" Anne, would you have followed me if I'd tried to cross the river?"
"Instruction directed me to stay. Program directs me to protect you."
"I love you, too, Annie, but don't ever take the risk. I could cross the river without danger. My body floats in water. Yours sinks. The mud would bog you down."
"Program directs me to protect you."
"You can't protect me if you're at the bottom of the river. You can't float. Do you understand float?"
"Verb: be buoyant, rise. Noun—"
"Cancel. You stay away from that water, hear me?"
"I'm receiving you clearly, Warren."
"I order you to stay away from the river. If I go close, you stop and wait until I come back. You don't ever go into water. That's a permanent order."
"I perceive possible priority conflict."
"You have to preserve yourself to carry out your instruction to protect me. True?"
"Yes."
"Water can damage you. It can't damage me. If I choose to go there, I go. You stay away from the water."
A delay. "Recorded."
He frowned, hitched the pack up and looked askance at her, then cast another, longer look backward.
Build a bridge, perhaps? Make the other side accessible for Anne? The thought of going beyond her range made him uneasy—if he should run into difficulty, need her—
There were the com units. The portable sensors.
He wanted to go over there, to know what was there. And not there.
The microscope turned up a variety of bacteria in the water. He sat in the lab, staring at the cavorting shapes, shaken by that tiny movement as if it had been the sight of birds or beasts. Somethinglived here and moved.
Such things, he recalled, could work all manner of difficulties in a human gut. He called up Library, went through the information gleaned of a dozen worlds. The comparisons might have told Sikutu something, but he found it only bewildering. They might be photosynthesizing animalcules, or contractile plants.
Heat killed the specimens. He shoved the plate into the autoclave and felt like a murderer. He thought even of walking back to the river to pour the rest of the vial in. Life had become that precious. He nerved himself and boiled the rest—imagined tiny screams in the hissing of the bubbles. It left pale residue.
Two days he lay about, thinking, distracting himself from thought. He sat in Anne's observation dome at night, mapped the movements of the system's other worlds; by day, observed the sun through filters. But there were the charts they had made from space, and looking at the stars hurt too much. It was too much wishing. He stopped going there.
And then there was just the forest to think about. Only that left.
He gathered his gear, set Anneto fetching this and that. He unbolted a land-crawler from its braces, serviced it, loaded it to the bay and loaded it with gear: inflatable raft, survival kit.
"Let it down," he told Anne. "Lower the cargo lift." She came out afterward, bringing him what he had asked, standing there while he loaded the supplies on.
"Assistance?"
"Go back in. Seal the ship. Wait for me."
"My program is to protect you."
"The pseudosome stays here." He reached into the crawler, where the sensor remote unit sat, a black square box on the passenger seat. He turned it on. "That better?"
"The sensor unit is not adequate for defense."
"The pseudosome is not permitted to leave this area unless I call you. There's no animate life, no danger. I'll be in contact. The unit is enough for me to call you if I need help. Obey instructions."
"Please reconsider this program."
"Obey instructions. If you damage that pseudosome, it's possible I won't be able to fix it, and then I won't have it when I need you. True?"
"Yes."
"Then stay here." He walked round, climbed into the driver's seat, started the engine.
"Recorded?"
"Recorded."
He put it in gear and drove off through the grass— looked back as he turned it toward the forest. She still stood there. He turned his attention to the rough ground ahead, fought the wheel. A machine, after all. There were moments when he lost track of that.
The sensor unit light glowed. She was still beside him.
He dragged the raft down the sandy slope, unwieldy bundle, squatted there a moment to catch his breath on the riverside. The wind whispered in the leaves. No noise of motors. He felt the solitude. He saw details, rather than the sterile flatnesses of the ship, absorbed himself in the hush, the moving of the water.
He moved finally, unrolled the raft and pulled the inflation ring. It hissed, stiffened, spread itself. Beep. Beep-beep-beep.
The sensor box. His heart sped. He scrambled up the sandy rise of the crawler and reached the box in the seat. " Anne. What's wrong?"
"Please state your location," the box asked him.
"Beside the river."
"This agrees with my location findings. Please reconsider your program, Warren."
" Anne, you keep that pseudosome where it is. I'll call you if I need you. And I don't need you. I'm all right and there's no danger."
"I picked up unidentified sound."
He let his breath go. "That was the raft inflating. I did it. There's no danger."
"Please reconsider your program."
" Anne, take instruction. Keep that pseudosome with the ship. I've got a small communicator with me.
The sensor box weighs too much for me to carry it with the other things I need. I'm going to leave it in the crawler. But I'm taking the communicator. I'll call you if there's an emergency or if I need assistance."
"Response time will be one hour seventeen minutes to reach your present location. This is*
unacceptable."
"I tell you it is acceptable. I don't need your assistance."
"Your volume and pitch indicate anger."
"Yes, I'm angry."
"Be happy, Warren."
"I'll be happy if you do what I told you and keep that pseudosome at the ship." A long delay. "Recorded."
He took the communicator from the dash, hooked it to his belt. Walked off without a further word. Anneworried him. There was always that conflict-override. She could do something unpredictable if some sound set her off, some perception as innocent as the raft cylinder's noise. But there was nothing out here to trigger her. Nothing.
He slipped the raft away from the shore, quietly, quietly, used the paddle with caution. The current took him gently and he stroked leisurely against it.
A wind signed down the river, disturbing the warmth, rustling the leaves. He drove himself toward the green shadow of the far bank, skimmed the shore a time.
There was a kind of tree that flourished on that side, the leaves of which grew in dusters on the drooping branches, like fleshy green flowers, and moss that festooned other trees never grew on this kind. He saw that.
There was a sort of green flower of thin, brown-veined leaves that grew up from the shallows, green lilies on green pads. The river sent up bubbles among them, and he probed anxiously with his paddle, disturbed their roots, imagining some dire finned creature whipping away from that probing—but he only dislodged more bubbles from rotting vegetation on the bottom. The lilies and the rot were cloyingly sweet.
He let the current take the raft back to the far-shore point nearest his starting place. He drove the raft then into the shallows and stood up carefully, stepped ashore without wetting his boots, dragged the raft up by the mooring rope and secured it to a stout branch to keep the current from unsettling it by any chance.