"None needed, I tell you. It's all right. Go away."
She stayed. Malfunctioning humans, he thought. No programming accepted. He frowned, beyond clear reasoning. The bio and botany labs were ahead. He kept walking, into them and through to Botany One.
"Have you been maintaining here?" he asked. The earth in the trays looked a little dry.
"I've been following program."
He limped over and adjusted the water flow. "Keep it there."
"Yes, Warren."
He walked to the trays, felt of them.
"Soil," Annesaid gratuitously. "Dirt. Earth."
"Yes. It has to be moist. There'll be plants coming up soon. They need the water."
"Coming up. Source."
"Seed. They're under there, under the soil. Plants, Anne. From seed." She walked closer, adjusted her stabilizers, looked, a turning of her sensor-equipped head. She put out a hand and raked a line in the soil. "I perceive no life. Size?"
"It's there, under the soil. Leave it alone. You'll kill it." She straightened. Her sensor lights glowed, all of them. "Please check your computations, Warren."
"About what?"
"This life."
"There are some things your sensors can't pick up, Annie."
"I detect no life."
"They're there. I put them in the ground. I know they're there; I don't need to detect them. Seeds, Annie. That's the nature of them."
"I am making cross-references on this word, Warren."
He laughed painfully, patiently opened a drawer and took out a large one that he had not planted.
"This is one. It'd be a plant if I put it into the ground and watered it. That's what makes it grow. That's what makes all the plants outside."
"Plants come from seed."
"That's right."
"This is growth process. This is birth process."
"Yes."
"This is predictable."
"Yes, it is."
In the dark faceplate the tiny stars glowed to intense life. She took the seed from the counter, with one powerful thrust rammed it into the soil and then pressed the earth down over it, leaving the imprint of her fingers. Warren looked at her in shock.
"Why, Anne? Why did you do that?"
"I'm investigating."
"Are you, now?"
"I still perceive no life."
"You'll have to wait."
"Specify period."
"It takes several weeks for the seed to come up."
"Come up."
"Idiom. The plant will grow out of it. Then the life will be in your sensor range."
"Specify date."
"Variable. Maybe twenty days."
"Recorded." She swung about, facing him. "Life forms come from seeds. Where are human seeds?"
" Anne—I don't think your programming is adequate to the situation. And my knee hurts. I think I'm going to go topside again."
"Assistance?"
"None needed." He leaned his sore hand on the makeshift cane and limped past her, and she stalked faithfully after, to the lift, and rode topside to the common room, stood by while he lowered himself into a reclining chair and let the cane fall, massaging his throbbing hand.
"Instruction?"
"Coffee," he said.
"Yes, Warren."
She brought it. He sat and stared at the wall, thinking of things he might read, but the texts that mattered were all beyond him and all useless on this world, on Rule's world. He thought of reading for pleasure, and kept seeing the grove at night, and the radiance, and Sax's body left there. He owed it burial. And he had not had the strength.
Had to go back there. Could not live here and not go back there. It was life there as well as a dead friend. Sax had known, had gone to it, through what agony he shrank from imagining, had gone to it to die there. . . to be in that place at the last. He tried to doubt it, here, in Anne's sterile interior, but he had experienced it, and it would not go away. He even thought of talking to Anneabout it, but there was that refusal to listen to him when he was malfunctioning—and he had no wish to stir that up. Seeds. . . were hard enough. Immaterial life—
"Warren," Annesaid. "Activity? I play chess." She won, as usual.
The swelling went down on the second day. He walked, cautiously, without the cane. . . still used it for going any considerable distance, and the knee still ached, but the rest of the aches diminished and he acquired a certain cheerfulness, assured at least that the knee was not broken, that it was healing, and he went about his usual routines with a sense of pleasure in them, glad not to be lamed for life.
But by the fourth and fifth day the novelty was gone again, and he wandered the halls of the ship without the cane, miserable, limping in pain but too restless to stay still. He drank himself to sleep nights— still awoke in the middle of them, the result, he reckoned, of too much sleep, of dreaming the days away in idleness, of lying with his mind vacant for hours during the day, watching the clouds or the grass moving in the wind. Like Anne. Waiting for stimulus that never came.
He played chess, longer and longer games with Anne, absorbed her lessons. . . lost. He cried, the last time—for no reason, but that the game had become important, and when he saw one thing coming, she sprang another on him.
"Warren," she said implacably, "is this pain?"
"The knee hurts," he said. It did. "It disrupted my calculations." It had not. He had lost. He lied, and Annesat there with her lights winking on and off in the darkness of her face and absorbing it.
"Assistance? Pain: drugs interfere with pain reception." She had gotten encyclopedic in her processing. "Some of these drugs are in storage—"
"Cancel. I know what they are." He got up, limped over to the counter and opened the liquor cabinet. "Alcohol also kills the pain."
"Yes, Warren."
He poured his drink, leaned against the counter and sipped at it, wiped his eyes. "Prolonged inactivity, Anne. That's causing the pain. The leg's healing." A small delay of processing. "Chess is activity."
"I need to sleep." He took the drink and the bottle with him, limped into his own quarters, shut the door. He drank, stripped, crawled between the sheets and sat there drinking, staring at the screen and thinking that he might try to read. . . but he had to call Anneto get a book on the screen, and he wanted no debates. His hands shook. He poured another glass and drank it down, fluffed the pillow. " Anne," he said. "Lights out."
"Good night, Warren." The lights went.
The chessboard came back, behind his eyelids, the move he should have made. He rehearsed it to the point of anger, deep and bitter rage. He knew that it was ridiculous. All pointless. Without consequence. Everything was.
He slid into sleep, and dreamed, and the dreams were of green things, and the river, and finally of human beings, of home and parents long lost, of old friends. . . of women inventively erotic and imaginary, with names he knew at the time—he awoke in the midst of that and lay frustrated, staring at the dark ceiling and then at the dark behind his eyelids, trying to rebuild them in all their detail, but sleep eluded him. He thought of Annein that context, of bizarre programs, of his own misery, and what she was not—his thoughts ran in circles and grew unbearable. He reached for the bottle, poured what little there was and drank it, and that was not enough. He rolled out of bed, stumbled in the dark. " Lights," he cried out, and they came on. He limped to the door and opened it, and the pseudosome came to life where it had been standing in the dark, limned in silver from the doorway, her lights coming to life inside her faceplate. The lights in the living quarters brightened. "Assistance?"