More fleshing of lights and an almost mechanical clicking.
"In an abandoned city," was the final answer, the tone somehow lacking the earlier flavor. "My data is incomplete as to what planetary system or galaxy."
"You're here," Gerald said. His voice dried around the edges. "And you can tell me of a play from 1920's Earth, but not where here is?"
"Regrettably, that is correct, sir." The robot seemed slightly put out by Gerald having the bad manners to point it out. After a pause, it added, "I think I'm doing rather well for only being twelve minutes old."
That stymied anything else Gerald was going to say. It galled him, but, "I don't understand."
"I said I was twelve minutes old. Twelve minutes and fifty seven seconds to be precise."
Gerald looked past the robot to the empty notch in the wall from which is had come. Wariness tightened his muscles and stood him up. "Is there someone else here?"
"Define some one. Some or one of what?"
"Another human. How can you be only 12 minutes old?" He stood like he was aware of his body. Aware of what it could do without a sword, without the Fae.
"Ah, human. There are no other humans within the range of my sensors." There was another mechanical sounding click. "I can be fourteen minutes and fifteen second old because that is the elapsed time since my creation."
No other humans within the range of sensors. "What is the range of your sensors?" Some of the strength had left Gerald's voice. He was alone.
"Within the city, my range is impeded," the robot replied. "Roughly, a mile."
"Who lives here?" He should have known it was too quiet. Far too quiet.
"No one other than yourself. I am assuming from the use of the word 'who' rather than 'what', you mean intelligent life."
"Why am I here?" There was only brief moments given to absorb the answer.
There was a pause but it was briefer. "That information is not in my databanks, sir."
That was convenient. "What intelligent life was here before me?"
"The Krell."
"Who are the Krell?" Gerald had certainly never heard of them.
"The Krell built the city." It wasn't a very good answer. The tone seemed officious, as if the robot realized it.
Taking a deep breath, Gerald swept a hand back through his hair; it only fell back into his eyes. "Clothes," he said, wanting an answer for something. "Do you know where I can find some clothing?"
"I can fabricate anything you require, unless it includes radio isotopes. Those will take time to construct. Describe what type of clothing you need."
Radio Isotopes? Gerald shook his head. "Silk? Leather? Could you do that?"
"Certainly. What style of clothing?"
Using the Fae to construct a picture for the robot would have been so much easier. Gerald found himself following the motions for a Working anyway, knowing that nothing would happen without Fae. He pictured the Working in his mind's eye and sighed.
"A silk tunic, thigh-length, with long sleeves. The sides at the thigh should be split for movement. Silk hose, thicker, for pants - split at the front top middle with lacings for closure. Soft leather knee-high boots, split down the back, again with lacings - long lacings. The soles should be reinforced--how will you know it will fit me? How are you going to fabricate it?"
"Molecular construction."
Behind Gerald, the light in the room he had woken in glowed on.
A shadow gathered in the furrow between Gerald's eyebrows and he turned just slightly toward the renewed source of light.
Through the doorway, he could see the clear dome. The mist was forming in it again.
Gerald glanced at Robby. "What's going on?"
"Were you attempting to visualize?"
There was a nod. "I'm... used to having my visualizations take physical shape. Somewhat."
"The Thought Development Device appears to have attuned to you. It was responding."
For a man always thirsty for knowledge, even Gerald felt a little waterlogged by all of the new terminology. With a last look at Robby he turned back to the other room and walked into it to peer into the dome.
The robot moved also, following him.
In the dome, the cloud coalesced to mirror his shape again but there was a fuzziness about it.
"Perhaps if you visualize again, sir. The clothing..."
It was easy enough, each detail of the last outfit he was wearing. Travel-fit, fighting-fit, the tunic and pants unembellished but still of obvious good-quality. A thin, black silk scarf that he had Worked to resist the poisonous gasses of the volcano. All of it was there in perfect detail, each stitch of each seam, flawless, lacking the dirt and grime and wrinkles that the outfit had acquired after he'd lost the ability to Work them away.
It was terrible, reaching for the Fae and finding only a void. It made Gerald dizzy.
He reached something, however. The fuzziness around the figure (of himself, and moving slightly, looking, even blinking) cleared and the figure was now clad as Gerald had visualized.
Robby hummed. "I will have the garments for you in... fourteen minutes." Then the robot turned to walk back to his nitch.
Gerald reclined on the couch and put a hand over his eyes, clearing his mind. His head throbbed slightly after extending himself to no purpose real purpose. He still didn't know where he was, or why he was here, but at least he would have clothing. A small victory.
In the clear dome, the figure dissolved and the cloud of mist cleared. There was quiet for a while, as Gerald rested.
Fourteen minutes later, the robot returned, garments exactly to Gerald's specifications, draped over one arm.
Gerald opened an eye. Then the other. He stood--coming as close as he'd ever been to Robby--and took the garments, holding them up in marvel. They could have been his clothes. "How... How did you make these?" He was already dressing.
"Molecular construction." Robby waited impassively. "Sir... I could not answer your question of why you are here, or apparently to your satisfaction the reason for my age. You did not ask why I am here. However that may be irrelevant."
Gerald tucked himself into the thick, raw silk pants and glanced up as his fingers laced the ties. "Robby? Why are you here?"
"To assist. You requested English. The Krell were extinct long before humans evolved on the third planet of their yellow star in the arm of the spiral galaxy. This house did not recognize English. It is far to primitive a language. It made me, to communicate with you."
"The house made you?" The rest of it... that the Krell were extinct long before humans, yet humans were the primitive ones?... that was filed away with the rest of the information.
"I was fabricated from information recorded in a Krell laboratory, on Altair four. Probably why my data is incomplete. The planet ceased to exist before the recorded information could be verified."
Gerald was unsure of any questions to put to that. He tugged the finer silk over his head, wishing he'd imagined a fastening for his hair. Sitting back down, he pulled the boots over and, stepping into them, began to lace them. "Where did your body come from?"
"The matter was fabricated, according to the data recorded in that laboratory."
"Fabricated from what! How?!" That was a growl. Wrapping a bit of the extra lacing between his fingers, he snapped it off. Used it to tie back his hair.
"The English language is inadequate to answer your question," the robot replied. "The only Earth languages that might come close are quantum physics or native aboriginal. Do you speak either of those?"
Quantum physics. A word gracing the crumbling pages of Casca's journal. Nothing that Gerald knew how to speak. He hadn't thought it was a language at all. The other he couldn't even place. "No," he admitted, "I don't. Do you have texts on either?"
"One moment, sir." There was a ripple of lights and a few clicks, and a hatch in the front of the robot slide open.
Two leather-bound volumes rested inside.
Gerald stared. "Should I bother asking how you got those?"
"I fabricated them for you, sir."
"Of course you did." Gerald stood and took the books, running fingers over the cover and flipping open the top one.
Written in English, it was a book published in 2078 on Quantum Theory.
Gerald touched the date and closed the cover. He looked up at the robot. "So I am in a dead civilization with a robot as my only companion and while he can't tell me much of anything, he can fabricate anything I want?"
"Anything I have enough data to fabricate. Inanimate objects only," Robby corrected, his tone an admonition. "Some materials may take time."
There was one thing missing from his outfit, and Gerald had to ask even though the thing would be different without the coldfire Worked into it. "What about a sword? Steel."
"Rapier, epee, broadsword or sabre?"
"Closest to a sabre, but a little more weighted." He gestured to the dome on the table. "Should I?"
"A good idea," Robby replied, turning to the dome. "The hypothesis is suggested that the more you use the Developer, the more attuned you will become."
Just so with the Fae. Gerald took a deep breath and reached again for something that wasn't there, his mind swinging at a void and dredging details of his blade. The sabre-length of it, the weight making it almost a one-handed long sword. The keen edge and leather-worked handle, the simple, curving D-guard and preened tang.
The cloud of mist appeared quickly and coalesced, no small figure of Gerald this time, rather, the object he was visualizing itself. It took some time to resolve completely but finally there it was.
The robot appeared to observe, and then backed away. "Superalloy steel will take twelve hours to fabricate. Carbon steel only seven."
"Superalloy?" Gerald asked. He wasn't familiar with the term.
"An alloy that exhibits excellent mechanical strength and creep resistance at high temperatures, good surface stability, and corrosion and oxidation resistance, typically with an austenitic face-centered cubic crystal structure." For a moment, Gerald mulled over the words that he understood. "I suppose it would make a better working blade than carbon steel, then?"
"Typical applications are in the aerospace industry. That would be a yes, sir."
Aerospace. The word thrilled a shiver up Gerald's spine. "Superalloy, then. I don't suppose that I'm in a rush for anything. Will you be... detained, then, for twelve hours?"
"Yes, sir. Is there anything you wish before I begin the fabrication process?"
Gerald looked at the shape of his sword in the dome and wiped his mind clear, watching the dome clear as well. "Do you have books on this civilization? The Krell?"
"The only work written on the Krell civilization in English would be Morbius's research. My data in incomplete. I only have a fragment of his early notes."
"Trust me, fragments would not bother me." The smile that Gerald offered was rueful. The hatch opened again. A thin notebook. Notes written in long hand. It was taken, and set onto the table with the other two. "Thank you. Robby - is there food here?"
"The door to the left of the panels goes to an eating area. There is a Sampler there. It will analyze a sample of your skin cells and produce adequate nutrition."
"And a washroom?"
Rather than answering, Robby started back into the other room. "Door to the right of the panels."
Gerald stood in the doorway and watched the robot move away. "Anything else that I should know?"
"Your question is nonspecific." Robby pause, and his upper half rotated to face Gerald. After a moment, he added, "There is a 67.8883 percent probability that there will be others."
That opened his mouth, and then closed it. "Others? What others?"
The robot gave no answer to that. Except, "Not enough data to specify."
A dry smile twisted Gerald's lips. "If I go out of this home, will I be able to get back in?"
"Affirmative."
That was an outdated word, even in Erna's (most likely stunted) vernacular. The man nodded. He had twelve hours to explore.